24 Learning

EasiYo cooking video competition

2011-08-14T16:44:00.001+12:00

A group of our Year 7 and 8 students entered the EasiYo Cooking Video competition. We would love your vote. The competition winner will be judged by online votes so the more the merrier.

Long time no post

2011-05-31T15:39:00.000+12:00

I feel a little guilty about not having posted anything for such a long time and now this post is asking for your help. Freeville School is in the final 20 to win a $50,000 or $10,000 prize from The Palms shopping centre. This is one way you could help us for only a few mouse clicks. If you feel able to support Freeville School we would really appreciate it. All you have to do is follow this link and place your vote for Freeville.

Freeville Room 5

2010-10-29T17:02:00.000+13:00

What a fantastic effort from Room 5 at Freeville School. These children should be very proud to be finalists in the tvnz6netguide awards

Freedom Writers

2010-08-23T21:29:00.000+12:00

As you can see I am trolling around the net for writing ideas. Someone loaned me a copy of Freedom Writers the other day. Very inspirational story. Great to think that a teacher could be so inspiring and the sense of hope that Erin Gruell allowed to grow in her class was impressive. The positive I took away from watching the video was the sense of purpose that she was able to inspire. I may just be getting old but I also found it a little bit disturbing that it was conveyed as a noble thing that she worked three jobs to pay for resources, and that her marriage collapsed because she spent all her time working. I haven't read the book and I know nothing more of the truth of her story than from watching the movie but...... ???? It just raised a few questions for me.

Writing Inspiration

2010-08-21T20:41:00.000+12:00

I've been browsing the net for resources to inspire our staff to be teaching writing in creative ways.

Here are a few links I thought worth sharing around.

Imagination Prompt Generator
The page is full of adverts but the ideas from the prompt generator are actually quite cool.

Writing Prompt Generator
A great little generator. Well worth a look.

31 ways to find inspiration for your writing
The main site this link is from is aimed at adult writers but the link is to quite a good list.

Ambleside Primary Crazy Story Machine

Poetry4kids

Scholastic Inspire Young Writers

2 Writing Teachers blog

I'm sure there are a million more great sites. Leave a comment with your best picks (although do understand that I will vet them and not publish any I consider rubbish or too full of advertising)

I found a poem written years ago

2010-06-28T20:41:00.004+12:00

O
is
the
only
round
letter
without
annoying
appendage
fastenings
attachments
protuberance
contamination
reorganisation
sticky out bits

Thought I might just share this little poem I wrote a very long time ago. (In case you need a prompt count the letters in each line.

My apologies for being ethno centric

2010-06-24T07:36:00.002+12:00

Over the last few months I have been getting a number of comments on this blog in Chinese. I have just been rejecting these outright because I had no idea what they said. This morning it occurred to me to drop the latest into a translator.

感謝您寫下您的生活，也是把珍寶來和諸君分享的心意

Thanks you to write down your life, also is comes the treasure the regard which and the gentlemen shares

So...... I thank you too for taking the time to thank me. I don't hold myself in much regard so it is disconcerting to think that someone in China thinks my sharing is a treasure. (At least that is what I'm taking from the translation.) If I have completely misunderstood the message feel free to enlighten me.

National Standards misleading comments

2010-03-12T08:07:00.002+13:00

I'm not a political animal and I really do like my job thank you John but I just have to vent my frustration at the reporting of the national standards issue in the press. Today's Christchurch Press has a photo of John Key and Anne Tolley opening a new school under the banner Key prefers to 'work with' rebel schools

The first sentence says

Schools rebelling against the new national standards will have to explain to parents why they are prepared to allow children to leave school without adequate literacy and numeracy skills.

Now really! (if this is actually what you said John) This is just such political emotive nonsense. Schools already have many systems in place for identifying and communicating student achievement. The emotive suggestions that we need national standards to help us identify the underachievement are just patently wrong. Key's statement also suggests that schools are doing nothing about inadequate literacy and numeracy. Again... wrong wrong wrong. Schools work tirelessly and teachers care passionately about raising achievement. There is also an implied suggestion that we need the standards to identify schools that are failing. No. We have a school review process for that through the education review office. But it has just occurred to me that maybe with the cuts to the education budget this might be the new strategy. Scrap the Education Review Office (ERO) and just let schools be judged through published league tables of academic achievement. Lots of money will be saved. Great idea.

Learning Team 4 Blog

2010-03-10T20:38:00.003+13:00

http://freevilleflyer.blogspot.com/

After ignoring this for a long time I am making an attempt to get our team blog up and running again. I've passed the management over to a couple of really capable team members so hopefully they will get some good things up there. The first story from Tenira is great.

Enjoy.

Is this the end or only the beginning?

2009-12-19T07:29:00.002+13:00

Two days into the holiday and already I am thinking about 2010. Sad I know. I will wind down eventually and I have planned 3 weeks away with no computer.

I have taken on school wide responsibility for professional development in writing for 2010. I've done the usual trawl of google for creative and inspirational ideas and gathered a few good looking links in my delicious account. But I thought I would put it out there to the two of you :) who read this blog. If you have any brilliant suggestions for writing professional development that I could look into for 2010 I would love to hear from you.

Have a brilliant holiday and Christmas. Relax, enjoy your family, do things you love doing but usually don't have time for. May 2010 be the best year ever!

Prompted to write about league tables and standards

2009-10-13T16:28:00.003+13:00

Phew! It has been a really long time since I felt the urge to write anything here. Probably I have no one reading this anymore but if perchance I do then here is my little rant.

I was prompted to write after reading Greg's comments about MOE people reading his blog and asking him to correct material on it. He rightly pointed out that he was writing his own opinion and that should be respected. At the end of his post he says to be aware that MOE people are reading blogs to gauge opinion and that we should not be put off from sharing our thoughts.

So.... Here goes. If you are reading this from the MOE and want to comment then by all means do so and thereby add to the debate. Or even better go and comment on Greg's blog, cause a whole lot more people read that.

Tell me one good reason why we should be comparing schools in the manner that league tables will. I want to know two significant things when it comes to achievement data. I want to know where the child is at when they arrive (either to me as a teacher or to us as a school) and I want to know have I made a difference. (yeah yeah, I do want to know other things like next steps for learning and all that other stuff but basically I want to know am I making a difference). If I'm not helping the child improve in reading then I need to know that. If we as a school are not helping the children move numeracy stages then we need to know that, so we can do something about it. Who benefits from a league table comparison of our school to the one down the road? Or the one at the other end of the country? The argument that the MOE need this data to judge whether schools are failing just doesn't wash. They have ERO for that. If we have national standards and compulsory reporting of these will we no longer need ERO reviews?
The negative effects of league tables far outweigh any benefits.
Now don't misunderstand me. I'm not actually against plain language reporting to parents nor am I against having a standard to make comparisons against. Exemplars can be a really useful tool to use with the children to show them how their writing could be improved. As a parent I want to know whether my child is doing ok? As well as expected? Are they a genius (having inherited their mother's genes) or do they desperately need some more help. I want to know all this and it is quite reasonable to expect that we should be giving that information to parents in simple language they can understand. Learning stories are great (we use them a lot at our school and love them) but not really helpful if at the end of it I still have to ask "So are they doing ok?"
A big bug bear I have about this whole process is the sham that has been called consultation. If this is really important would it not have been significantly more productive to work with teachers and principals and get the sort of input and consultation that has happened with the new curriculum. I was offended to read in the paper in the first weekend of the school holidays an "announcement" from the ministry about new reporting formats that we will have to adopt for 2010??? Come on people. This is really unreasonable. Now perhaps this is just media hype and actually the MOE are not going to ask us at the end of October to have new reporting formats and documents for 2010. But hey! We live in interesting times.

