Computer Labs, lots of students and researching

At the moment lots of schools are researching the Olympics on the Internet. Depending on the age of the children and their 'skill' in searching the Internet, this could be potentially a frustrating lesson for both teacher and students. Here are some tips for making it a stress free, enjoyable experience for all.

1. Talk to the children before you leave the classroom about what they are going to be doing and what the expectations are, if you try to tell them in the lab most will not listen as all they want to do is get on the computers.
2. Ensure that all children know what they are going to do when they get onto the computer (which game, internet site, or finishing off activity)


3. Prepare a PowerPoint (or a Keynote) page with hyperlinks to the websites the students would most visit, students then can open this from a central place and quickly access the Internet pages (this is more suited to younger children)




4. If you want the children to type in the Internet addresses themselves then teach them to click on the Internet address at the top of the page and then type the URL. (for some reason children always type the Internet address in google which then forces them to take more steps than necessary to get to their final goal)
   
5. Most of the time you do not need to type www at the beginning of the address
   
6. If you want to teach the whole class something new, consider teaching a group first, let them practice and then they show others. The rest of the class can be practising typing, playing a game or finishing off work
   
7. Have a 'control' call that children must respond to when you call it such as 'S-T-O-P STOP!' or my favourite 'Stop, look, listen' or another one I have seen a teacher use is 'Hands up - On heads - Look this way
   
8. It is important that children know how to exit out of the programme they are in and how to log off, so that the next class can get started without having to do extra steps before they can even begin their own work


9. If the children are working on a presentation, consider having a rubric that gives them the success criteria listing what is expected

The Alphabet Key (The A-Z Key)

Tony Ryan's Thinker keys can be adapted and used with ICT and I am gradually going to add to this blog different ways I use these with children. The first one I am going to look at is the Alphabet key ('A-Z' thinker key).
Definition: Compile a list of words from A to Z which has relevance to topic.

Create a PowerPoint (or Keynote) template that has a letter per page. Insert a new slide and choose 'Title Only'. In this example I have made the letters in WordArt and dragged the 'Click to add title' down to the bottom of the slide. Duplicate that slide by clicking on the slide in the left hand panel and pressing Ctrl D (or Apple D) to duplicate, keep pressing Ctrl D until you have enough slides.


Topic - Zoo A to Z of animals in the zoo. When you visit the zoo, have a prepared worksheet with A-Z in one column and space in another column to record what animals there are that fit with those letters. Record any details you can find and add them to a PowerPoint (or Keynote A to Z)



Topic - Literacy Unit 'Where the Wild things are'
Use children’s drawings in Paint, AutoShape animals or take photos of them dressed up as Wild Things or photos of their art work. Insert these into an A –Z PowerPoint with names for each letter of the alphabet and descriptions of their Wild Thing.

Topic - Reading Activity 'Artemis Fowl'
Create drawings in Paint, Artrage or any other drawing software. Insert them into an A-Z PowerPoint. For each letter write something about the characters, themes or plotlines.

Big Huge Labs 'Curriculum use of Photos'

Big Huge Labs
has a multitude of applications that can be used in an educational context mainly as different ideas for publishing or presenting. If your school blocks Flickr though you might not be able to use it. Occasionally you might see some questionable advertising that you might like to advise your students to ignore. Click on images to see a larger version.

Motivational Posters

Insert a photo and type in an inspirational message, choose a frame.

Bead Art

Digitises photos and turn into beads

Jigsaw

Photos are turned into jigsaws with some pieces missing.

Picture Cube

Create your own dice with photos and graphics.

Magazine Cover

Create your own magazine cover with photo and words

Wahorliser

Turn a photo into a Warhol picture.
And there are many more if you click on the 'Jump to Menu' options

Planning, linking, websites and Interactive Whiteboards

With Interactive Whiteboards comes a huge amount of activities already created for you. Plus there are all the other activities that are teacher made in Kidspiration, Inspiration, Word, PowerPoint etc. And then I see that teachers have found all these wonderful websites but are not fully utilising them to their full potential. How can we manage all these websites and activities we may have stored on our computers?
Answer: Incorporate it into your planning. Hyperlink the activities, websites, or teaching resources into your planning and launch the sites from there. This is a perfect way of managing all of these links and it is all in one place plus you are able to see what resources you are mainly using. In this example I have colour coded the activities, red for Flip charts, orange for PowerPoint, green for Inspiration, blue for websites and black for book work.See my new blog dedicated to mimios and IWB http://mimioiwb.blogspot.com/

Modeling Writing and old Keyboards

When you are modeling writing on the whiteboard, have some old keyboards available for children to use. So when you are talking about using capital letters or full stops in writing you can at the same time say

• How do we make a full stop on the keyboard?
  
