Just in time for Xmas- The Digital Story of the Nativity

I hope you are all sitting back, relaxing, spreading good cheer and feeling excited about spending Saturday with friends, family and loved ones

I spotted this video on Derek Wenmoth's Blog and thought it was a fitting post for just before Xmas, it also lets me give you a 'Head's up' about two new features planned for the blog in 2011.

Every Monday, there will be a Blog Round up, giving you a summary of what is being posted out there in Blog Land about ICT in schools

Every Wednesday, there will be a WOW! Post, Website(s) on Wednesday, to keep you up to date about great resources, changes, additions or tools that you could try for yourselves

As always, the collective brain and shared knowledge of the cluster far exceed anything one person can do so I encourage, nay, I urge you to comment and post with your own ideas, resources, tips and hints regularly and to make it a habit!

Have a fantastic Xmas break

e-Central Xmas Competition Winners

Watch out Santa!

I spent yesterday driving around Central delivering prizes to worthy teachers (for completing the expertise survey), staff (for submitting more than 5 entries into the Christmas competition) and students who had won the three categories or been awarded 'Highly Commended' Prizes in the e-Central Xmas competition.

I surprised Ella Buchanan at St Joseph's with a Brand new iPod as she was heading off for lunch and she was gobsmacked! Gave me a taste of what it must feel like for the jolly bloke in the red suit when he gets to give presents to fantastic kids all over the world!

You can see Ella's winning entry as well as the other winners (Megs from Queenstown Primary and Ryan, Matt and Jack from Clyde) and the highly commended entries (Owain and Ben from Cromwell- these guys did an amazing job and it may astound you that they are only 5 years old! and Hannah Prout from Hawea Flat) on the wiki

e-Central Competition winners- Click Here

Congratulations to all of the winners and to everyone that entered, the standard was incredibly high and Dave and I had a very tough time selecting the winners

In the end, we were particularly impressed with how the winners had used ICT to present their entries and felt they deserved to be recognised for their hard work and creativity!

The teacher's expertise survey draw will be done tomorrow and I will post the winner on this blog

I wish you all a relaxing festive season full of fun and laughter.

See you all in 2011

Karla

Complete the Expertise Survey and be in to win!

Some of the most valuable PD takes place when one teacher is sharing their ideas and experience with other teachers.

There are 25 schools within the Cluster, each doing interesting and innovative e-learning activities with their students

EVERY ONE of you has expertise that is worth sharing and more than that, YOU know how ICT and e-learning can meet the needs of students here in Central Otago better than any expensive consultant

You can consider the challenges but also the opportunities and possibilities.

If we can understand what is available and how we can share this then we have an amazing opportunity

Please take some time to complete the survey below, considering carefully what you could share with others

AND if you complete the survey BEFORE Wednesday 15 December at 8pm, you will receive a sweet treat from Santa and the chance to win a $50 voucher for a store or restaurant of your choice.

30 people have already taken up the challenge, please encourage your staff to take 10 minutes too and help me meet my target of 100 teachers

To complete the Survey, click Here

The Future! 'The Age of Merlin'

Someone passed on this link to an interesting (and entertaining) article about the future. It is not education focused as such, but is quite a thought provoking read about the possible future. If some of these things do happen as stated then education and how we prepare our students will take some re- considering.

Quote "Now most of us have cellphones, and an internet-enabled user in Africa has greater access to knowledge than the president of the United States did 20 years ago." (The Age of Merlin - NZ Listener)

What are you thoughts?

Article is HERE

Sites I love at the moment!

http://www.khanacademy.org/ (maths and science concept videos)

http://www.writingfun.com/writingfun2010.html (interactive writing site, printable templates)

http://www.teachertube.com/ (videos, audio, pictures relating to school topics)

Maths for high school

http://mathworld.wolfram.com/

QR code

Does any one know anything about Quick response codes.

