My little space in the world

Get creative with your photos at www.photofunia.com!! This is a great site that allows you to add in photos (through face recognition). It is more appropriate for older students – and some fun for teachers too!!
Here is my 7 year old son Sam on the moon . . .

. . . and our school secretary on the face of Vogue

(I know I’m not doing a great job of doing this daily – as here is ‘yesterday’s ‘ post – I’ll get another done later today – however I am doing one for each day (if that makes sense!!)

I am a strong believer that oral language is one of the most important, if not THE most important, aspect in education. It is a literacy in itself and often is taken for granted – just because we speak and listen. But how do we teach students to speak and listen better than they currently do? Our students so often listen to others (including overkill by their teachers!!), however how often do they hear what they sound like? How do they hear their intonation when speaking to an audience? How do they hear their fluency (or not), their expression and their pace in their reading?

EASY . . .

Audacity. A simple programme which is very intuative and easily used by teachers and students alike. Students plug in a microphone (available for about $10 from any techie store), and record away. They can listen to it, edit it (including taking out pauses, ums etc) and hear what fluent reading sounds like, or if a struggler with writing they can record their ideas orally – just because they can’t record it on paper, doesn’t mean they don’t have the great ideas!

and the best thing – it is a free download!! http://audacity.sourceforge.net/

Oops – am I failing already???  Here is yesterday’s (Friday’s) post now!!

Every year I use this site as an ignitor to get kids into being competitive with their Basic Facts  at the begining of the year (competitive with themselves that is!) – www.worldmathsday.com .  As a school we use the free access – which is only available until World Maths Day at the beginning of March.  You can also subscribe to Mathletics and have access all year round.  It is great – schools register, teachers register and then you register each student.  They log in and both you and them can track their progress.  Really interesting to see who accesses it at home too!!

On a flight to Brazil in November I enjoyed the light hearted (but based on a true story) movie of Julie and Julia. Young Julie idolised Julia Childs. Julia Child’s early cooking story is intertwinedof with that of blogger Julie Powell’s 2002 challenge to cook all the recipes in Child’s first book. Julie cooks everything and blogs about it as she goes.

Recently on looking at wedding photos online of a wedding we recently attended, I came across the photographer’s blog where she was challenging herself to share a different photo each day in January. What a great idea!!

The latest Interface arrived today and I am continually amazed at how many new ideas, programmes and sites emerge and could be utlised in the classroom . . .  I am also continually frustrated that I never get the time (or should I say MAKE the time) to look, or explore at many of the programmes and sites that come out in this wonderful magazine . . .

so . . . (what am I getting myself into??)

here goes my challenge to myself . . . I intend to add a new site/resource/programme every school day this term (or should it be for the year)??? Let’s start with a term – and see how we go!!  I will be up front and honest now – I won’t be using all of my own experiences – I will probably be using Interface to guide me – this will be my chance to really look into and explore what is being shared.

I’ve already started – the previous post tonight lets you know of a fabulous site that will teach you a lot about a lot of programmes.  Who knows what tomorrow will bring?

The latest copy of Interface arrived at school today and like usual we all (the teachers) got excited to see it in our pigeon holes. It is testament to the plethora of tools there are ‘out there’ in the Web 2.0 world and the challenge that we have as teachers to utilise them as best to engage and enrich our students and their learning.

Here is a wonderful site of video tutorials for a HUGE range of programmes. The videos are of an appropriate length to talk you through skills, utilities and abilities in programmes. You can search through programmes and then through the functions of that programme. This really is a one stop tutorial shop!

The next time you need to find out the more intricate details of a programme – check out http://www.lookah.tv/.

I always associated the above phrase with the sports I played – training both on my own and also in team situations – I have now found it applies to setting up school networks!!

We have this wonderful new Microsoft Exchange Server, and I love Windows 7 as an operating system, however as with anything new we have a few wee glitches as we get used to this, and as we find things that aren’t quite working the way they should be at this stage!!

