Blog readings...

Check out this article...

http://www.nzherald.co.nz/the-changing-world/news/article.cfm?c_id=1502962&objectid=10705622

file:///Users/bwalker/Library/Mail%20Downloads/NZ%20Interface%20Magazine%20%7C%20Secrets%20of%20the%20best%20class%20blog%20in%20the%20country.webarchive

E-Portfolios my journey continues

ePortfolio Pedagogy: Session 2 from Edtech Ultranet on Vimeo.

I enjoyed watching this E-Portfolio discussion. Thanks Jamin for directing me to this.

E-Portfolios... HELP ME PLEASE

I know it's holidays but I just want to get my head around e-portfolios. Next year our year 5/6 team will be trailing e-portfolios. Not only do I think this will be incredibly motivating for the children, but we'll also help save the trees!

The thought of being able to have video clips of the child demonstrating their learning and then reflecting on how well they achieved, really excites me.

The issue is however... I don't know where to start.

I'd love help from anyone that has used e-portfolios in their school. Also if you have any links to readings, I would really appreciate it.

I have bookmarked Nick Rate's blog and I have already started a reading list for my holidays! http://nickrate.com/?s=e+portfolios

Thanks in advance for your support :)

IT Skills

I was all motivated to get my children to share their learning during word study today (which is part of my goal- to improve my students surface features in writing).

And after U Learn I can't wait to get started...however it was not that simple. My students have no idea how to use anything independently other than Photo Booth! I realised I haven't taught the skills of using the programmes! My children aren't "digital natives" who just "pick" things up. I feel I need to take a big step back and teach the basics. It makes me wonder what have I been doing this year? I guess I have spent a lot of time using online interactive sites and not enough synthesising.

I now have a computer ratio of 1:4 :) which will make teaching these skills easier. I will teach the class & get them to present their mini research on their chosen entrepreneur using Keynote.

Once they have grasped that, I will touch on iMovie, Comic Life and Garage band.

What a busy term and it is only day 2!

U Learn 2010 Reflection Cont.

Steve Wheeler- Key Note Speaker

• Digital Natives need:

1. Digital Literacy- They need to be able to evaluate & cross check all information
2. To be engaged & enjoy what they are doing
3. Personalised learning

Lane Clark- Key Note Speaker
http://www.laneclark-ideasys.com/index_new.htm

• I really enjoyed listening to Lane speak
• The message that was continuously repeating by all speakers "Are we preparing our children for their future or our past?"
• She had a good point... “when was the last time you graphed eye colours as an adult?” There is a difference at the moment with in school learning and real life learning.
• Interest and relevant are very different, just because the child is interested in something doesn’t necessarily make it relevant to them
• The more you know, the more you know you don’t know - that is why children ask more complex questions further into an inquiry unit
  
• Questioning involves complex thinking
• IDEA wondering wall colour code questions each week to see their children’s understanding deepen
  
• In the real world you know the "so what" & relevance before you start learning

Kirsten Beggs- Using literacy to life

• I was disappointed with this breakout as it was very much a beginners guided to using key note.
• This session showed how Key Note can be used to create your own talking stories
• I have many children in my class that would enjoy creating these for others

Barbara Zee & Dave Winter- Get going with Google Docs

• Learnt how to shorted URL addresses- simply paste your long URL on the http://bit.ly/
  site. It automatically gives you a shorten URL making it easier to share with others. I had no idea these sort of sites existed! Which goes to show the more you know, the more you know you don't know!
• Can definitely see the benefit of using a collaborative tool like Google Docs. I could see it saving a lot of time during team planning etc.
• You can go back to see history- so nothing is ever lost for good. All changes are record & by whom
• Found out, however that iWork can do the same using Share- iWork.com. I want to look into this more
• Google Docs is all about collaboration with very basic presentation tools. I would be rapt if Pages could do the same collaboration work as Google docs
• The Forms part on Google Docs is very exciting! You can create your own online forms, quizzes, multi choice test, etc. Once set up you simply paste your URL or shortened URL (using bit.ly) onto your blog. Every time it is filled out the information goes directly into a spread sheet.
• Google docs in plain English http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eRqUE6IHTEA
  

Lynne Kilmartin- Create digital story books

• This was another beginner's guide to key note
• Great to have props for creating scenes- action men, barbies, cars etc. to use as the image for story books

