Preparations

Tomorrow morning hubby is again ensuring I know how lucky I am by driving me to the airport to catch an early flight to Melbourne for the 21st Century Learning Conference.

Image by  iheartlinen (http://www.flickr.com/photos/iheartlinen/1013261489/)

My laptop bag is packed (power cable - check, webcam (just in case) - check, headset (just in case) - check, hard drive - check, back up USB - check, laptop - check...marking - sadly, check), my clothing bag is about to be packed (carry on only so I'm not too worried), my supervisions are ready to go and I'm emailing them as I type...those are the easy parts of being away for this amazing conference I've been drooling over for months.

Other things I've had to consider:
- triple check that I did indeed book a room with broadband access...sadly this is very important to me these days...since I'm not allowed to get a portable internet account
- ensure my utterli account is switched to Melbourne details so I can mobile blog as necessary
- set up a live blog at coveritlive...just in case...I want to give it a go but I'm worried...what if people think I'm being rude, or what if the venue doesn't have net access (there are times when I'm too shy).
- charging ipod (essential!)

Ok, so I know my preparations are sufficient...why am I feeling like I've forgotten something?

New Horizons

Okay, so I admit it...three days later and I'm still irked by the "need to broaden your ICT pedagogy" comment on my feedback. Now, I realise this is a fairly minor comment on an otherwise glowing report...but I've never been one to accept close enough as good enough.

As a result I'm left with a deep motivation to find ways to "extend" myself, and that's led to me playing and thinking a lot this weekend. And it's been productive. I've:

• Played with Audacity to finish off the first of the podcasts from the Year 8 classes...can I just say, the out takes had me giggling all night...hilarious! I've now also uploaded these to their secure podcast lounge so they can listen. I wish I was more involved in the actual teaching of this unit..it's driving me nuts
• Figured out how to use Studymate and Respondus to create flash games to include in my Blackboard virtual classrooms...and realised these can also be used to create activities for ipods...
• Figured out how to use these on my ipod (I know...I'm slow)

As usual I've done a lot of professional reading (blogs, links, articles, tweets) and as a result have a multitude of new possibilities twirling around in my head. Including:

• Using smsexpress.com.au or something similar to send reminders and updates to students
• Using utterli for audio blogging
• Investigating backchanneling options and the possibilities for my English classes (I'm liking the idea of something like coveritlive.com)

I've been having a couple of small issues with my Utterli blog posts - they haven't been cross posting automatically. Which is frustrating because I'm hoping to get it working before I head to Melbourne so I can still touch base daily. I played with some settings today and since I have to attend a very long after school planning session tomorrow night I'll test it all out then - fingers crossed it's sorted now...

In the meantime - what are your newest horizons? How are you going to be "broadening your use of ICT pedagogy" this week?