John N

Takahe - Word cloud - WordItOut

Takahe - Word cloud - WordItOut

Whoops! Our class just made this and we thought we were posting it to our class blog. Ok, tip for the day.... Check the blog you are posting to when linking from a website :)
This is another fabulous resource for brainstorming. We are brainstorming keywords for our information report writing.

Old School Request!

Dear Teachers out there in the land of Blog!!

I have had a request for OHP paper (or overhead transparencies) for the Xmas Competition Kiwi Xmas card.

I know some of you may have this lying, alone (and perhaps afraid) in a darkened cupboard and if you are interested in getting rid of it for a worthy cause- please let me know!!

Thanks for the entries I have received so far for the Xmas competition, keep them coming and please let me know if I can help with any ideas or support

All the best
K

Teaching teachers about blogging

Last year I discovered this great blog site, made by Allanah King (Nelson ICT group) that guides you through blogging. Sort of like a guide for dummies.

http://bling4yrblog.blogspot.com/

Anyway, after I found it and updated my classroom's blog, I shared it with my syndicate and we used it as guide for up skilling ourselves in blogging.

It has how to's, videos, step by step instructions for everything from setting up your blog, to comment moderation, adding photo slideshows, adding powerpoint presentations and all sorts.

I was reminded about it today when someone asked me a question.

I thought it might help you to lead your staff in blogging.

:) Ka kite.... Jac

Leadership Lessons from Dancing Guy

This is a great Youtube clip that Charles showed at the Principals 'Big Picture' session yesterday, I thought it related particularly to your role as Lead Teachers and the development of ICT in your schools...

That is not to say that we all need to be the Dancing Nut but that the path to create a movement has a whole range of heroes, Enjoy!

When did you last listen, I mean really listen, to a child?

While at Ulearn, I was introduced to this TED talk by 10 year old Adora Svitak, challenging TED listeners that the world needs "childish" thinking: bold ideas, wild creativity and especially optimism. Kids' big dreams deserve high expectations, she says, starting with grownups' willingness to learn from children as much as to teach.
When was the last time you listened, and learnt something from a child you teach?

Enhanced goodie bags have all been won! Don't miss your chance for an original Goodie bag!

Congratulations to the 10 staff from across the cluster who took up the challenge to be the first 10 to post once and comment twice on the e-Central Blog site.

It is fantastic to see the sharing and collaboration taking place across the cluster and I look forward to it becoming embedded in our day to day practice.

There are still Original Goodie bags left so jump on the blog, comment twice and post once before the end of November and win yourself one! Encourage as many of your staff as possible to link into the Blog and share their ideas, simply e-mail me with the address they would like to use and I will send them an invitation to be an author on the blog

And the winners are:
Cyndi K from QPS
Mary J from QPS
Alistair B from Clyde
Luke D from Hawea Flat
Lara from Remarkables
Bridget from Remarkables
Kerry G from Wanaka
Laetitia from Wanaka
Jac from Goldfields
Nicky G from QPS

Well done guys!

Flicker Storm and stuff

Hi. I just wanted to say thanks to Dave and Karla for the web based learning workshop last week and how it was great... lots to look at and play around with.

I have had a go at flicker storm and it was fantastic. It lets you search images that are copyright free and able to be uploaded for your blog etc. If you click on advanced search it gives you the options... anyways I uploaded images to go with our classes inquiry questions, all very quick and easy. I just screen grabbed them without downloading the image first and saved them direct to my desktop for uploading to my blog.

SO thanks heaps for that website.

Also someone at the same course mentioned wanting free clipart and I thought I would just add this link as it is one I have used a bit - it's not fabulous so if anyone has others that would be lovely!!! http://clipart-for-free.blogspot.com/

Cheers Jac

How to get interactive on a blog.

I was hoping to use my class blog as an interactive site for people to share their ideas from around the world. It’s been a few weeks now and no one is commenting. So I decided to take the bull by the horns so to speak and educate these people! LOL!