I know that with a little time (and the technological know how from our techie installers) all be great – but in the meantime we just have to be patient!!

. . . after all – we are ‘teachies’ – not techies!!

Currently there is real conflict between the government and educationalists re the impending National Standards that have been literally ‘thrust’ upon us as teachers.

Where do our governments priorities lie though? The school dates for next year have been changed – why? because of the rugby world cup here in NZ!!

The government is refusing to listen to teachers, researchers and other educationlists about the issues that the standards will create for students, teachers and schools, and yet they think we think that the Rugby World Cup is important enough to change our school terms for!! Swine flu didn’t even impact this much!!

Who made this decision – and really – why????

What do you think?  What implications is this going to have?

This is the last instalment of ‘Deidre on tour’ – and I don’t know where the last four days have gone!! I’m currently sitting in Auckland airport.

Friday is all a bit of a blur to me now – I think the jet lag had kicked in by then and I was operating in a different time zone to the one in which I was in!!

Friday started with us having to present our presentations again – for supposedly an hour. We were told that we would be presenting these to the teachers from the ‘School’s track – the innovative schools’ and if we had a Brazilian doll on our stand, we would have judges coming around too. The Brazilian doll meant you were in the final lot of teachers who were being considered for the awards – and I had one on my stand!!

We had no idea how many judges were coming around – and mine started off VERY badly with the Phillipino judge being my first one and half way through my ‘chat’ with her – she said ‘That’s enough’ and walked off!!! I didn’t take that as a positive!! What I wasn’t counting on were the remaining 11 judges who all ‘chatted’ at different times – and so what was to have been an hour – was well and truly over 2 because not only did you have the teachers from the schools coming around, you also had the teachers who weren’t in the running coming around and enquiring about the project too! At one stage one of the judges came up to me and said ‘I have been trying to chat with you for over an hour, but others keep on beating me to it’ – so as you could imagine the intensity was quite high.

Later in the morning we met back with our group in regards to the Collaboration project and spent the afternoon sharing these with others, and looking over a range of projects that involved some new Microsoft ‘free’ software (I like free software, as it means that you can promote it with schools and teachers, without them having to consider if it is ‘worth’ buying. They can get it, look at it, use it and THEN consider the benefits that it might bring to teaching and learning in their classrooms.)The programmes we looked at included ‘SongSmith’ (you write the lyrics, pick the backing track and then sing it – and wahlah – you end up with a soundtrack!!), Autocollage, which collages photos – good for having students categorise or as a ‘stimulus’ for discussion in the classroom, along with Deep Zoom Composer which is another image manipulation programme.

The final keynote (at 5pm) was from Jean ?? . By this stage I wasn’t just in another time zone, I think I was on another planet – but the adrenalin and the company of the stimulating others was enough to keep me going. His keynote was fascinating – he is apparently one of the most influential men in the world in regard to global affairs. Did you know that currently the world is using 125% of the reserves we have? It is estimated that by 2020 we will be using 200% of our reserves – that doesn’t paint a good picture for 2050 does it? He believes that it only requires about 10 trillion US$ to solve this problem and to begin to break the habits and cycles that are present and contributing to the problems. He believes that this should be more than possible considering the US$17 trillion that was used to save the US banks last year – where are our priorities?

We had less than an hour then to get ourselves ‘glammed’ up for the gala dinner. As I was to be checked out and gone by 7am Saturday I decided it would be a good idea to have myself all packed before then – so it was a bit of a rushed job but I got there.

Yet again the Aussies were fantastic – for the final evening they kindly changed their title from the ‘Australian team + the kiwi’ to the ‘ANZAC team’. We were bussed to the National Art Gallery where there was the most fantastic marquee set up. We were greeted by Brazilian women in their large dresses – dressing us with beads and silk ribbons, before being entertained by drummers, dancers – and oddly enough wind instrument players. There was a huge police presence about, as well as many of the young children from around sitting up high on the fences above us, looking down to the venue and the action. From within the marquee we were then entertained by the Bahia Symphony Orchestra (a gift to the conference by the President of Bahia State).

