Sharing the Addition

Wiki and blog workshop

2008-10-07T11:34:00.003+13:00

Here we are sitting in the computer suite.

New posts on my new blog

2008-05-12T16:01:00.001+12:00

Just to let you know that I have posted about using Pages for collaborative writing on my new blog at:
http://sharetheaddiction.edublogs.org

New Posts on my New Blog

2008-04-30T09:32:00.003+12:00

Just in case anyone is still checking in here and hasn't followed me over to Edublogs, I have three new posts there to check out.

Again, the address of my new blog is:
http://sharetheaddiction.edublogs.org

Blog Address Would Help

2008-04-14T22:50:00.003+12:00

OK - so the last one was the second to last post :-) THIS is the last one. New blog address is:
http://sharetheaddiction.edublogs.org

This Blog is Moving!

2008-04-14T22:40:00.002+12:00

This is the last post in this blog. I have decided to make the move to EduBlogs for security reasons and because I like the templates better. You might spot a familiar figure in the header :-)

So goodbye to blogger and hello edublogs. Please follow me across and change your subscriptions (all you hoards of subscribers).

UStream about Calendar apps

2008-04-10T13:01:00.002+12:00

This is my first attempt to use UStream along with a free application for adding effects to your videos called CamTwist. In the video, I talk about two other applications Spanning Sync (to sync between iCal and Google Calender) and GooSync (to sync between mobile and Google Calendar).

What do you think of this attempt? Am I really an angel?? :-)

Correction to YouTube post

2008-04-05T10:26:00.003+13:00

I realised the other day that I put the wrong Firefox Add-on in my earlier post on how to get YouTube videos. I should have been Download Helper and not Video Downloader.

I used to use Video Downloader but it stopped working - sorry about the confusion. I will edit my earlier post to fix the error there as well.

Big Huge Labs

2008-04-05T10:19:00.002+13:00

I know that most people already know about Big Huge Labs but I thought I'd remind people about it again. I had fun this morning making a motivational poster out of one of my photos from Vietnam. I really must get to using this with kids!

The Power of Email

2008-04-02T16:50:00.003+13:00

I love the internet - it is such a leveler! Getting in touch with people who work with different tools has now become very easy and effective.

I have posted a number of times in the past about a favourite photo editing tool of mine called FotoFlexor. It has to be one of the easiest way to manipulate photos and work in layers and it's FREE online. However, recently I have been concerned about the advertising at the top of the site for 'Girls Gone Wild' where woman were topless with only their hands for cover. I decided to try and get in touch with someone from the site about this issue and the email exchange below shows the results:

Hi there,

I wanted to bring your attention to the banner advertising on your site (particularly the Girls Gone Wild ads) that means that we can't use Fotoflexor for education. I have a number of teachers ask me in my role as an ICT advisor what site will allow them to edit photos and work in layers and FotoFlexor is the obvious choice but the advertising of topless women holding their breasts means that we can't use it in education.

I'd really appreciate it if you could drop me a line just to let me know if that type of advertising will stay on the site so that I know to advise teachers that they won't be able to use the application.

I am a HUGE fan of Fotoflexor and voted for it in the web awards and was very excited about using it with students. I do understand that you have to make money as well.

Hi Suzie,

Thanks for your interest in FotoFlexer. I completely understand your concerns and I'm 100% sure we can find a solution. Let me talk it over with some people internally and see what filtering we can do with the ads (to be honest, I didn't know we had ads like that!). I'll be in touch with a solution for you shortly.

Hi Suzie,

I tracked down the issue with GGW wild ads, they were running on an Australian regional campaign, which is why I had never seen them. We have instituted exclusions for all "sin" ads in the future (sex, alcohol, cigarettes, anything not appropriate for all ages). We serve a young audience generally and these should never be served on FotoFlexer at all, at any time. The ad company that sells our ad inventory has said that the exclusions should be in place with very little delay and so the issue should be resolved.