I checked out these web sites to see what I could do first to encourage feedback and interaction.

http://www.successful-blog.com/1/10-reasons-readers-dont-leave-comments/

http://www.problogger.net/archives/2006/10/12/10-techniques-to-get-more-comments-on-your-blog/

I decided I was happy that my site wasn’t negative, depressing or not inviting feedback and interaction so then I went to next step

A site that educated me on how to let people actually access my account.

http://www.google.com/support/blogger/bin/answer.py?hl=en&answer=42399

http://www.google.com/support/blogger/bin/answer.py?hl=en&answer=41443

Once I got that sorted. I set my new settings and had a go. It actually worked.

Step 1 sign in

Step 2 settings tab

Step 3 comments tab

Step 4 follow through and set so anyone can view. Make sure you get it emailed to you before it is published for safety.

The second link is the best to see how to set my settings to allow people to comment have detailed instructions for those who require more information on how to.

I then made a basic instruction list that I sent home for parents and gave the children a homework challenge - to teach their parents how to comment on their learning. Feel free to copy.

How to leave a comment on our class blog

- Click on comment at the bottom of each post – a pop up will appear

- Type in your comment.

-Type in word verification as shown in weird letters

-If you have a google account click here and add your username and password

-If you don’t have a google account click on name/url and just type in your name. You don’t have to put a url in.

-Click publish comment

It will then be emailed to me so I can check it is safe to be published on our blog, as anyone in the world has access to this blog. Once I have checked it, your comment will be available for the children to see your feedback and ideas.

PS I also found out how to embed!!!!

When you do a new post and add a link go to tab that says edit html and paste it in there!! LOL. So simple  Now I can add interactive video and answer garden images on my posts. Yahoo.

Posterous

Try out the web2 tool Posterous. It's ideal for first time bloggers, there is no set up needed as Posterous sets it all up for you. It's just an email away.
Your Posterous can be set to private or you can make it an open blog so others can comment on.
If you get the opportunity to create a Posterous blog let others know how you get on by commenting here.

Photos, video, MP3, Doc, Powerpoint, PDF etc can all be uploaded at the click of a button.

Have a look at the short video I came across from the ICT PD Online wesite.

Queenstowns Enviro blog

Queenstown Primary has a student Enviro Group. We have at least one project a term that we try to achieve often they run over 2 terms. Our actions are recorded on our blog. Any research information that the students need to find is also being posted on the blog. Our next step is for the students to add their findings to the blog to make it more interactive. Our team of teachers all take responsibility for adding to this blog.
You can see it on www.queenstown.school.nz then go to blogs or use this link

Reflections and plans...

Once again we are nearing the end of another school year and we are all beginning to think about and plan for 2011, while also reflecting on all of the amazing events which have taken place within our professional teaching lives and within our schools this year.

2010 has been an amazing start to a remarkable journey for both the staff and the students at Remarkables Primary School. We have grown and developed many fantastic things across our school and across the curriculum, especially within e-learning!

One main highlight for me as the e-learning coordinator was the implementation of iPod touches into our teaching and learning programmes. At the beginning of this year, my husband and I had one iPod Touch between us for personal use at home; we used it mainly for listening to music! We had no applications on our touch and I had no idea how these could / would be used as a part of our learning programmes at school!

So, my thinking in this area has come a very long way! At RPS we currently have three sets of five iPod touches in our school, one set in each teaching team. The iPods now have a variety of different educational applications on them and are in hot demand! Our teachers and students absolutely love these devices! An iPod Touch engages children, gives instant reward and feedback to students, allows for hundreds of chances to practice a skill, and makes learning and practice fun!

The other day I was busy working with one of my numeracy groups on the mat, when I looked up to check on all of the others students in my classroom. It happened to be our day to have the iPods in our classroom all day and my students and I are lucky enough to also have four laptops permanently in our classroom . When I looked up, I realised just how lucky we are, and just how amazing the use of technology can be in education...

