Educating Erin

There are so many events out there that I’d love to go to if there weren’t two main obstacles – cost and the fact that I have to go to uni! Here are some of the ones that I found and thought could be relevant to my topic of unit planning with VELS.

The MAV annual conference (4th and 5th of December, 2008) will definitely have sessions on VELS – I went last year and they have soooo much happening. A good tip – if you volunteer to help they let you go to some sessions for free. I did this last year and it was great to get involved and feel useful! While I won’t be able to use this directly for my learning around this topic this semester, I definitely plan to keep learning past uni!!!

The MAV also run a public lecture series, but there are no details about this year’s program up yet. I listened to a podcast of one of last years’ sessions, and it seemed like a good forum for learned about maths in the ‘real’ world, which could give you lots of ideas for connected learning in the classroom. I’ve joined their mailing list so that I don’t miss any great sessions on VELS or any other topic.

The Australian Education Union (AEU) have just run a student teacher conference, but I wasn’t able to go I will be looking for their events in the future though as the descriptions of the conference sounded highly engaging and useful.

One event that I will be able to attend is the Professional Standards Project for Indonesian teachers on the 8th of May. While also being really useful for learning about teaching, I hope to
get lots of ideas about using VELS both from the actual session and from discussions with other teachers there.

I also have been given free attendance to two interactive whiteboard sessions being run at the Firbank Grammar School, for Indonesian on the 14th of May and for Maths on the 15th of May. While not directly focussed on VELS, I plan to have my VELS radar active for any little tips, and I also think that the resources and ideas presented with the whiteboards might make using VELS easier, especially cross-curricular planning and using ICT.

Part of the reason I spent so long researching these websites is that there are some many relevant associations who have extremely relevant and useful sites! In terms of collecting both ideas and resources, this has been a very successful part of my plan. To reflect on my research, I’ve complied my notes on each website, focusing on its relevance to curriculum planning using VELS, and also the useful teaching and learning resources each site offers. I was going to post this the other day, however bonfires and brother’s birthdays and other stuff derailed that plan! And also severe editing was required – you don’t need to read all my copious amounts of notes no matter how exciting I think they are!!

Most of the information I found useful on the Mathematical Association of Victoria’s (MAV) website (at http://www.mav.vic.edu.au/) was restricted to members only. This only proved to be a matter of waiting for log on details as I joined for half-price at their conference last year! As I’ve mentioned in other posts, the Curriculum Planning section of the website was most relevant to my development plan. Everything is organised by VELS levels and maths topics, which as well as making the activities and teaching sequences of a unit plan much easier to plan, is a good indication of what each progression point might look like in practice. Many of the resources are hard copy, or have to be bought (eg. Maths300, RIME), however I think there is a high chance of many of these resources already being owned by schools. I also intend to follow some of these up in the Deakin Library when I get a chance. I’d also like to investigate the learning objects for mathematics on my next rounds, as I have seen a few of the Indonesian ones in a class at uni, and I think they have heaps of potential to my future unit plans.

The Victorian Indonesian Language Teachers’ Association (VILTA) website (at http://www.mltav.asn.au/indonesian/) was not nearly as in depth (or time consuming!) as the MAV site, however I did find some great resources. There is information on Indonesian supermarkets, restaurants, bookshops, excursions and incursions, which I could see being very useful in providing authentic Indonesian experiences. There is also a really nice collection of useful weblinks.

In terms of finding materials on VELS in unit planning, the MAV’s website was the most useful to me. The other professional associations were still useful (read about professional development in my next post), but the MAV’s was by far the most complete. The only possible drawback is in it being limited to members of the MAV, however in just the few experiences I have had at their annual conference, and exploring their website has convinced me of the importance of this association.

One of the reasons I think that the MAV website stood out so much is that other associations do not have nearly as strong an internet presence. I receive newsletters, email bulletins and journals from both VILTA and MLTAV (Modern Language Teachers’ Association of Victoria) which are very useful in terms of connecting with the profession.