Another gem from the Digital Storytelling Professional Development I attended at the Learning Innovation Centre was our session with Deborah Cohen from the Australian Children’s Television Foundation and a break-out session I attended with her later in the day.

Deborah Cohen stepped us through ‘My Place’ from start to (almost) finish. Here I will tell you a secret, I thought ‘My Place’ was the Sally Morgan version and I was interested in attending that break-out session because of the indigenous perspectives I might be able to incorporate in an English/SoSE unit around the book. I thought that it would be interesting for any year level because it has been adapted as a picture book for younger readers too.

Imagine my surprise when ‘My Place’ turned out to be a book written by Nadia Wheatley for Australia’s Bicentennial Celebrations in 1988. Back then I was having fun attending Expo 88 and drinking beers at the various exhibitions there. Now there’s a digital story I can tell …

‘My Place’ is a very clever picture book in it’s own right. It has been made into a magnificent television series, with another series in the pipeline, which will encompass another 100 years. Each episode of the series is set in an earlier decade from the perspective of a child living in the house the story is set in.

The icing on the cake – and it’s very nice icing, is the companion teacher and student websites. The websites are a joint initiative by The Children’s Television Foundation, Curriculum Corporation and The Learning Federation. Aligned to ACARA (for the time being) for English and History; it is a treasure trove of resources for those of us historically deprived and wondering where we will suddenly ‘get’ appropriate teaching resources and ideas for teaching Australian history. The ‘My Place for Teachers’ website is a one stop shop. The website can be searched by decades, themes, events and people who are significant to Australia’s history. There is enough material in the website for years of work, or you might base a more focused unit around a particular theme.

The website adds an additional two decades to the original idea so that we are brought up to 2008, right about the time Kevin Rudd made an apology to the stolen generation. Additional resources are also available when you purchase the series on DVD with accompanying Teaching Guide, which is available from Australian Children’s Television Corporation or Curriculum Corporation.

As you can probably gather from this blog post, am excited about using this resource in the classroom. I have registered on the Teacher Forum so that I can network with others thinking about or already using the resource. I will be interested to hear from anyone already using it.