ICT Teaching and Learning

Five things I would want my teacher to know about me

2012-02-01T21:40:00.000+13:00

Shaun Wood sent me this challenge which was first started by Allanah King. It is a worthwhile challenge to do with our students because it will make them think about how they learn

5 things I would want my teacher to know about me

I like art, I am visual... if you talk at me you will see me doodling in my books
I can listen to you and do other things at the same time
I don't like to sit for long periods of time, I need to move and I do fidget
If you are telling me something I already know then I will get bored and will look for something else to do
I like open challenges, pose a problem and let me choose how to solve it

I challenge @dbeehre, @krivett1, @llaburn, @lindalehrke, @KseniaNZ to do this challenge

Infographics and Inquiry Presenting

2011-09-21T18:54:00.002+12:00

All of my schools at the present are embroiled in Rugby World Cup fever. Students are researching and finding out information not only about their own country but also adopted countries. Soon they will need to present this information so I have been talking to teachers about how 'Infographics' are a great way to present student work.
Students will have created their research question, found their keywords and used the smart researcher tools to find information.
They will have copied photos or graphics to folders and the internet references to WordProcessor (Word, Pages, Google Docs) along with 'brief' notes copied from Internet pages that answer their research question. They will synthesise their notes and present facts and 'hopefully' they will present new ideas with conclusions and inferences.

Now how could they present it?

The following example has been created in Comiclife.

Or in PowerPoint

Or in Keynote

The following diagram lists all of the possible elements that could be included in an infographic

The criteria for an infographic presentation is

Keep a balance between graphics, text, charts and numbers
Be aware of what colours work well together, not too many and remember complimentary colours (opposites of the colour wheel)
Check all of the time that you are answering your research question
Reference your facts, graphics etc
Include graphics, photos, graphs, flow charts, graphic organisers, statistics
Add your own inferences from the information presented

For younger children you can simplify the criteria

Some of the programmes that would be suitable for creating infographics

PowerPoint: more suitable then Word as all of the different objects will not move around randomly + version 2007 and 2010 have great Smart Art graphics
Pages or Keynote (for Mac): easy to move objects around and place them
ComicLife: great Title graphics, easy to create 'Chart' type infographics
Kidspiration and Inspiration: Mindmapping type infographics

One way to introduce students to 'Infographics' is to show them a variety of examples and examine what make them great presentations, itemise the best points and use them in their own infographics.
I am gradually adding examples to Scoop.it that are suitable to show younger students.
Click on this link to see examples suitable to show students.

I will be following up with more posts on this subject as I develop ways of how to teach students how to find the right sort of information, graphics, symbols etc to suit their presentations.

Photo of the Day - Google Presentation and Wikis or Blogs

2011-08-30T17:20:00.000+12:00

Andrew wanted to showcase his students 'Photos of the Day'. He thought about just uploading the photos to a wikipage. I suggested he created a Google Presentation, embed it on the Wiki with a link.
So when the students upload their photos to the Google presentation they will be updated on the Class wiki.

Google photo of the day

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Click on link to add a photo to the presentation

Publishing Junior stories

2011-05-19T12:49:00.001+12:00

One of my junior teachers has had a frustrating time trying to publish her Year one students' stories. She uses Word and has a frame for her Picture box and a text box below that for the story. After she has saved 24 pages of this format and typed in her students' stories, text boxes and frames have moved and she has the tiresome task of moving all the boxes in place again. She asked if there was a way of anchoring the text boxes, but unfortunately there is not. So I came up with the idea of making a PowerPoint Template.

Open up PowerPoint, choose plain template
Go to File - Page Setup and change Page Orientation to Portrait
Next choose a Layout, choose one with a Text box space, she deleted the title
Next resize the text box and add a square shape for the picture box, move them to where you want them, set your font and size
Remove the bullet points from text by clicking on the bullet point button on toolbar
Last step is fix the rulers, because when you remove the bullet point the second line of text indents and you need to fix that

Once you have the template looking the way you want it, then duplicate the slide by clicking on it once in the slide tray, Press Ctrl D or Command D however many times you need copies.

Go File - Save as and Choose Template from the dropdown menu. Make sure that you know where it is saving to as when you choose 'Template' it defaults back to Template folder.

Now when this teacher publishes her students' work, she can open up this template, type in the stories, no text boxes will move around and she can print it out for the students to illustrate. Once she saves it, she still has the blank template to use over again.

Day 5 e-Learning Classroom

2011-05-08T22:17:00.004+12:00

Part of good management of students and the creation of 'self-managing' students is the time it takes for them to become self managing and what management strategies, you...the teacher, have put in place.
As an issue arises then create a management strategy to take care of that problem. One came up yesterday, this school does not allow students to print from their computers, only the teacher laptop can print! Some of the children have publishing to print, others need to print out their drafts for conferencing and further editing. The teacher could end up being harassed by impatient students all day wanting their printing!

Solution: We will add a 'Ready to Print' option to the Writing management board. Students move their name labels to that part of the board. The teacher will find the saved file in the student's individual folders and can print all files at at time that is convenient.

We wanted all of the children to have some typing practice, so instead of handwriting sessions everyday, nine children would be allowed to go to the computers to practice their typing and do their spelling activities. The rest of the class would do their handwriting and spelling. We made a timetable that would run for the whole week. This will go on the wall so all students know when it is their turn to be on the computer during this time.

We used the 'easi speak' for a different purpose today. One of the students has a problem with writing things down, computers are difficult and so was the iPad. The main difficulty appears to be with spelling and writing/typing fluently. This child has very good verbal skills. She managed to write down her ideas and after she conferenced her work with the teacher rather then get her to go through the pressure of writing or typing again we got her to publish with the 'easi speak'. She did a perfect job in one 'take'. She was also the first person to publish in the class and had the biggest smile on her face when she was informed of this.

The 'easi speak' continues to be one of the most popular choices for reading. Students love using the microphone to record their voices speaking and even more so...hearing themselves back through the speakers.
The teacher will need to set up a timetable for this activity as some children were complaining that they haven't had a turn yet. Small whiteboards are great for 'booking' time and equipment and students are more likely to use them mainly for the novelty of using whiteboard markers!

Mobile Listening Post

I brought in an old iPod of mine that has audiobooks loaded on it. I have a few copies of Stormbreaker so I set that up as an reading option for students. Several students enjoyed listening to the story and reading the book at the same time. To manage this well, if there are students listening at different times then they will need to make a note of the time where the story is up to.
This is a great followup activity for students particularly if the group are reading the book as part of their instructional reading.
Teachers can make their own audiobooks of student basal readers, record them on GarageBand (Mac) or Audacity, then download to an iPod or MP3 player. Use a splitter so up to 5 headsets can listen at one time.

Another popular reading activity is 'Grab some friends and perform a play. The students also have to record what they are doing with a 'Flip Video' Camera (these are not in production anymore, so if you can find one, grab it as it has so many uses in the classroom). The benefits of students recording is

it keeps all students on task
the play can be watched at any time by anybody
the performers can 'critique' their performance

In this photo is an interesting group with one girl and several boys with strong characters. From the beginning you could see that there were going to be 'co-operation' issues. From several observations I feel that the use of the camera kept them more on task then they normally would be, as they wanted to have a movie to show the rest of the class so got over their 'leadership' problems quickly.

Collaboration

Even though these students are working 1-1 on these computers, they are still talking to each other, they are asking questions, providing answers and helping each other.
They are on swivel chairs that helps with the collaboration, they can move and turn to each other. When this photo was taken, the boy on the end had a problem and the two girls to his right were helping him.

Day 4 e-Learning Lead teachers

2011-05-05T16:29:00.000+12:00

I worked most of the day with the lead teachers from the e-Wrapper cluster.
The following presentation has all the links to what we discussed

The Horizon Report
The Traditional, Digital and e-Learning classroom
Teacher level of integration
The e-Learning Classroom resource wiki
Classroom Spaces
Digital Toolkit
e-Learning action plan
Digital Capabilities Matrix
Cybersafety
Assessment, Measurement and Planning ideas

Everglade elearning

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We then talked about how the Everglade Learners Wiki is being used as a Portal for students with all their resources and activities.

Day 3 e-Learning in the Classroom

2011-05-04T18:32:00.001+12:00

Maths
Students are working well through the activities, some of them need to be reminded that they have to record their scores from the online math activities. Children who were working on the mimio workshop are learning to be co-operative with each other so that they share ownership of the mimio pen!

Reading

The reading session went extremely well today. Students were moving from task to task independently.

We introduced two new options, the audiobook on the iPod touch and the Easi-speak microphone.
The students with the Easi-Speak had a great time recording themselves reading a story and listening to themselves reading it.

Students sat with the iPod touch, the splitter and head phones and listened to 'The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe' audiobook.

The children are also very fond of using the flip video to record their plays.

Writing

The students are getting into the swing of using the Writing task board. They were all moving their names across to the appropriate column. Some of the students started on the Conferencing options. At this school the students can't print from the school computers, only the teachers laptop is enabled to print so we are adding another management space to the Writing task board 'Ready to print' so that the teacher knows which students have work to print out, and can print it out at a time that is convenient to them.

Handwriting, Keyboarding and Spelling
The blending of these subjects is working well. Students know who are on the computers for Keyboarding and Spelling, while the others do their Handwriting and Spelling in their books. Keyboarding is already starting to improve.
Several children are confident with the Home keys (asdf jkl;) so I have started them off on the Keyboarding cards.

Day 2 e-Learning Classroom

2011-05-03T21:16:00.004+12:00

Another great day in the classroom. The children settled down to their tasks straight away and were not phased by all of the teachers in the room observing them.
Maths
Most of the students realised that they needed to write their progress and answers in their maths books. The teacher of the class was amazed by 3 children who were working on the 3 computers in the withdrawal space. He expected them to be not on task, but they were totally involved in what they were doing occasionally helping each other at the same time.

I also noticed that the teacher was able to leave the students (He feels comfortable enough to let go of control) who were working on the workshop for short periods of time to look around the room at what the other students were doing. There were not enough computers for all of the students but they all managed to co-operate well with each other.

Reading
The students understand how the task board works now and are eager to try out the different options, especially the iPad stories. So that we can find out what activities the students like doing the most they will fill in the following tracking sheet

Reading recording sheet

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This will assist in future planning of activities and also identify individual student preferences.

One group of students went with the 'Grab some friends and act out a play'. We gave them a Flip Video camera and they videoed their efforts. Their first effort they viewed away from the rest of the class, lots of laughing but they soon realised that they needed to make some drastic changes. They went outside and did it again and did a great job!

Spaces

Gareth created a secret space today and introduced it to the children as a 'Quiet Space'. The students used it well today. This photo was taken when another student came and told me that the child in the Quiet Space had been there for a long time, when I went and looked this kid was reading quietly with another student.

Writing

Gareth talked about Conjunctions in the writing process today. Teachers who were observing were amazed at the level of engagement with the children that were working on the iPads and iPhone. Students are now starting to use the Writing Management Board as they move from the Drafting stage to Editing and Conferencing. We will be introducing the conferencing choices tomorrow.

Handwriting, Spelling, Keyboarding

Already the students are concentrating consciously on their keyboarding skills. Most children had 2 hands on the keyboard and were touching the space bar with their thumbs. We have timetabled 9 children everyday to do Keyboarding exercises rather than Handwriting and then they can continue with their Spelling activities after 10 minutes of typing practice.

Spelling activities

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The students who aren't on the computers continue with doing their spelling in their spelling books.

P.E

Gareth has made a 'Large Ball skills' assessment sheet for his children. They looked over what was expected of them, students took turns at videoing groups of other students. When they came inside they watched themselves and critiqued their performance. They now have their learning goals for the next P.E session.

Art

The topic at the moment is Disasters so Gareth prepared a PowerPoint with images to do with disasters. Students will be creating their own disaster icons for posters. Everybody started off on paper and I worked with a couple of children on Paint. More about this tomorrow!

Starting an e-Learning classroom

2011-05-02T19:37:00.001+12:00

This week I am working with another teacher in a Year 4 classroom. We have the beginnings of setting up an e-Learning classroom. This teacher has had to make quite a few dramatic changes in teaching practice to operate fully in an e-Learning environment.
The class has 4 computers and 5 laptops. I have taken in 3 iPads and today I even let the students use my iPhone.

Gareth and I met for one day to plan last term. I talked to him about what an e-Learning classroom can look like. I created a cutdown version of the action plan that my teachers in the e-Learning classroom are using (theirs goes for the year).

I created the wiki for the class and we are treating it as the portal for the students to their learning.

We introduced the children to it first thing in the morning. Before school started I taught 3 students how to make a weemee and they continued through the day when there was a spare moment to teach someone else.
Rules
We talked about rules.

The emphasis was on being co-operative, collaborative and self-managing.