Alfie Kohn and National Testing

2009-07-06T19:37:00.003+12:00

I've just bought this book by Alfie Kohn

I haven't finished it yet but it is giving me a lot to think about in light of the current discussion in NZ about national education standards.
MOE
NZEI

Actually I was prompted to post something here because I read Graham Wegner's blog and his latest comment is about the death of blogging.

Sorry. Back to Alfie Kohn. Wouldn't it be great to get someone like this out to NZ to speak the Minister of Education.

It's the school holidays here in New Zealand so apart from sleeping and catching up on unfinished school work I am managing to also do some reading. Quite fun really when you get the time. :)

More from Sir Ken Robinson

2009-02-13T21:10:00.002+13:00

This is from a talk he gave to the RSA about his new book "The Element". It is 40 minutes but well worth the time.

Sir Ken Robinson

2008-12-01T20:47:00.003+13:00

http://www.schoolsnetwork.org.uk/natconf_videos/Ken_Robinson/default.htm

This man is a legend.

Sorry the above link seems to have disappeared. If you haven't listened to Sir Ken speak browse Youtube and pick up on some of his presentations. He is fantastic to listen to.

World Population

2008-11-14T08:34:00.002+13:00

http://www.ibiblio.org/lunarbin/worldpop

It is Canterbury Show Day today and I am sitting with my girls browsing the net and having fun asking questions of Ms Dewey. We came across the link above which is a counter of world population. It allows you to pick a date back to 1970 and compare population then and now. You can also project into the future and see what the population will be up to 2037. This could be worth sharing as a discussion starter for my class. If I team this up with The Story of Stuff the discussion could get really interesting. I'm going to try it out.

Four day working weeks are great! Maybe the new government would consider this as a new policy?

Following on from ULearn08

2008-10-12T21:03:00.008+13:00

I've just been reading some of the things I picked up at ULearn.

The Periodoc Table of Videos is a brilliant set of youtube videos from the University of Nottingham. Click on each element and you get a short video explaining the element. Just great.

Tutpup is another site worth checking out. This is basic maths facts and spelling where you login and compete against others from around the world. It is a bit like Mathletics and Spellodrome except it is free. That always attracts me. :)

I have also been playing with Marvin. This looks like it could be quite fun. The thing I really want out of any of these animation software programs is the ability to create characters. I haven't yet found one that will easily allow that. Marvin is pretty cool though and pretty easy to use. It has a few bugs that annoy me. I couldn't get it to export the sound with the animation when I created a video.

Another cool looking gizmo that I think we will buy is this mp3 recorder. It has a built in rechargeable battery and you can listen to what you have recorded on the unit before you save it to your computer to manipulate in audacity or upload to a podcast.

Sheryl Nussbaum-Beach was one of the keynote speakers at ULearn08. She very generously makes all of her resources available for free on her wiki here. There are a whole lot of great resources here worth looking at.

Robomind is a great looking online intro to programming. I'd really like to get some lego robot kits but this might be a good starting point.

Another great resource gathered at ULearn was the Interface Magazine.

ULearn08

2008-10-10T19:53:00.002+13:00

I've been at Ulearn08 this week and it has been a great time. Tiring but enthusing. Three standouts for me.

Tony Ryan - This man is an absolute legend. What a delight to listen to him. It is so good to be reminded about the importance of being transformational in our teaching. This wasn't a presentation of "how to teach" rather a challenge about "how to be". It was worth the conference fee (not that I paid it personally mind you) just to hear him speak. He talked about teachers needing to be Energisers, Ethicists, Entrepreneurs and Environmentalists. Great to be reminded that teaching is a mirror. Your attitude is reflected back to you. I know this is true when I feel frustrated and that is reflected back at me from the children. I hadn't really thought about the opposite being true that when I am on top of it that gets reflected back in improved attitude from the children. So many challenges in this presentation that I will be mulling it over for awhile.

Webspiration - This is a beta test of an online version of the classic brainstorming software. It just looks brilliant. I sat and created a brainstorm and then collaborated with someone else all within the time of half a keynote speech (woops did I confess to that). If this remains free and online I don't see how they will keep selling the full product? Maybe the full version offers extra features. I'm sure it will. Very nice to see this online though. It is better than some of the alternatives I have played with like bubbl.us or mindmeister.

Finally. I am so proud of the children from LT4 who came and presented some of the things they have been learning. They were just great and I was very proud of them. If you happened to be in the session... Thank you. Some of the things we showcased are available here.

Wordle

2008-09-06T07:48:00.005+12:00

Education Policies

This is a cool tool. We have been forming political parties in our class and the children have been writing policies. Wordle creates a word cloud from any pasted text or you can just drop in a URL and it will go get the text for you. The more frequently a word appears in the text the larger it is on the cloud. In playing around with it I have dropped in the Labour party education policy and the National party statement on National standards. I would have preferred to compare two policies but it seems National have not released their policy yet. It isn't hard to see which is which. I'm going to get the class to do this with their own policies. Makes for an interesting comparison.

Try it out with your school website or your own blog and see what your text looks like.

Go animate

2008-08-09T20:43:00.003+12:00

This is a great web tool for creating animations. Very simple to learn. I hope school's bandwidth can cope cause I want to use this on Monday! Fantastic!

Just the coolest thing

2008-08-07T20:49:00.002+12:00

This is a link to a Transit NZ website that has video of NZ Highways. Sort of like Google streetview. Very cool.

inanimate alice

2008-07-22T20:44:00.002+12:00

If you haven't had a look at this site is is well worth browsing. Incredible multimedia storytelling.

Running to Uganda

2008-05-10T20:59:00.003+12:00

It feels like an impossibly long time ago that I last wrote anything on my blog. Life has been incredibly busy and there just hasn't been time. But I thought I'd share, with anyone who is looking, a revived project that we are going to have another go at this year.

Last year we ran to meet a school in Palmerston North. This year we have a boy in our school who is raising money for his airfare to Uganda so he can visit the children's home his parents have helped set up there.

So..... we are running to Uganda. This is a big ask but I think if the children all get motivated that we ought to be able to do it. Keep an eye on the wiki and see how we get on. We are starting on Monday!!!

Waht do you tnhik of tihs?

2008-03-14T06:21:00.002+13:00

Aoccdrnig to a rscheearch at Cmabrigde Uinervtisy, it deosn’t mttaer in waht oredr the ltteers in a wrod are, the olny iprmoetnt tihng is taht the frist and lsat ltteer be at the rghit pclae. The rset can be a toatl mses and you can sitll raed it wouthit porbelm. Tihs is bcuseae the huamn mnid deos not raed ervey lteter by istlef, but the wrod as a wlohe.

Thanks Allanah

Classmate PC

2008-03-06T18:33:00.003+13:00

Goodness me it has been a long time since I posted anything. I have been so busy in my new job that I haven't had the time. But today I couldn't pass up this opportunity to test a piece of equipment and blog about it at the same time. I am typing this on a Classmmate PC. This is sort of like an ASUS EEE or the OLPC computer that has been all in the blogoworld. I've taken a couple of photos so you can see what they are like.

This could be a really useful tool. I want to play with it for awhile but if anyone has any experience with these or any feedback I'd love to hear from you. It is running winXP and has a 30 GB hard drive. 512 mb Ram could be limiting and I'm not sure if it is upgradeable. Built in wireless took me a couple of minutes to get connected on my home network. Also has ethernet port and two usb ports. Headphone and mic input but that is all. I'm no touch typist but the small keys are not too bad. You wouldn't want to be typing a lot on it but then mostly we don't type screeds of stuff.

