Hello Yvonne and welcome from a fellow Australian. I teach at Hawkesdale in country Western Victoria. I hope that you can meet up with fellow visual arts teachers.

ICT is exciting but trying to get others excited in it also is a hassle :)

Hi Yvonne, and thanks for your note. I went to Melbourne in 2001 and didn't want to return to the states - what an incredible place! Thanks for the lead also! Janet

Prinicipal class have ICT requirements written within the expectations of their positions and also the school requirements... Sometimes its good to remind them :)

Hi Yvonne! Thank you for the lovely note on my blog! I'm also a 'newbie' but blogging really is addictive for sure. My kids are so excited. We are a performing arts open school and I teach 1st, 2nd, 3rd grades. I dapple in art myself, having been a self-taught potter by trade for years in Italy. I love your site - I also spent lots of time on it. Will surely return! Great art projects. One can detect a strong energy going on in your room!
Diane
www.piazzamannino.edublogs.org

Hi Yvonne,

With your interest in Education Technology, I recommend you take a look at Wiziq's virtual classroom and authorstream's power point presentation platform. Both are web based platforms, have a bunch of features and free basic service.

Thanks Yvonne.

Mark

Hi Yvonne - sure can :)

Yes I like to go searching for new cool tools for educators, and the genealogy has become quite an obsession recently. There are some great tools out there at the moment. Have you seen My Heritage yet? The tree builder is pretty good and you can collaborate with others.

Alison

Morning Yvonne - the My heritage stuff is free http://www.myheritage.com/ and can download the software and build your tree offline and then upload it to the site. Its very neat and the detail you can put in is great.
I'm in Adelaide and I work for edna, so we have been back since the 2nd of Jan. It's not too busy yet though ~ It will get hectic soon though when everyone goes back!
All the best with your PD - please do share what you learn with the rest of us :)

Thank You! Yes, it is humid here but I LOVE IT! I have lived in Florida most of my life so the heat and humidity doesn't bother me very much. I've been making myself familiar with Classroom 2.0 and I've already found several resources that I want to pass on to my coworkers.

Hi Yvonne - I'm happy to meet you -- my mum sure knows a lot of diverse and interesting people. Re Rotary -- they already provide our kids with scholarships and fund a trip for 1 student to a tech thing in another province every year. They also have just given us a grant for $5000 worth of equipment. I have a feeling that asking for funding to send 2 teachers Australia might be a bit too much.

What I'd like to see is a group of schools getting together. We could do a day or an evening about tools for several interested teachers from each -- even better if they'd also each bring a student so they could play together -- and then we could visit each school and do something there for their staff's as well if they' like us to. I also had an idea of doing a day for student teachers and their classroom sponsor teachers together -- an interesting blend of 'new' and 'old' school, but that would mean involving a university. A conference would be great, but it's hard to find lists of them as your country is big like Canada.

I correspond with a number of people (esp. in another Ning called 25 tools about how to get reluctant teachers involved in technology, but one of your own continent's teachers has had what I think is a superb idea. She puts little posters up at the photocopy machine!! Here's the link to her website: http://mrsleung.edublogs.org/. She's also in Classroom 2.0 at: http://www.classroom20.com/profile/Riss.

Now I'm joining the world to watch Obama.
-Sue

Hi Evonne,
Thanks for the lovely comments about my blog- indeed what a small world it is! I actualy live in Bendigo :)

Goodluck on th epositive return to school - I realised only Monday that this is my last week of freedom (and also my last week to get my room ready!!!!!!) I will therefore spend every day this week at school.
I'm really excited about this year though as I have set up a link with a school in the UK and we will be teaching them about Australia. Great things are going to happen this year, I can just feel it :)

Hope you have a great year too.
Narissa

Athens you should know better, I'm always working!!!
Cheers John

Well I'm off home after a hard days work! Have a great weekend and let's pray we have some relief from this terrible heat over the weekend
Cheers John