Maths
We introduced the Measurement task sheet

Measurement Assessment

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and then the Measurement Workshop

Measurement

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and finally the Measurement Website. The students were then given the choice of what activities they had to do, we only had time for a short trial so they were allowed to go to one task and try it out. Some students worked in pairs, some worked alone, some worked on the Workshop with Gareth. The children grasped the concept of working like that incredibly fast and there was a wonderful working hum in the classroom. It will be interesting to see how they go tomorrow self managing themselves.

Reading
Gareth has created interactive worksheets around the student readers for the week. I will post examples of these on the website and in a blog post tomorrow. Students read with the teacher, then worked on their interactive worksheet and then their third task was to choose from the options. More about this tomorrow.

Writing
I created this teaching PowerPoint on Argument writing and Gareth introduced it today.

How to write arguments junior

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Students were shown the Word Graphic Organiser template.

Argument persuasive template

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Nine students worked on computers drafting straight onto the Graphic Organiser. Two worked on the iPads and one on the iPhone. The rest worked on the print outs of the Graphic Organisers.

As it was not the full amount time allowed for writing today, they will continue with this tomorrow.

Keyboarding
Keyboarding was introduced briefly and all students pasted in a photocopied version of a keyboard, and coloured in the home keys. As I wandered around the students while they were typing today I was constantly saying "Two hands on the keyboard, thumbs only on the space bar!"

It was a great start to the week. These 7 and 8 year old students adapted so easily and quickly to the new ways of doing things in their class. On my advice the teacher got rid of some desks and replaced them with tables. The students were very surprised to start off with but very quickly got used to their tote trays and sitting wherever they wanted around the tables. We will be having quite a few teachers observing over the week so it will be interesting to see how the students cope with that as well, judging by today they will be all little champions.

Self review and setting Goals

2011-03-10T17:59:00.002+13:00

I have been talking quite a bit to teachers about students documenting their own Personal Learning Journey. It is loosely based on 'Ipsative' Assessment which is the measurement of where we were, where we are now and where we want to be. The following diagrams build on that with the student deciding with the teacher what they are going to have to do to succeed with their goal. The junior one is more simplified then the senior example.
Click on the diagrams to see them in full view.
Junior

Senior

These were created in Kidspiration and Inspiration. Students can type into them or they can be printed out and students write in them.

The examples are available for download on this site.

Visual Publishing

2011-03-07T17:01:00.001+13:00

I saw students publishing their autobiographies today in Word, with a border and a fancy heading. Children were working alone, typing one finger each letter as they copied from their writing books. They look bored and uninterested in what they were doing.

Another teacher said to me, I want to do something more interesting or exciting when I get my students to publish their autobiographies, they aren't able to write much. This school has very limited access to internet, they cannot publish online so we needed to use what was available on the computer. They had Inspiration version 8! I was elated!
I started showing the teacher how they could create a visual autobiography.
We set up a template for students to use...

Then we looked at how you could add pictures, Inspiration 8 and 9 have a great search feature (unfortunately the search feature is blocked at this particular school).
Other choices of graphics are students creating their own graphics in Paint, Artrage or Kidpix.
Or you could go to Google Images and find graphics, there are quite a few free graphic sites that show up in Google Images such as http://www.cartoonclipartworld.com/
Use Google images to find graphics of maps and places as well.

There are lots of skills children will learn 'just in time' and 'as needed' in an authentic context.

Keyboarding skills...do we need to teach them?

2011-03-03T13:28:00.001+13:00

I am hearing the same old story at all my schools and I am seeing it myself as I wander around the classrooms. Teachers are complaining about the slowness of students typing on the computer. I am astounded that I still see Year 6 children typing with one finger while they rest their head on their other hand!
So...do we need to teach typing skills?
Yes we do! They do not gain keyboarding skills by 'osmosis'.

But it doesn't have to be a new subject that has to be taught, it can be integrated into what you are already doing in the classroom.
One method I use is to print out a keyboard for each child, stick it in the back of Spelling book, practice your spelling words by typing them...
...or in the back of a Handwriting book, practice your Home Keys before you start your Handwriting.

Plain Windows Keyboard

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Make up a learning centre with laminated coloured keyboards

Colour Win Keyboard

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and bag these activities for use in Options, tumbles or Wet Day activities

Typing Card Activities

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Typing Practice Cards 64

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Part of your observations, working with and walking around should involve you always encouraging students to

"thumbs only on the space bar"
"Pinkies only on the shift and delete key"
"always rest your fingers on the Home Keys"
"don't cross over the Magic Line"

Magic Line

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You can also teach keyboarding skills while modelling writing.

For Mac versions of Keyboards and more keyboarding ideas and resources go to my Keyboarding wiki page.

Using Social Media in the Classroom

2010-12-03T20:27:00.000+13:00

Facebook is well known as personal social media. But it is also possible to be a useful tool to use in education.
Jane Danielson is documenting her school's journey into the use of Social Media and how it is becoming an integral part of the communication lines between school and community. http://janedanielson.blogspot.com/

A lot of the teachers that I work with are disappointed with parent interaction with their blogs and wikis and would like feedback from them on children's work. Jane has discovered from the large take up of 'Liking' the school's Public page and through comments left on the school's public profile page that a lot of parents have Facebook and that they seem to regularly check it. Feedback from parents say that they like this method of communication.

How could you use Facebook in the classroom?

You can add a 'Public Profile Page' to your personal account. This is your connection to the parents in your class.This will enable you to post updates to your Public Profile page like

updates to wikis and blogs
links to websites or articles
reminders about events that are coming up
requests for parents to check student pages

How does this affect your personal Facebook?

When somebody clicks the Like button on your Facebook link, they will receive only the updates you put on your Public Profile page, they do not get your personal updates and you do not get theirs.

How do I set up a Public Profile page?

Log into your Facebook page
open another tab on your browser (Ctrl T or Command T)
go to this website http://www.facebook.com/pages/create.php
click on Local Business, choose Education
Type in the Page Name in space provided
Tick the 'I'm the official representative...'
Click Create Official Page
Click on Create Page
Add a brand image and information
Add your first post (it might be a link to latest blog or wiki update) by clicking on Post Update

Click on the Like button
Now you need to create a Like box to go onto your wiki or blog for parents to click on so that they will receive your updates
Click on http://developers.facebook.com/docs/reference/plugins/like-box
Paste in the internet address for your Public Facebook page
Make changes to the width and colour of theme
Click on Get Code and copy the code
Go to your Wiki, click on Edit Navigation, Click where you want it to go, click on Widget then other, paste the code, click Ok and then Save
To add to a blog, go to the Dashboard, click on add a Gadget, click on HTML/JavaScript, paste code, click Save, drag the gadget to where you want it on the side panel, click Save

If you want to communicate with the parents of your children in your class, then try using the social media tool of Facebook to reach them. This just might encourage them to look at your blogs and wikis and comment on their children's work.
But be aware this is not for your children's use, Facebook has a R13 rating so your students if they are under the age of 13 are not legally allowed to have a Facebook page so it is not appropriate for them to 'Like' your public profile page let alone comment on it. If this does happen, then you will need to inform parents through a post on your Facebook page about the legalities and also talk to the children in your class.

Talking Technology and e-Learning to Parents

2010-11-27T13:14:00.003+13:00

I was asked to talk to a group of parents recently about e-Learning. I usually talk to teachers so this was a new experience for me. A small group of parents got it, a lot didn't!
So...what was the problem?
One man said ' I may be old fashioned but what about the 3 'R's! It is an important question, the answer... is that they are still there but are being delivered to students in a different way.

Another thing that bothered me was a parent saying 'My daughter cannot tell me what 7x 4 is, or it takes her a while to think what the answer is (she is obviously using strategies to work it out). I thought to myself 'Well really? How important is it to know what 7x 4 is?' We have calculators available to us everywhere. I know of very successful accountants who don't know their timetables, they use the tools that are available to them to solve the problem. Some parents of today expect their children to be taught as they were taught when they were at school, as this parent said 'I learned by rote and I know my timetables'. The argument could be that this is the type of learner he is, or he has a stronger intelligence in that area but his daughter does not.

The point is that the skills we need change with time and technology... as a checkout operator in a Supermarket in the late 70s, I had to count back change to customers as per company protocol e.g if an order was $10.30 and they gave me $20 then I had to count back the change to the customer
'$10.30 and 20c is 50, 50c is $11, $2 is $13, $2 is $15 and $5 is $20.00
A few years later machines came in that gave you exactly how much change you needed to give to the customer. That skill I had, has not been used up until this day.

Parents do want to see 1-1 computing. They want children to have their own computers. I see 1-1 computing replacing rows of desks with rows of laptops, and the blackboard of yesteryear is now an IWB. The only difference between the classroom of the early 1900s and now is the technology. I am seeing a lot of teachers using their IWB as the old 'chalk and talk' but that will change as they get more familiar with the software and start creating authentic resources that students can use.

Parents were worried that Handwriting and Spelling would not be in the programme anymore and what was a maths and reading session going to look like. We reassured them that those programmes still happen, the teaching and learning still happen but with the aid of a variety of technologies in a student centred classroom.
Another parent said he was worried about the work load on the teachers, how could they manage 26 students doing different things with lots of equipment in lots of groups. The Principal was able to answer "We teach like that in traditional classrooms!' She went on to explain how we group teach.

Traditional style teaching

A group with the teacher for instructional work,
A group working on individual specific worksheet/ or reading book activity that had been designed for their group
A group on computers individually working through a graphic organiser Character Study
A group listening to stories on the listening post
A group reading from their group box of books at their level

e-Learning class

A group with the teacher for instructional work using iPads to tap out answers to questions teacher asks
A group working together in smaller groups on a specific online worksheet/ or reading book activity that had been designed for their group
A group on computers (in pairs or threes) working through a graphic organiser Character Study, discussing character traits, looking through the novel in their hands to find more information, sharing their answers
A group listening to an audiobook on the iPod via a 5 way splitter whilst reading from the paperback copy at the same time
A group choosing from the reading options which could include a variety of activities using technologies or non digital materials

It was interesting to see and hear parents reactions to this way of learning. Human nature is to go with what we know and what we believe works, change is unknown and threatening. We need to think about how we can help parents to transition to this way of learning.

The e learning classroom

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Since I wrote this post I have come across another blog post by Celia http://ccoffa.edublogs.org/2010/11/27/it-comes-down-to-trust/ Her post focuses on how parents are reluctant to let their students use social media and their lack of trust in their own children. She reiterates what I observed that there is a sense of fear amongst some parents and a lack of understanding of what social media and Web2.0 tools are.
Jane Danielson is documenting her school's journey into the use of Social Media and how it is becoming an integral part of the communication lines between school and community. http://janedanielson.blogspot.com/

It was one of those 'Oh wow' moments!

2010-11-10T17:12:00.003+13:00

I was working with a teacher today who was distracted by one of his Year 5 boys that was working slowly in his bookwork. He commented to me that the student found it difficult to write and just as hard to work on a computer. He was finding it challenging to get much work out of him at all. I suggested the iPad, and as I had one with me we called the student up. I asked him had he ever tried an iPad before... he had not!
I asked him to type a sentence about himself, his name, favourite sport etc. He started typing, see video below...

I looked at the teacher, whose jaw had dropped. He couldn't believe his eyes!
When I asked the student why did he think he could type so well on the iPad, he said he didn't know. But I think it is because his face is totally focused on one screen and he doesn't have to keep lifting his head from keyboard to monitor as you do with a computer. He was also able to edit a lot more quickly as students generally type a sentence, then look up and then delete the whole sentence if it is incorrect. This boy was able to see his mistakes as they happened and delete right then and there.
We also asked him to do the exercise he was having difficulty in writing on the iPad and he completed it in record time!

This has to be another argument for having iPads and iPod touches in the classroom! It can capture a reluctant learner to become enthusiastic, engaged and successful!

Go to http://ipodsiphonesineducation.wikispaces.com to find out what iPod Touch and iPad apps I am recommending.

Creating Math Activities

2010-10-12T13:28:00.001+13:00

Tania wanted to know how to create clock math activities in Inspiration today. In 10 minutes she had made 2 activities that children are going to be using independently and in groups using the mimio.

Step 1: Google 'Blank Clock Faces'. Click on Line Drawing in the side panel options
Step 2: Drag the clock face of your choice onto the Kidspiration or Inspiration page
Step 3: Draw the lines by clicking on the line tool on the toolbar

Step 4: Change the lines into arrows by going to Link - Arrow Direction

Step 5: Add a text box below the clock

Step 6: Click and drag around the whole clock picture and text box, press Ctrl or Command C and paste on another part of the page, repeat until you have covered the page. Save your activity as a template.

Use the same template to create other activities.