The awards were announced and while I wasn’t one of the winners – I was in great company. ‘Aussie Mark’ won the Collaboration award, and Mandee the girl from the UK who I had spent Tuesday exploring the city with, won the Community award. Both were well and truly worthy of their awards and I look forward to keeping in some form of contact with them – to watch further developments that they may be involved in.

The Gala dinner certainly had the ‘Brazilian feel’ to it – plenty of ‘wild’ dancing to crazy music and lots of fun. We were taken back to the hotel about 1am, however people were on that much of a high it would have been rude to have left the celebrations and the friends that I had made over the past four days (of whom many I feel like I have known for much longer!). We obviously had to celebrate Mark’s win, and did so in style!

It was then a short sleep before I headed to check out and catch my plane in Salvador airport – however when I got to the departure lounge there wasn’t a plane to be seen! The language barrier was much more than I had ever expected. While Portuguese is the mother tongue of the Brazilians, Spanish is their second language and very few know English. We found this quite prevalent even in our hotel, with there only being one or two of the hotel staff that you could ask questions of. Thank goodness for the events company as they were able to deal with any issues that did arise. Anyway the difficulty with the delay at the airport, was that the notices seemed to be coming over in two different languages – but not English!!! Luckily one of the keynotes was on the flight too, and he was a fluent Spanish speaker and so I was able to ask him of the notices coming over. Luckily – as there were another 8 people from the conference on the same flight and I never heard one of them speak a word of English!! On getting on the plane I then had my stomach sink as it seemed that about 12 of us had our seats double booked. Who was going to fight for the seat?? As it turned out the Canadians had arrived at the airport as they saw our flight heading to Sao Paulo, and with the language difficulties had decided that this was the flight that they needed to be on!! The frightening thing was that they had gone through two lots of security with their boarding pass and no one had noticed!! So after they got off the plane I had a seat and after a 2 hour delay we were on our way to Sao Paulo!! With the delay I worked out that I had to get myself to the departure lounge, with about 30 mins up my sleeve. I did this and then we had another 2 hour delay in Sao Paulo!

With all the delays I then didn’t have much time to fill in in Santiago, and had no trouble in sleeping the 14 hour flight away to Auckland. Is was nice to be back in NZ – even if it was 3am – and getting a bed at the hotel here was like heaven!!! The relatively short flights then to Chch and Oamaru were quick and enjoyable.

I found Brazil really expensive (and here I was thinking that I might pick up a few bargains!!) I had bought tee shirts in the markets for Roly, Sam and Allie (just 1 each) and these had cost me 85 Real (about NZ$75). I was keen to get Sam a Brazilian soccer jersey – however at 160 Real (about NZ$150) I decided that would be a bit extravagant!! Here I was thinking that I was going to be bringing back HUGE bags of cheap souvenirs and tees!! I did go away with 22.8kg of luggage (LAN Chile have a limit of 23kg!!!) and this included my kiwifruit soaps as my ‘gifts’ for fellow attendees. I seem to have acquired a bit from others as leaving Brazil my case weighed in at 28kg!! Luckily TAM (the Brazilian airline doesn’t worry about that – and at no stage have I been charged extra!!) I did repack by bag in NZ to get it under 25kg, so was pleased no one wanted to weigh my hand luggage!! I really don’t know where all the extra weight comes from – although each night you would come back to your room and find a Microsoft gift – sunblock, caps, tees etc, and of course there are the wide range of gifts acquired from other attendees – pencil holders the shape of Columbian sombreros, dynamo torches, pens, pen drives, pins, clips, beads . . . .!!!!!!