I will attempt to get back to blogging soonish. At the moment I am enhjoying the challenge of Team teaching with two others a class of 70 fantastic year 7 and 8 pupils.

Fun set of Geography Challenges

2007-12-26T19:26:00.000+13:00

http://www.travelpod.com/traveler-iq/worldphotos

This Traveler IQ
challenge is brought to you by the Web's Original Travel Blog

The Story of Stuff

2007-12-14T06:22:00.000+13:00

This is a fantastic 20 minute presentation about consumerism, sustainability, environmental impact and what you can do about it. Just brilliant.

Definr

2007-12-02T21:37:00.001+13:00

This is a brilliant online dictionary. Very fast and has a neat little plugin for firefox. You can drag to your tool bar a link that when you click on it it opens a small box for you to type a word you want the definition for. Works a treat. It also makes suggestions for you if you have an approximation of the spelling.

Link this with Freerice and you can quickly get to level 50! :)

Lookybook

2007-11-23T20:11:00.000+13:00

Lookybook

Free Rice

2007-11-21T21:33:00.000+13:00

Have a look at this website if you want something to challenge your children (and yourself) that also has a positive benefit. The link above takes you to the totals page which has some incredible statistics showing how something like this can take off. Fun to play and you are helping address world hunger! What more can you ask for?

Teacher Salaries in Perspective

2007-11-17T15:09:00.000+13:00

AREN'T YOU ALL SICK OF THOSE HIGH PAID TEACHERS??

Their hefty salaries are driving up taxes, and they only work nine or ten months a year! It's time we put things in perspective and pay them for what they do... baby-sit!

We can get that for less than minimum wage. That is right. I would give them $3.00 dollars an hour and only the hours they worked, not any of that silly planning time.

That would be $19.50 a day (7:45 AM to 4:00 PM with 45 min. off for lunch).

Each parent should pay $19.50 a day for these teachers to baby-sit their children.

Now, how many do they teach in a day... maybe 30? So that's 19.5 X 30 = $585.00 a day. However, remember they only work 180 days a year! I am not going to pay them for any vacations.

Let's see . . . that's $585 x 180 = $105,300 per year.

(Hold on! My calculator must need batteries!)

What about those special teachers and the ones with master's degrees? Well, we could pay them minimum wage just to be fair, round it off to $7.00 an hour. That would be $7 times 6-1/2 hours times 30 children times 180 days =$245,700.00 per year.

Wait a minute, there is something wrong here!

There sure is, duh!

(Average teacher salary $50,000/180 days = $277per day/30 students = $9.23/6.5 hours = $1.42 per hour per student.) Very inexpensive babysitter and they even educate your kids! Crazy!

2007-11-07T20:22:00.000+13:00

This is the tool I was looking for to power the Run to Meet You project. It is just brilliant for tracking a trip. Well worth looking at. We are nearly in Palmerston North so we will be looking for somewhere else to run to. Any takers?

Wedding map to share with guests

California Fires

2007-10-26T20:45:00.000+13:00

George Bush took some flak for not responding very quickly after Hurricane Katrina but apparently he has been much quicker to respond to the current crisis. Maybe a little too quick if this photo is anything to go on.

Here's a fun little graphic someone sent me

2007-10-19T21:10:00.001+13:00

Run to meet you

2007-10-07T12:27:00.000+13:00

Earlier in the year we tried to get an internet connection going with schools via the photo a day project. It sort of petered out, partly I think because of Northern hemisphere schools heading off for their summer holiday just as we were getting started. If anyone is interested in reviving that one we'd still be interested.

Run to meet you is a new idea to try and get our children to connect with others around the globe. Have a look at the wiki and let me know if you are interested. Given the guidelines (see the wiki) I figure we ought to be able to run at least halfway around the world before Christmas.

I'd love to hear from others about what they think of this idea.

Contemplation

2007-09-25T21:51:00.000+12:00

It has been an exhausting term and the holidays have just come in time!

I've felt too busy to blog but have missed the interaction and the process of jotting down my thoughts. Today I've been catching up with some reading and this one jumped out of the pile.

It comes from Stephen Heppell who is always good value to listen to. Great little list to reflect on for your own situation.

I like point three...

Quality controlled -------------------------------------Quality Assured

Makes one think really about things like ERO and assessment and teacher standards and feedback.

From David Muir comes this list of Heppell quotes.

“Bits of paper are worthless!”

“A school’s policy should be: ‘We could so do this’ “.

“We don’t know how good or children can be – let’s find out.”

“Learning can inoculate children against poverty”

“Being part of a community is important but everyone looking the same and acting the same is disastrous.”

(Rats!!! I had written a whole longer response to this and then firefox crashed and lost the lot). I'm tired now and going to bed so if it was important it will come back.

Our First Alice Video this year.

2007-08-30T22:28:00.000+12:00

This is so time consuming to do but truckloads of fun. This movie trailer is supposedly the precursor to the full movie!! We will wait and see. (Made by Year 7 and 8's)

Scary scary scary!

2007-08-28T14:07:00.000+12:00

This is why we need to teach listening and thinking skills along with communication skills.

Random Ideas Generator

2007-08-28T13:43:00.000+12:00

This is quite a useful wee tool for generating random ideas. It is along the lines of deBono's thinking games or Tony Ryan's Thinkers Keys.

You click on the button and the generator spits out three words. Great for developing creative thinking in your students. I can see it being used to generate creative writing ideas or for oral language.

Just be prepared though. I came across one word that I thought was inappropriate for classroom use.

Thanks Kevin for the tip.

Educational Philosophy

2007-08-26T20:04:00.000+12:00

We are entering a review of our school charter and we've been asked to bring our educational philosophy to staff meeting tomorrow. I'm not able to be there due to another appointment but I actually like thinking about this sort of stuff (sad I know) so I had a go at trying to represent what I believe about education in an inspiration mind map. This is still a work in progress of course. It always will be but I'd love any comments on what you think I mean or whether you agree or disagree with me.

Mmmmm! 8 Things!

2007-08-09T21:53:00.000+12:00

Now here's a challenge to me. I feel honored to have been tagged to add to the whole "8 things blogo round." Cheers. It does make me feel connected. Thanks Chris and Rachel and Greg.

But.....

I hate chain letters and I have no idea what to write and pretty much everyone in my bloglines has already been tagged, so.... in the spirit of wanting to extend a hand of friendship to anyone anywhere I will try to add 8 random things and if you read this and want to communicate consider yourself invited to participate. If you leave me a comment I'll visit your blog and interact with you too.

So 8 Things...

1. My first car was a Morris Minor with indicators that popped out from between the doors. I bought it for $50.00 and drove it home and never drove it again.
2. A few years ago we drove from Glasgow to London in one day in a car that kept jumping out of fifth gear. Most annoying.
3. I dislike gardening.
4. I was living in Dorset (UK) on September 11th 2001 and have never felt so far away from home.
5. I took a holiday around the South Island once and took heaps of photographs (with no film in the camera)
6. I love digital cameras.
7. The worst job I have ever worked was picking rubbish out of a pile of glass waiting to be recycled.
8. I left my power cord at school and the laptop is about to hibernate.

Buffalo vs Lion vs Crocodile

2007-08-09T15:37:00.000+12:00

In case you didn't catch this on CNN or the TV news this video is fantastic to watch. We thought we would show it to the class and talk about the power of a group to stand up to bullies.

