Amanda Marrinan, winner of ISTE’s 2011 Kay Bitter Award for Excellence in Technology-Based PK– 12 Education
The Kay L. Bitter Award for
excellence in Technology-Based PK–
Amanda Marrinan, Kay L. Bitter Award for Excellence
in Technology-Based PK– 12 Education Teacher
St. John Vianney’s Primary School, Manly, Brisbane, Australia
Even some of the most devout educational technology
advocates haven’t tried what Amanda Marrinan does in
her classroom as a matter of course: She encourages her
5-year-old students to blog. She opens her classroom three
days a week for a bloggers café, providing students a space
where they can blog, network, learn new skills, mentor one
another, and even help staff and parents.
In 2007, she connected her class with teachers and students across the world using Skype, and she has participated in global collaborative projects. One of those projects,
Voices of the World ( http://onevoice.ning.com), connects
educators who share recordings that their students make to
introduce children to languages, accents, and dialects from
around the world.
Marrinan is able to engage her students in international
projects due to the connections she’s maintained with educators in the United States, Canada, and Australia. She also
shares her tech knowledge by facilitating workshops for
teachers and parents during lunch breaks and after hours.
What her nominator says: “Amanda’s students participate
in online, collaborative projects that support their learning
across literacy and numeracy as well as develop an aware-
ness of the whereabouts and culture of others within our
global community. The children connect, learn, share, and
collaborate via wikis, Voice Threads, and video as well as
through tools like Skype and Twitter. Amanda truly em-
bodies the qualities of a lifelong learner. She is passionate
about embracing technology as a way of differentiating
learning for her students.” —Sheila Adams, teacher, Rye
Junior High School, New Hampshire, USA
Diana Fingal is senior editor of L&L. She has been
writing for and editing periodicals for more than 20
years. She has a bachelor’s degree in journalism from
the University of Oregon in Eugene, Oregon, USA. She
also taught English in a K– 11 school in Yalta,
Ukraine, as a Peace Corps volunteer.
