My little space in the world

http://oamaruint.edublogs.org

This is a blog that I have started with a group of students at my ‘new school’ – Oamaru Intermediate.  Through this blog we are looking to celebrate the students’ literacy skills (written,  oral and visual) and keep the community (and beyond) up to date with the happenings in our school.  We meet once and week, and in between the sessions the students are now looking for many opportunities to plan and prepare some ‘meaty’ topics!

 Another aspect that is developing is the use of a wide range of tools to plan, prepare and present our information.  Already the students have been introduced to Audacity (audio clips), Bubbleshare (the files of still photos) and of course Blogging.  Our range of skills and tools will continue to develop as our blog grows!  Keep an eye on it -and please feel free to give them feedback on what they have put together so far in the first 2 sessions

For those of you who were on our bus trip to Timaru last term, many of you will remember watching a fabulous ‘MAC’ programme called Comic Life being used in a couple of the classrooms at Bluestone.  At the time we were told that this was just for the MAC platform – HOWEVER – I have just found out that there is indeed a version for PCs.  It has a free 30 day trial and then is $24.95 for a license so a reasonable price.  This is a great wee programme for various visual displays, and a great way to study a variety of uses of language while using your own photos.
Check out the PC free trial here.  MAC free trial here.

Here is a little sample of what I have done with some family photos.
(Click on the image to see it with detail)Here is an example of how North Lowburn School in North Canterbury are using Comic Life to reflect on their learning – a learning journal, reflective journal etc.

What a wonderful day!  I have spent today in Dunedin facilitating

Scratch Workshops with some fabulous children from all around Otago.  It was great to work with these creative kids (and teachers) to learn and discover aspects of this wonderful programme.  The conference itself runs over 2 days and is a wonderful opportunity for Yr 5 & 6 children to experience new teachers, programmes and experiences.  One neat quote from a girl this afternoon “I made a video and a friend!!”

My workshops with the programme Scratch were an introduction to using Scratch to produce some animations. Scratch is a great free download (can be used on both platforms) and is relatively simple to use to create animations (and games).  From a teachers point of view it comes with some great support material that can support class use.  Check out the Scratch site here:  http://scratch.mit.edu

 Thanks to Iain Cook-Bonney who has kindly uploaded the Scratch animations from the first workshop today to the Scratch gallery.  Check them out here:  http://scratch.mit.edu/galleries/view/6835

I have uploaded some from this afternoon’s workshop and these can be viewed at http://scratch.mit.edu/galleries/view/6840

You may want to see what others have been up too also – Check out the  blog, the podcasts and the website for the kids @ conference event.

North Otago and the AVRACS cluster were proudly represented by 3 children from each of Duntroon, Ardgowan and Waitaki Valley Schools, so I look forward to hearing of their highlights on their return.

I have been a PC user for my entire ‘computerlife’.  I did have one go with a MAC as I almost inherited one as a leased teacher laptop a few years ago, however breathed a sigh of relief as a new PC arrived in the school and was handed to me!!

I have felt sorry for Maheno staff all year as their PC facilitator arrives and needs to ‘play’ to explore the software (or hardware) first, or as they are sent links to download free software they find that many of them are for PC – so I suppose that this is a bit of a public apology for them.  I will say that I do feel we have continued to be fruitful on my visits and that we have continued to move forward.  Thanks to their wonderful junior teacher Anne who leads this and has become a real MAC convert.

I must say that I had a wonderful couple of sessions with kids and teachers in Kurow the other day at Waitaki Valley.  We were looking to explore the programme ‘Garageband’  and achieved so much though ‘discovery learning’.  It is wonderful how intuitive children are and how creative they can also be when they are given quite wide parameters.  Anyway – I think that I have overcome my own personal MAC stigma (Phew!) and look forward to future MAC experiences!!

I still do enjoy this little South Park clip of PC vs MAC.  If you know ANYTHING about MACs and PCs – then you have to watch this!

For many years I have been a strong advocate of the uses of Intranets in classrooms.  Initially when I was involved in setting one up (about 1999, 2000) the purpose was to share the successes of the children in your class.  It took a while of development, but I did soon find that this was a little bit at cross purposes – what was the point in bringing parents into the classroom to view the intranet with a photo of their child’s art work on it, when they had walked past the art work on entering the room? The same could also be said for a child’s piece of writing – if the only reason is to ‘publish’ then the audience could be wider if it was on the wall, or accessed from the child’s book.  I think that there is an opportunity for powerful learning though if a child’s piece of writing is put there to be used as an exemplar for others in the class to refer to.

