Free Typing Game
This morning I had a go at level 1 of Freetypinggame and I passed! Wrists are a little sore though
ICT helping kids learn
Preparing for the cluster day last week was an opportunity to reflect on how we had used ICT in the classroom to help student outcomes. Many of our students are averse to writing and reading or anything else to do with literacy and one particular successful ICT unit came to mind. The topic was food and we were making a chocolate cake. Beforehand we looked at the recipe as a class and talked about what we were going to be doing. During the “making” a photographic record was kept. After the “sampling” back in class we talked about what we had done. I wrote all the comments on the board in no particular order. Then we sequenced the statements into numerical order using 1,2,3 etc. The kids created their own Powerpoint document using the photos and statements. As an extension some of the students used the EasiSpeak microphone to record the statements as a commentary with the picture. The enthusiasm to start and complete the project was without precedence as was the sense of pride exhibited by the kids when they watched and listened to their finished product. Of course the subject matter may have had something to do with the enthusiasm as both they and their teachers are fond of chocolate. The students were very keen to show their work to anyone they could, not a frequent occurrence for many of these students.
Lead Teacher ICT Day
We had our Cluster Lead Teacher Day today
highlights: shares…tumblebooks, tutpup, math-attack, quietube, Coaching, Digistore, teara, food
relevancy: most of it relevant to us
implications: very dependant on present school situation (see previous post)
fantastic day, but motivation is a little low at present as the wind has been knocked out of my sails!
Waimokoia School
We have received a letter from the Minister of Education stating that she is looking at closing our school because it ‘is not currently offering a balanced and quality education setting for it’s students.’ Also ‘it has also been under a statutory intervention’ (commissioner instead of a Board of Trustees) ‘for a number of years and investigation shows that this situation is unlikely to change.’ Well talk about a slap in the face! We’re determined to fight it but when you listen to some of the other different and varied reasons we have been told (by our commissioner and a representative from the MOE) it certainly looks like they have made their minds up and the “community consultation process” we are going through is just a formality before the closure happens.
The trump card for the MOE is that both our Commissioner and our Acting Principal are both Ministry employees and are not at liberty to lead any charge against the MOE or Anne Tolley the minister.
Watch this space for updates and also for details of the Hikoi I will lead to the Beehive.
I really do hope that the Ministry decide to try to give our kids a chance at an education….
Eastnet Cluster ICT Expo
I had a fantastic day last week at the Eastnet Cluster ICT Expo. All credit to Belinda for the fabulous organisation.
A momentary lapse of reason at the Learning@School09 conference dinner set the wheels in motion for me to present to mainstream teachers about the issues involved when dealing with students with difficult behaviours. At this same “think tank” we also came up with a title for the presentation, although the final version had to be edited for mainstream public consumption!
My first run of the “Kids stuff up! Get over it!” session went smoothly and was a great confidence boost. I found it difficult to look at what I do that works and put it into a presentation of only 45 minutes. I had to quiz a workmate about what she reckons it is that I do (thanks Bry). From this list I expanded and added my own thoughts to produce a framework to base the powerpoint on. Leading up to the session I thought I was not going to have enough material to fill the time but after examples and personal experiences were added we went a little over time. The attendees appeared attentive and “hanging on every word” was the way one described it. A couple of questions were fielded later that day so it obviously made some teachers think about their practice. Just what I wanted.
A highlight for me was a slide show I had created with one line pointers for teachers to consider. An issue arose when trying to illustrate these slides. I needed to keep in mind privacy and copywrite concerns so I decided to use photos from my own albums. It didn’t surprise me (or my work colleagues) that I had many images that demonstrated different aspects of behaviour problems. These fit perfectly with the statements I was trying to get across.
I was a little nervous leading up to this day but am so glad that I made the leap to do it and am now looking forward to the next stage in this learning journey.
I will link the powerpoint here, but because of the risk of possible recriminations I will restrain myself from linking my slideshow. Maybe you will be able to catch it at the next Learning@schools10 conference!
kids-stuff-up powerpoint
Waimokoia Staff ICT Day
Yesterday we held a Residential Staff ICT Day and it was a great success. This is the first time we have had a “mini conference” like this within our school and judging by the positive feedback it looks like it won’t be the last.
The seed of thought was sewn for the day when a co-worker asked me to show her how to copy a picture from google images and paste it onto a certificate she was creating. When it was done she said that this was the kind of stuff the staff should be learning on call-back days. Many of the staff work in classrooms during the day or have to help students with homework in the evenings so upskilling (yuk I hate that word) them is a potentially productive activity.
As part of my ICT Lead Teacher role I took charge of the planning. Residential staff were asked what they wanted to learn more about and Teaching staff asked what they could teach. Digital Photography, Flip Mino filming, emailing, internet searching, opening and saving files, powerpoint, publisher, smart board, moviemaker, word and blogging were the topics that resulted. 26 of the staff were asked to each choose three topics from the list. 8 teachers were asked to name the topics they would run classes on and then the fun began. I had never before encountered the dilema of logistics of timetabling on such a grand scale. I was readying myself to spread hundreds of post it notes across the lounge floor but I could not fathom how that would solve the multitude of clashes. A scan of the google results for “timetabling school” produced http://www.asctimetables.com/
which made life less complicated. The free download allowed access to most functions. The US$499 price tag put me off the full version. Lots of data entry and a fair amount of personalising to adapt the program to my aplication and also some substitution to cancel clashes produced perfect results. It still needed some thought to make the timetable happen but I am unsure how I would have achieved the same results without a computer. When I was happy with the results I went to print but this was one of the applications that I didn’t have access to. I hand copied from the screen and then retyped it into excel. Printed and done. The only issue on the day was a miss-type of a room number!
A very productive day of ICT and staff are already looking forward to the next one.
Useful stuff from lead teacher day
BJ would be proud of me, I have already spread the word about
to help solve a technical issue in room 1!!
Lead Teacher Day
Today we got together at Elm Park School as a group of keen lead teachers. We looked at Web2 tools and what a massive number of fantastic classroom tools there are! I will attempt to paste the link below…
We spent time looking at the role of a Lead Teacher which I found very helpful as I came in late to the contract as ICT LT and had missed out on a lot of this
A great day and now I’m rearing to get back to school to show everyone all the new tricks I’ve picked up!
Wiki
Well it has been a while since I visited here but I have resolved to get here on a more regular basis.
This morning I was navigating my way around our school wiki and with the assistance of a student I sorted out how to create a link to a web page with the title customised how I wanted. So frustrating but pure satisfaction when it finally worked!
To show how proud I am I’ll do it one more time here…
