The Redback Project

Elisabeth Murdoch College is a large secondary college in the south eastern suburbs of Melbourne.

This project has been developed to support our staff develop a range of 21st Century skills with available Web 2.0 tools, to explore them, play with them and become comfortable with them.

While beginning my TPL (Teacher Professional Leave) in 2006 I came across a wonderful site which was using a self discovery approach to training their staff with the use of Web 2.0 tools.

Originally developed by Helene Bowers for the staff at the Public Library of Charlotte and Mecklenburg County in August 2006 the Learning 2.0 project participants created blogs and explored a wide range of Web 2.0 learning tools, based on completing 23 things . The aim was to provide their staff with a better knowledge of web 2.0 tools which would be useful for working in libraries.

Part of my role this year has been working with staff in a peer coaching role supporting their use of ICT. Most of the coaching so far has been in the basics of using software and hardware, useful, but I felt I wanted staff to become more innovative in how they used the technology. Rather than getting frustrated, as I have seen some people do, Stager, I reflected on ways I could introduce staff to some of the wonderful tools available in a more fun way than the usual staff PD sessions.

I thought I could develop a similar project to the 23 things project, but focus on the tools we have available to us and are more relevant to a Victorian secondary educational system. There are many sites that are blocked by the education department, and many that are just too big a drain on bandwidth. So… my challenge is to adapt and develop the project created by PLCMC to something fun for teachers to use and develop skills at the same time, with sites relevant to secondary education.

Wish me luck