Kirsten Beggs - New iMovie

• I was thinking this was going to be another beginner's guide... however I was pleasantly mistaken!
• I felt sorry for anyone who hadn't used iMovie because it was advanced, super fast and covered lots of new tricks- I LOVED IT!
• Did you know that iMovie has the advance features turned off?!!! You have to go into system preferences and turn them on... then WOW
• You can have a picture in a picture! instant green screening & lots more
• I learnt how to easily select a section of a clip & how use the precision editor to trim clips more specifically
• When filming ensure you have a 5 second 'handle' on each end of the clip- this is necessary when using transitions to ensure you don't loose the key part of your clip
• When adding transitions- ask yourself "what value does this add to the movie?"
• We HAVE to get Chroma green walls painted in as many classes as we can. It is AMAZING how professionally iMovie cuts out the green & superimposes it on a new background. WOW I can't wait to try this out (I think I might just have to paint a wall in my room...)
• Teach your children the order for creating movies- editing, transitions, titles and then audio last.
• WARNING: You can not use ANY music without permission outside of the school e.g. DVD and blog. New Zealand schools have been done for $10,000. Encourage your children to create their own using garage band.
• A bit of a loop hole- (I like loop holes) Just like a book you can use up to 10% of a song as long as you acknowledge the source
• Normalise clips button- makes all audio a consistent volume
• I never knew how to create chapters within a movie! We'll now I do. There's a little orange tab that you drag where you want it & then you can name all the chapters

So over all:

• Ashhurst School has come a long way in the last 12 months
• We are on the right track with engaging our students
• I think we are doing our best to prepare our children for their futures and not our pasts
• We are teaching the importance of critical & creative thinking

My Goals:

1. Use digipaths to create learning paths ways for each maths group (then move onto other curriculum areas)
2. Use as many of the iMovie features as I can to ensure I remember them all
3. Explore iWork.com
   
4. Have IT experts with lanyard ID labels showing what they specialise in

What a busy, yet exciting term ahead of us.

U Learn 2010 Reflection

I'm back from U Learn. I enjoyed the conference and it was great to see how far along Ashhurst School is compared with many other schools. Here are a few summary notes from keynotes & breakouts I went to:

Lee Crocket- Understanding the digital generation

• Knowledge changes and facts become obsolete
• Children's brains are changing- they see & interact differenctly
• Education needs to be about the "head ware" not the "hardware"- focus on critical & creative thinking
• Which type of learning are we providing for? "Just in time" -the learning of the future? or the "just in case" learning of the past?
• He show this clip: Daniel J Simons 2010 Invisible gorilla - perceptual blindness
  

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IGQmdoK_ZfY

• This relates to how busy our lives are and show how easy it is to miss things that are going around us. You can't assume anything.

David Kaine- Building a 5th wall in your classroom

• Make the children work harder- train children up to be the experts. They become the port of call. I need to do this with keynote, podcasts & imovie etc. I want to get lanyards for my IT students and the children will have a list of the programmes that they are experts at listed with their photo ID on their lanyard.
  
• David thinks that most schools don’t integrate e-learning and ICT isn’t valued, as it often is dropped off the programme. I feel that this is not the case at Ashhurst School. ICT is very much an integrated part to learning in my classroom.
• Think about where you put your computers- do you encourage collaboration by allowing groups of children to work around the one screen?
• Other teachers have had parent work shops- where parents learn about posting comments, taking photos & movies and have a go at uploading to the wiki/blog. This allows parents to have a better understanding of what the children are doing and encourages the wider community to be a more active audience. -Could be run by the student. Shows the children that everyone is a learner. (We could definitely do this at Ashhurst School)
• A new website that I learnt about: Glogster (edu.glogster.com) multimedia synthesis of knowledge e.g. it gets children to copy & paste “stuff” from the internet AND then you synthesis all of this knowledge into own words- I think this would be very relevant for my children to encourage them to not copy but still acknowledge the sources of the information.

Fiona & Rochelle- Digi Store learning paths

• I got a lot out of this Breakout & I AM SOOOO MOTIVATED AND EXCITED ABOUT SETTING THIS UP! To start with I will do this for each of my maths groups. My long term goal is my students will create their own instructional movie to relate to the follow up activities.
• http://digistore.wikispaces.com/NavigatingLearningPaths (Their notes)
  
  
• http://digistore.tki.org.nz/ec/pin/MHWUUP?userid=4408 (My digi path)

They read an entertaining book called “it’s a book” Lane Smith -book on how books are forgotten

I will post my notes on the others tomorrow. I have to get up early for school tomorrow.