The same activities can be created in IWB notebook software as well. Do a search for clock and you will find a clock face, hands and digital display.

mimio, Smart notebook, Activinspire

Webcams and Kids

2010-10-07T21:52:00.000+13:00

With the latest of rollouts of laptops a lot of them have webcams built into them and I am amazed at how many teachers do not realise that they are there! (Apples have had them forever!) This is a valuable resource that you can use with your children.

read your story to the camera, turn your book around to show the picture (upload movie to wiki or blog)
take a photo of your art masterpiece (print out or post on wiki or blog)
read/act a play (place the laptop somewhere where it can see a large area, record your play, edit in Moviemaker or iMovie
create your avatar (use the photo editing features of your camera to add effects)
record your speech and watch it back (critique and make some improvements)
Skype or iChat with students in other classrooms
Skype or iChat with invited guests and ask prepared questions
take your laptop for a walk and show your viewer what you are seeing
record a newscast for podcasts

Creating Reading Activities

2010-09-13T13:22:00.004+12:00

I was talking to a teacher today about creating activities for her reading programme. I like to start with my top reading group which means that the other groups will be able to do that reading activity when they reach it. Kidspiration and Inspiration are perfect for this. The activities don't take long to create especially if you create activities using old templates.
Here are a couple of examples using the book Rosie at the zoo.

After they have used these as followup activities they can then be stored in a folder for that reading group as extra reading activities, make sure the books are also kept together in a 'Book Box' so that the students can use them with the computer activities.

Wallwisher and the Christchurch Earthquake

2010-09-06T19:47:00.001+12:00

I was working at Willowbank School today and the teacher was talking about how she wanted to use Web2.0 tools with her kids. With all that has happened in Christchurch with the earthquake, I thought it was important for the children to have a forum they could talk about it on. Wallwisher was the obvious choice.
This is a Wallwisher I have set up for the different ways you can use Wallwisher. Thanks to the people who have added to it...great ideas.

Space Technology Unit

2010-08-13T13:19:00.002+12:00

The latest technology unit I have written is on Space. The focus of the unit is to understand that several models need to be made and tested before a prototype can be created.
Click on the Full button to see this document in full screen.

Spaceships unit plan

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The Juniors are going to be making Origami spaceships and the Seniors will be creating spaceships according to their own specifications.

Level one and two space student assessment

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The Seniors will be looking at Richard Bransons 'Spaceship Two'

The seniors also have a PowerPoint with links to the websites and movies that will help them with their tasks.

Spaceship

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The assessment for the Seniors is to itemise the steps that it has taken to get to the final design of Spaceship Two.

Senior spaceship assessment

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As an Extra...
These students worked on the Volcano eruptions last term so suggesting that they animate the orbiting of planets around the sun was not a difficult task for them to achieve. They were able to apply the same techniques they used with animating 'Erupting Volcanoes'.

How to make an animated solar system

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Which of course lead to them wanting to animate spaceships.

How to animate spaceships

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Students can create their own 'Spaceships/Rockets' in Paint or Artrage. These are then animated in PowerPoint or Keynote.

We used Artrage to create backgrounds.

Lifting Student Achievement with Technology

2010-08-04T17:24:00.002+12:00

This is a presentation created by a teacher to present to the Board of Trustees. This teacher is a self confessed Luddite who two years ago did not like working with computers in her classroom. Now she is totally sold. What is so wonderful about this presentation is the evidence the teacher has to how computers and the use of the 'mimio' have 'significantly' lifted student achievement in her class.

Integrating ict into classroom

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Younger Students and Computers - you need to teach them how

2010-08-04T13:31:00.004+12:00

Teachers of younger children tend to not let their students use the computers for independent activities, mainly because

the children have no mouse skills
they don't know how to single or double click
they don't know how to navigate within the website or the game

With the younger ones and the ones that not so able, use the math activities as a teaching tool, rather than as an independent activity. This way students will learn how to do the activity with you modelling and coaching them. I always talk through what I am doing with them. In the example to the right, I would show them how to open the file, I would have spare keyboards available and when we are ready to type the answer into the square, I would say
"How many suns are in this circle, lets count them, see how I'm moving the mouse pointer over each sun. So what is the answer? Now we will type the answer into the square below, but first we must click in the box, now we type the answer." Then we would repeat that process but this time I would be asking, what is the next step we have to do, once they have the idea I would then hand the activity over to the children. After a while of demonstrating whilst teaching, students will be able to do the activities independently. This is the ideal time to teach troubleshooting as you will see what children have difficulty with.

In the example below I would teach children how to open up the PowerPoint file, what button to click to turn it into a slideshow and then how to get the PowerPoint pen. If you have an IWB or mimio, then you can save the file as a PDF and then import into the notebook software so that the notebook pens can be used.

Count

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Don't ever assume that young children know how to use the tools or the buttons, they need to be taught by you demonstrating it.

Make a Poetry file

2010-08-01T21:53:00.000+12:00

I remember many years ago as a student teacher having to create a poetry file for an assignment. I cut up cardboard, used fancy felt-tips, wrote a different poem on each cardboard sheet, illustrated them...it took hours and hours.
When I visit junior classrooms, I often see blown up Poem Cards that teachers are using with children. I advise teachers to make IWB notebook files of their poems. Once they have made their poetry files and saved as a single document, they can use them in conjunction with their Poem cards.
They can use all of the tools such as 'highlighter, shapes, pen tool' to teach conventions of text and poetry. The blown up Poem Cards are still used as independent reading activities.

If you do not have an Interactive Board, but you do have a projector than make your poem files in PowerPoint or Keynote (or Google Presentation) files.
Use your whiteboard markers to teach conventions of text and poetry.

'Time Wasting' Kids who take ages to finish work

2010-06-10T07:24:00.004+12:00

There is a very simple and effective solution to the problem of students who drag out the publishing or presenting of work on the computer...

You have 'X' amount of time to do this work
If you do not finish it, you print it out and finish by hand

Do not fall for the 'I haven't finished.... I need to be on the computer again tomorrow!'

Children very quickly decide that they don't like presenting 'half and half' work and will miraculously speed up and finish their work.

Kids as Commentators

2010-05-31T16:07:00.000+12:00

More and more students are being invited and given access to online discussions, forums and comments on blogs. This is wonderful, the classroom walls are open and children have the freedom to make observations and remarks on other student's posts.

Consequently, it is important for teachers to train children in the 'art' of commenting. There are several rules of netiquette they need to follow. They have to understand that this is an extension of the classroom walls and that rules that they follow in the classroom cross over to their behaviour in online environments.
Here is guide to start students off as online commentators. Use this as a springboard for talking about the type of comments we make, what are good questions and answers for forums and discussions, and most of all how this is a fun, engaging, collaborative extension of our learning.

Kid's comments and posts

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Volcanoes, computers, animations - Authentic Context

2010-05-13T20:18:00.001+12:00

One of my schools are studying Volcanoes at the moment, and as we live in the city of Volcanoes (Auckland), this was a great opportunity to link our learning to an authentic context.

ICT component: View this slideshow, click on the links and follow the instructions on the slide.
Work through the PowerPoint file 'Making a Volcano'

watch the animation on how a volcano erupts
Look at the Shake, Rattle and Roll site, take notes on what the animations look like
Look at the animations on Weather Whizz kids and take notes
Look at the different types of Volcanoes on Volcano Explorer, build your own virtual Volcano and see how it erupts

Volcanic Simulations

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Follow the animation steps in the Animating objects PowerPoint and practice making an animation.

How to animate objects in power point

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Once all of the students have made the animation, share them with the class and talk about if the animations are in the right order. Revisit Volcano Explorer and look at all of the different volcanoes and identify the different ways the volcanoes erupt.
Ask the students can they identify what type of volcano they have, and if the order of eruption correct. If not then they can work on their volcanoes to make the necessary adjustments.

Further Activities:

Select one of the Volcanoes in Auckland, take a photo or find a photo, crop it, identify what type of volcano it is and create a volcanic eruption simulation
create a volcanic simulation of your local volcano, upload to Slideboom, embed in a Glogster poster explaining the type of volcano it is
Read 'Under the Mountain' by Maurice Gee (a fantasy fiction based some of the volcanoes in Auckland) Create a map showing the positions and type of volcano, create a simulation for the 3 different volcanoes

PowerPoint as a modelling and teaching tool

2010-04-22T09:06:00.002+12:00

I was helping a teacher with ideas of how to integrate ICT into her classroom programme. I asked her what her shared book was and suggested how she could teach 'Shared Book' using the class computer and a group of children. (Read the Shared book with the children first)

Start off with a blank page, introduce the shared book, ask what the title is, type the Title in
in the sub title box type by Room #
Insert a new slide
Read the text from the Shared book and then start typing it in
ask questions like "What do I need to type first?" "What goes at the end of the sentence?"
Computer skills are taught as they are needed i.e. "How do I make a capital letter?" "Who can show me how to type a full stop, what finger should I use?
As the book was one about 'I can run, I can draw' etc. The teacher taught the children how to take photos, so these 5 and 6 year olds took their own photos and the teacher inserted them into their PowerPoint.
To finish it off she chose a design template and this was all done as part of the lesson with the children participating alongside.

All this was part of their shared book learning experience, and put their learning into an integrated, authentic context. They now have this story on the computer as an extra reading activity.

As a follow up to this, students can take photos of other things they 'can' do and add them to this shared book or create an new one.

Lab lessons with Juniors

2010-03-13T11:19:00.003+13:00

I was working with a computer lab teacher today looking at ways to work with students. She had a class of Year one students came in!

You need to put some sanity saving measures in when working with a class of 5 and 6 year olds in a lab. They can't sit for long, because they are too excited, so it is best to get them on the computers straight away. If possible don't have them sharing as their collaborative skills at this age aren't that great!
Beforehand you will have needed to teach a couple (or more) of more able students to help the others to log on, and then click on the programme they are going to be using i.e KidPix or Paint. Let them go for it, experimenting with the tools or doing their favourite thing. Once everybody is logged on and in the programme, THEN you can start to add some order to your lessons.

The following are the stages you could go through with Juniors
These happen over several sessions!

free play
while they are in free play, work with individuals showing them a new tool i.e dragging background pictures and adding stamps
show them the typing tool and type their name (you will need a display on a wall that shows the Upper and Lower case letters for those who haven't mastered them yet)
type the words they know how to write (have high frequency words on the wall for students to look at)
first official lesson can be drawing a picture about their topic or what they are writing about in their classroom LIMIT THE TOOLS! Pencil and Paint Can ONLY
Repeat this session many times but bring something new in when the students look ready for it like typing your name (I also teach new things to students who look like they are capable of it as I walk around)
next session might be typing a sentence
at some stage teach the more able students how to save (they will help you to save students work)

once the students are used to all these steps then you might introduce a new programme/Application
at the same time talk to the students about the magic line, put two hands on the keyboard, this hand can't cross over this side of the magic line and the other hand can't cross over that side of the magic line (I put little pieces of folded paper between the keys to create a magic line)

Once the students know the routines and how to use one or two of the programmes, then start using your computer lab time as curriculum teaching and learning time. Writing is a good area to start with. Use the projector to model your writing genre. Students can have their writing books (there should be a container of pencils in lab). Send a small group of able students to the computers to draft (use Kidpix, Kidspiration, Pages, Word etc). The rest of the students can be drafting in their books. Children could be sent off to the computers to...

draw a picture for their story
Type a heading for their story that could be printed out
find a picture in Kidpix that could be printed out

While this is all going on, integrate keyboarding skills at the same time

always remind them of the magic line
thumbs only on the space bar
pinkies only on the delete key
rest fingers on the home keys (those students whose fingers can reach and are ready for it)

With little ones it is all about learning the basic skills and developing that fine motor control. Some students will need more time 'with free play'. If you have students that need mouse skills then set up Interactive Learning Centres such as...
Mouse Practice

Mouse Practice PowerPoint Show version

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To make these Learning Centres follow these instructions

Finally, limit the time students are on the computers, 30 minutes is plenty of time for younger children to be staring at screen. If you have extra time over, then bring out the cameras and take photos that could be used for motivational writing or for publishing their work.
Just remember at this age more than any other age, the students will develop their skills at differing speeds...some a LOT faster than others. Identify those children that have those skills and use them to help you to teach the others. You will find that children learn best from each other!

Researching smarter

2010-03-10T13:44:00.004+13:00

There are still a lot of teachers that are sending children off to do 'research' on Google using one key word.i.e bird (253 million hits later). When they finally find a page that has the information they want, it is invariably printed out, and trawled through looking for information.

This is long, tedious, boring and usually irrelevant!

Become a smart researcher with some of these strategies

1. have at least 3 key words if you are looking for information on birds, what sort of birds are you looking for, what country etc so now the Google search becomes 'bird native wading' and because we want to search for New Zealand Birds we click on pages from New Zealand.
Now we have 10,400 hits!