Fantastic animation about life being a musical

2007-08-07T19:15:00.000+12:00

Freshminds

Thanks for this Allanah

Interesting Experience Today

2007-07-31T16:22:00.000+12:00

I have just realised today how much my world has changed. I was reading my bloglines feeds and there was a post from Chris about looking for a laptop cart. I remember doing similar research myself a few years ago and thought "Oh, I can help you out". Without reading the rest of the post I jumped around and found the link to the company we bought our trolley from and then tried to post it as a comment in Chris's blog. First I had to be a member and login to leave a comment. Mmmm. Then I searched for an email address on his blog. Mmmmmm! Then I gave up and went back to the blog entry (dated today) to discover he has actually already resolved the issue (obviously ages ago because he bought trolleys in Hong Kong). Why? I'm confused? If it was me I would add a couple of things to his list of lessons learned.

1. People are reading your stuff... If you have a question, blog about it. There are people all over the world willing to help.
2. Open up your comments so that people can contribute. I was willing to make a connection here but after searching for a way and not finding it easily, I gave up.

Obviously I have too much time on hands. I'll now go back to marking.

Do we place little value on software

2007-07-27T20:41:00.000+12:00

Reading Wesley Fryers blog today and he had a posting about free software. I posted a response with some suggestions but was halted by Gary Stagers reply.

" Why is software so devalued that a growing number of people believe it should be free?

Balls and playground equipment are not free. Hardware is not free. Spelling books and standardized tests are not free.
Why not have free teachers? You could all work voluntarily.
Is the quest for free software rooted in the low self-image of educators? Why should teachers depend on charity?
It all seems sad and symptomatic of powerlessness to me."
I actually had to agree with Gary on this one. What are your thoughts on this? Are we too preoccupied with free software?

Speaking of free software this is a cool looking alternative to garageband. Not as easy to use but hey! Free.

Interclue

2007-07-26T20:25:00.000+12:00

This is a little add on for firefox that works a bit like snapshots. I've just downloaded it and now both snapshots and Interclue are working on my page. That could get a bit nasty but it is worth having a look at. This apparently is a Christchurch company so there is nothing like supporting the home team. They aren't the only team on the block though.

Sound snap

2007-07-23T20:58:00.000+12:00

I have played in the past with garageband and superduper music looper but this is a new take that might be useful. I downloaded a few loops and created a simple tune in audacity. The next step is to try this in Acid Xpress.
Good fun. I love playing with this stuff.

Very Funny

2007-07-21T08:52:00.000+12:00

Inspiring

2007-07-17T21:33:00.000+12:00

This presentation is inspiring. This is what I want to achieve with the kids I am working with. Dr Tim Tyson from Maybury school speaks about children making a difference. He shows a number of examples of student movies and discusses the level of motivation of the children. Well worth viewing.

This is worth sharing. I wonder if my class will get the irony? You'd hope so!

2007-07-17T20:09:00.000+12:00

Visuwords

2007-07-13T16:56:00.000+12:00

Thanks to Vicki Davis for the heads up on this cool web tool. It is a dictionary that displays associated words in a visual map.

Sian's Podcast

2007-07-12T19:46:00.000+12:00

This is my four year old. She wanted to do this. It will be interesting to see if she continues with this. I am truly just the facilitator.

I'm procrastinating here

2007-07-07T10:51:00.000+12:00

I'm supposed to be completing an assignment but avoiding it with lots of web browsing and video watching. Here are a couple of fun things I've come across that are worth sharing. For a year or two now I have been getting a weekly science email from CSIRO

This contains all sorts of interesting stuff. This week's email has two completely unrelated items that caught my eye. The first was a fascinating article about the statistical relevance of success related to the first letter of your surname.

News: The surname study
by Richard Wiseman (touring Australia for National Science Week)

Easy as a, b, c: can your name really affect your life? As contrived - or cruel - as the names Brooklyn, Romeo and Cruz might be, the happiness of the Beckham boys could be salvaged by their surname. Not, as you might think, because it's a famous name; if their father had been called David Wickham things could have been quite different.

More than 15 000 people have taken part in a unique experiment to explore whether your surname influences your life. The results yielded a fascinating insight into an up until now hidden aspect of the human psyche. I wanted to know if people who had a surname that began with a letter near the start of the alphabet were more successful in life than those with names towards the end. In short, are the Abbots and Adams of the world likely to do better than the Youngs and the Yorks?

Past research gave me good reason to think so. Last year, American economists Liran Einav and Leeat Yariv analysed the surnames of economics' academics working at US universities. They found those with initials early in the alphabet were more likely to be in the best-rated departments, achieve other measures of ‘success' or even win a Nobel Prize.

Publishing their findings in The Journal of Economic Perspectives, they argued such "alphabetical discrimination" was probably due to the convention of listing authors of academic journal papers in alphabetical order, resulting in professors with surnames towards the start of the alphabet appearing to be more prominent in their field than their alphabetically challenged peers.

I wondered whether the same effect might apply outside the world of economics. After all, whether it is on a school register, at a job interview, or in the exam hall, people with surnames towards the start of the alphabet are used to being first.

Given that we often associate the top of a list with winners and the bottom with losers, could all of these small experiences add up and make a long-term impact on someone's life?

Everyone participating in the Surname experiment was asked to indicate their sex, age, surname and rate how successful they had been in various aspects of their life, such as their health, finances, career, and "life in general". Scores in all these categories were added up to obtain an overall "measure of success".

The results revealed that readers whose surnames began with letters at the beginning of the alphabet did indeed rate themselves as significantly more successful overall than those with surnames starting with lowly, end-of-the-alphabet initials.

The surname effect was especially pronounced when it came to career, suggesting alphabetical discrimination was alive and well in the workplace. Interestingly, the effect was also more visible in men than in women. This may, of course, reflect the fact that many women change their surname when they marry. Perhaps women who are considering whether to adopt their husband's surname should take into account the alphabetical implications - or choose a real Alpha-male in the first place.
What might account for this seemingly strange effect? One pattern in the data provided an important clue.

The surname effect became more pronounced in older age groups, suggesting it was not due to childhood experiences, but rather it built up gradually during our lives. It seems that constant exposure to being at the top or bottom of the alphabet league - the A-list or the Z-list - slowly makes an impact on the way in which people see themselves.

So should these results give those whose surname initial falls towards the end of the alphabet cause for concern? Well, as a Wiseman, and therefore someone with a lifetime's experience of coming towards the bottom of alphabetical lists, I take some comfort from the fact that the effect is very small. Then again, when you look at some of the best-known people around today – Crowe, Blair, Bush, Branson - it does make me wonder.

As a Wilkinson this concerns me. :) I wonder should I start taking the register in the morning starting from the bottom of the page? Fascinating. I might get my class to explore this issue. The possibilities for statistical analysis based on children's passions is boundless. Get them to explore the surnames of All Blacks, Pop Stars, Movie Stars, Olympic Champions etc whatever they are into.

The second thing that has distracted me from my assignment (apart from blogging) is a series of high speed videos.

Another tool worth checking out

2007-06-28T22:32:00.000+12:00

This is a cool tool

2007-06-28T22:14:00.000+12:00

Embed Google maps into your blog.

Pivot Animation

2007-06-04T10:28:00.000+12:00

I was reading a post from Kevin today and reminded about using Pivot animation to create stories. If anyone is interested I would be keen to get going a story exchange using Pivot. To this end I have set up a wiki at animate our world.

Maths Lines

2007-06-01T15:48:00.000+12:00

This is cool. I'm going to try it with my maths class next week.