• One group of four students were on Mathletics on the laptops under their own logins challenging other students from around the world to basic facts challenges using 'Live Mathletics'
• Another group of five students were sitting silently on the corner couch with their iPod Touches around their necks, totally engrossed in practicing their basic facts using a maths educational application called 'PopMath'
• A third group of two students where making and reading three and four digit numbers using a Bee Bot and Bee Bot mat
• Of course the fourth group were with me!

As a teacher one of my worries has always been, are the students who are not with me during reading, writing and mathematics rotations purposefully engaged, practicing a skill, engaged and on task?

This particular day I can honestly say, yes they all were! And the e-learning tools we have for them to use and learn from, are the reason why!

Next year we plan to have more iPods within our school, the ultimate would be to have a set per class.... but that is a long term goal, and you never know, there may be something even cooler and more engaging soon!

Bridget :)

Xmas is drawing near...

You've seen the Xmas decorations in the shops and no doubt are thinking about your upcoming holidays but i hope you are also all considering the e-Central 'Wishing you a Merry Central Xmas Competition'

The deadline for entries is Monday December 6 and schools can submit UP TO 15 entries in each category. There will be a prize for each school that submits more than 5 entries.

If you are interested in some ideas for ICT that could be used for the Central Christmas Story and Kiwi Christmas Carol, I ran a staff meeting last week and have posted the notes on the wiki.

These can also be accessed through this link

Ho, Ho, Ho!!!

50 Tools for Creating Web Based Stories

During my research to put together a great resource for staff who attended a Xmas Competition Workshop I ran last week, I came across this fantastic blog post. This gentleman had written a story for a 60 second story competition (in itself an interesting idea) and in doing so decided to compile a resource, ‘50 Web 2.0 tools to create a web based story’

To see the original story and brief info about each tool with a version of the ‘Dominoe’ story produced for each, visit http://cogdogroo.wikispaces.com/Dominoe+50+Ways


If you are interested in more information about each tool as well as additional examples split into sections (Slideshow tools, Timeline Tools, Mixer Tools, Comic/Sketch Tools, Collage Tools, Map Tools, Flickr Tools.Ideas, Audio Tools, Video Tools and Presentation Tools), Visit http://cogdogroo.wikispaces.com/StoryTools


Gives a whole new spin on Publishing!

5 enhanced Goodie Bags have now been won- Don't miss out on your Chance!!

It is great to see ideas being shared and ideas sparking enthusiasm across the region, don't underestimate how interested people can be by your thoughts, add these if you post a video as well and stimulate a discussion with colleagues across the cluster!

Picasa and Picnik

I put a blog together a few weeks ago to use as a springboard for sharing with our teaching team about Picasa and Picnik. Both Google products but are multi-platform so can be used on PC and Mac and are free.  The collages you can create easily in these programmes work well on class pages or blogs or even newsletters.

You can download Picasa from HERE.  If you already have Picasa installed there is an update available that puts 'Picnik' in the editing tools part of this rather than only being accessed from online google albums.

And the link to the blog is HERE.

The posts are in no particular order.

I would love to see anything you create using Picasa or Picnik and how you use or could use this with students. 

We are in the process of supporting students in Years 1 - 4 to use these programmes for their own photograhpy.  What digital photography programmes have you used successfully with students and what do you think made it a successful programme?

search engines

Tried the bloolify site yesterday in class and was a geat hit.  Is there another kids search engine others have used?

The nature of an interactive blog (Beta Version)

At the end of Ewan’s course I took a look at myself and then reassessed what my ICT practice was and what I needed to do to change it. I consider myself savvy ICT teacher, but after a bit of reflection it was I who was savvy, but not my practice, I was not really transferring this passion and knowledge to my students or to other teachers. Additionally I had a blog that was null and void; it had long ago become home to tumble weeds and not much else.