2. Open up a mindmap/Graphic Organiser (I like to use Kidspiration or Inspiration, or you can use online versions) Create a simple mindmap

3. Go back to the internet site you have chosen, press Ctrl F (Command F for Macs) type in one of the key words from questions in mindmap like 'eats'

4. The word eat did not appear on my page so I used a synonym such as feed, click the next button to see each instance of the word feed until you see a sentence that will answer your question
5. Go back to your mindmap and type in the information you found
6. Go between the Internet site and the mindmap adding information
7. Add a picture to your mindmap by right clicking on a picture in your internet page, select Copy Image, go back to mindmap and paste (Ctrl V)
8. Don't forget to reference where information and picture came from

Model this way of researching to your class.
Use this model in all curriculum areas.
Become a smarter researcher yourself and your students will follow!

What to do with a few minutes spare?

2010-03-05T15:09:00.003+13:00

There are few games that I like to play with students when we have a few minutes spare, you need at least a projector (and laptop) and even better a mimio or IWB.

Free Rice
Free Rice is my first favourite. For every question you get right 10 grains of rice gets donated through the World Food Programme.

The reason it is my favourite is that if you click on Change Subjects you can choose from other subjects.

I particularly like to do the Geography questions as most children in New Zealand schools have very little idea of where other countries are in the World.

Lemons for Literacy

Then there is Lemons for Literacy. With this site every correct answer helps somebody to read in America. Money is donated by the site creators to purchase literacy materials.

With this site you can click on the speaker symbol to hear the words and meanings.

You can also change the type of game by clicking on the 'Defintion Matching' dropdown menu to choose Word meaning. You can also choose a subject rather than General (some of the choices are Business, Medical, School, travel or hospitality). You can also adjust the level of the words.

Free Poverty
Lastly there is Free Poverty

The goal of this game is to test your knowledge of places on the map. Every correct answer means that freepoverty.com will donate 10 cups of water. The further away from the correct spot and the cups of water decrease, if you are too far away there is 0 cups of water awarded. Unfortunately it does have advertisements on it so check what they are advertising that day before using with your class.

The reason I like using the mimio or IWB is that students can use the pens to interact with words and the maps rather than one person using the computer.

And here is one more I have just found

Free Flour

Free flour used to donate one spoonful of flour to World Hunger, but they are looking for sponsers. You can still play the game for free.

In this game you get questioned General Knowledge questions. Check out what the advertisements are advertising before using with children.

Simple but an effective way of Publishing

2010-03-03T20:55:00.001+13:00

A teacher said to me today that her children were always publishing in the same way, in Word with a frame and a title. She wanted to know some different ways to publish. I showed her my slideshare presentation '59 ways to publish'

Journal Publish
We decided to keep it simple and look at only using Word and PowerPoint. We looked at the Journal story idea. When you look at school journals, most of the pages have pictures in the background and text overlaying the page.

This is an example of two Word pages side by side. The photos cover the whole page, some of the photos have been lightened with the Washout button and then text has been inserted using textboxes. (Remove the background colour and line from the textbox by clicking on the Fill can and selecting 'No Fill' and the outline shape or line button and select no outline or line).

Publishing using PowerPoint Templates

One single PowerPoint page can be used for publishing as well. Open PowerPoint, choose a design theme.

Select a slide layout, type in text, add graphics. Print out single page.

You can adjust the colours of the template by

Mac: Open the Toolbox and choose a colour theme from Document Theme

Windows: PowerPoint 2007 choose from Colours

This day in History

2010-02-01T14:27:00.000+13:00

One of the activities I timetable children to do each day before school is to find out what happened on this day in History. Some of the sites I had been using were American (and were the day before, because of time difference).

Sometimes the information on those sites were not really appropriate for children in New Zealand. I came across this site New Zealand History online. What a great way to teach our students New Zealand history.

How to use in the Classroom
IWB
Make a file using the notebook software of the IWB you are using. Add the links to the first page.

I also link to a weather site and current news site.

Students are timetabled (3 a day) to click on a link, read the page, decide which item they are going to copy and take a screen capture to a new page.
This becomes part of our oral language time in the morning where all 3 students have a chance to report back to the class what they have found out. They particularly like using the IWB to navigate to their pages and we always take the opportunity to use the highlighter pens to identify key words, nouns, great adjectives etc( what ever happens to be our focus at that time.)

Projector only

Make these links in a PowerPoint and hyperlink to the address or the pictures. When presenting back students click on the link and find the item they want to talk about.

No Projector or IWB

This still works well without a projector, students take notes of what they have found out and report back to the classroom. This is great activity for making sure that all children get hands on time using the computer and the internet every two weeks.

Ancestral Seafarers

2010-01-18T16:45:00.000+13:00

I have written a series of technology units that have an ICT focus and I am going to share them over the next few weeks.
The first one is Ancestral Seafarers. Students will use Google Sketchup, Digital Lego and Paint as some of the ICT tools.
This unit is designed to integrate into the main Science and Social studies focus.
Setting: We have been looking at how the early Maori people migrated to New Zealand. They used many forms of navigation tools such as the stars, migrating birds and tidal flow.
Brief: It is the year 2010; we have sophisticated technology available to use. If we were going to make the same trip and were able to use the technology available today to navigate, then what and how would we use it? Plan a model using Sketchup, Digital Lego or Paint and identify all of the technologies you have used.
Specifications:

The boat you travel in can be no longer than 20 metres
You must justify the use of each technological item

Follow the slideshow and complete the tasks.

Ancestral Seafarers

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Discuss this

'So canoe traditions do not only explain origins. They also express authority and identity, and define tribal boundaries and relationships. They merge poetry and politics, history and myth, fact and legend' (retrieved from TeAra)

What does this mean? How can it relate to your own design?

Try out the tutorials in either Sketchup or Digital Lego
Draw your plan itemising all of the technological improvements that you will use for navigation.
Level 1: Describe your plan itemising all of the technological improvements that you will use for navigation.
Level 2: Present your plan to the class explaining the outcome you are developoing and describing the technological improvements
Level 3: Describe your outcome explaining how it will suit what you plan to do with it, identify the technological improvements and describe in detail how they will assist with the final outcome
Level 4: Identify what the need or opportunity was, describe the technological improvement and how it will benefit the stakeholders.

TeAra the The online Encyclopedia of New Zealand is a wonderful resource to start with when researching anything to do with New Zealand.
TVNZ on demand is another valuable resource and Waka Hui had several episodes on Ancestral Seafarers.

Twelve Days of Christmas

2009-11-27T14:41:00.011+13:00

There are only two weeks left until the end of the school year in New Zealand,

so it is time to start thinking about Christmas activities we could do with the students in our classes. Even though Christmas is during Summer we still adopt a lot of the Northern Hemisphere traditions and teach them in our classes. One noteable case last Christmas was showing the teacher of the bi-lingual Tongan unit how to make paper snowflakes online and offline!
The next few posts are going to concentrate on Christmas activities you can do in the classroom using computers.

Twelve Days of Christmas

This was a favourite activity I did with students every Christmas where we would

read The Twelve Days of Christmas
sing the song
read the Kiwi Version of The Twelve days of Christmas, A Pukeko in a Ponga tree
sing the song
finally we would plan and write our own 'Twelve Days of Christmas' story
The children would write and illustrate their own books

The ICT adaption of this would be to create their own books using either

PowerPoint (Younger children could have a template with most of the words typed and they would fill in the gaps, add pictures and themes to the pages)

Here is a download for the PowerPoint. Click on the Menu button and select Download Presentation. You will need to have a slideshare account.

Twelve Days Of Christmas

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older children could create theirs from scratch
draw the pictures in Kidpix, Paint or Artrage
students could draw or paint pictures, take photos of final products
or use online programmes to create drawings such as Sketchfu ( need to set up an account, click on Download to see image and screen capture or print); Odopod is more suitable for older students, drawings look like watercolours; Sumo is more suitable for older children as it has quite comprehensive tools; Artpad is a simplistic art tool suitable for all ages, take screen captures of finished art work
other programmes that could be used are PhotoStory 3 (Windows only), Moviemaker (Windows) or iMovie (Mac) Insert photos, record voices or add a music track to create movie.

Inspiration or Kidspiration could be used for the mindmapping of the ideas and publishing as well. Both Kidspiration and Inspiration can be hyperlinked to websites, Inspiration can also have movies embedded on the page.

ComicLife is also another easy way to publish students work. Use their drawings or photograph artwork and add it to the comic.(If you are using images from online don't forget to reference!)
If you don't have ComicLife then use the Autoshapes in Word

A simple but fun activity for all ages is building a picture in Kerpoof and adding text, you can search for graphics and make it as unusual as you like. Print it or screen capture it when finished.

Of course the ever popular Wordle should not be left out. Adding a Tilde ~ in between each word will allow phrases to appear. This is when children need to learn how to copy and paste as there is a lot of repetition going on.

Themes
Different themes could be decided on. There are different schools of thought on the original meaning of the song. Here are some ideas for themes that could be used

characters and settings from a fairy tale or favourite book
indigenous items from the child's country of origin
favourite sports (teams)
international themes such as Global Warming, Third World countries, Disasters
based on a Social Studies/Science topic studied that year
presents they would like for Christmas
presents they would like to give for Christmas
based on people in the school/classroom
based on a favourite movie (See the youtube movies below)
look through a current magazine or newspaper
write about noteable school or personal events

How about a non-Christmas theme?

There maybe some students in your class who do not celebrate Christmas so they could have a theme about the holidays. I saw a great book in a classroom a few days ago called 'The Twelve Days of Holidays'. This is written from the mother's perspective as she is increasingly getting 'fed up' with her children at home during the holidays. Students could write about

the holiday they are going to have
their best holiday
their worst holiday
their dream holiday
or from the perspective of a member of their family

Other versions of 'The Twelve Days of Christmas' that can be viewed that could motivate students are the following

this one is a slideshow with pictures (paintings) of each day

This next Youtube movie is a good example of how you can create your own Twelve days of Christmas on a particular theme, in this case on Disney stories.

This version will appeal to Shrek fans. This is a great theme to use picking out characters in the movie.

And if you want to see the lyrics have a look at this Youtube movie

For more advanced ideas of presenting the twelve days of Christmas which could be embedded into Blogs and wikis...

Wallwisher: Add posts to the wall, could be an individual wall or a collaborative wall

For further instructions on how to use Wallwisher

Glogster a poster yourself application enables you to embed graphics, movies and link to websites.

Create an online book

Mixbook has some great Christmassy templates. Students can publish their Twelve Days of Christmas in Mixbook and then embed into their wiki or blog (for free). They can also be purchased from $6.99 US and sent to you.

There are a lot more online ways of presenting 'The Twelve Days of Christmas', for more ideas look at

Publishing Writing Ideas November 2009

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Where the Wild Things are

2009-10-17T21:22:00.000+13:00

Where the Wild Things are is an old favourite book of mine and one that I have used with classes many times. The movie is due out on the 3 December 2009 (in NZ) which will renew interest in this old classic. A few years ago I developed some activities using the context of the book and integrated it into the maths we were doing at the time; tessellations and rotation. The skills students learned from working with shapes enabled them create their own Wild Things.

Where the Wild Things are activities

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Creating Wild Things from shapes Activity Four

Creating Wild Things

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Build a Story: Activity Six

Build A Story Example

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A to Z of Wild Things: An example

A Z Of Wild Things Example

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Editing Writing, Telescopic Text and Magnetic Writing

2009-10-07T14:18:00.005+13:00

Teachers want to know ways to engage students in editing their own writing. If you have a projector, whiteboard (or even better an IWB) try this.
Start off with Joe Davis's site http://www.telescopictext.com/
I ask students to describe what the tea could taste like, write some answers above the text, then click on the word 'tea'. New text will be inserted into the sentence.

We carry on in this mode predicting, describing and analysing the new edited text until we can go no further.

The next day we can look at this website which is based on Joe Davis's site http://basseq.com/fun/telescopictext/
Now we can add our own words by replacing the text that is already there by highlighting the word to be changed, click on Replace, type new word and then click on Submit changes.

The third day can then be spent looking at Tripticos Word Magnet site.
Type in a sentence. When you type in the full stop make sure there is a space between it and the last word.
Click Next.

In the next window you can choose from many different backgrounds but for my editing lesson I will keep to a blank page

Click on Done and the next page will appear with your text broken up into text boxes. Click and drag them up to make a sentence.

Now start adding new words by typing in the 'Add new magnet box', once you have clicked the + symbol, click on a colour to change the colour of your text box. Drag it into the correct place. Use the colour coding to identify adjectives, conjunctions etc.

This is a great way to get students interested in editing their work and to see how a sentence can come alive. These are the type of activities that I like to use with children as part of my modelling and teaching.
This will work well with just a projector and computer, but the Interactive Whiteboard would allow students to take over the manipulation of text and objects.

