Year 2s from St Matthew’s visited Sovereign Hill in preparation for their school Musical Concert. Over the years Sovereign Hill Education has developed a partnership with St Matthew’s, in  2004 Mick Travers, their  music teacher wrote/directed his Musical “Eureka” which the school performed at Sovereign Hill with the assistance of visiting students. 2010 the Mary MacKillop Musical was performed at Sovereign Hill.Now the school is planning another Musical involving history;  What has shaped us? and Where have we  come from? The year 2s were involved in playing olden days games to get the idea of what it would be like as a child on the goldfields.

We just wanted to say thank you for allowing us the opportunity to engage in the educational session yesterday. We absolutely loved it. Sovereign Hill is by far the best excursion we have been on to date. You can check out our blog at bcashin.global2.vic.edu.au. Grade 2C from St Matthew’s North Fawkner.

I could not seem to get animoto working, after downloading the free sample, I couldn’t get my images downloaded … but will keep trying!!!!! May have to move my images to Flickr.
We have a selection of podcasts on the Sovereign Hill website.
The podcast “Catholic Education in Ballarat” has author and Historian Jill Blee speak about early Catholic Schools on the Ballarat Diggings. The recording contains some wonderful quotes about the poor standards and the hardships faced by students and teachers alike. Music by Men o’ the Hill.
This is just one the many podcasts that appear on the Sovereign Hill Education website. They are available for teachers and students to view and possibly use with photo story or PowerPoint to create a photo presentation of their visit to Sovereign Hill.
Others found on the website are: ‘Why Ballarat did not become a Ghost town’, ‘Songs of the Goldfields’, ‘Settlers and songs’, ‘Alcohol on the Goldfields’, ‘What made Victoria different?’, ‘Easter Traditions’.
We also have an audio library consisting of mp3 files of various quotes. Teachers and students can download audio files of quotes from the Australian goldrushes. These quotes are primary sources – from the mouths of people who were there as interpreted by our actors. The files can be downloaded and used in digital presentations
http://sheducationcom.ascetinteractive.biz/?id=audiolibrary#GrassRoots

Author and Historian Jill Blee speaks about early Catholic Schools on the Ballarat Diggings. The recording contains some wonderful quotes about the poor standards and the hardships faced by students and teachers alike. Music by Men o’ the Hill. Quotes by Barry Kay.
This is just one the many podcasts that appear on the Sovereign Hill Education website.They are available for teachers and students to view and possibly use with photostory and photos of their excursion to Sovereign Hill.Others found on the website are: ‘Why Ballarat did not become a Ghost town’, ‘Songs of the Goldfields’, ‘Settlers and songs’, ‘Alcohol on the Goldfields’, ‘What made Victoria different?’, ‘Easter Traditions’.
We also have an audio library consisting of mp3 files of various quotes. Teachers and students can download audio files of quotes from the Australian goldrushes. These quotes are primary sources – from the mouths of people who were there as interpreted by our actors. The files can also be downloaded and used in digital presentations.
http://sheducationcom.ascetinteractive.biz/?id=audiolibrary#GrassRoots

Mass at St Alipius Diggings Church at Sovereign Hill

Enthusiastic singing voices could be heard across the goldfields at Sovereign Hill on Monday 29 April, 2013. Students, teachers, Principals, and CEO staff gathered as a faith community in St Alipius Diggings Catholic Church, to celebrate the conclusion of Ballarat Catholic Education Week 2013.

St Alipius Diggings  Catholic Church allowed the small faith community to celebrate mass in the traditional style of the 1850s. Fr McInerney and 2 students from St Alipius primary school raised the flag with an ecclesiastical cross to inform the Catholic community that mass would begin in half an hour. Fr McInerney also showed, members of the congregation the custom of the celebrant facing away from the community throughout the Mass and members receiving communion over a rail at the front of the altar. Many of the younger participants were not aware of this practice of times gone by and were most pleased to be able to be a part of reliving history.