The experience has been great! I have met some fantastic people and had my mind opened up to many new life experiences. For example the Columbian women was at the conference as her innovation was that she had the village parents make handcrafts that were sold so that they could purchase 15 computers in their school! The teacher from Losotho, who used mobile phones, as they didn’t have power in their school, and the kids could bring the mobiles from home all charged up and use at school, right through to the likes of Mark and Mandee, who literally have world changing projects and innovative practices influencing the students they teach and the teachers that they work with. Michael Furdyk (who worked with the student forum in KL – the multimillionaire by 20, and now only 24 – has been named as one of the 20 most likely people to influence the 21st Century who was also at the conference) has approached Mandee in regards to how she can be a part of his ‘Taking It Global’ – the worldwide project which is connecting students worldwide.

It has truly been a privelege to be a part of this programme, and I feel that my personal as well as my professional life has been enriched as a result!

The judging yesterday was really interesting. We were either an A or a B – I was an A and so was to stand at my presentation from 1.30-3pm within which time I would chat with my 3 judges, the media and of course other teachers. The Bs then were to go from 3.30-5pm. Unfortunately (or maybe fortunately) us A’s got the short straw and couldn’t get away from our stands until nearly 4.30. The room was light – tiled floor, tiled walls and tiled roof –but REALLY noisy and so with language barriers at times you were really straining to hear people’s questions, and they were straining to hear you. It was quite different in KL where we got our ten minutes with the judges to ‘sell ourselves’ – this was instead 3 really neat conversations with the judges about the teaching and learning that happens as a result of my project – and gave you the opportunity to really talk passionately about what you believe in – as well as what you do. The three judges all came around separately and with two of them I didn’t even know I had been judged until after our conversations!! I feel really happy with what I was able to share with them, and certainly feel worthy of my place here!! The language barrier was no problem at all – 1 US judge, 1 Canadian judge and 1 Danish judge who spoke very fluently and who obviously understood what I said by the questions she asked.

We find out tomorrow morning if we are shortlisted – there will be something on our presentation if we are. Those who are selected then have to re-present their poster to another panel of judges mid-morning for another couple of hours!

Yesterday we were put into our groups by the tables we were sitting at –for the collaborative projects. Luckily ‘Aussie Mark’ and I were together and we were joined by a Canadian, and two other very good English speakers from India. There goes half the battle – we all speak and understand English!! Somehow we have to take from our visit to the old part of the city and the markets today an idea to create a collaborative project from. Our concept that we are looking at is ‘Sign of the Times’ where we are taking the idea of the signs – an international language – and basing our work around this. Hopefully this will shape out fine!!

I have been very kindly taken under the wing of the Aussies mainly, however Stewart Ball the APN from the UK team has been wonderful too (he is a Welshman obsessed with rugby – so I wonder if that has any influence???!), One of the Aus teachers from the School’s track has nicknamed me ANZAC – so at least their creating some sort of Alliance with me!

Microsoft Aus are picking up my dinner tabs!!! Aren’t they wonderful?? Jane has been great and has been really inclusive in involving me with what they are doing.

Today has been a great day – but I am not the only one on the Berocca’s now!! The Australian contingent got wind of my Berocca’s and who was I to not share them after all that they are doing for me?!!! Yes – it has been hectic and VERY tiring – however we have had lots of laughs too!!

It is nearly 1am, however I have only just got back to my hotel room, and Skyped Roly and the kids. Seeing as I don’t really have anyone here to ’share my day with’ I think I’m finding this e-mail/blog thing quite therapeutic for me!!! I know I won’t be able to sleep until it is done – so hence the update!

I continue to be grateful to the Australians who are treating me as one of their own. Tonight in the bar I was introduced to a Dutch teacher by one of the Aussie teachers as Deidre from our far east island – New Zealand!! ANZAC has stuck – and I think that will stick as my name for the rest of the conference – thank goodness only one big day to go!!

