http://www.teachers.tv/

Fantastic site for educators http://www.teachers.tv/

If you are not yet aware of Teachers TV online then I highly recommend this as a place where you can find information for personal professional development, resources for using in your classroom and an online community where you can seek answers and offers solutions to questions posed by other educators.

I have created a voicethread to explain why the site appeals to me:

ActivInspire Advanced Training

I was fortunate to participate in an ActivInspire Advanced training session yesterday in Albany with three colleagues from different levels of the school, representing Years 0-4.  The session was taken by Claire who was an excellent trainer.  I particularly liked the way she asked us if we'd like some time to explore after she'd introduced a new tool/technique and then she would use the clock tool with a countdown for 2 minutes just like you would in a classroom!  Very effective!
I had done the online training prior to the session so was already quite knowledgeable which was great as the session was very fast paced and this allowed me to help others and absorb the new ideas.  I was very happy to learn how to create my own magic spy glasses which I hadn't quite managed to do on my own!  I also learned how to extract text, bounce images and text into flipcharts (sorry this feature is not possible on Macs) and alter the settings in Windows Media player to allow the camera tool to take still images from a video player.  This involved opening Media player then right clicking on the toolbar and choosing tools, options, performance, then unticking the use overlays box. 

You then need to click ok and apply several times to save the change!  Once I had removed the video clip from the flipchart and re-inserted the camera tool worked perfectly.  We were taught to drag the clips straight into the flipchart or else use zamzar to convert the file and this is a very reliable way of turning the clip into either flv, avi or wmv.
We ran out of time to learn about using the activotes for assessment but I am going to do the online training for learner response systems at Promethean Planet and then when we have further training with Marnie later this Term I will be able to ask her any questions that I have!

Continuing my delight with ActivInspire!

I decided today, after communicating with my colleague and friend Mrs P who I co-lead the eLearning team with, that I would prepare our upcoming presentation to our staff in an ActivInspire flipchart. I wanted to use as many of the tools/actions as possible to showcase the possibilities of the software to the staff who might not get the opportunity to attend training sessions. The online training at Promethean Planet is great and I happened across a brilliant site while doing a Google search which has helped me a lot today, however, I hope I get a lot faster at creating flipcharts as this one took me several hours and I'm not quite finished yet! The previous link goes to the magic ink section as this is what I have been wrestling with today! I cannot recommend the ActivInspire program enough it is absolutely brilliant and as an ex-Smartboard user I have quickly switched my alliegence to Inspire! Thanks Promethean! Click here to access excellent support materials. Here is a good blog with ideas for Activ. I would highly recommend downloading the Top Tips pdf.

Here is an introductory videos to help you get started:

Hooked on thinking

This afternoon through into this evening we had whole school professional development with Pam Hook and Julie Mills. I found the session inspiring and it has got me thinking even more specifically about what we want children to learn, why are we doing this, what is the big understanding and what concept and contexts?????

More than anything I like the idea that SOLO taxonomy is a framework that helps children learn to learn and identify their next steps and the next steps of others and that as teachers we need to be doing deliberate acts of teaching. I am very excited to develop my knowledge and understanding further and have Pam and Julie assist us with our planning for our whole school. Julie had a look at our integrated inquiry plan for next Term and we have some ideas about revisions that we can make to improve the plan. We need to consider the learning intentions for each activity, which SOLO verbs are involved and which hot maps can be used to explore and increase understanding.

I found these photos of Pam and Julie on Google images because sadly Kathy and I forgot to take a photo of them working in our school today even although we had both thought about it, we got too caught up with what we were learning!

NZ & Australian IWB Conference 2009

Yay I attended the IWB Conference in Week 10 with KP and KA. Another fabulous PD opportunity, thanks to BR for sending me on this.

I was thrilled to attend workshops on Mimio, Promeathean, Activinspire and SMART. There was a challenge to complete a booklet getting a stamp from each vendor which really encouraged me to visit each one and discuss their products. I had no idea there were so many different IWBs and solutions! I feel reasonably informed now!

Originally I was very pro-Activboard and have to say after the conference my affiliation for these boards and their software is re-affirmed! They appear to be very sophisticated and I am looking forward to attending the roadshow at Point View next Term to find out more.