I really appreciate you brining this to my attention!

-Neil Warren
FotoFlexer.com

And so a great result! Now I can feel free to recommend FotoFlexor without any further problems. It just shows that it is definitely worth sending a quick email to the people behind the tools if there is something that you think could be improved.

Getting YouTube Videos

2008-03-24T20:07:00.007+13:00

In many schools, YouTube is blocked by filters due to concerns with inappropriate content being on the site that kids could access. However, there are a lot of fabulous video resources that could be used in an educational context that are also being blocked. Still, if you have access to YouTube at home, there are ways to download the videos to your laptop to be played in class. This also solves problems with slow streaming speed (videos stopping and starting as they load).

Step One - Downloading
Downloading the video using a Firefox Extension
If you have Firefox (or Flock) as your web browser, there is a very handy Add-on that you can install for free into Firefox that will allow you to download videos from YouTube and other similar sites. It is called Download Helper . When it is installed and you are on a page with a specific video, you will see a group of coloured balls rotating next to the URL address. Click on the down arrow next to the balls and you will see the flv file for that video that you can then click on to download.

Downloading the Video Using Online Services
This site asks you to paste in the web address of your video and then it will download it. It also offers a free FLV player to download to view videos.

Zamzar is another site for getting videos but it has the added advantage of letting you choose what format you would like the video. It converts the video and then sends you an email with a link to download it.

Downloading the video using Mac software Tube TV
If you have a Mac, you have another option if you download a free application called TubeTV. You open up the application and then use the search within the program to locate a video that you want. Then you can click on the black download arrow. This program also has additional features such as automatically converting the video to other formats from flv which makes it easy to play back.

Step Two - Playing Back Movie
If you don't use TubeTV to convert the file, you will have an flv file which won't play in either Quicktime or Windows Media Player. I will quickly cover options for fixing this for both Mac and PC users.

Perian Plugin for Quicktime on a Mac
First, go to the Perian website and download this plugin and follow installation instructions. Perian will now be added to the bottom section of your System Preferences window. Open your downloaded video in Quicktime and the flv file will now play. VLC player can also be downloaded for Macs but Perian means that you can still stay within Quicktime rather than have to use a different player.

VLC Player on a PC
This is freeware software that you can download and install. If you open up your downloaded video file in VLC, it will play without any problems. If you still want to play your video within a popular player such as Windows Media Player, there are other applications and plugins that you can install. Check out this website to get instructions.

Questionout

2008-03-24T16:09:00.004+13:00

From the same design company that created Samorost 1 and 2 (with 2 being more appropriate educationally) comes another Flash based game designed specifically as an educational game for children. This game has been commissioned by the BBC and is available on their Bitesize Revision website. Thanks to Allanah King for bringing this to my attention through her blog.

You move through eight levels with each level having a set theme for the questions and graphics such as genres and writing, numeracy, and the sciences. You have to first click items or characters within the level to cause a chain of events that will get one of the characters within the level to start asking you questions. This is often a big puzzle in itself - one level that seemed particularly difficult to get started with was one that had a cat in it and my clue to you is that the cat is the key. With each correct answer, you get more hot air in your balloon which, when full, takes you up to the next level. With each incorrect answer, you loose some of the hot air. This would be really motivating for kids (my husband played it right through all eight levels after he saw it sitting open on the screen and he is a big kid!)

Level Descriptors

2008-03-22T20:26:00.002+13:00

Through chatting to a new Twitter friend, she gave me some links to some of her wiki pages. One of the most useful things I found looking through them was a set of ICT skill level descriptors that are used in her school. While I believe that skills need to be taught in context and that descriptors shouldn't limit teachers, I also believe that a base line of what MUST be covered by the end of a stage can be helpful to aid the development of an ICT programme across a school. Someone else has done the thinking for you on this wiki and these descriptors could easily be tailored to suit the context of your individual school. This link will lead you to the kindergarton descriptors with other levels linked to on the left.