Today we had a ‘field trip’. Our big challenge is to work in groups of 5 to create a unit of work that would work in any of our countries, where ICT enhances the teaching and learning. While we don’t have any language barriers (like we had in KL with this) we do have 2 VERY PUSHY Indian ladies who I am scared of!! Aussie Mark is a charming, quiet, but clever person – and is handling them very well considering!! Anyway we had to go on this field trip and take an idea from it to use. We have taken the focus of the ‘international language of signs’ as our focus and are shaping work around that. If it turns out to be any good I will flick it on to you teachers out there! Our field trip took us to the markets this morning (what a place to have to go!!!). It was very expensive though and it was interesting to see our tour guide have his pockets filled with cash as we left each of the places – his commission obviously!! I puchased tee-shirts for Roly and the kids and some funky (but simple) pieces of art for the walls at home. We then were taken on a guided tour of the old part of Salvador. The buildings are amazing and leave the historical buildings in Oamaru for dead. We went into a Catholic Church that makes the Basilica in Oamaru look like a plain old church!! Everything was detailed ten times more – and also guilded in gold!! It was interesting walking around and I was pleasantly surprised how clean it was, and how very few hawkers we saw, and how safe we felt. The fact that there seemed to be a high police presence might have contribute to that!! The Canadian teachers had been there on Sunday and said that it was a total contrast to what they saw, and what we have since found out was that Microsoft had the streets cleaned, the beggars moved on . . . and of course the Police in place in order to ensure we were safe!! So the reality is that we have seen a beautiful part of the world, walked the amazingly cobbled streets, however probably not experienced anything like the real world there!!

There have been a few people going down with tummy bugs here. Obviously the tap water isn’t safe to drink, and so we are avoiding things like lettuce etc too, however much of the fruit smells really awful. One of the Australian women thought she would play it safe with breakfast this morning and stick with just the fruit, however ended up being brought back from the market in a minivan, and then wheelchaired to her room, where she spent the day on the toilet! Food poisoning is the suspected problem!!! In contrast tonight we went to a fantastic restaurant where we sat on a balcony over the sea, and had the most devine food. Yet again – Microsoft Australia picked up the tab (and at 1750,00 Real – about $1500 for 8 of us, I was pleased I wasn’t having to try and bring back a receipt to claim that one back!!).

This afternoon we sat through some VERY dry corporate speakers, who really didn’t do much to inspire us to be honest. It would have been more valuable to have heard from the Innovative Schools and to hear what practices they have in place. We then had 1 1/2 hours to work with our team on our Collaborative Project, of which we (Aussie guy, Canadian girl and I) have accepted that it will never be what it should or could be – however we need to respect the pushy Indian ladies and we’ll just see how it goes.

Tomorrow morning we have to present our projects again to half of the teachers, and then we go around and view the projects while the other half present. Then each country is allowed one vote. Me as NZ gets one – and Aussie as 8 get one – so another ANZAC alliance has been drawn up – I won’t say any more!!! We then find out if we need to present our work to more judges, and if so – we do it all again for an hour!! Somewhere then we also need to work with our group to get that work all completed as it needs to be handed in for judging mid afternoon – the pressure cooker stuff is happening!!! I can see the 40+ hour trip home being filled with sleep!!!! We have one final keynote as late as 5pm (til 6pm) before being given an hour to get sorted for the Gala dinner in the evening. It is all a bit of a mystery really – we know we are not allowed to wear high heels, have to wear as much white as possible, and get taken there on buses!! I’ll need to get myself sorted before all of that as I am out of the hotel about 7am on Saturday in order to be home about 7pm on Monday night!!!

One thing if for sure – I am well showered here. We are all finding – even with the air con we still need to shower mid afternoon because as soon as you step outside into the humidity you are sticky!!! I’m then finding that I need to shower before I go out at night and of course first thing in the morning. I am pleased to say that the walk around outside this morning has added ever so slightly to the pale colour my skin was, and I feel a little bit like I have had a few days in Otematata!!! (That might be where the similarities end!!)

Well everyone – that is my day today – and tomorrow looks like a biggie too. I had better get to bed, so that I can at least get a few hours sleep in order to get me through tomorrow.