This Blog became my personal challenge from Ewan’s course and I believe that it is now a successful, interactive record of the learning that is happening within my classroom. My next challenge is to make it more student driven, although I am not at the stage of allowing them publishing rights, like I have here.

Peruse the blog linked below and then see the stages of my development that got me to the point that it is now at.

http://mrdyerhfs.blogspot.com/

Stages of my development

1. See what was out there, look at models of a successful blog and plan how I wanted mine to look.
http://edte.ch/blog/
http://www.interfacemagazine.co.nz/teacherblogs/

2. Find new and exciting tools that would make my blog seem different, exciting and modern. Researching Web 2.0 tools (never new that there were Web 1.0 tools before this cluster) and investigated how to incorporate them.
http://www.wordle.net/
http://answergarden.ch/

3. Blog every day, if a child wrote a story of had a success it went onto the blog and that helped me transfer thinking from it being my blog to it being our blog. Movies, stories, poems, brainstorms… all had a place on the blog.

4. I made it necessary to visit the blog to access certain things… I did not hand out the homework sheet, but placed it on Google Docs and put a link to it on the blog. This gave parents a reason to give my blog a go again and when they got there they found out that it was again being used. Homework tasks were created for the blog such as…
-Photo Competitions
-Word Gardens
-Google Earth Challenges
…and where programmes were needed I provided links to the necessary download sites (Pivot Stick and Google Earth) and even found tutorials for parents to watch to explain how to download and install the required programmes.

5. I changed my morning news on Wednesday to be ‘Thinking and Inspiration News’, where we watch a clip, such as Tinker School on TED and then record our discussions in a format that suits, like a Wordle or PMI.

It has become a bit of an obsession, but it is a good obsession, and I am able to see a shift in thinking in the eyes of the parents of the students I teach.

It is a bit strange sharing this reflective posting with you all, but I hope that something I have written here is interesting or thought provoking or maybe a something new for someone to adapt to their own blog.

Lunch time is over, so back to the class

See you all next week

Luke

Help Danella with A Question/Problem

My blog needs your ideas. Danella's Bog.

Calling all Bloggers

Many of you out there will be aware that we are encouraging teachers from across the e-Central Cluster to comment and post on our FABULOUS blog!

So as an incentive, we have decided to widen our scope and offer a fantastic Goodie Bag to ANY teacher who comments TWICE and posts ONCE before the end of November!

The goodie bag contains a 4GB Flash drive that contains all the downloadable freeware from "software for Learning" (www.tki.org.nz) as well as a list of the BEST Freeware recommended by Educational Computing and can then be re used by you later! Post its; pens; Information about available software, gizmos and gadgets for your school, sweets and more all in an eco friendly re-usebale black bag!

BUT WAIT, THERE'S MORE... The first 10 people to meet this challenge will receive a FREE bonus second 2GB Keyring Flash drive in a lovely gift box from Mimio

Can't wait to see what you all have to say, if you cannot access the blog to comment or post, drop me an e-mail with the e-mail address you would like to use as your blog contact and I can get you invited to the blog in a flash!!

Happy Posting!

Microsoft's Vision for 2019

Changing Education.......

Hi folks - have just watched this video about the past and future of education - the dialogue is by Sir Ken Robinson along with some very clever animation. Quite thought provoking! The part about the study on Lateral Thinking was especially interesting and the video made me think a lot about the world focus on 'standards' in education and where they are driving us. Entertaining as well!

Howdy Folks!!

I had a great time at Ulearn, the aftershocks adding to a quite surreal week!
I'm going to add a couple of websites which I hope you will find useful to use in your classroom. You may or may not use them already, I don't know, but they're useful anyway!!
Hopefully you are a BIG user of youtube in your classroom! It's without a doubt one of the web's best resources. Two of the unfortunate features of youtube are a)the often colourful comments underneath, and b) the increasingly random video links down the side of the page.
One way to remove both of these annoying problems is via the website http://viewpure.com/.
It's easy to drag this website address into your bookmarks bar for easy use. Once you find a youtube video you want to use, copy and paste the url into the viewpure box and you video will be 'purified!!!!'