I enjoyed listening to Alison Gernhofer the Principal of Wetslake High School address the attendees and she spoke about the importance of gathering evidence about the impact of IWBs to present to BOTs to continue with the provision of these tools in schools. Then the keynote speakers - the Vice Chairperson of Promeathean Stephen Jury was great and did an exciting presentation using the software! He also discussed the importance of teachers being experienced (not BTs) and also being in the year level for several years and have an IWB at that level for 3 years to get the most out of the situation which really hit home for me. I am in my 8th year of teaching, my 2nd year at Year 0/1 and have had my IWB for 1 and 1/2 years. Still have a way to go! Then the speaker on Saturday Professor David Seedhouse spoke about the Values within the Revised NZ Curriculum and I think he made a lot of interesting points too! I think the main point he was making was that we shouldn't just blindly follow the NZ Curriculum but rather challenge the list of values and the statements made about these as values are involved in everything and really can't be taught but rather opinions be expressed and discussed. He spoke about the incident where a Tongan man cooked his dog which is perfectly acceptable in Tonga but not in Auckland. So according to his values it was ok but the SPCA officers values did not accept this behaviour. If you look the other way is that acceptable to you? How does this affect your values? What if you intervene then are you disrespecting that individual's values and then challenging your own? Basically it all gets very complicated! I wasn't really sure what to think at the end of it all but I do think it's opened my eyes to this aspect of the Curriculum and I might have some ideas to share in future discussions at school whether they are my own personal opinions or not.

My favourite workshop was run by Nelia Thompson from Flaxmere Primary School and featured snippets from using IWB in a new entrant room which I was thrilled to attend because I have taught in this year level for nearly 2 years and have not had any PD in teaching it, I have just been doing my own thing!!!!! I will definately implement some of her ideas, thanks Nelia. Above all she showed what children can do when theyare given the opprtunity and I think now I am ready to let go a bit more and give the children more freedom.

I also enjoyed finding out about Google Docs and Google Sketchup. I already use Google Picassa and Google Maps but they were great to get notes for too and confirm I am utilising them to their full potential! It was excellent using Flickr Storm and finding out about Keepvid for storing youtube clips.

Jo Evans from Edsoft also presented a whole lot of different multisensory tools to assist the writing process with ideas for special needs individuals in mainstream classrooms. Neat ideas which could be passed on to parents as well.

A fantastic conference. I am keen to be involved in the assess to learn contract otherwise I have seen lots of ideas of how involve WALTs and WILFs after this weekend.

KnowledgeNET Conference 2009

I was lucky to attend the KnowledgeNET Conference - site for this is www.knconference.co.nz - in week 9 and had an opportunity to listen to 3 excellent keynote speakers: Mark Treadwell, Lester Flockton and Owen Alexander. Some of the things discussed were slightly controversial and definately the opinions of these individuals but I enjoyed listening to all of it immensely and certainly it got me thinking and talking with my colleagues which was very interesting.

At one workshop by Janet McCarroll and Jana Benson, from St. Mary's Catholic School, I was introduced to the powerful tool 'Jing' for formative assessment. Jing is free to download from: www.jingproject.com/ and you can record using a laptop camera or webcam or if you don't have one of these take a screenshot and then record using audio either on your laptop's microphone or an external mic. At St. Mary's they used it to record conversations between student and teacher to discuss the WALT and success criteria for the piece of work and discuss the achievement of this within the piece of work and then feedforward to the next piece of work. This was uploaded onto the school's KNET page and parents were able to comment. This formed the Term's e-Portfolio sample and was schoolwide. I think this was something that I would be keen to try and certainly take back to school to discuss with my colleagues.

I went to another great workshop by Amanda Grimsey from Cornwall Park School where they do not use any external web 2.0 tools they only use KnowledgeNET's tools which I thought was a very interesting concept! They don't use Blogger but instead blog within KNET which removes any problems with uploading student images and naming students within photos as everything is password protected. There isn't the potential for an audience outside their school community but it strengthens the school/home connection and involves parents and other family members in a totally transparent way. They raised the question - how important are the opinions of people we don't know and will never meet?! I am not sure what I think about that as there is the possibility of opening a dialogue with other schools through Blogger blogs which wouldn't be possible if you could only access these via passwords, still it's an option I was unaware of till now.

Sarah Ingram exelled again! She shared her ideas for e-Portfolios and Jing again featured. I find Sarah excellent! She did my training in-school several years ago on KNET and was professional and prepared and offered good ideas. I am very interested in investigating e-Portfolios after this Conference.

Julie Lynch and Lisa Keilman from Takapuna Normal Intermediate both ran great workshops on integrating KNET into the classroom and webquests. I was interested to see their use of MIMIO as well.

Excellent experience - I love PD! They even played live music and had a dance troupe perform in the lunch breaks. Very well organised Conference. I was a bit disappointed with the Trades display, I think the layout wasn't very condusive to encouraging interaction with the vendors.