Thanks to Ollie Bray for the heads up on this one.

Fun to play with

2007-05-26T13:48:00.000+12:00

Try this one just for fun.

SLOOH

2007-05-24T22:00:00.000+12:00

Slooh is a rather cool looking tool for looking at the stars. If you have anyone in your class interested in astronomy this one may get them excited.

Unfortunately for me the visibility was not good when I logged on but I will definitely go back and have a look at this one.

K12 Conference

2007-05-23T18:26:00.001+12:00

Announcing the second annual "K12 Online" conference for teachers, administrators and educators around the world interested in the use of Web 2.0 tools in classrooms and professional practice! This year's conference is scheduled to be held over two weeks, October 15-19 and October 22-26 of 2007, and will include a preconference keynote during the week of October 8. This years conference theme is "Playing with Boundaries." A call for proposals is below.

OVERVIEW:
There will be four "conference strands"-- two each week. Two presentations will be published in each strand each day, Monday - Friday, so four new presentations will be available each day over the course of the two-weeks. Each presentation will be given in any of a variety of downloadable, web based formats and released via the conference blog (www.k12onlineconference.org) and archived for posterity.

FOUR STRANDS:
Week 1
Strand A: Classroom 2.0
Leveraging the power of free online tools in an open, collaborative and transparent atmosphere characterises teaching and learning in the 21st century. Teachers and students are contributing to the growing global knowledge commons by publishing their work online. By sharing all stages of their learning students are beginning to appreciate the value of life long learning that inheres in work that is in "perpetual beta." This strand will explore how teachers and students are playing with the boundaries between instructors, learners and classrooms. Presentations will also explore the practical pedagogical uses of online social tools (Web 2.0) giving concrete examples of how teachers are using the tools in their classes.

Strand B: New Tools
Focusing on free tools, what are the "nuts and bolts" of using specific new social media and collaborative tools for learning? This strand includes two parts. Basic training is "how to" information on tool use in an educational setting, especially for newcomers. Advanced training is for teachers interested in new tools for learning, looking for advanced technology training, seeking ideas for mashing tools together, and interested in web 2.0 assessment tools. As educators and students of all ages push the boundaries of learning, what are the specific steps for using new tools most effectively? Where "Classroom 2.0" presentations will focus on instructional uses and examples of web 2.0 tool use, "New Tools" presentations should focus on "nuts and bolts" instructions for using tools. Five "basic" and five "advanced" presentations will be included in this strand.

Week 2
Strand A: Professional Learning Networks
Research says that professional development is most effective when it aims to create professional learning communities — places where teachers learn and work together. Using Web 2.0 tools educators can network with others around the globe extending traditional boundaries of ongoing, learner centered professional development and support. Presentations in this strand will include tips, ideas and resources on how to orchestrate your own professional development online; concrete examples of how the tools that support Professional Learning Environments (PLEs) are being used; how to create a supportive, reflective virtual learning community around school-based goals, and trends toward teacher directed personal learning environments.

Strand B: Obstacles to Opportunities
Boundaries formalized by education in the “industrial age” shouldn’t hinder educators as they seek to reform and transform their classroom practice. Playing with boundaries in the areas of copyright, digital discipline and ethics (e.g. cyberbullying), collaborating globally (e.g. cultural differences, synchronous communication), resistance to change (e.g. administration, teachers, students), school culture (e.g. high stakes testing), time (e.g. in curriculum, teacher day), lack of access to tools/computers, filtering, parental/district concerns for online safety, control (e.g. teacher control of student behavior/learning), solutions for IT collaboration and more -- unearthing opportunities from the obstacles rooted in those boundaries -- is the focus of presentations in this strand.

CALL FOR PROPOSALS:
This call encourages all, experienced and novice, to submit proposals to present at this conference via this link. Take this opportunity to share your successes, strategies, and tips in “playing with boundaries” in one of the four strands as described above.

Deadline for proposal submissions is June 18, 2007. You will be contacted no later than June 30, 2007 regarding your status.

Presentations may be delivered in any web-based medium that is downloadable (including but not limited to podcasts, screencasts, slide shows) and is due one week prior to the date it is published.

Please note that all presentations will be licensed Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 3.0 Unported.

As you draft your proposal, you may wish to consider the presentation topics listed below which were suggested in the comments on the K-12 Online Conference Blog:

» special needs education
» Creative Commons
» Second Life
» podcasting
» iPods
» video games in education
» specific ideas, tips, mini lessons centered on pedagogical use of web 2.0 tools
» overcoming institutional inertia and resistance
» aligning Web 2.0 and other projects to national standards
» getting your message across
» how web 2.0 can assist those with disabilities
» ePortfolios
» classroom 2.0 activities at the elementary level
» creating video for TeacherTube and YouTube
» google docs
» teacher/peer collaboration

KEYNOTES:
The first presentation in each strand will kick off with a keynote by a well known educator who is distinguished and knowledgeable in the context of their strand. Keynoters will be announced shortly.

CONVENERS:
This year's conveners are:

Darren Kuropatwa is currently Department Head of Mathematics at Daniel Collegiate Institute in Winnipeg, Manitoba, Canada. He is known internationally for his ability to weave the use of online social tools meaningfully and concretely into his pedagogical practice and for "child safe" blogging practices. He has more than 20 years experience in both formal and informal education and 13 years experience in team building and leadership training. Darren has been facilitating workshops for educators in groups of 4 to 300 for the last 10 years. Darren's professional blog is called A Difference (http://adifference.blogspot.com). He will convene Classroom 2.0.

Sheryl Nusbaum-Beach, a 20-year educator, has been a classroom teacher, charter school principal, district administrator, and digital learning consultant. She currently serves as an adjunct faculty member teaching graduate and undergraduate preservice teachers at The College of William and Mary (Virginia, USA), where she is also completing her doctorate in educational planning, policy and leadership. In addition, Sheryl is co-leading a statewide 21st Century Skills initiative in the state of Alabama, funded by a major grant from the Microsoft Partners in Learning program. Sheryl blogs at (http://21stcenturylearning.typepad.com/blog/). She will convene Preconference Discussions and Personal Learning Networks.

Wesley Fryer is an educator, author, digital storyteller and change agent. With respect to school change, he describes himself as a "catalyst for creative educational engagement." His blog, “Moving at the Speed of Creativity” was selected as the 2006 “Best Learning Theory Blog” by eSchoolnews and Discovery Education. He is the Director of Education Advocacy (PK-20) for AT&T in the state of Oklahoma. Wes blogs at (http://www.speedofcreativity.org). Wes will convene New Tools.

Lani Ritter Hall currently contracts as an instructional designer for online professional development for Ohio teachers and online student courses with eTech Ohio. She is a National Board Certified Teacher who served in many capacities during her 35 years as a classroom and resource teacher in Ohio and Canada. Lani blogs at (http://possibilitiesabound.blogspot.com). Lani will convene Obstacles to Opportunities.

QUESTIONS?
If you have any questions about any part of this, email one of us:

» Darren Kuropatwa: dkuropatwa {at} gmail {dot} com
» Sheryl Nusbaum-Beach: snbeach {at} cox {dot} net
» Lani Ritter Hall: lanihall {at} alltel {dot} net
» Wesley Fryer: wesfryer {at} pobox {dot} com

Please duplicate this post and distribute it far and wide across the blogosphere. Feel free to republish it on your own blog (actually, we'd really like people to do that ;-) ) or link back to this post (published simultaneously on all our blogs).

Conference Tag: K12online07

After participating in this conference last year I can highly recommend it. Brilliant experience well worth the time.