 In my last couple of years as a classroom teacher, I made my class intranet pages so that they supported the learning process, rather than celebrated a product.  What I mean by this is that I would make a page of links for particular maths groups to direct them sites appropriate to their current focus, I would link on documents that they might need to access on which to use – eg graphic organisers, outlines of tasks etc.  I would also outline particular tasks and the instructions.  This way there was no excuse not to know what was expected, and all children in the class had the same access to all of the information, and connections.  I often found that this was as good as having another adult in the room.  Children were focussed on the task at hand, had access to all the resources that they needed, and had access to Internet links etc that supported their learning and the task.  Focused and clear learning intentions and scaffolding.

 Yesterday at Duntroon, I worked with Bev to plan out and create their Intranet.  This is certainly a work in progress, however as teachers they have been using Front Page links on desktops to direct children to sites.  This has worked successfully, however requires loading onto each computer once a page is changed/updated and can become cumbersome.  By setting up intranet links, once any changes are made on the intranet, it is read on all computers like this.  We will watch with much anticipation to see how these teachers develop their site, and their use of the Intranet.

Maheno  are in the process of having their library digitised for ease of use and manageability.  Within their new system ‘AccessIt’ is the ability for library users to add their own review of a book.  Anne (in the Junior room) is ensuring that on each library visit, the shared book is added to the ‘Reviewed booklist’ so that others within the school can see what classmates and school mates have to say about the books that they have read.  A great way to utilise the programme that they have, promote reading and the sharing of texts, as well as promoting the material that is already in their library.

My visit to Totara on Monday was a wonderful morning spent with the Year 6 students of the school.  Janet (Principal and class teacher) was concerned that after their work with Front Page to create their Living Heritage website, there were actually only a couple of children in the class who were competent with the programme and that could transfer this use for another time.  In order to have more purposeful practice I worked with this group of great kids at exploring the ways that we can hyperlink in a web page (ie using an image/picture, hotspot, or text) and the variety of reasons for why we might hyperlink (ie link to another page within our site, link to another site, link to a document . . .). 

 Within the school they have an intranet, however it isn’t actively used.  I have now set up ‘practice’ pages for these keen and now competent children to continue to delve into the use of this, with the intention that this will drive the use and updating of the school Intranet.  Janet and Shirley were very excited at seeing just how simple it is to create a link or series of links that can then direct children within classroom activities, easing the organisation (ie not having to type in URLs constantly) and manageability of children on the Internet (or intranet).

 . . . Anyway these children are now experts in hyperlinks and intranet pages, and spent time in the morning writing instructions for the others in the class (The Year 7 & 8s who were away at Technology), trying out each others instructions and setting these instructions out so that they can be easily followed by anyone else.  A great resource to have and now the Intranet can be driven by the enthusiasm and skills of the students, rather than expecting teachers to drive it and update it constantly. 

Nearly @ Term 4 and I am just catching up on the end of Term 3!

Barbara (@Omarama) shared her experience and successes at the Lead Teacher’s Day, but I want to add this to my blog as a reference for all teachers in the cluster.

For those of you who aren’t familiar with it Book BackChat is an English Online project that runs throughout a term.  It runs for all levels and enables picture books and novels to be shared, discussed, critiqued and further understood. The term previously you get the list of books that are going to be in the BackChat and this gives you the opportunity to pre read them with your class (especially necessary for novels with Senior classes).

Once you are part of the Chat for the term, you get focus questions e-mailed to you regularly and as a class (or individuals) you can respond to the text.

This is a great online project that allows discourse within your class and then between other classes – and the texts are great!  (Take note that if you order them for your school through the University Book Shop in Dunedin you get a 20% discount).

Have an explore through the links below:

Term 4 2007 BackChat Books
Previous BackChat – Sitting on the Fence (Great book for Senior Classes – so good I bought it myself to read it!)
Sitting on the Fence – Week 2 Discussion Showing you how the discussions are facilitated.
An example from Omarama with children’s response to the text.  This link gives you an example of the learning activities that took place in the classroom that week in response to the questions that were asked.
Register here

Even if you have your term planned for Term 4, register and keep an eye on the Chats so that you can plan for participation in one in 2008.

What a great day with a great bunch of inspirational leaders in schools!  Lead teachers shared some ideas of successful practice in their classes and were given time to explore a number of ‘places’ that they don’t usually get the time to look at.  Please follow your lead teacher up to make sure that they share with you all of the fabulous ideas that they have acquired from this day.

Here is a great idea from Erina at Five Forks (or should I say Duntroon?)  She has introduced to the Senior room a weekly ‘Juicy News’.  The class together decided on the format for the newsletter to go home and a template was created for this.  A template was also created to organise the ideas for the Student of the Week and an area in the classroom put aside to allow organisational aspects to be displayed.  This has been well received by the families of the Senior children and because of the organisational set up has been easy to maintain (And so Sue hopes for her return to Five Forks in 2008). Templates for Erina’s organisation are available on the AVRACS Centre4 site in a folder called ‘Good ideas’