47 Ways to publish Students' writing

2009-09-13T17:24:00.003+12:00

This is an update to a previous slideshow I had made on publishing students writing. This has more activities and explanations for teachers how to use in the classroom.

Publishing Writing Ideas 2

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Print out in PowerPoint

2009-09-09T22:02:00.001+12:00

A teacher asked me today how could she print out all of the slides on a PowerPoint presentation on one page which then lead me to show her the different ways that are available to print.

Print Slides

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Number Knowledge, Basic Facts and PowerPoint

2009-08-26T12:57:00.000+12:00

I was working with Jenny today at her school, and she was telling me that the problem she has with Number Knowledge is that children do not know their basic facts and this is throughout the school.

She wanted to create flash cards quickly, so I suggested making them in PowerPoint.

Choose the Title Only slide from the Slide layout.

Drag the title bar down so it is in the centre of the slide.

Type in the number sentence, insert a square shape from AutoShapes (Shapes).

Resize everything so it fits in the slide

Click on the slide in the Slide Panel, press Ctrl D (Command D for Apple) to duplicate the slide.

Change the numbers and box around, repeat once more until you have 3 slides.

Shift click all 3 slides and then duplicate. Change all the numbers. Repeat this last step until all of the Flash cards have been made.

When printing make sure you select the Handouts - Slides per page 6

Cut out, write the answer on the back, laminate and bag the cards.

Doubles To 10

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The PowerPoints can be used as a computer activity as well. Duplicate each slide and type in the answer, resave as an activity. In Normal view, students click on the box and type in the answer or in Slideshow View they can use the pencil to draw the answer. The next slide will have the answer for them.

Doubles To 10 Game

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Make a series of cards and games and organise them into

Doubles (to 10) (more than 10)
Bonds to 10 (creates 10 i.e. 7 +3, 6 +4),
Combinations up to 5, (a total less than or including 5)

Inanimate Alice - Multimedia Fiction and Networked Novels

2009-08-15T10:41:00.011+12:00

Came across this site Inanimate Alice and I was overwhelmed with ideas of how to use this in a classroom situation. Inanimate Alice is an interactive multimedia story (known as Transmedia, storytelling across multi media platforms) that grows as the main character gets older. The story starts in a simplistic way and gradually increases in readability and game challenge levels. There are 10 levels, four that have been released so far with Episode 5 coming sometime before the end of the year. All these episodes can be viewed for free!

What I liked about it was how it would appeal to visual learners and non-readers alike. Apart from reading, this is also a fantastic motivator for writing and publishing. I recently wrote a post about 'PowerPoints can be great' and this way of presenting a story lends itself (in simplistic terms for young children) as one that could be created in PowerPoint or Keynote because of the hyperlinking abilities. MovieMaker or iMovie could be used as well more so for the animated effects that could be added.

Have a look at this wiki Digital Literacy -Inanimate Alice, (Pascoevale Primary School) there are some fantastic examples of episodes students have written using PowerPoint.

Flight Paths by the same authors is a Networked Novel where readers can participate by adding fragments, ideas or chapters. Again, these stories would be great motivators for writing.

Ways to use this in your classroom

create their own version of the story making themselves the main character
take one of the main characters of 'Inanimate Alice' and build a story around that character and their adventures
continue the story and create different chapters in different countries including details that pertain to the culture of that country
use special effects of photo editing software (Befunky, Fotoflexer, Lunapic, Picnik, Aviary) for the photos on their story
retell the story from another perspective

Available as well is the iStori.es software tool with an all time site license for $242 (NZ). This allows students to create stories in the same way as Inanimate Alice.
Teachers can request the comprehensive Education Pack which has lesson plans and resource pack. There is also an Education pack available for the iStori.es, an authoring tool.

What is important to note here is that the Multimedia fiction story cannot exist without the writing; that is what makes it powerful. There are striking images coming at you, but the writing is what leads you on, to think, predict, question and wonder what is next.
I believe that this genre of writing and reading is an important development in our literacy programme.

PowerPoint Presentations can be great

2009-08-06T17:32:00.005+12:00

Given the choice of presenting digitally, PowerPoint is the most widely used presentation tool in classrooms. This is because a lot of teachers are not ready to let go of it and experiment with online media or free downloadable software. Consequently it is also a tool that it is used in limited ways

most of the time it is used as a Text and Picture slideshow with animations and sound effects
the presentation is more than likely linear
and it is a regurgitation of facts

But PowerPoint presentations can be made exciting, informative and interesting just by deciding on the delivery of the information.
The following slideshow can be used to demonstrate to students the different ways PowerPoint can be used present information.

Dinosaurs And The Modern Day Hunters Guide To Presentation

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Walk the Talk: Day Two - Computer Lab

2009-08-05T21:14:00.003+12:00

Day Two:
All classes came into the lab and sat at the computers. To remind them of the sequence of the programme I had written a list on the Activboard

Come in
Sit down
Log on
Open Server
Open Wikispaces page
Click on Sign in
Type in User name
Open Pages
Type six lines of Home Keys asdf jkl;
Choose a game from the Wikipage to play

Once all students had finished typing home keys, I called them from their seats to the mat in front of the Activboard.
We revisited the Writing and Publishing Online Rules. Next we looked at the Xtranormal slideshow I had made, this was also a reminder of what they need to do. This is also an example of one of the types of publishing they are going to be doing this term.

For the rest of the session students worked on their Wordles and Copying/Pasting edited stories onto their wikipages.

Some of the students have published wonderful Comic Life posters that have photos of children in them, but at the moment the school do not want to have the children’s photos online. So to publish them and protect anonymity we double click on each picture, click on the Details button and used one of the Filters to comicfy the pictures. .
Do this for each photo and the effect is that that you can still make out what the figures are doing, but you can't make out the faces.

One major teaching point this session was showing students how they could have multiple pages open on their browser.
I noticed that when they needed to go to a new website they would type over the address of the page they were on.
I demonstrated how they could press Command-T (Control-T) to open up a new page where they could type the address.
I also needed to remind them that they do not need to type the whole address, (miss out the http://www).

Routines have been set now, students now know how to respond when I need their attention 'Stop, look, listen' and they have already learned many new skills.
Next week the teachers would like their students to publish some writing they have finished. The week after that I will be starting Argument writing.

Walking the Talk: Day One 'Computer Lab'

2009-07-27T12:48:00.007+12:00

For the next nine weeks I am teaching one day a week in a school in South Auckland. I am working with 4 different Year 6 classes running lab sessions. I have started a Year 6 wiki for them and the main concentration is going to be on the children's writing and publishing.
Day One
Introduction of me and my expectations for the next nine weeks.
What are the rules?

Writing And Publishing Online

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Look at our Wikipage.

Practice our typing.

Keyboarding Practice

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Play a Spelling game or Typing game.

Find a Recount we have already typed into Pages.

Make a Wordle of it. The students had to learn lots of skills for this activity, how to move between Pages and an Internet Page, keyboard shortcut keys such as Command-A to select all, Command-C to copy, Command-V to paste.
They also had to learn how to do a screen capture to save to the desktop, Shift-Command-4. They took a screen capture of their Wordle and uploaded into their Wikipage,

Wordle

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Bookmarks, Interactive Learning Centres and Delicious

2009-07-25T21:18:00.007+12:00

In past blog posts I have talked about Interactive Learning Centres and bookmarks in Delicious. Teachers have embraced this management method of directing students to certain websites. This is a great idea and works well as long as the links are directly linked to a specific activity that is supporting the teaching and learning.
Ways to use Delicious

make it the home page on your class computers
make bundles of your reading groups and math groups (See page 7 of How create a Delicious Account)
directly link to the activity rather than the page that might have several links on it
send the link to your Delicious page home on your school or class newsletter
when Parents ask you what are suitable sites for their child to access, give them the Delicious link
when you start a new topic make sure that you have a tag or a bundle for it so that students can access these links at home
make a bundle that is specifically child friendly games (check them out to make sure they are not full of inappropriate advertising)
set student homework using Delicious Links
keep your bundles well organised and your tags clear
ensure that you have a Spelling bundle with spelling and grammatical tags (very useful when homework has not been set, but students can use these for practice at home and at school)

I have been asked by some teachers whether they should just have a wiki and not Delicious. I suggest that you have both. The wiki is more current and should show the posts, games, activities, discussions that are happening at the moment. The Delicious page is more historic as it shows all the links you have covered in the year and is a great resource for children to use quickly and easily.

Ways to use Interactive Learning Centres (ILC)

create pages that are group/curriculum specific (Reading or Math Groups names)
directly link to the activity rather than the page that might have several links on it
use PowerPoint or Keynote to create ILCs (later versions allow you save as PDF files which means you can play them on any machine irrespective of Platform or Version of software)
if you have special needs children create an ILC that is specific to their need and level
create teaching lessons using ILC, make them in PowerPoint and then copy or import into Interactive Whiteboard software. Hyperlink to the Internet or games and activities that you have made in PowerPoint, Word, Pages, Keynote, KidPix, Inspiration or Kidspiration

The slideshow below is an example of how you could make a Maths ILC. One page shows games that are strand specific and two pages show 2 different Maths groups and the activities that they are doing related to what is being taught at the moment.

Interactive Website

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Reading the Classics 'Paper versus Digital' Why not both?

2009-07-09T11:17:00.015+12:00

As a child I was and still am an avid reader. I had a Grandfather (hobbyist antique collector) who would fuel my literary interest by giving me 'old- antique' books that he found in his travels. I don't know what happened to most of them now but I still have a fully bound copy of 'The Girl's Own Annual' circa early 1900s chapters separated by the finest tissue paper. Included in this anthology was the typical girlie serial stories right to the helpful hints/advertisements of how to embroider your underwear!
As a child I was desperate to read anything, and I'm not sure how I discovered them (probably through my mother who was a teacher) but I know that I read most of the classics before I was 13. I then discovered 19th Century Gothic literature and that consumed me through my early teens.
When I was teaching full time, I liked to read to my students everyday. It was always a novel, and I particularly liked reading classic novels...but how can you do that in today's world where there is so many differences in our lives compared to one to two hundred years ago. Language is different, context and meaning of words have been changed; we have lost a lot of words and phrases that were used many years ago and they have been replaced with new words and expressions.
We all know that a`movie' of a book is never the same as the book we have read. An experiment I tried out with some Year 3/4 (7 & 8 years old) students a few years ago was when there was a plethora of Disney movies re-released. Peter Pan was the one we focused on. The children and I found as many resources we could and we all gleefully consumed them. Then I started reading the original Peter Pan by J.M. Barrie. They loved it and were totally surprised that the Disney 'Peter Pan' was based on this original story. I purchased and found several copies of the original book and as I read it to the class the students read along at the same time.

Digital Medium
Nowadays we have a new medium to reach children and encourage them to read the old classics. A lot of these books are available free online.

Kids Corner has a wonderful collection of Beatrix Potter Stories with text which students can view or you can download the audio of it and play it through your computer or download onto an iPod (students can listen to the story while reading the printed copy at the same time).
Scroll further down the main website page and there is audio downloads to Alice in Wonderland, Wizard of Oz, Charles Dickens, Grimm's Fairy Tales and Rudyard Kipling.

Book Glutton has a comprehensive collection of all classic books, some of the children ones I have found are Alice in Wonderland, Treasure Island and many more.

You can embed links to the books, read them online, make comments and chat about the books A Europe of tales is an animated interactive site retelling the ancient myths and legends of their countries stories.

Many Books is a site with free books to download as PDF, e-Reader or Kindle) some of the featured stories are Anne of Green Gables and The Wind in the Willows.
Project Gutenberg is a source of many classic e-books that can be downloaded as webpages or PDFs, have a look at the Velveteen Rabbit, this could be used as a shared reading lesson using an interactive whiteboard or mimio. Use the highlighting tools and pens to find key ideas, note sequencing, answer questions etc.
Page by Page books is a text based comprehensive list of classic books.
Planet PDF
Planet e-book these last two sites are where you can download PDF versions of classic books.
PDF search is a comprehensive search engine for PDF files, search for a book title and find many versions of it.
Feedbooks allows you to download to MP3 players, smartphones, iPods, PDAs and Kindles.

Graphic Novels
Graphic Novels are a great way to lead children into reading the classics and this site Classics Illustrated Comicbooks is one of my favourites. It has a great collection of classics that have been turned into comic books. One of the ways I would use this site is to read the classic novel alongside of each page of the comic, using the illustrations for prediction, clarification and for visual stimulation of what is happening in the story

For older students here is a link to Shakespeare in comic form, download as a PDF

Just Audiobooks
Here are a list of sites where you can download Audiobooks to MP3 players or iPods.
LibriVox
Loudlit is a website where you can download MP3 audiobooks or just listen online. If you don't want to download then plug in speakers into your computer
Free Classic Audiobooks
Candlelight stories have audiobooks, movies and storybooks

Books that are not so classic are available as well at
Sqooltube has video books of Dr Seuss, Berenstain Bears, Maurice Sendak amongst others

iPod and iPhone Apps
There are several 'Apps' that allow you to download to your iPod or phone classic books (i.e. Stanza and eReader)
You can even download classic comics (do a search for Archie).