• What finger do we use?
  
• How do we make a capital letter?

Use that teachable moment to incorporate some keyboarding skills! Don't assume that all children know how to do it!

Wordle - Word Clouds

Wordle is an application that creates Word clouds from text. The more times the word is used is how large the text will be. You can print them or take a screen capture of them for use on blogs or wikis. To embed you must save to Gallery first and then the code will appear. Here is an example of text copied from a recent newspaper article. This could be used as an activity for writing a report.











Or this one where the story of Cinderella was copied from wikipedia site http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cinderella

Why not copy the text from a child's story and insert into Wordle, the student will be able to see what words they use the most in their writing.
Here are some examples of student writing. This particular student is very aware about using descriptive adjectives and interesting verbs.


This next student who is of the same age as the previous one has the same amount of words, but it is obvious which words she has overused by the size of the text. In discussion with this student she is able to clearly see that she needs to find other words for 'said, school, fun' and she could look at the use of her pronouns as well. Compare the two Wordle diagrams and it is obvious which student has the larger vocab!
If you are letting students enter this site on their own then I suggest that you give them this address http://wordle.net/create this will avoid the Home screen which has examples of others 'Wordles'. Occasionally there may be one that has inappropriate words but if you use this address with the Create it will open up the Create window thus avoiding looking at the Home Screen. There are new features being added regularly. Use the menus to make more changes to your diagrams, the Language menu allows you to show all common words like 'the' or 'and'. The font menu offers you a range of creative fonts. Layout gives you many choices for viewing the words horizontally, vertically or any which way. Under the Colour option you can change the colour of the words and backgrounds. This application has the potential for many uses in education so give it a try!

Mixbook Creating books on line

Mixbook is an application that enables you to create online books (with turning pages!) with photos and text. You can upload photos and jpegs to a library in Mixbook. There are a variety of page templates to choose from. Once finished they can be embedded into wikis and blogs.

View More Create a Photobook

| View Sample Photo Books | Create your own Photo Book

Be Funky - Catoonise your photos

Be Funky is a photo editing application that will cartoonise your photos in colour or as line drawings.



These can then be saved to your computer.

Use these images to create a cartoon in ComicLife or insert them into Autoshapes in Word or PowerPoint.

There is also a wonderful morphing tool where you can stretch parts of the photo. These boys look like elves now!

Eventually you will be able to cartoonise video clips as well as this is a feature they are working on. See a demo here.

Dipity and Timelines

Dipity is an online application that allows you to make and share interactive timelines. There is a search feature to look at other timelines under a wide range topics i.e. History, Literacy, Social Science etc. These timelines can be embedded into wikis, blogs and webpages. This is an example of an incomplete timeline about Sir Edmund Hillary.

Sir Edmund Hillary on Dipity.

Ideas for drafting writing

Here are some ideas for drafting writing that have worked well in classrooms

Mindmap ideas for writing, use coloured felt tips, glue into writing book.
WordProcessor (Word, Pages, Appleworks)

•Set the page line spacing to 2.5
•Children type for a given amount of time, (15 – 30 minutes)
•If they haven’t finished in that time then they carry on with pen and paper
•They proofread and edit their work with a pen, publishing does not have to be completed on the computer

Using Graphic Organisers
•A group of 2-4 children can work on one computer drafting

•They print it out when finished

•They write their own individual stories using their drafts in their writing books using their graphic organiser draft
OR
•You could have blank printouts for children to write in and then glued into books and then the story is rewritten using the graphic organiser as a framework for the writing



Here are some other ways that you might like to try that teachers have found successful

•If you have a PDA they have WordProcessing software on them, perfect for the intrapersonal (self smart) student, who likes to work alone. Use the infrared or Bluetooth to send to a computer
•Old blackboards , take a photograph, print out and stick in writing book
•On an OHP , students can write with coloured OHP pens and stick in writing book
••On a whiteboard (photos can be taken as evidence of writing)
•Magnetic Board , take photos

Use a Drafting task board to manage the drafting choices.
This example on the right shows the different drafting choices and the names of the students

bubbl.us Online collaborative mindmapping

bubbl.us is an online mindmapping tool that can be embedded into blogs, wikis and websites. It can be created online, saved, printed and other people can be invited to add to it. It can also be exported as a image so it can be inserted into wordprocessing documents. Once it is embedded use your mouse to click and drag the diagram around, use the scroll button on your mouse to zoom in and out. Try this out on the example below.