Another fantastic website for use with anything animals - www.arkive.org
This website is a virtual ark for videos, images and information to do with animals anywhere! It has a massive library of images and videos of New Zealand creatures, as well as any world wide animal. There are also several basic online games available on this site which relate well to endangered species etc. It is being improved all the time and you are able to bookmark your own resources on the site for easy access.

I hope you find these sites useful and I'll pop back in a week or two to add a couple for.

Ka kite,
Alistair

Ulearn, Ilearn, WElearn

During week two of the school holidays, rather than sunning myself on a crowded beach on the Gold Coast, I was up in a shaky Christchurch for the 10th Ulearn conference.

The BIG question for me was how can I ensure that the learning is shared through the cluster and that we make the most of the professional learning opportunities we all access?

Hence the title, Ulearn, Ilearn, WElearn.

My aim and the aim of Dave, Alistair and Sarah who attended is to share some of the highlights, the new learning, the 'where to nexts?' as well as some national and international best practice.

Over the next couple of weeks, through this blog, we will be sharing our experiences, posting links, ideas and discussion points.

We welcome your feedback, questions, ideas, links and examples and as we have said previously, to learn from one another is immensely valuable. We invite you to take the time to read, to comment, and definitely TO POST!

So without further ado (drumroll please...), WELCOME to Karla's conference experience:

I decided to utilize the pre conference workshops and though disappointed to miss out on the ipod/ipad option that would have enabled me to learn how to design and create my own apps (which I will definitely be following up independently) I attended a workshop with

Suzie Vesper entitled 'Utilising web 2.0 tools to support today's learners'

Those of you who have been lucky enough to attend a workshop with Suzie before will know how knowledgeable and inspirational she is, for those of you that haven't yet, keep an eye on her blog http://sharetheaddiction.edublogs.org/ to share her love of learning and keep up to date with new ideas!

The session was highly interactive and explored a wide range of FREE online tools that can be used easily by teachers and students.

For ideas about some of these recommended tools, follow this link:

http://learningweb2.wikispaces.com/Table+of+tools+for+blogs+or+wikis

In the afternoon, we had the chance to focus on a particular area. I chose to focus on Voicethread: http://voicethread.com/ which I know many of you have already been exploring, but for those of you that haven't yet, this is another tool that can be easily utilised

How to use Voicethread

To get a completely free educator account that allows you to make up to 50 VoiceThreads, start from this address: http://voicethread.com/products/k12/educator/

Choose the VT Educator option and complete the steps (the apply button appears to be grayed out but it still works).

Using this tool you can:

• Create an online media album that can hold essentially any type of media (images, documents and videos)

• Make comments about the media in 5 different ways - using voice (with a microphone or telephone), text, audio file, or video (with a webcam

• Share a Voicethread with anyone so that they add comments to your Voicethread or are even able to edit the media as a collaborator

• Use the Doodle tool to draw on the media as you add a comment to illustrate your point.

• You can download a VoiceThread as a movie file (but this costs if you don't have an educator account)

• You can embed your VoiceThread into online spaces

For ideas on how Voicethread can be used in your classroom, Suzie has put together a great presentation that can be accessed from slideshare http://www.slideshare.net/suziea/voicethread-examples-in-education-presentation?type=powerpoint (even though it is 3 years old, it is still very relevant)

I worked with Tabitha, an AMAZING Secondary teacher from Auckland, and building on an existing VoiceThread on 'Interesting Pants'. We wanted to have fun with the tool, to focus on the tool itself, rather than the content, so we explored pants in Christchurch, link to our VoiceThread is below, this is simply for a giggle so I hope you enjoy it!

http://voicethread.com/share/1369597/

Until next time

Looking forward to your comments

Karla