You can download the entire Shakespeare's plays for free or the Sherlock Holmes collection for $1.29 NZ. For $2.59 you can get 400 fairy tales including Aesop, Hans Christian Anderson and the Brothers Grimm.

iPod and iPhone Audiobooks
There is a huge collection of Audiobooks available, a few free but there is a cost to most of them i.e.
The Wind in the Willows is $14.95 but the voices are well known actors from when it was a radio production. The Ugly Duckling is $2.99, Little Women is $7.99. Be aware when you are buying Audiobooks whether you are buying the Abridged or the Unabridged. If you want the full copy purchase the Unabridged!

Remember if you are downloading to an iPod or iPhone, you can use a Splitter (NZ $20) to include 5 headsets around the same iPod.

All of these digital resources (plus the many thousands I haven't found yet) are available for you to use in your teaching programme. They may just stimulate those reluctant readers to read, and open up a new world to history for those who enjoy reading.
Many of my happiest memories have been of when I read those classic stories and immersed myself in the history of the time. Share these with your students!

Keyboarding and Integration

2009-07-06T13:00:00.010+12:00

Most teachers tell me that they do not have enough time to teach keyboarding skills but there are ways around this...Integration!
The best time for Keyboarding teaching is when you are doing other things! Have a couple of old keyboards handy or laminated printouts of keyboards. (Click on the picture below to see a larger view and print out.)
As you are modeling writing talk Keyboarding at the same time. "Now we will put a full stop at the end of the sentence here. How do we make a full stop on a keyboard? Which finger do we use? Pass around the keyboard and show the person next to you how you make a full stop (or a capital letter, or a comma etc)."
When you are using a computer keyboard with your Interactive whiteboard, talk about what you are doing. "I need to insert an awesome adjective before this word, so I click just before the word, I type my new word, and then I press the Space bar."
Ask questions like "How many times do I press the space bar to make a space between words?" or "What is the quick way to delete a word?" or "What fingers do I use to press the Enter key and the backspace key?"

Click on this plain keyboard, print out and photocopy. These could be placed in student's Handwriting or Spelling books
Part of the Handwriting lesson each day could include a focus word. I have made some of these up in PowerPoint, a keyword to each slide (when I have a lot more I will upload a slideshare version of it)
Students can practise that focus word on the photocopy of the keyboard after they have finished their handwriting.

The other keyboard could be used to practise spelling words...'Type out your spelling list'.
Always talk through what you are doing when you are keyboarding in front of children, don't just assume that they know!

Narrative writing: Teaching Model

2009-06-19T12:59:00.004+12:00

Here is an example of a Narrative teaching model I would use with students. This would be used everyday, focusing on a different part of the model whether it be structural or grammatical. Each day I would also look at an alternative example of publishing.

How to write Narratives

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Computer Labs ' What can I do?'

2009-06-08T21:12:00.005+12:00

I had a teacher say to me that they wanted to make their lab lessons more interesting as they seemed to be doing the same thing every time. Lab lessons are a perfect time to extend into your classroom teaching! I asked her what subjects were they missing out on in the lab time and some days she does Topic and others Reading. I suggested to her that she uses the lab time as her teaching time, do what she would normally do in that time in the classroom but turn it digital. We looked at what she is doing for her topic which is Mammals. She has a Year 3 class so she wants to be able to guide them to suitable websites. I showed her how to create an Interactive Learning Centre in PowerPoint and pointed out how to make the visiting of the websites more meaningful with creating a purpose for going to them. At the same time, the students will be learning more keyboarding, internet and PowerPoint skills.
Here is an example of a PowerPoint 'Mammals' Learning Centre. This can be downloaded and adapted for different year levels.

Mammals

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Recording Audiobooks as part of a guided reading lesson

2009-05-26T12:13:00.011+12:00

I was working with a wonderful young teacher at Willowbank school last week. She was recording the children's voices in Garageband while they read their book Aunty Mo's Kids by Jill Eggleton. They had recorded reading it in theatre style. Now they were adding sounds to it. While they were working together I came to a realisation and said to the teacher "Do you know what you are doing here? You have moved from the traditional teacher and students sitting on the mat guided reading lesson to the student centred, teacher facilitated using technology guided reading collaboration."
This teacher had been using all the 'Guided Reading' steps of responding to and discussing text
while the students were in front of the computer, reading their books, searching for words and sentences in context, recording voices and sounds, learning computer skills, collaborating together and creating an audiobook that they will be able to use in their classroom as an extra activity (with iPods) and share with other classes.
As I said to her, "this is another way of teaching and engaging children in learning, that you do not have to teach always in the traditional style. Your activity could also become your teaching time with the children."

As teachers we have to be brave and let go or adjust some of our traditional delivery methods to incorporate the use of technologies such as computers, cameras, iPods, IWB's, game consoles, or Flip videos. The children will be engaged, on task and learning, you as the teacher will see different aspects of your children as they become more animated and in control of their learning.

Creating Comics in Word

2009-05-22T08:15:00.009+12:00

I was working with a teacher today who said he was going to make comics in Word.

To make it look more like a comic, upload your photos to Befunky and cartoonise them. Click on Get Started, click on Cartooniser, click on Browse files, select a photo, click Open, rotate or crop if necessary, click OK and your photo will appear. Click Save, name your photo and click Save to My desktop, click OK you may be asked to Save again. You may want to crop the white border of the photo

I had previously already showed him how to insert Autoshapes onto a page, I usually insert six to a page. Then you click on a shape, go to the Fill can, choose Fill Effects, click on the Picture Tab, click on Choose Picture, select a photo and click Insert.

Once the pictures are inserted then you need to add the speech bubbles and narrative text boxes. This is a wonderful way of publishing children's writing.

You can also do the same thing in PowerPoint but put one photo on each slide and it becomes a Comic Slideshow.

ICT Kids

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Transformations in the 21st Century Digital Environment

2009-05-12T16:13:00.002+12:00

This is a slideshow I presented at a recent ICT Cluster Conference. It is an overview of the eight days I spent in a Year 5/6 class.

Keynote Speech Presentation

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Audiobooks, Instructional Readers & Shared Books

2009-05-08T04:38:00.008+12:00

There are lots of Audiobooks available for download online on iTunes, but rarely the one you want! Harry Potter books are available on the US iTunes site but not on our NZ iTunes (What's up with that?)
But if you have an iPod , a 5 way splitter
Belkin Rockstar
(NZ $20) and cheap headphones (NZ $2.99) then you can create absorbing reading activities for your students.

Record your voice in GarageBand (Mac) or Audacity (Win), upload to iTunes and download to your iPod.

Kids love the iPods and the headphones and this makes for a very 'q-u-i-e-t' activity!

More Ideas

Do you know somebody who has an interesting, expressive voice, ask them to read for you and record them
Record in theatre reading style where you have different voices reading the parts of the characters and narrator
Junior teachers ask teachers of Senior children to get their students to record some of your instructional readers or shared books
More able readers in the class can create audiobooks for less able students
Keep a box of the books/Journals/Instructional readers that you have recorded so that children can choose their favourite story to listen to

Or what about when you can't get to every reading group, record the questions you would normally ask as part of the recording. Students can pause the iPod to look up or find the answers.

Teaching Experience time 'Writing'

2009-04-22T21:14:00.020+12:00

My management of 'writing time' has been the same for all of my teaching career. Every time I show teachers how I do it, they think it is a brand new idea, but teachers have been doing similar things for nearly 30 years. I was fortunate to have started my teaching life in a wonderful South Auckland School with an inspiring Principal and an incredible management team. Staff PD was taken by 'experts' on the staff and what I learned at those sessions have carried me through my life of teaching. In later schools I taught at I gained many more strategies that lead me to fine tune my teaching practice. The management procedures I am going to write about I have used with New Entrant to Intermediate, Decile One to ten children.
As I have said many times, Management is the key to successful, productive teaching and learning. Children should know at any one time what they should be doing 'now' and 'next'. I spend a lot of time in teachers' classes, and one of the things I see frequently is children coming up to the teacher saying 'I have finished this, what do I do next?' Here are some of the management strategies and the teaching processes I follow to stop this from happening.
I present the students with a slideshow about the writing genre. There are examples of drafting and publishing, the process is broken down in stages, and there are links to website games.
Step One:
Every day we look at the slideshow but we will concentrate on one aspect. I usually write a class drafting example at the same time, reworking and editing everyday.
Here is the Explanation example I used with these children

How to write Excellent Explanations

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Here is a link to a Recount Example.
Step Two:
Modelling of Writing. Here are some examples of how to do this.

in the school where I was demonstrating I used an Inspiration framework that I have designed
this framework is worked on everyday until it is ready to be published as a class presentation

other examples are

Using a notebook page in an IWB or mimo, insert a lined page template and write an example to be edited

use the coloured pen editing tools, highlighting and line tools for editing
no IWB but have projector; then use Word/Pages, type in the story, editing as you go
KidPix: use the pen tool to write the story, change the colours for editing purposes

Step Three:
The Self Managing Taskboard
I have used this taskboard since the early nineties. When we start a writing topic everybody begins at the drafting section. Students then move themselves from drafting to proofreading. They follow all of the proof reading steps ( read aloud, peer proof read etc). Move to Conferencing.

Step Four:
Drafting
I like to give students plenty of choices when drafting. This encourages some of the reluctant writers as there are some new and different ways of drafting.

Step Five
Conferencing

While waiting to conference with the teacher students can 'do' the Conferencing choices. These cater for student's different learning styles, interests and intelligences. It also means that they always have something to do while they are waiting for me to conference with them.Part of managing themselves students record their conferencing choices onto a tracking file

Step Six
Publishing
After the student has conferenced with me we discuss which would be the best way to publish their work. Once their work is published they then start a new draft and work through the cycle again. Here is a slideshow with some examples of ways to publish your writing.

Publishing Writing Ideas

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Finally here is the Individual Explanation Assessment.

Teaching Experience time 'Maths'

2009-04-21T16:03:00.006+12:00

The next few blog posts are going to concentrate on single curriculum areas and how I developed the management and organisation of the teaching and learning time.

Maths was an interesting one, I decided I wanted to teach a particular strand rather than 'Number' so I chose Measurement concentrating on Perimeter, Area and Volume. I wanted the children to become self managing and responsible about their learning so the unit I developed revolved around this idea. You can see the unit by Ctrl clicking (or Command click) on this link. Several years ago I had previously developed a statistics unit where everyday I would start off with whole class teaching session of around 5-10 minutes where I would demonstrate how to create the different types of graphs (laptop connected to a TV set). Students would then work independently through the large number of tasks while I targeted the children who needed help. This worked really well! I had no projector or IWB at this time. So my new challenge was how could I use the mimio to its full potential. And that is when I came up with the idea of the workshops. I created three different workshops; Perimeter, Area and Volume. I designed them so that the students could run it themselves using the mimio.
The daily session would start off with the Class Activity (One slide per day, the example below shows an example of 3 days with answers). If students got any of the problems wrong on the page then they had to attend the Workshop. Students could also choose to be present at the workshop if they wished. I overheard some children saying that they wanted to go to the workshop even though they got the class activity all correct. On observation it was apparent that they enjoyed the collegial working atmosphere.

Class Activity

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At the very first Workshop on Perimeter, I lead for the first 5 minutes and then it was obvious that the children could take over themselves, I put one person in charge telling them to make sure that everybody has a turn recording using the mimio pen.

Perimeter workshop

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On page 8 of this slideshow is a link to the very excellent bbc.co.uk site on perimeter. This was a perfect activity for children to do collaboratively and individually as it gives them the answers and totals at the end. Without any prompting from me the students went back and redid the quizzes they got wrong!
While the students were working on the workshop I was able to move around the room talking to individuals or groups if they had created their own group. Sometimes you would find a group of 2 or 3 at the Wii. Quite often children would work in pairs, but there was also several that liked to work alone. It was interesting to note each day that most children liked to work in the same pattern, either in a social group or on their own. The same children also volunteered for the workshop (they liked playing teacher I think!)

Area Workshop

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Over half of the class were able to organise their time without my intervention, and most (particularly the girls) were able to keep up with the recording of what they were doing. A lot of the boys liked doing the fun stuff with computers, Wii, PSP and iTouch, so they needed a bit of a push in the direction of covering some of the book tasks.