Kerpoof

2008-03-13T21:26:00.003+13:00

Yes - this is a kid friendly site despite the name sounding as if it might not be!

It is great fun and would be a great way to encourage writing for children. You can make pictures and cards by choosing a background and dragging on characters which you can resize, rotate and add speech bubbles to.

You can also put backgrounds with scenes on them together in a sequence and make a storybook in this way. When making a movie, each character you add has a number of actions that you can programme them to do. You take one of the available actions and drag it up into the timeline. You can continue building up a sequence of these actions with a range of characters. You can also add special effects. This is great fun and takes perseverance as well. It could be considered a kids way to program (it reminds me of Alice but at a lower level). Like the storybook option, you can add more scenes to your movie to create a longer story.

To get the content off the site, you can print but you can only view the video online.

This is a great tool. You could use it to create the beginning of a story and print it and then children write the middle and ending. This is just one idea - I'm sure you could think of many other uses.

A Range of Resources

2008-03-10T23:30:00.003+13:00

Well, I've been rather quiet recently as the Year Group meetings take quite a long time to put together. Stil, I have been finding some very interesting bits and pieces as I prepare for them and I have also been making some handouts for workshops that others might be interested in.

OK - here is a list of things that may or may not be useful to you.

List of links for different year groups.
http://zerototwo.wikispaces.com/Great+links+for+Juniors
http://threetofour.wikispaces.com/Yr+3and4+Links
http://fivetosix.wikispaces.com/Yr+5and6+Links (still being worked on)
http://seventoeight.wikispaces.com/Yr+7and8+Links

When you on each year group space, you will notice in the left hand navigation menu that there are also pages for great use of ICT under different currciulum headings. I have started to add to these but this will be an ongoing project.

Here are the links to some of my latest software wiki resources

A huge bank of sites to find film resources and short films that you could use in the classroom.
A restructuring of my large wikis page into smaller pages with two new downloadable tutorials added to the Wikispaces page.
Two new downloadable tutorials on my Powerpoint page about adding audio and about customising backgrounds of slides.
Much prettier and easier to use index pages such as this one for online tools.

I have also found a really great resource on the Google Educators page with this unit on using Google Docs for revision of writing. There are a number of downloadable worksheets to support the unit. There are a number of other resources on the Google Educators page so it is worth checking out.

Calling all Good Websites

2008-03-04T23:23:00.003+13:00

Hi all,

I am putting together lists of great websites for teachers to use in workshops and wanted some input from the blogosphere on what are your favourite primary school level links. Add a comment to this post with some of your top picks.

I am putting together pages for each year group band in the cluster. The Yr 0 to two age group teachers have already met and this is the list of links I prepared for them.

http://zerototwo.wikispaces.com/Great+links+for+Juniors

I'd love more throughout the age groups. Let me know your picks!

Thanks a lot :-)

VoiceThread

2008-02-25T13:37:00.002+13:00

I have just spent most of the morning putting together a handout on the basics of how to use VoiceThread such as getting an account, uploading pictures, adding comments, creating extra identities and how to embed in a wiki or blog. This four page PDF handout is now available on my educationalsoftware wiki at http://educationalsoftware.wikispaces.com/Picture+Sharing

Here is an embedded example of a VoiceThread.

Learning at School Time Again

2008-02-21T09:51:00.003+13:00

Here I am in Rotorua again. It has been a good conference so far despite some issues with the internet connection. Here is a pic with Rachel Boyd, Amanda Signal and I at the Blogger's Cafe.

The keynotes this year have been quite theoretical. We started off with Jeremy Kedian as the opening keynote who focused on what learning is and what it might look like in 2020. He talked about form and function in a school. The function is to facilitate learning but often the form (organisation, timetables etc) dictates how this learning happens and can imped new innovations. He then looked ahead to a time when the domination of form over function might be reversed.

