I have copied this slideshow from The Bashful Blogger's blog as it was so neat having all these awesome tools collated into one place!
9:10 PM
8:32 PM
While browsing through TKI I spotted this interesting looking slideshow about how to use comics in the classroom and have added it below. I must admit to feeling a little twinge I don't teach middle or senior school at the moment as opposed to new entrants!
At first glance I like the look of the All about me as a starter activity in Term 1. The cybersafety ideas look interesting as a way of explaining this to seniors and I also think the reflection tool might be interesting as a way of making writing a recount exciting for middle and senior children. Has anyone used any of these ideas in their classroom yet and have any thoughts???
8:13 PM
I was invited along with my friend KP to attend a senior staff meeting last week to discuss where we are at SPS regarding inquiry. We have decided to re-think doing a whole school theme next year and have some PD to further develop our understanding of inquiry and I am feeling very positive about this as it will hopefully allow me to increase my own understandings and allow the staff to take ownership of a worthy a theme that we can explore in 2011. I have just been watching a video of an interview by Sharon Friesen on EDtalks which explores what I think about inquiry...
Now we just have to come up with some suitable themes that our students and staff can relate to and make sense of where there is an authentic purpose for inquiry!
10:14 PM
After reading Hey Milly's blog I really like the sound of Google Wave and am going to ask her to invite me! Any thoughts anyone?!
9:59 PM
After having this blog recommended to me by 2 colleagues I decided to have a read and can say I thoroughly enjoyed it. Bruce Hammonds blog has some recent posts with very interesting information and ideas around National Standards and the Revised NZ Curriculum. I identified with the following image as I think about education and the shift that all involved need to make as we consider changes in technology and try to prepare learners for success in their lives:
I am currently very interested in upskilling myself in inquiry learning as I have been involved in several inquiries this year and feel I have not quite got there! Even although I have tried very hard! I am looking forward to 2010 and having more attempts at this exciting and powerful approach to learning and will be keen to centre my personal learning goal around this area.
5:10 PM
After a request via a comment on my blog I am sharing some of what I do with hyperlinking in my planning. I find this invaluable for allowing quick, fluster-free access to files/documents when teaching. As I teach Year 0/1 the children don't have a hugely long attention span and it can get a bit tricky if they have to sit for long periods while you're searching for things in your My Docs! I link to other Word documents (e.g Lt Plans, assessment record sheets, other weekly plans such as reading and maths off my master daily plan etc), websites, Kispiration, SMART Notebook, powerpoint, images off my plan.
Above are screenshots of my weekly reading plan and the underlined words are the linked text. To do this highlight the word(s) you want to create the link on and do control 'k' or insert hyperlink for PC computers and then search for the specific document/file or copy and paste the url for an internet site.
12:38 PM
Just participated in the very worthwhile Cluster Share at EPS last Tuesday. Our ICT team leader KP put together an excellent and humorous powerpoint to share our journey thus far with the Contract and to look to the future. As she was on leave I was operating the slideshow. It was a bit nerve racking as we had quite a challenging presentation being the only school to ask for audience participation using laptops with an internet link to scribblar. That was definately one of my favourite parts even although it was a bit tricky to get all set up, thanks AS and BJ, but I think it was worth it. It was interesting to see that during the first task the adults got very involved in testing the capabilities of the tool without realising their ideas would be shown on the big screen! This illustrates things to be aware of when using this cool web 2.0 tool in your classroom! Thanks to JS and NB and the Senior Management team for helping hand out the laptops to people. (I will put the links to the scribblar rooms on soon but cannot view these at school at the moment!)
I am keen to use scribblar with a teaching group and some roving laptops and am looking at how I will incorporate this into my programme this Term. I might try splitting the class in half and myself and my teacher aide work with a group each to type their ideas into the room. Watch this space as I will no doubt have a few things to say after I've tried it!
I was also interested to note that all of the schools showed video in their presentations. Waimakoia have flip mimos and we have a couple of slightly inferior quality flip videos which the children love using as they are so simple. We did discover during the putting together of our presentation that the zoom quality and sound quality are not great on our flip videos and KP and I looked into the flip mimo at the IWB conference. However, I did notice that a lot of staff and students in all the presentations seemed quite nervous or unsure of being videoed and I am keen to find out this time next year what changes there will be in this area. KP and I definately want to create a quiet space which could perhaps be a media room which is not affected by bells ringing etc as it's pretty tricky trying to find a quiet, filming space with no interuptions here at the moment!
It was really neat to see what other schools have been doing but I must admit to being a bit preoccupied with making sure I had everything all set up for our part to properly pay attention! Congratulations to all the staff and students involved everyone can be really proud of their efforts. Thanks to EPS for hosting a great event and I look forward to the next one!
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