So before I begin, I acknowledge that it has been a very long time since my last blog post. Kinda sounds like a confession doesn’t it 😉
I need to make more of an effort to keep posting despite how hectic and busy school life gets.
So where do I start? I have returned from one of the most energising and inspiring weeks of my professional life as an educator; having spent a week with some of the most amazing and talented people has had an amazing effect on me.
Before I go into some of the details of the Institute, a lot of friends, family and colleagues have asked me “What is an ADE?” or “What do you have to do?” I think the best way to explain is in this video.
The Institute was brilliant. The workshops, quality of the presentations and the amount of learning that occurred was nothing short of incredible. The one thing that struck me was how open and genuine everybody was. You could walk around the amazing resort and start a conversation with a stranger and within minutes you would hear a story about their experience that would blow your mind. This happened to me on numerous occasions.
I was lucky enough to meet some colleagues who I have been following on twitter or reading their blogs and form a face to face relationship with them. It was great to be able to discuss ideas and future projects with like minded educators – the nerd talk was pretty sensational. One night on my way to the pool, I walked past two Canadian guys talking about video compression rates 😉
While attending the workshops was incredible, the whole experience really went into another gear during the evenings. There were so many opportunities to network and mingle with an unlimited supply of highly skilled professionals, granted, many of these opportunities took place either by or in the pool.
For me personally, there were simply too many stand out moments for me to list or discuss here. However, I will mention one thing that I saw that applied to me. It is a powerful little video called “How To Lead Innovation: The 3 Carriage Train” and was created by Ray Nashar (straight As and no Es) who I had the pleasure of meeting. Ray created an iTunes U course called “How To Lead Innovation: The 3 Carriage Train” and I throughly recommend that you have a look at it. For me, this video has come at the right time as I look at position of where my school is at the moment and where I want it to be. Do yourself a favour and watch the video
I’m feeling inspired and reinvigorated by the new people that I have added to my PLN and I’m happy to say that I have a few new projects on the horizon that I’m excited about. I’ll leave the details of the projects to another time.
Just before I end this post, I’ve created a new Multi Touch Book exclusively for iPad. The Book has been designed for my school, specifically for the parents as a condensed version of our school website  with access to all of the necessary forms and notices while utilising the features of iBooks. The Multi Touch Book is on our website http://www.samps.vic.edu.au or can be downloaded directly by clicking here
ourinspiredclassroom 