Volume workshop

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This was a great way to teach as I was able to oversee the whole class and work with the students who needed it the most. There was a relaxed, calm feel about the class as everyone got on with what they needed to do. I think the students liked knowing what they were going to be doing as soon as they came into the room as they had done the planning and thinking about it.

| View Sample Photo Books | Create your own Photo Book

All of the maths websites were bookmarked on the Class Delicious site and all of the computers, Wii, PSP and iPod Touch internet browsers opened to the Class Delicious page as a Home page. With the Workshops being so visible due to them being projected on the screen with the students using the mimio, I was able to keep an eye on what the students were doing and if they needed any help.

Unexpected Outcome - Music

2009-04-15T08:53:00.012+12:00

When I was a full time teacher (my day job for the last 12 years has been working with teachers), music was a big part of my day. With guitar and ukulele I would travel. I would be that teacher leading the school or syndicate group assembly in song, or supporting the school 'Kapa Haka' group. I am responsible for introducing many generations of children to The Beatles, Chubby Checker, Elvis, Simon and Garfunkel, Fleetwood Mac, Creedence Clearwater, The Beach Boys and many other classic bands. Back then I always found that music was important to children and they really enjoyed a sing-a-long. One of my most popular reading activity choices was our blown up music chart books where I had typed the songs and photocopied them up to A3 and made them into a book. Children would take those books outside with a metre ruler (for pointing) and sing their hearts out.

I haven't had the opportunity to sing like that with children for several years, and I did not build it into the two week teaching block I have just finished, but what did happen that I did not expect was how the students wanted to use the iPods. I knew they would be interested or curious especially if they haven't had much exposure to them before, but I was not prepared for their overwhelming interest in the music side of the iPod. They loved using them for the Audiobooks. The Belkin Rockstar 5 way splitter ($20) and headsets for $2.99 were a great addition to the reading programme. One group while they were working on their Stormbreaker activity listened to the Audiobook story on the iTouch (this was the students' choice as they had free reign over their decisions of what to do in Reading Choice time).

By the second day students were asking me if they could play music before school using the battery operated (or power) speaker system. So every morning they would set up the iPod touch on the speaker system and play music until the bell went, and then it was like automatic pilot, they would switch off the music and start their day's work.
On the third day I noticed one of the students had a particularly great singing voice, so I showed her the iKaraoke (NZ$110). We hooked it up to the speaker system and she was away, so every morning as well as the music we were serenaded by this young lady.

But one particular use I noticed that sneaked in was students listening to music while they worked. In this photo, the student has just removed the head set to talk to me but he had been working away quietly listening to music.

The most interesting factor I noticed were the type of children who voluntarily used the iPods for music were the most, for a better word, 'rambunctious' lot who had the loudest voices in the class and the 'ones' that you noticed the most in the class. But when they were listening to the iPods, there was a noticeable silence.
These students were on task, doing their work and not bothering anybody else. I had no problem with them listening to music as they worked as that is something I like to do.
It just goes to prove that old adage 'Music does soothe the savage beast [sic]!'

Walking the Talk Day Seven

2009-04-08T13:16:00.011+12:00

Volume session went well with most children doing well on the Class Activity.
Some had to stay back for the Volume workshop and they worked well in a peer teaching session.

Teachers that were visiting were impressed with how 'on task' the children were, and how engaged in their learning.

Later I got the 'Year 4' expert in Digital Lego to demonstrate to other students (and teachers in the room) how to use some shortcuts and tricks to create models using the projector and laptop.

Everyday I show a new example of how to publish in an interesting way. Today was 'Journal Page' which is where you have several pictures covering one page and text is placed on top. I will have some student examples of those tomorrow. Here is a Comic Slideshow example created by one student
and one created in Comic Life!

Walking the Talk Day Six

2009-04-07T16:14:00.011+12:00

Another great day with some excellent students. Maths is an interesting challenge as the students are streamed throughout the school so you have students coming from year 4 to 6. This is a particularly good bunch, very articulate and clued up! So I have a large group of students moving into the classroom every morning. They understand the routines well (even when I change them at the last minute). The whole idea of the maths organisation was for the students to be 'self managing', which they are but only with the things they really want to do, so I have had to inject a little more teacher direction. Now when they come in they have to do the 'Class Activity'. Once that is completed, students come up and use the mimio pen to write the answers, explaining as they go how they got that answer. The rest of the class has to agree with the answer, if not there is more discussion. Anybody who gets any of the answers wrong have to stay for the 'Workshop'. The students run the workshop that I have prepared.

Area Workshop

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I'm listening as I work with other students and jump in when I need to.

If I see that a child understands then I send them off to complete their other tasks.

In this example the child is using the 'Wii' to access games that have been saved to the 'Wii's' Favourites list.

There is the class Delicious pag e that their classroom teacher has set up and I have added to it. The students know that they can go into this to access the websites I think that have the appropriate games and quizzes for them.

Some of the students have started on their Google Sketch up and Lego Digital Design assessment tasks where they have to design a technological classroom annotated with measurements showing perimeter, area and volume.

More on Research Topic
I will post later on the research topic as there is so much to cover but here are some photos of students at the searching for information using keywords stage!
This group were thrilled as they found the answer to their question as to 'Why the Internet was invented?'
These two worked well together using the iPhone!
Some kids like to work on their own, this one is using the iTouch and listening to music at the same time!These two used the wireless internet feature on the Wii to find their information.

Walking the Talk Day Five

2009-04-06T15:37:00.006+12:00

I haven't seen the children since Thursday last week (ran a course for teachers on the Friday!) I was interested to see if they could remember the routines, I was pleasantly surprised, everything ran as if I hadn't been away. This reinforces what I always say to teachers... if you have strong routines, high expectations, and well organised management (and a quiet voice) all students will respond well. It doesn't matter if they are decile one or ten, they still respond in the same way. I did this same 'teaching experience' in a decile one class a couple of years ago, and a couple of teachers that have visited so far have seen me 'in action' in both schools, using the same management techniques and children reacting in the same way.

Most of the students are using the mimio well and are quite capable of calibrating it. Surprisingly enough we do not have to calibrate that often (maybe 3 times a day) even though the projector sits on a table in the middle of the room. Students have become very adept at it.

Everyday for writing I demonstrate a different way of publishing. Today I modelled Comic Life for Publishing. Children have used it before so several of them worked at it confidently. Some are working on Photo Story 3 (free for Windows), publishing on their wikipage or typing it up in Word or Pages with Borders, titles and their Superhero graphics. Some have published using the Publish button in Inspiration. One child has made a Podcast 'with a little help from his friends', all of which we will add to his wikispace.
I only have 3 more days left so I'm going to show them my 'Comic Slideshow' idea in PowerPoint and upload to Slideshare and how to create an iMovie in 3'easy' steps!

Update on Research topic: I think they get what I mean about creating Research questions and keywords. We will be searching for information tomorrow!

Walking the Talk Day Four

2009-04-02T16:23:00.002+13:00

Day started off well with children completing their before school 'Morning Task', selecting News headlines, This day in History and weather. All 3 children reported back to the class using the mimio to screen clip and then the pens to highlight important points.

We had an interesting afternoon working on our research skills. I took the class through the following slideshow and we tried out some of the activities. Interestingly enough, they had never heard of Christopher Columbus but they were able to discern from the information provided on the 2 different websites which was the real information and which was false!

Internet Googling

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Walking the talk: Day three

2009-04-01T13:12:00.020+13:00

The children are settling into their routines well. The early morning task went well with the timetabled students screen clipping the news headline, weather and this day in history. It was great to see other children helping the students if they were not sure of what they were doing.
We used the screen clippings later in the morning as the children who had collected them reported back to the class. We used the News Headline to highlight what keywords are, as this is a focus of our Research Unit.

Maths went well with more of the children starting to get the hang of organising themselves. There are still some children that need to be directed back to their assessment sheets. A few more internet problems happened but it all was going well by morning tea.
Writing time went smoothly with students going straight to their tasks once we had the teaching point of the day, which was conjunctions. We looked at conjunction game altogether. I used the mimio pad and that was passed around as students took turns at answering the questions 'with a little help from their friends'.

Everyday I like to show an example of excellent publishing, whether it is something that a child has done or a piece I have put together.
Today I demonstrated how you can turn an Inspiration framework into a published piece of writing.

Here is the Explanation framework, this is a piece I use for modelling.
I showed the class how you use the 'Transfer' button to transfer the writing into Word.

It appears with the Framework as a graphic and the text only also appears so that they can edit their work. It was really that 'just in time' learning as they learned how to highlight text, turn bullets off and use the decrease indent button to align the text to the right of the page.

Next I presented a finished exemplar reiterating my expectations of a high quality finish to their publishing.
I was very pleased with some of the work that was done after this teaching session!.

The Reading programme went very well with all children on task and doing a variety of activities from adding to their Chapter Title Assignment, Listening to Audiobooks via iPod, cloze activities using the mimio...or just reading!

Students decided on their Research Question today after a lot of drawing out of the previous knowledge they had attained, but more on that another day!

Walking the Talk Day Two

2009-03-31T16:33:00.014+13:00

The first half of the day was beset with internet problems but between the IT teacher and the technician at the school everything was running smoothly for the second half. It is difficult to run a programme that is heavily internet based when the internet is not working well, so that was a good lesson for me. If you want your students to work on computers during this time then have a back up plan in place.

In maths the children are working on perimeter, area and volume. Luckily in their Assessment sheets they have plenty of other activities they can be doing when the internet falls down, but I will need to put some more non-internet computer activities in a folder for them. I have plenty of numeracy ones that I have written for their level so I will have those on standby.

I ran the perimeter Workshop today, or I should say the kids did! They took over the mimio pen and worked through the notebook pages. They didn't really need me, once they knew how to work it out! Which left me able to wander around and see what the other students were up to.

The expectations I have for the children is for them to become self managing with their learning. They have to work out what they need to know and plan when they are going to complete their tasks.
Here is the example of the perimeter tasks and area tasks.
They have internet sites, some of which can be accessed with the Wii, PSP and iTouch. So far we have used the Wii with great success. The school has an LCD screen on wheels, which I have grabbed everyday, one of my students sets it up which takes about 2 minutes. He goes straight to the internet, and then to our favourites and then to the class Delicious site that the classroom teacher Julia, had set up previously. I have organised it into some Curriculum areas and group folders with more to be added soon.
The students can easily access all of the websites their teacher and I want them to access. We have set up all the home pages on the computers to go to this site as well. It is also a great site to send children to for homework (which I did tonight!). Purchasing a Wii for around $400 is a cheap option for creating another access point for internet. Some schools have taken it further such as BBI in Auckland and are using the Wii as an interactive whiteboard. The Wii in the class is a popular option, children are using it for learning games and will be using it for searching the internet. Today Julia and I observed 'one character' multi tasking, he was listening to an audiobook on the ipod and playing a reading game on the Wii, but more on that later!
I soon realised that the children need a lot of help in 'becoming self managing'...particularly the boys! They go for the fun options first while most of the girls, were doing the activities that would improve their understandings of the concepts. There is going to have to be more direction for these students. They also needed to be reminded that they have to sign off their tasks as they do them. Am I expecting a lot? Yes, but they will get there with perserverance on my part.

Writing and Reading time was whirlwind, children are having to come to grips with the routines and also the self managing of what tasks to do. I will go into this in more depth in later posts.

In the afternoon we carried on with more Inspiration activities leading up to their Research topic. These students have grasped the technical skills of Inspiration incredibly quickly, you show them once and they are away. We just need to work on the content some more!

Walking the Talk Day One

2009-03-30T16:07:00.006+13:00

Today was the first day of my 'Walk the talk'. I am teaching in a Year 5/6 class for 2 weeks (first 4 days of each week).
This is a Decile 10 school, with very capable children. It was a totally mac school until the recent purchase of some linux netbooks. The class of 28 children has 3 E-Macs and 1 teacher laptop. I have taken another iMac, a Windows computer and 4 Windows laptops and and a netbook. I was able to get them all onto the internet which is great as most of my planned programme is Internet based.
The most exciting thing for the students was the LCD TV and the Wii. They all thought they were going to be jumping around playing tennis and bowls, but that rumour was quickly dispelled as I showed them how it can access the internet wirelessly and I had some maths games bookmarked.
It was also noted that I had iPods, iTouch, and a PSP.
Once I set up the computers and the mimio, the children started filtering in, the first child was a bit of a character and very interested and capable with all things digital. He has become my main man and by the end of the day, he was teaching others how to use the mimio, access the internet sites on the Wii, save files to memory sticks and any other troubleshooting problems that arose. His job is to now train another person, and then it will snowball from there.
I showed the children my planning and told them how they could access it from my computer. My 'main man's' job is to get it set up in the morning from now. I set the routines of
1. Before School 3 different people per day have to click on the Morning Routines, one to look at the Weather, one to pick a news headline and one to find out what happened this day in History. I showed them how to Screen Clip the item they want to share to a new page in the mimio Notebook.
We needed to discuss how you need to read what you are going to screen clip so that you understand it enough to read and talk about with the class.Will be interesting tomorrow to see how the kids cope with it.
2. I showed them their spelling words which will be on the screen for them tomorrow, and set the routine of Bells ring - come in - start Handwriting card - move on to Spelling activity (on screen) - practice Keyboarding which will be on the Wii. More about this tomorrow!