Stop Disasters Game

2007-05-20T14:20:00.001+12:00

I'm starting to get taken by online games that I can see have a genuine educative purpose. Electrocity has me captivated.

This is a new one to me. It has five different disaster scenarios and a time limit before disaster strikes. You have a budget and have to prepare the location for the coming disaster. This would fit well into any disaster unit at the upper end of primary or lower high school level.

If you can recommend any games like these two I'd love to hear from you. As always I'm a cheap skate so I want free, preferably online suggestions and they have to be educationally useful. I'm sorry but Wolfenstein just doesn't do it for me.

Thinking Mathematically

2007-05-19T08:12:00.000+12:00

I was prompted by a posting on David Warlick's blog to comment about teaching mathmatics. I'll post the gist of it here.

I agree with you David that the computer has changed significantly from a ‘computing’ machine to a communication machine. Although I do think this change, for most of us, was quite a long time ago. I’m not a specialist mathematics teacher but it seems to me that what is missing in maths classes often is relevancy. The pupils need to understand why a mathematical concept is useful to them in everyday life. Just because it is going to be on the test is not a good enough answer anymore.

We have been playing with a couple of things in my maths lessons that I think are both fun and relevant. http://www.electrocity.co.nz/ is a game where the students have to build a city (a much simpler online version of sim city). Every decision they make in the game has an impact on population, environment, electricity supply, happiness and bank balance. My class have been playing the game for a couple of weeks now but I have just added the task of creating a spreadsheet to track the impact each decision has on the total score.

Another group have been using google sketchup to create 3D models of the school buildings which we will post up to google earth when finished. Lots of mathematical discussion about how to create a scale model and how to measure the height of the hall without climbing on a ladder.

I know many more teachers could add their ideas here about how they are using technology effectively in teaching mathematics.

In New Zealand we have embarked on a numeracy development project across the whole country. See http://www.nzmaths.co.nz/numeracy/Intro.aspx for an introduction. As part of this project digital learning objects http://www.nzmaths.co.nz/LearningObjects/ have been created to illustrate mathematical concepts in an interesting way.

The key thought I had in my head when I wrote my first attempt at this comment was that we need to be making maths relevant. If the children cannot grasp the purpose of learning a particular concept then we need to find other ways of presenting it until we do make it not only understandable but relevant. If I can’t answer the question “Why do I need to know this?” then I need to rethink my lesson.

Maybe we need a movie/slideshow/website/whatever competition along the lines of… “You need to know this mathematical concept because…”

That is my 10 cents worth anyway (inflation adjusted and taking into account the exchange rate and the fact that we no longer have 1, 2 or 5 cent coins in our currency I felt I couldn’t add 2cents to the debate)

In browsing the comments on Davids blog I came across this great looking site. It looks a bit like the digital learning objects at the nzmaths website.

Food for thought.

2007-05-15T19:07:00.000+12:00

Many of you will be readers of Wesley Fryer. If you are not this post on his blog is worth reading. He is pondering the issues around high stakes testing (long may we resist this notion in New Zealand) and in the way we convey a sense of failure to our children. The post is a good reminder about the way we talk to our children and how we ascribe success and failure. I know I have mentioned it before but the TED talk by Sir Ken Robinson is also a powerful reminder of valuing children for more than their ability in reading, writing and mathematics. If you haven't looked at that one I really would encourage you to take the time.

Clayanimation on Teachertube

2007-05-13T20:53:00.000+12:00

This wee animation was made a couple of years ago but I was looking for something to upload to teachertube while I was experimenting. This was made by some year 5 pupils. They also made the soundtrack themselves using super duper music looper.

Comic Life for PC

2007-05-11T20:57:00.000+12:00

Now this is some good news. A beta version of Comic Life is now available for PC owners. I can't get it to work properly yet but I'm sure they will sort it out. Worth a look.

Here's a new take on publishing

2007-05-11T19:15:00.000+12:00

If any of you are in New Zealand you will no doubt be aware of the tragic death of two teenagers at a party last week. For those of you overseas the girls were run down in the street, along with several others who are still in hospital.

The reason I was prompted to write was when I opened the paper today there was a half page article of messages taken straight from the Bebo website someone set up in remembrance of the girls. This says something about the way news gathering has changed. What I did wonder was whether there were ethical issues involved here. Did the paper ask permission from the people who posted messages on the Bebo site? The other issue is that usually newspapers won't print letters from anonymous sources but in this case the postings to Bebo could have come from anywhere. I think there are issues here that need addressing.

World Class Education

2007-05-05T13:17:00.000+12:00

This report from the Ohio Department of Education makes interesting reading. I have only browsed the executive summary but the description of where they want to head to as a state made me stop and think for a minute. As a New Zealander I read the list including, that schools would be

• Organized around instructional leadership of principals and teachers
• Receive funding based on a weighted student formula
• Are accountable for delivery against state standards:
– Student performance
– Implementation of teacher career lattice in cooperation with unions
– Provision of student supports based on systemic diagnosis
• Have the authority and resources and state accountability
• Teachers have a variety of roles and compensation related to the contribution they make

and thought that most of this was covered currently under the present local governance model of education we have in New Zealand. I don't think we could claim to be particularly revolutionary and there are many who would certainly question any claim that we have a world class education system. I wonder how much research Ohio State have done? I must go and read the rest of the report to find out more.

The futureof magazine publishing?

2007-05-03T22:46:00.000+12:00

Wow! Take a look at this link.

Electrocity

2007-05-02T19:13:00.000+12:00

Here is a great looking game. Build a city. Make decisions about infrastructure, prospecting, environment etc etc. All sorts of things. Aimed at year 7-9 students but hey! I enjoyed having a play. Also prizes available for New Zealand schools. This could be a good one to give as homework.

Podcasting Poetry

2007-04-30T20:13:00.001+12:00

Click here to get your own player.

Fonts Fonts Fonts

2007-04-29T14:44:00.000+12:00

This is a font called Sketchy. This and 499 other cool fonts are available from Fonts 500.

Teacher TV

2007-04-28T08:24:00.000+12:00

This is a great looking website from the UK with a whole raft of good quality videos related to education. There are videos for use in class as well as ones for professional development. I've just viewed part 2 of a video about boys education and it was quite good. Worth browsing through.

Mmmmmmm? Should I be worried?

2007-04-23T19:10:00.000+12:00

http://news.independent.co.uk/uk/health_medical/article2472140.ece

As someone who has a wireless network at home and who works in a classroom with wireless access, should I be worried? I don't know enough about this but I do wish someone who really did know was able to give advice that was understandable. I went looking for information about wireless danger a few years ago and could only find conflicting reports that were so technical I couldn't understand all the jargon. The analogy in this article to laptops being the cigarette of the future made me stop and think. But then what about all the cell towers going up around the city that I have no control over? Can anyone point me to a simple explanation?

Have a look at this.

2007-04-21T17:17:00.000+12:00

http://www.noonebelongsheremorethanyou.com/

I just love this sort of creativity.

Mashup Thinking part2

2007-04-21T09:17:00.000+12:00

The concept behind 'mashup', as I understand it, is that parts of different media are merged to create something new. The more I think about it the more I think this is a good analogy for where we are heading in education. I blogged yesterday about 'Mashup Thinking' but I also think we need 'mashup' in a whole lot of schooling. Mashup Curriculum. Mashup Classes. What would Mashup schools look like? There is discussion in the blogosphere about School 2.0 and I guess this is where this idea fits.

