Leave your favourite ‘Teachie’ website on Mark Sparvell’s website.  Mark was Australia’s teacher representative at the World Innovative Teacher Conference that I attended in Brazil in 2009 and has continued on an upward journey with many other exciting projects and roles since – including a recent trip to NASA Spacecamp!!!  (Mark was awarded the ‘World’ Innovative Teacher’s award).  Keep an eye on his site as I’m sure this will continue to draw on innovative uses on teaching practices in the classroom and beyond!

Anyway – get onto his site – leave your favourite and keep an eye on what others are recommending!  www.sparvell.com

I wrote yesterday of the time I had spent with my own children yesterday with all being stuck inside with the blizzard conditions.  On Sunday Sam (9) decided he wanted to start his own blog to let people know what he has been up to.  Last year as a Year 3 he was in a class where his teacher started a fantastic blog to keep parents informed of learning within the class (this blog is still VERY active so check it out at http://freddiefrog.edublogs.org ).  Sam became VERY interested in having his work shared with an audience (the parents and our family around the country).  He enjoyed seeing his work up, photos of himself and with this he became interested in posting comments and feedback to others too.

He has created his own blog (http://samsenior.edublogs.org) and is VERY excited to have had about 7 people comment on his blog already.  He has an audience for his writing and for the first time in a long time his writing at home is about more than just rugby (Sam spends A LOT of time writing commentaries or news reports about every rugby game going!!).  This is a wonderful example of how our children now have different interests and curiosities than we did, just because of the media they have access to.  He is exploring different image programmes in order to try and add interest to his photos, so it will be interesting to see where he goes with this.

Please check out his blog and leave a comment – he would love that – remember that all of this is his own work and his own ideas, and own skills – it is quite frightening really – isn’t it?????

It does pose a few questions for us as teachers:

• How do we know we are meeting the needs of our students?
• How can we best meet their needs in today’s world with the access we have in classrooms?
• What will it be next?
• How can we as teachers ensure that we are creating opportunities that allow our students to develop many of the key competencies, without feeling like we have ‘lost control’ of the teaching and learning?

And don’t forget to visit the blog of a 9 year old!

With being ‘snowed’ in I have had the chance today to explore some websites with Sam (aged 9) and Allie (aged 4) and see what ‘spins their wheels’! 

The Reading Eggs website looks fantastic.  It is another site from 3P, the hosts of the popular ‘Mathletics’ website.  As with Mathletics, students’ families or school pay for a subscription to allow them to log in and use the site.  Luckily I had a free trial code for Reading Eggs and Allie is enjoying the opportunity to ‘learn to read’ some more!!  It seems to have progressive activities that are unlocked as the child works through the activities/levels.  It is very interactive and allows the child to hear the sounds of the letters and apply that knowledge to their reading activities.

Allie has become quite hooked – I don’t know what I will do when the trial runs out!!!  (Pay up maybe????!!!)

Did you know that the NZ Ministry of Education have purchased licences for Google Sketch up Pro so that NZ schools and students can use this within their learning?

This is a sophisticated programme that allows students to plan ideas and see them in 3D before even considering how it might come together.  I know in speaking with some people in industry that Sketch up Pro is comparable to many of the expensive industry based programmes and now we have access to it in our classrooms!

To access your licence in order to have this deployed across your school please e-mail DSV.MOESupport@datacom.co.nz

I love this site!! Acouple of years ago it started off as a 3D creation site, Lego on the web really – but has developed into a rich site developing creative and critical thinking skills as well as increasing the understanding of spatial awareness (that research has shown needs to be developed in children).

There are higher level challenges that involve your working your way through the levels to understand gears etc in the technic part of the site – www.legotechnic.com

I love the Creationary online -this has kids thinking and visualising 3D objects – again – great for that spatial awareness.

I haven’t used this programme (yet) as I have only just come over it tonight and it looks fantastic.  It is a free programme and the trial on the front page has a very clear voice that reads back the text well.  I can see many uses for this in all classrooms, giving access to text for many students that might not usually be able to read the text.

As usual Andrea provided lots of ideas and links to online tools.  I love this site that I have never seen before – it is an online journal -but it is private, so there for you to access and add to when you want to.  You can get e-mail reminders to update your journal – imagine how great this could be in Technology as a record of what students have done in each session.  You can add images and links etc.
www.penzu.com  
It lets you know things like how many words you have typed too!  I have only just started using this – but it looks hugely valuable in many areas of the curriculum!  Love it!

I’ve been looking at this site a little bit lately and believe that there are endless possibilities of integrating it into classrooms.  My bloggers on our School Reading Blog import a photo of the book that they have read and write a post about the book.  Some of the bloggers also insert audio into the post.  This site – Fotobabble.com allows for audio to be attached to an image and then the image embedded into your site/blog post etc.  What a simple way to use it!

I have just been reading an article in the April/May edition of Education Technology Solutions (an Australian magazine I recently picked up while at a conference in Australia.) The magazine has some wonderful articles about ICT leadership, teaching, decision making etc, and amongst the articles was one where a teacher had used FotoBabble on her blog in order to communicate more readily with another teacher and their blog in the States.

I’ve had a wee play with FotoBabble tonight – nothing flash – but it took all of 30 seconds to do this (including embedding it!!).

I have the Interface online RSS feed on the right menu of my blog – but I don’t know if I have ever highlighted this site on my blog.  I can’t rave enough about this magazine – both the hard copy (which I just love!!!) and the online site.  There is just a plethora of information for teachers, managers, decision makers, students (if they get hold of it!!)  . . . and so much material to guide and inspire you.  I have kept EVERY copy of this magazine since it arrived in my letterbox in 2007 (I was an ICT facilitator at the time) and haven’t missed reading each one from cover to cover (and some I read for a second, third time . . ).  I frequently refer to them before making purchasing decisions and was really interested to read the latest Facebook article, in the same week that I pitched to our BOT the need for us to be out there on FB!!  It is topical, informative and inspiring!    I’ve even had the privelege to trial some hardware and write a review for the magazine as well as article that was published back at the beginning of 2010 – Article here

Check out the Interface Online website – and it you don’t already get it – make sure you order your one now!  (We now order them for EVERY teacher in our school it is in such high demand!!)

I’m playing a bit of catch up – so much for my ‘Daily’ post!  Storybird looks fantastic – another online publishing tool.  I haven’t yet used it – but it is a collection of illustrations that anyone has permission to use.  You can then publish these online or have them published in hard copy form, along the same lines as Snapfish do with photos.