Our first post......

Welcome to the new Innovative Education blog from the Partners in Learning Australia team. From this week forth, we will be blogging on a weekly basis on all things innovative and exciting in the Australian and global education community. We aim to provide a mixture of local innovative education stories, examples of international best practice, highlighting new and useful resources and software for educators and stimulate debate about how to best utilise technology and change practices in schools.

Starting today, we are aiming to develop a community of educators who contribute to and initiate debate around the issues highlighted here and elsewhere in the education community. The new Partners in Learning Network; www.pil-network.com, will provide educators with a place to initiate and contribute to all types of educational discussions. The PiL-Network is now the hub for all PiL resources which provide any innovative thinking school with the resources to begin their journey of innovation and change. To help generate conversations, we will also use the Twitter #pilaus when posting articles for debate and continue the discussions in the Partners in Learning Network.

We will endeavour to provide informative, relevant, rich content to enable you as educators to develop innovative best practices to meet the challenges of todays classroom. Over the course of the next few months, we will blog about great examples of developing 21st century skills in classrooms around the world. You too can contribute to the content on this blog. If you, your class or your school has undertaken an innovative teaching and learning project we would love to hear about it and welcome your submissions to guest blog right here.

We will also focus on the integration of technology into teaching and learning. Technology is not the single answer to the challenges we all face in education but it is the medium through which we can begin to address these challenges. Check out this video to see how the challenges education faces in Australia, are no different to around the world:

[View:https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4wflkD15Nm4]

A fantastic blog to learn from education 'heroes' around the world is on Anthony Salcito's 'daily edventures' website. Here education heroes from around the world tell their stories of integrating technology into their teaching and learning practices.

As Anthony says, "innovation in education is a worldwide challenge," so we can all learn from innovative education project regardless of where they are located. Katarina, in the article above, is a great example of someone who took something different to engage her learners. Has anyone ever used robotics in their classes? If so, we'd love to hear your story so feel free to comment below.

Finally, perhaps we'll leave you with some homework! The Partners in Learning program has developed many useful, rich resources for teachers and education leaders. The InnovativeSchools Toolkit is a collection of such resources. The IS-Toolkit is a clear, accessible and practical guide for you and your school community to begin the journey of innovation. The toolkit is intended to be a starting point rather than a complete solution and it offers a process that can be customized based on your unique needs.

The four key areas for focus are:

The toolkit is a one stop shop with case studies, a knowledge library, workshop tools and structures, and a self reflection tool to provide school leaders with the knowledge base and resources to begin a jorney of innovation in their school. Check it out and see can it help your schools innovation journey.