I have had conversations in the past with teachers being very disparaging about home schooling. Maybe the public school system has something to learn from home schoolers who are creating 'mashup school' for their children. Mmmmmmm! Food for thought. I'm just musing here really and have to develop my thinking a lot more around this issue.

Mashup Thinking

2007-04-20T19:45:00.000+12:00

Had a great experience today when I was able to join in briefly with a professional development day happening at Brightwater School via skype connection with Allanah.

She was attending a session led by Dr David Whitehead. Allanah has given a great summary on her blog which is worth having a look at. She has included a brief audio comment from David where he is talking about knowledge as a verb. Now this isn't a particularly new concept but something he said triggered the thought in my head that we have a web2.0 term "mashup" that could be applied to the sort of thinking he is describing. So there it is. I put this out there for development. "Mashup Thinking" is what we are needing to develop.

Voice Thread

2007-04-19T08:57:00.000+12:00

This is an interesting looking tool. Might be easier to use than podomatic to create podcasts. You can embed or link to the voicethread you create. One downside I can see is that you have to record via the macromedia recorder on the website. My experience of this in podomatic is that the quality isn't that great. Also it requires a microphone plugged in. I have been giving my iPod with attached microphone to the kids to record podcasts for our class. We also use audacity to manipulate the audio and get rid of all the umms and ahhhs and hesitations. I'd say it is worth looking at but I'd like to see them add some audio editing tools like jumpcut provides for video.

PDF annotator

2007-04-16T13:02:00.000+12:00

I've just been looking for a pdf annotation tool (prompted by my wife who was printing out copious pdfs so that she could write in the margin of them).

There has to be an easier way I thought.

If anyone knows of a better tool please let me know but this one seems pretty cool.

It allows you to type, highlight, add notes, draw etc onto a pdf file. The free version adds a software evaluation message to the top of each page which you would have to just ignore. If you pay for the pro version the message goes away. I'm amazed I haven't wanted to do this before now! Cool!

MSPaint

2007-04-15T14:08:00.000+12:00

Here's one for all those people who complain they would do more with ICT in their classroom if only they had.... better computers, better software, wireless access. I'm a firm believer in doing the best with what you've got. This video sums that up. If this inspires you to drag out MSPaint again then check our Artrage and you can see some really amazing stuff.

A great reminder about thinking before you post images online

2007-04-14T08:33:00.000+12:00

Thinkature

2007-04-13T22:38:00.000+12:00

I'm always on the lookout for cool tools. This is another good looking one.

It looks a bit like Mindmeister the one I blogged about a few weeks ago but this one is up and running and not in invitation only beta stage. I have yet to try collaborating with someone on it but it certainly looks friendly enough.

Worth checking out.

Ban the laptop?

2007-04-13T11:56:00.000+12:00

This is an interesting article from David Cole. He has banned laptops from his law lectures. Students were surfing the web, checking emails, sms messaging friends etc during class. As I read the article I couldn't help thinking that one of the most obvious issues was that he was standing at the front of the class "sage on the stage" style delivering knowledge to his students.

He argues that

As for multitasking, I don't buy it. Attention diverted is attention diverted.

Mmmmmm????? This point is worth pondering. We are hearing a lot about "digital natives" whose brains are wired differently. To what extent does this impact our classrooms?

Yes there are times when lecture style delivery is just the most efficient way to communicate a body of knowledge deemed important. At those times then putting down the laptop may be a valid call but I want to know, how much of a students day is in this sort of class? At university where face to face time is a lot less than at school maybe it isn't such an issue. In school where we have the students for extended periods how much of the day is lecture delivery?

How many opportunities do my students get to ask questions, present their opinions, search for answers, clarify ideas, talk about their understanding and create new knowledge for themselves.
I think web2.0 tools allow some increased opportunities to engage in knowledge creation. For me... I'm still trying to integrate the laptop effectively into learning, I'm not ready to ban it just yet. :) What do you think?

I think I have a hidden cartoonist inside.

2007-04-12T10:08:00.000+12:00

This is cool because I can also create my own characters (well actually in this case I copied one of our Freeville characters from school) but I was able to green screen the background and make it transparent, import that gif into toondoo and Walah! Characters to include in your own cartoon. Now this all seems very exciting and I'm not sure why it is so cool when this can all be done just as easily in Powerpoint.

The environment has something to do with it. I'm interested in tools like this that can be motivating for children to become creative. If this sort of adaption wasn't possible I'd quickly lose interest in toondoo because of the "clipart" nature. I do subscribe to Jamie McKenzie's view that clipart can stifle creativity. What are your thoughts on this? Toondoo is allowing the creator to mashup their own ideas from a collection of resources. Is this more or less creative? Fun to play with anyway and that is a huge plus.

It must be holidays

2007-04-11T21:25:00.000+12:00

Does anyone know why the speech bubbles have disappeared from my cartoon?

I must be tired I am enjoying this.

This could get to be addictive

2007-04-11T10:30:00.000+12:00

The picture was created by my maths class. We were learning to draw three dimensional shapes using isometric paper. Fun!

Toon Doo

2007-04-11T09:23:00.000+12:00

Vicki Davis has been posting cartoons created in Toon Doo. I thought I'd play around with it and I discovered you can also upload your own images. Now that is cool. You are not limited by the backgrounds available but you can use paint, kidpix, artrage etc or take your own photos and use them as backgrounds. Wow this is exciting. Anyone for a cartoon exchange?

A nice little reminder that the world is changing

2007-04-10T20:18:00.000+12:00

Maybe we should change the one laptop per child project to the one cell phone per child? Might get there faster! This video is from Teachertube.

Changes

2007-04-01T20:05:00.000+12:00

It has been a thought provoking weekend. My 94 year old grandmother died on Friday evening. I've been thinking since about all the changes she saw in her lifetime. She was born a few months after the Titanic sank. She lived through two World Wars, the depression, polio epidemic, Napier earthquake, Murchison earthquake, Wahine disaster. She lived to see man walk on the moon, jet aeroplane travel, television, computers, the internet. Incredible social changes occurred in her lifetime. Advances in science, medicine, technology... etc. Nana grew up in a house without electricity. I just can't imagine it really.

All that melancholic musing makes me think about my own girls and the changes they will see in their lifetimes. How do we prepare our children for a future we can't even imagine? Well I'm not really sure but I guess Nana's parents had no idea about television, internet etc. Heck! Motor cars would have been a marvellous new invention. Nana grew up, raised a family and lived through a period of incredible change. If all the predictions of futurist commentators are anything to go by change will only increase at an exponential rate. Two things I think about all this. Developing an ability to cope with complexity may be one of the most important things we can promote. That and doing things with your family. Spend time and get to know the most important people in your life.

Writing tool

2007-03-29T22:17:00.000+12:00

Cool little web 2.0 tool for publishing writing. Not at all fancy but very simple to use. If you have littlies who you don't want to get buried in Publisher or Word this might be worth looking at. It comes from Thinkfinity.

21 Classes

2007-03-22T21:47:00.000+12:00

I'm always on the lookout for web2.0 tools that are teacher and child friendly. I know Classblogmeister is available but I haven't had a reply to my request to set up a class blog. I saw 21classess on Will Ricardson's blog and thought I'd have a go. So far it seems pretty easy. It is a bit light on features like templates but I'm just exploring at this stage. The 2mb limit for a free blog space might kill it for me. Also the fact I can only have 50 blogs is a bit of a downer cause we have 64 children in the class. I know, I know, I could just register two classes but that is more hassle. I'm not yet convinced about it but it certainly is worth playing with. I'll set up a few kids and see if I can get them enthused about it. I'd really like a free, ad free, blog/podcast combined that will allow teacher management of content and comments and unlimted student accounts. Any suggestions?