This school streams their maths classes, so I lost most of the kids to other classrooms and had to train up a new lot. These are very able top stream students and seemed quite taken aback when I told them they were going to be teaching themselves, managing their own learning and booking me when they needed help! I gave them a pretest I had created on perimeter, area and volume. We then marked it and they had to write down on their Student Assessment Tracking sheet what areas of the test they needed to work on more. I showed them all the activities that were going to available in books, worksheets, computers, internet, Wii, PSP and iPod Touch. Tomorrow is when they have to come in, choose their activity or learning opportunities. I have told them I will be running a Perimeter Workshop which is their choice to attend...shall be interesting! More tomorrow!

The Literacy part of the day was Explanation Writing where we looked at the PowerPoint.

How to write Excellent Explanations

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This will be broken up and different parts concentrated on over the next few days. Children were very excited about the drafting and publishing possibilities. More about that later!

Ran out of time quickly for reading but was mostly about what the routines will be, and that students could choose from a wide range of Reading Options when they were not doing Guided Reading with me or related reading activity. More on this later.

The afternoon session was introducing them to the Class Wiki and especially the Wiki Promise

We made a start on our Research Unit. The children have been looking at Communication so I wanted to see what they had learned previously so they worked on an Inspiration diagram 'Fact Recall'. Tomorrow we are going to look at how to create a research question and find keywords.

Visit www.moblyng.com to make your own!

Animation and Digital Cameras

2009-03-21T09:51:00.000+13:00

I worked with a group of children and a teacher today showing them how they can make a simple animation. They are studying Maori Culture and Protocols on a Marae. Their focus is on Karanga (Welcoming onto the Marae), Hongi (greeting) and Wero (the challenge). The teacher would like them to show their understandings of these protocols by creating animations, so the class is divided into 3 groups each going to depict the 3 different foci.

Team Members
Each group needs to have a
- camera person
- tripod holder
- set designer
- several people in charge of animating and moving the characters

Planning
- research, gather information
- storyboard
- write script
- collect animation objects and set material
- animate using cameras
- edit adding text and music
- publish as movie, DVD or slideshow

Set Design
It is important to have an inanimate object like a tree or a building so that it really looks like the characters are moving. I have suggested coloured fabric for ground cover and sky. Students will also collect small rocks, sticks and stones.

Characters
We discussed what the characters could be made our of and these are some of the choices
- plasticine
- pipe cleaners and pegs
- small dolls
- Lego

Filming
- the tripod needs to be steady and all bolts and handles screwed securely
- the camera needs to be securely set into the 'foot' of the tripod
- one person operates the camera, one person holds the tripod
- one person animates their own characters
- the photos must be 'framed' within the Set (we don't want to see what is behind or above the set)
- all characters need to be firmly secured with blu-tak so they don't move

Editing
- download all photos to iPhoto or My Pictures, put them in a folder so that they are easy to find
- upload photos to iMovie or MovieMaker
- before dragging the first photo down to the movie tray, set the speed (0.01) and in iMovie (turn of Ken Burns)
- drag rest of photos down to the Movie tray (Ctrl - A for Win, Command-A for Mac)
- if the photos are not the right speed then highlight them all as above and adjust the timing
- add a Title slide at the beginning, then a credits at the end
- finally add music, crop if necessary
- save Movie file and then export to your computer and/or to a blog or a wiki

Marking Students work

2009-03-16T03:35:00.008+13:00

One of the questions I get asked a lot particularly when I run my courses is 'How can you keep up with the marking of students work that is completed using the computer?'
The most obvious way is to print it out, but for most classrooms in our school that is not always a practical solution...
One: because the Printer does not always behave itself as it should
Two: it's always running out of paper and nobody replaces it
Three: we want colour and it is not a colour printer
Four: somebody pressed 'Print' a few times and now we have several copies
Five: we are reducing our carbon footprint

The next solution that teachers try is getting the kids to save it to their own folders. That could work!...depending on where the folders are. If they are on one central computer, then it is not too difficult to retrieve their work (if they save to their own folder!) This will only work if 'you' the teacher 'teaches' them how to save to their own folder. One of the most common professional development acts I have to do is 'teach teachers how to save to folders', understanding how to navigate to where items are saved is one of the most fundamental actions of successful computer use. If you have a projector in your classroom then demonstrate it regularly, don't assume that students know how to do it. I always 'talk' my way through the actions I am performing so that they can see what I am doing, while I am performing that action.
"Now I am going to save this file by going to File-Save, I look at the top here to see where I am saving, is that the folder I want to save in? No, then I need to click on My Documents here, then double click on my folder here, what does it say at the top of my dialogue box? Am I in the right place? OK, click Save."

But the next problem we come to that is quite time consuming is going into every student's folder to retrieve the work they have completed. So this is when you need to teach the children 'How to manage themselves'.
Step One: Create a folder on the main computer used or if there are more than one, create a folder on the Server in the Student Disk
Step Two: Call it 'Marking Drop Box'
Step Three: if you are expecting a lot of marking, then make sub folders in this folder in either Curriculum areas or group names
Step Four: Train your students how to save to this Marking Drop Box
Step Five: Train your students how to retrieve their marked work from Drop box and place back into their own folders
For the teacher this is much more manageable. You are able to go to one place to view and mark student work, and if you are the teacher that prefers to do marking at home, then copy the folder to your laptop.

This will only work if the students and teacher are trained to follow the procedures. Make up a Step by Step guide to saving and retrieving.

Fact or Opinon: Evaluating Websites

2009-03-12T05:32:00.003+13:00

Children have difficulty evaluating information from websites for relevancy and accuracy.
In a previous blog posting 'Helping children to become better researchers' I talked about how to create the research question and find keywords. But what happens when they click on Google and find all those 'hits' about that topic? If their keywords are really good, generally the quality of their hits will be pretty good as well...but how do they really know? They don't! Unless they have been taught how to critically evaluate a website. This latest blog post from Langwitches titled 'Don't believe everything you see online' provides many useful links to websites and helpful hints on how to develop 'critical evaluation' tools.
I like to use a Graphic Organiser with guiding questions where students can evaluate their answers and decide if the website is creditable or not.

PowerPoint, Visual Dioramas, Screen Beans and Animation

2009-03-10T08:30:00.007+13:00

I was with a teacher yesterday who had been working with children on my 'Visual Diorama' idea. Some of her kids had discovered 'Screen Beans' and had been adding them to their Dioramas. She wanted to know how to make a slideshow of all of her class dioramas. Once I showed her that I suggested she might like to try a simple animation using the Screen Beans and the Backgrounds in PowerPoint.

Step One
Search for a suitable background in PowerPoint by clicking on Insert - Clipart. Type in the search term background. Click on a background to select it. Resize it to fit the slide.
Step Two
Type in the search term 'Screen Beans' in the Clipart search box. Click on the screen beans of your choice. Place them on the first slide.
Step Three
Click on the slide in the slide preview panel, press Ctrl D (Command D for Apple) to duplicate the slide. Move the screen beans by clicking on one, then use the arrow keys on your keyboard to move them one or two spaces. Duplicate that slide. Repeat until you have finished your animation
Step Four
Go to Slide Transition and deselect on Mouse Click and click on Automatically After and leave the timing at 00.00
Press F5 or click View Show to play your animation.
For it to work really well, you will need a lot of slides. For five seconds of animation I created 46 slides.
This activity is great fun, very quick to do and a great introduction into the world of animation!

Kidspiration as a mindmapping tool

2009-03-10T06:47:00.007+13:00

One of the teachers I have been working with recently is trying to integrate ICT into her daily programme and wanted some easily achievable activities her junior children could do in the lab based around her topic of 'Our Friends'. The school has the software Kidspiration and so far her children have been making basic mindmaps around certain ideas and topics.
The children know how to create symbols off one main symbol and type in information.

I showed this teacher that when you are clicked on a symbol you can change it to a picture and still keep the writing or add writing underneath it. So now the children are going to extend their thinking on their topic and add pictures by clicking on the name of their friend and adding what they like to do. So before the students go to the lab, they need to survey their friends to find out what they like to do.

Once the students have finished the mindmap task, they will then analyse their mindmap and make comparisons and assumptions that they will then present to their group. The rest of the group will compare with with their mindmaps and students can hypothesise what these results mean.
This is also an ideal time to do some 'just in time' teaching with the children, if you see students who are coping quite well with the task then teach them some more skills, such as in this case how to colour the symbols so it differentiates each idea, or how to change the shape of the symbol in the centre. Before you know it, this idea will spread around the lab as other students pick it up and pass it on.
I emphasise to teachers that they should do this same task several times (in different topic areas) consolidating and building on the skills children have developed.

How to create interactive learning centres in PowerPoint

2009-03-07T22:07:00.005+13:00

How To Create Interactive Learning Centres

View more presentations from Jacqui Sharp. (tags: powerpoint)

Justine has great examples of Interactive Learning Centres (Digital Learning Centres) that she has created on her wiki http://digitallearningnz.wikispaces.com/

Create interactive learning centres in Keynote

2009-03-04T20:54:00.003+13:00

How To Create An Interactive Keynote

View more presentations from Jacqui Sharp. (tags: interactive learning)

Organising Activities for Reading and Maths

2009-03-03T15:12:00.005+13:00

If you have made some group specific activities in Kidspiration, Inspiration, PowerPoint, Keynote, Word or Pages, then you need to make them easily accessible. One method that used to work well for me and that I have introduced to many teachers is to make your group folders i.e. for Maths, they might be called, 'Squares, Hexagons, Triangles' and leave them on the desktop. Copy the files/activities for the week into the folder. Teach students how to find their folder and the activities. For Maths never put more than 5 activities into their folder. If there are fast finishers make a 'Fast Finisher' folder with activities they have completed in the past, sometimes I will choose ones like Time, Measurement and Geometry for maintenance practice.

You can also include Interactive Worksheets in Word, Pages, PowerPoint or Keynote with hyperlinks to the activities in that folder or to websites. This example to the right has been created in PowerPoint, and the screen captures are pictures of the actual online activity. These games are linked to the websites as a follow-up to what has been taught in Maths that week.

The following example has been created in Word. This is an interactive Reading worksheet with links to Inspiration activities and space to record their answers.

And this is one of the examples of the Inspiration worksheets the above Word document links to.

If all of the related files are kept together in the same folder then you will not have any trouble accessing all of the files. But do remember one thing! When creating activities for students, save them as templates! If students have to save their work for it to be marked, teach them how to save to their own folder.
Interactive PowerPoints that hyperlink to games do not need to be saved by students. The only things that need to be saved is when changes have been made.

Before I send children off to complete activities, I always go over the activity I expect them to complete. Don't assume that they know how to do the activity i.e how to click on a hyperlink. Talk them through how they are going to do it and especially if they need to save a copy to their own folders.

Computer Troubleshooting in the Classroom

2009-02-25T09:54:00.002+13:00

At the Learning@school conference I was talking to some West Auckland teachers about computer management in the classroom. One of the problems that teachers find that students have at the beginning of the year is computers not going, screens off, power supply not connected or what to do when the computer stops working. The best way to deal with this is to set up a trouble shooting guide or flow chart for students to follow when things go wrong, so if the students follow those steps and still have problems, then they must go to the Computer Monitor, and if that doesn't work, then go to the teacher. It is all about developing students independence and problem solving.

5 Question Thinker Key

2009-02-19T22:23:00.005+13:00

This is the answer 'Solar System'. Write 5 questions where 'Solar System' is the answer! Sound easy? The first couple of questions might be, but after that you will start to dispute what you have written. This is a great collaborative group activity where you will be sure of plenty of discussion and argument especially if the students start thinking about other answers for the question. This is actually an example of a 'closed answer...there is only one answer; but to create the question to get to that answer takes a lot of thinking and synthesising.

Graphic organizers such as Kidspiration or Inspiration or online versions such as bubbl.us or Webspiration are useful.

Key Competency 'Managing Self' and PowerPoint

2009-02-19T12:48:00.006+13:00

I was working with Karuna and his main goal is to have the children in his class use the digital cameras more and to add the photos to PowerPoint. He has decided to integrate this into the 'Managing Self' Key Competency.
His students are going to take photos of each other doing the usual things they do in class and outside the classroom. They will then insert a photo into each slide of a PowerPoint with the success criteria for each specific competency.
When the students have finished typing in their criteria and inserted their photos then they will print it out in 3 slide view.
This can then be displayed and students can 'mark off' each criteria as they achieve it stating how they accomplished it.

How To Print Out In Power Point

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