The next day we had Julia Atkin who took us on a journey into Eastern philosophy (which was slightly over all of our heads) before ending up with the main message that schools need to be more holistic and start with development with the whole self and self in society and then the learning areas and values are the vechicles you do this with. This is replacing having the learning areas at the centre and developing the child as a side issue. More to come.

Foto Flexor Improves and Classroom Video Casestudies

2008-02-15T11:39:00.006+13:00

I have been having yet more fun with the image manipulation web 2.0 tool FotoFlexor.

I used their brand new Smart Scissors tool to cut out a picture of me on a hammock and layer a beach scene behind it. Quite a bit of fun!
I have also been looking for video case studies of ICT in action to use in our year group meeting days and have found a number of great sites from the UK.
Teacher TV
I have been using this site for a while now and always find great content to watch. Not just for ICT - I watched a great maths video that will change the way I teach fractions!
Teaching and Learning with ICT
A site with a HUGE number of video case studies and accompanying lesson plans and resources.
Developing Teaching Using ICT
Again, more video case studies as well as a bank of ideas that you can use.

Bringing it all together

2008-02-12T14:41:00.000+13:00

I have been working on creating a network of wiki to use for the various projects happening within our cluster. I have almost finished these off today and have created one wiki to rule them all which I have called the Teacher Portal and is accessed at http://teacherportal.wikispaces.com

The great thing for me about this network is that I have been able to bring together some of the tools that I have been dabbling with over the last year.

The booking wiki makes heavy use of the excellent Zoho Creator. Each school has a form embedded on their own page on the wiki that asks them to identify what they would like to work on in sessions with the facilitator and a few other details. This online form feeds into a spreadsheet that can be downloaded from the Zoho site. It is so easy to set up these forms - if anyone would like help with this, I could make an instructional video to show you how (using the great tool iShowU for Mac). I have asked that these are completed at least four days before school booking sessions. I can then download the results and clear the results off the online area ready for the next set of data to be entered. I have also asked that teachers complete an evaluation using a SurveyMonkey survey so that I can easily analyse the results.

I have also set up a series of year group wikis (see left links off teacher portal wiki) where each teacher in the cluster will have their own wiki page. With two full day year group meetings across the cluster this year, hopefully this will help build this online community.

The tools are proving to be just that - useful tools! It is great when you start to feel as if you are really finding effective uses for things after spending so many hours dabbling.

Back to Business

2008-02-07T21:21:00.000+13:00

After a wonderfully regenerating holiday in South East Asia, I'm back at the computer. OK - I didn't totally get away from screen time as I had a travel blog that I kept updated while we were away but it was really good to have some 'real life' experiences rather than all cyber. Should you want to check out some pics, they can be found on http://flickr.com/photos/suziea

Now it is back into work and there are a number of projects this year to keep me busy. It is also really exciting that a number of the schools that I work in are trying out some of the Web 2.0 tools that I found last year. Muritai School are having a go with 21classes for two of the classrooms. This is a blogging tool that allows a central blog page for the class with individual blogs for each child behind this. The great features of this tool are that there are monitoring tools for the teacher to check the appropriateness of the content and you can do things like have post a message that appears on all the blogs or specify which blog it appears on. The blogs also interconnected in some ways which is more like a social network. Finally, I think the fact that some of the writing on an individual blog can be made private would be great so that parents can share in it but not necessarily the entire class. If I had a class, I'd like to have a go with this tool so I am living through them vicariously.

Another school is looking into using Airset, a calendaring and organisation website that I had a little play with last year. Again, I think this is a great tool so I will be looking on with interest as to how well it works for them. We have also set up blogs for each class in a couple of the schools. One thing that will hopefully help this work really well in one of the schools is that we have used just one school gmail address (using the admin email address to sign up) and created 10 blogs from the same account. This means that if a teacher leaves, the blogs and the blog URLs will stay with the school rather than littering cyberspace when that teacher leaves and never uses that blog account again. It also means that there is only one username and password to remember for all 10 blogs. I'll let you know how this works over the course of the year.

