Education Services Australia is looking for teachers for a national project that emphasises teacher voice, social media and the Australian Curriculum

Education Services Australia (ESA) would like to engage a group of talented teachers in the role of teacher champions for a national project that emphasises teacher voice, social media and the Australian Curriculum.

The project, The Teachers Information and Ideas Exchange, is a nationally-funded DWEER project concentrating on identifying teacher voice, in the context of the Australian curriculum and learning and teaching pedagogy.  It is delivered in collaboration with national partners ACARA and AITSL.

It is known that many rich discussions occur between educators. This project focuses on teachers and their educational conversations and aims to provide educators, using contemporary social media, a mechanism to participate in semi-formal to informal structured talks and for these discussions to be captured for other teachers. The project will provide an online forum and associated mobile applications, linked to many national resources, to allow teachers to share ideas and discussions, with plans to include a powerful search engine and the ability to archive discussions.

The teacher champions will act as mentors, mediators and discussion starters. ESA envisages that these high performing teachers will become a network themselves sharing thoughts and ideas. Teachers who have a social media interest, and are interested in driving and contributing to a national project would be an ideal candidate. It is hoped that many teachers who put their names forward are those who understand and realise the importance of social media in the life of a teacher.

Between 50 and 70 teachers will be selected from all educational jurisdictions in Australia and from a range of subject specialists/class room teachers from all levels of education.

The champion’s commitment for the project is for the 2013 school year. As part of the project ESA will provide professional development for the selected teachers (online). A small stipend will be made available to schools to help defray any costs occurred in the implementation of the role. Individual teacher champions will receive a certificate of participation and a gift from Education Services Australia in appreciation. (an I-pad or tablet device)

To register your interest in becoming a teacher champion, complete the online registration at http://goo.gl/VuaZ0

You are also encouraged to forward this letter to other teachers who you may think would be interested.

Further information is available through the ESA program director, Tony Brandenburg, either by email at tony.brandenburg@esa.edu.au or on mobile 0428 345 001.