Thanks Ashhurst School BOT for sending us to Christchurch for U Learn.

My Survey- Using Google Docs

Holiday to do list...

I have been looking at lots of other blogs lately and that is going to be my number one focus for the holidays. I want to add pages and all my links on the blog for reading, writing & maths activities etc. I like how Sam has the links & pages etc.
http://ashhurst8.blogspot.com/

I'm looking forward to camp next term.

ICT 1 on 1 with Lyn

Today I learn some tricks...

http://vidtomp3.com
converts video clips such as YouTube and saves the audio as an mp3. It has been downloading for the past 10 minutes (make that 20mins now) and it still isn't ready. Has anyone else had any luck with this site? I also question whether it is legal? (downloading songs without paying for them- doesn't sound quite right!)

http://www.divshare.com
You can upload audio files and embed them into your blog check it out:
http://6gigs.blogspot.com/2010/08/our-ad-for-what-not-to-wear-fundraiser.html

http://www.zamzar.com/
I had my kids' ad they made in Garage Band exported into iTunes. It gets saved as an m4a file. But the div share only liked mp3 for embedding so I had to convert the file.

grandpa's plant

ICT TOD Call back

I absolutely love www.classtool.net you can upload/embed cool gadgets onto your blog.
http://classtools.net/education-games-php/timer/ You can also get name picker- I will definitely be using both of these.

I am looking forward to using voice thread in my class.

Google Images

At the TOD a few weeks ago Suzie Vesper made us think about ensuring we have permission to reuse images that we find on the internet. I completely agree with this so I taught my class how to do an advance search to check images are available for re-use.

All was well until we realised how few images are free to re-use. For example, do a standard Google image search on 'Kaimanawa Horses' About 3,410 results. However select the filter for "labelled for re-use"...1 result, which had no horse at all.

We needed images so I said since it was only for a school poster it is ok. But it is not. What do you do?

ICT & Positive Thinking

I am proud of how far my children have come this year. At the beginning of the year when I asked the children to take a photo & upload it into a document they looked at me like I was speaking another language. I had a child that has been away lot and needed to catch up with portfolio samples (see above) "How do you do this?" was quickly answered by many eager children who were confident with the whole process, right down to selecting the right printer. It might not sound like much to everyone... but it is huge for my class. It is great that I can integrate ICT in the classroom programme without having to constantly teach the skills.

Positive Thinking
Well... I have let myself down in this area. The cold mornings are getting to me. I am trying to start the day positive but it is a struggle when you don't feel 100%.

Using the Flip

Today my class viewed Room 16's blog. They were very impressed with the video footage- explanations, haka, jump jam...

Then "Why can't we do that?!" So I asked the children, what are they proud of this term and what did they enjoy doing this term that they would like to share.

Check out 6gigs.blogspot.com to see what we have come up with.

One downfall has to be the loading time it takes when uploading video footage. They are only short clips and I think they are small 23-100ish mb.

Is there something that I need to be doing to speed this up?

Just incase you're not counting... only 13 School days to go and that's without taking out release days, sports exchanges, zero waste, etc. and we have soooooo much work left to do.

Only 16 School Days to go!

I can't believe we have only 16 school days to go. My class will have to work overtime to try and find answers for their inquiry questions! And then there is still the creating & social action part of the process!

They were able to use keywords to help them search for information. The wonderwheel feature on Google was very effective to help the children think of other possible key words/phrases. The issue is the children's lack of confidence with skimming & scanning and this can be difficult because not every site that they go on has information that they want or need. It has been great listening to the children reflecting on their findings e.g. "I thought algae was always bad... I didn't know it can be used as a biofuel!"

I would appreciate any suggestions to help with research :)

Blabberize

Check out how cool Blabberize is! Thanks Sam :)
It is so easy & very funny. I think my children will have fun using this. I guess this is yet another cool thing I will add to my list to try. Only 17 school days to go... maybe it might have to go on next term's agenda.

Teacher Only Day Reflection

My highlight of our cluster TOD has to be listening to Tony Ryan's Keynote. There are so many things to think about. He is such a positive person and I definitely think starting your day positively and thinking positively can and will make a difference. I'm going to give this a go (even though I struggle getting up on cold Winter mornings). I've read his book, The Ripple Effect, which is all about this. I also liked the idea of taking a photo of your key learning for each day. I'd like to do this too, but I'm taking little steps and focusing on one thing at a time. At the moment I'm trying to get my class blog up an running.