Change Projects

2007-03-19T18:53:00.000+12:00

I mentioned earlier that we are working on 'Pay it forward' type projects. Today was the first day I have seen the class really coming to grips with the projects. There are a number of great ideas and it will be fun to see them develop over the next few weeks. The thing that excites me about what they are doing is that they are all real projects that will make real changes if the kids work through the process and actually complete their goals. I'd love to see more of them get excited about international changes they can get involved with but at this stage the projects are mainly local school issues.
I'd love to link them up with some other children around the world who are making changes in their own schools. Maybe we could share stories. If you teach in a middle school class and have your children engaging in social action projects I'd love to hear from you.

Two games have caught my eye.

2007-03-04T08:56:00.000+13:00

These two games have caught my eye in the last couple of days.
At school we have been watching "Pay it Forward" and we are encouraging the children to start thinking about a project they can initiate that will involve some social action or service to others. I've been thinking about how to incorporate video games in a meaningful way and these two certainly get you thinking. The game Ayiti is part of the Taking It Global website which has a whole range of social projects that kids can get involved in or initiate themselves. I played it for a bit last night and quickly became engrossed in trying to achieve a better life for the characters in the game. So many factors to think about and take into consideration. This is a really powerful game for having kids think about the interrelationship between health, work, family, education, happiness and success. Certainly made me think.

Dafur is Dying is also powerful for conveying the desperate situation that exists in Dafur. I wondered if it almost trivialised it too much by turning it into a game. I'll have to think about this but I think that maybe World Vision do this better by connecting children to real stories about real children in real situations. What do others think?

Mindmeister

2007-02-24T13:40:00.000+13:00

This is a seriously cool collaborative web2.0 application. It allows you to collaboratively build a mind map online. The tools and fonts are a little limited but the ability to work online with someone else on a brain storm and see their changes as they make them is just brilliant. I've just tried it out and it works brilliantly.

At the moment it is in private Beta testing only but if you want an invitation (and are willing to collaborate with me on something) then send me an email and I'll invite you.

Now to find some people for my class to interact with online. If you have an idea let me know.

Team Teaching Part 2

2007-02-15T19:09:00.000+13:00

I realised after yesterday's post that I should explain more fully how we operate the Team teaching in Learning Team 4 at Freeville. In some circles "Team Teaching" means two or more teachers sharing a class but only one of them is actually in the class at a time. I understand this as job sharing but it isn't what we are doing. This year we have 64 children in the class. There are two of us responsible for the learning of these children. We treat them as one class and they break up into different groups for different parts of the day. Sometimes it might be mixed groups of year seven and eights. Other times it might be reading or spelling groups based on their current level. On occasions there could be an all girls group or an all year 8 group etc etc. The flexibility this gives means we can meet the children's needs with two of us contributing to planning, assessing and coaching the learning. The children carry with them a weekly planner which they refer to throughout the day to help them be in the right place at the right time. It is only week two but I have been really impressed that most of them have been able to get themselves organised and in the right place for each lesson.
Today I took a session with half the class (while the others were at art) on Thinking Maps. These are a really powerful learning tool to add to the tool box.
It has also been really cool to be able to use some of the ICT tools I have been showing to teachers in the last few years with a group of children. In the first week of school we have

graphed on excel our spelling test results and our beep test scores,
taken photos during maths,
contributed to Photo365 an internet project,
researched greetings on the internet,
played maths games online,
made powerpoint presentations on "What Change Means"
created pivot animations showing "Change"
downloaded music from freeplaymusic

The thing that really excites me about this is that the focus for these activities was the learning not the technology. Fun fun fun!

Wow! School is exciting

2007-02-13T20:49:00.000+13:00

Well! I've been at school for one week now and I have to say it is going to be a great year. Working in a team teaching environment seems to me to have a huge number of benefits for the children. Freeville School is such a friendly place with a really great atmosphere. I am thoroughly enjoying learning with the pupils in learning team 4. We have joined the Photo365 for schools project on flickr. There are some great photos starting to be discovered. It is early days yet and I am finding my way with all the things one has to learn at a new school. I'm excited by the focus on learning that I see happening everywhere.

I'm also into study for the Masters of Teaching and Learning paper I have enrolled in and have to say I am finding it hard to get back to reading academic waffle again. I do enjoy the study normally so I'm sure I'll be ok once I get into it. The last few years have been really focussed on ICT and I am quite looking forward to thinking about some other things for awhile. I have to write a reflection about the place of research in daily classroom practice and I'm starting to think I might look into team teaching as a research focus. If anyone has any good links for team teaching research I'd love to know.

This looks like fun

2007-01-28T09:11:00.000+13:00

http://roxik.com/pictaps/index.html

What happens to the mouse click?

2007-01-27T07:24:00.000+13:00

http://www.dontclick.it/

Have a look at this link for a fun project. The challenge is to navigate the site without clicking your mouse button. See if you can do it. I couldn't at first but I quickly got the hang of it. Quite fascinating to think about our online behaviour.

Holiday in Heaven

2007-01-21T16:49:00.000+13:00

I'm feeling quite relaxed and ready for the year after a couple of weeks camping.

Great to be disconnected from everything. No power, phone, internet.... Fantastic!

I won't reveal the location, in the interests of preserving it's pristine beauty but I can happily say we had the beach completely to ourselves almost the whole time (apart from a seal and numerous birds).

It really was fantastic.

Relaxed and ready for an exciting 2007.

This week sees me with 3 days at the University of Canterbury College of Education for a block course followed by 3 days at Ferrymead for the First Films course. Should be fun.

2007 here we come

2006-12-20T17:09:00.000+13:00

I know it is nearly Christmas and schools are thinking about the holidays but I met next year's class today and I have to say I am really excited. What a great looking bunch of people. My brain is buzzing with all sorts of ideas about ways to generate 'real' learning experiences and projects that will capture the imagination and enthusiasm of the pupils.

I wish you all a very happy and restful holiday and look forward to blogging and learning in 2007.

Happy Christmas and Happy New Year.

Two cool things

2006-12-20T17:01:00.000+13:00

http://thefischbowl.blogspot.com/2006/11/2020-vision.html

This blog posting by Karl Fisch includes a video titled 2020. It is his view of the moves in technology and education over the next 13 years. It makes interesting viewing.

http://kids.quintura.com/

The link above is to the Quintura search engine for kids. Well worth looking at. It would be worth doing a comparison with google and some of the other search engines for kids like kids yahoo and ask for kids

A Comment! Wahoo!

2006-12-17T17:28:00.000+13:00

Thank you Jody your comment was appreciated and your class blog looks fantastic. Great stuff.

I've just realised how powerful and motivating it is to get a comment on my blog. I've had the map on the blog for awhile and that is quite fun to see the red dots appearing but to have a real live comment! I know this sounds silly but it is quite motivating to have some feedback. I write the blog for myself really as a way of recording sites I have found that I want to be reminded about. I have never been a diary writer but thought I'd give blogging a go. The fact that others are looking really is motivating and it is this motivation I'd love to try and capture and pass on through the creation of a blog with my class next year.

The last three years I have had the real priveledge to be a full time ICT professional development facilitator. In 2007 I am going back to a classroom teaching role at Freeville School.

I was thinking about this the other day and realised that I have learnt so much myself in the last three years. Things like blogs, podcasts and wikis are all new technologies that I have discovered and had the chance to pass on to others. It is so exciting to me to see classes get excited by the opportunities to commnicate to a global audience.

Check out

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