My little space in the world

Have a look at this great little site -http://www.toondoo.com/ – another neat way to create cartoons.  Many of you have been using Comic Life lately (remember it is on PC and MAC versions now) however this allows children to create their own little stories or sequences without using photos of people that they know – images are instead used. I would see this as being of value to share a message in the likes of a topic based inquiry. How better to share a message? or tell a story?
Here is my first ToonDoo trial:
 

With Wikis being more prevalent around schools, I am becoming increasingly curious as to ‘good practice’ and ‘best uses’ of wikis in enhancing classroom environments, activities and learning in general.  I am a member of both the NZ CompED and ICT in English List Servs through Massey.  They are both well worth it as far as gaining new ideas and uses of programmes.    When you subscribe to listservs such as these you keep up to date with what’s happening in ICT in NZ Schools.  It is easy and it is free.  For NZCompEd just send an e-mail to nzcomped@massey.ac.nz with the following command in the body of your e-mail message
subscribe nzcomped 
(make sure there is nothing else such as signatures in the body of your e-mail).

ANYWAY . . . one of the latest postings has really impressed me.  One of the teachers has used this site – http://www.msrogers.com/English2/poetry/30_days_of_poetry.htm to support her Level 4 Creative writing programme and in doing so has had each child set up their own wiki of which they are using as their ’stage’ to show their poetry creations.  Check out this for a wonderful example.

Would you consider using this to create a larger audience for your students?  We have to start thinking like our students – so maybe it isn’t a ‘would you’ but a ‘why wouldn’t you?’

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.

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.

These little animations are the result of a quick little 20 minute activity with a few senior children at Glenavy.  Aren’t kids wonderful the way they quickly pick up new things?  These children had about 20 minutes to make anything between 20 & 40 paint pictures, and then put them into a little program that they had never seen before – GIF animator (Downloadable here for free).  Have a little look and see what you think – imagine what they could do if they had a reasonable amount of time!!  I look forward to seeing the next developments with these!

 (Click on the image to make it move)

Here I hope to keep up to date with my visits to schools in the cluster and what they are all up to.  Hopefully this will allow a sharing of ideas and skills across the cluster.

Palmerston: Bevan has made a great start to setting up a school intranet here.  A great tool in classrooms to use to direct children to particular sites, and manage literacy and mathematics groups with directed instruction.

Papakaio: I spent some time here assisting some Yr 3-6 students create radio ads for their PReP products using Audacity.  This was another example of Just in Time learning for me.  I had had a play with this software before, however never had a use to use it – what a great piece of FREE software and it was used with great success.  Have a listen! Radio Ad

BUBBLESHARE: Check out what you can do with Bubbleshare.  I have created an album of photos from our Timaru Bus trip and loaded it onto the front of our AVRACS site.  Here I have created an album of a collection of photos from schools around the cluster.  Isn’t it great?  What a fun way to share static images.  Check this out at www.bubbleshare.com.  Easy to use and an attractive outcome!

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