Sovereign Hill welcomed the enthusiastic congregation, which included representatives from; Loreto College, St Patrick College, Emmaus Catholic Primary School, St Alipius Primary School, St Francis Xavier Primary school and St Columba’s Primary School, Liam Davison (Director of Religious Education), Sue Crowe and Adam Cameron provided the music and encouraged the singing and Jo-anne Van der Voort (Religious Education Officer) assisted with the preparation of the Mass.

The congregation was reminded that the diggers who flocked to the Ballarat Goldfields came here with hopes and dreams of a better life. Throughout the hard times their faith and their Church community continued to support and encourage them in good time and bad. Similar to faith communities today supporting the hopes and aspirations of its members.
http://www.ballarat.catholic.org.au/_uploads/enews/2013_E-news/May/may13sovereign_hill.pdf

Listen to local Ballarat History teacher Doug Bradby. Doug is the author of the Seriously Weird History series, his newest book, “Life on the Goldfields” is excellent primary students studying Gold. Doug works in the Ballarat Gold Museum as a volunteer with students on exhibitions and also visits local schools. http://sovereignhilleducation.podomatic.com/

I had heard of Google docs before through colleagues. Google docs in plain English  – enlightened me and made much more sense to me. I can see how it could be used with students and other teachers, especially if you do not have time to meet physically.

Google form was a great idea, could be used in many ways:

• evaluations at the end of a Theme
• student evaluations at the completion of assessment tasks
• checking students for prior knowledge at the beginning of a unit of work
• checking for student understanding
• surveying teachers
• used for evaluations after a teacher PL activity

I have really enjoyed this module as it has given me a purposeful and relevant opportunity to investigate Blogging in detail. There are so many great blogs in the’ blogosphere’. Because I am relatively new to blogging (started a blog in 2012, but did not make much progress with it) this new knowledge and this web 2.0 Course will enable to me to get back on board.
The “5 tips for helping students become better bloggers” was concise and a good start. http://blogwalker.edublogs.org/2009/08/28/five-tips-for-helping-students-become-better-bloggers/ for teachers using Blogs with their students but also useful for any first timers
1. Provide students with good examples
2. Reflection Sheet and self-evaluation

3. Teach students to hyperlink
4. Share strategies for bringing others into the blog conversation

5. Teach students to use the Internet safely, effectively, and ethically

Whilst I was checking out some of the best Award winning Education blogs from 2012, I found a school who will be visiting Sovereign Hill soon. Blogging can be a great way to connect with the children’s learning before, during and after an excursion. The 2 teachers who run the class blogs have certainly got their students on board, with many of their student’s blogging in the holidays. I am going to start up a family blog after seeing one of my colleague’s a great idea for keeping in touch

I have had a Twitter account for a few years and use it quiet differently from my original purpose. I am more of a follower and use it professionally and follow Museums, Libraries, news, cultural organisations and galleries. authors to keep up to date with anything new. I had an interesting experience recently whilst teaching a class group at Sovereign Hill, we were involved in an education session titled “Put Yourself in the Eureka Picture”, where the students get dressed up and create the important events leading up to Eureka. The teacher/adults take photos of the students and back at school make up a book after downloading the PDF from the Sovereign Hill Education website. The class teacher was on her smart phone the whole lesson. When I returned to my computer I saw that she had tweeted some photos and comments from the session. I was chuffed at first by the compliments but also thought that perhaps she had missed out on her students’ actual experience. This school was on a 3 day Camp and used their Twitter account to let parents know and keep them in touch with what they were doing regularly throughout the day.

I have quickly realised that you can spend much time on all this! Watching the videos (over and over again) that grabbed my attention, reading blog posts and focusing for some short periods of time on a particular tool that I needed to use or wanted to further investigate. It can lead you off in different directions and soon find yourself caught up with reading interesting snippets of information.
Most of the tools I have had limited exposure to and some I have never (of course, heard of) I did download the doc. “25 tools for professionals” which I have already looked back on. I am also keeping a ‘note book’ of good ideas, things to check out again or use in my work. It also has prompted me to chat with colleagues and find out what they know about the various tools and how they see them being used. I enjoyed setting up my iGoogle page, so easy!