Anyway - glad to be back and I feel that we have a lot to cover this year. I look forward to the discussions in the blogsphere. To celebrate the New Year, I have even given my blog a spruce up and a new title. Hopefully, I'll see a lot of you again at the Blogger's Cafe at Learning@School.

School's Out for Summer!

2007-12-22T00:12:00.000+13:00

It has been a great year and I just wanted to wish all subscribers and regular readers a very Merry Xmas and Happy New Year.

My husband and I are off on our honeymoon to Vietnam for five and a half weeks so there won't be any updates on this blog until February next year.

By the way, I made the above picture in Kidpix by dropping in my photo, using the fill bucket to get rid of all of the background, and then putting stamps around the outside. A great activity to do with kids to make individualised Christmas cards!

I also have found a website called Google Guide which you might want to check out if you want to know how to improve your Google searches. It tells you everything about how to use all of the Google functions.

Even at the end of the year I can't resist slipping in a few bits and pieces! Happy holidays all!

Making a Difference and Blog Posts to Podcasts

2007-12-09T10:41:00.000+13:00

Sheryl NassbaumBeach's commented on Twitter about the positive the impact of one 10 year old who has set up a blog called '25 Days to Make a Difference'. On this blog, she outlines each day one thing she has done to make a positive difference to the world and invites readers of the blog to do the same. She is holding a competition to see who can have the biggest impact from her readership using $25 US (her monthly allowance) as they prize money. Since then, a number of people have offered to match her prize money so she has started to offer other prizes in different categories. This is a really nice idea and she has had 1000s of hits in the week since the site has been up. One of the prize categories is for the good done by a classroom so perhaps classes may want to look at it.

On this blog, I noticed that there was a link to an Odiogo version of her blog posts. This is a free tool where you can register and give your blog feed address and then Odiogo turns each post into a podcast episode. They also provide a feed for this so that people can subscribe using iTunes and then download to an MP3 player. The quality of the audio from this tool for this blog was very high. The voices sounded very natural reading the blog posts (and of course very American). You can check out the Idiogo page for this blog for yourself by clicking here.

John Hattie's Powerpoint on Improving Student Outcomes

2007-12-07T17:29:00.000+13:00

I was looking up bits and pieces in relation to my previous Clinton Golding post and found this downloadable powerpoint about the findings and recommendations of John Hattie. One of his major points is about providing challenge for students. You can get a PDF copy of his powerpoint by clicking here. In this presentation, he has rubrics for teachers to assess themselves such as the one for challenge that you can see in the screenshot to the side.

I also found an interesting article written along the same lines about challenge in the teaching of maths.

James Nottingham who Marne refers to also focuses on challenge with his 'pit thinking'. I have used this 'pit' idea with my children when I was teaching year 3/4. Basically, you help children to see that when mastering a challenging task, they will feel as they are descending into a 'pit of uncertainty' where it may feel as if they will never get it. However, if they persevere, they will begin to climb out of the pit and see the light at the end of the tunnel. The kids in my class would start to say things like 'I'm in the pit at the moment' and I think it helped them knowing that this was a normal pattern of emotions when in a learning situation. You can download some of Jame's powerpoints from this address (though they wouldn't open on my Mac - the error message said it may need to be opened in a Windows version and resaved so that the Mac could access it).

Clinton Golding on Developing Thinking Classrooms

2007-12-07T09:47:00.000+13:00

After school yesterday, I was given the opportunity to attend a Clinton Golding workshop held at Mana education. Clinton used to be based in Wellington but is now over in Melbourne University where he is considered an expert in developing thinking in the classroom. I really enjoyed the session (despite being from 4:45pm to 8pm near the end of a school year!). Here are some of my top take away points from the session.

Reality Check
Clinton asked us to say what makes a thinking classroom. After a few minutes discussion, he pointed out that we can't say that we have a thinking classroom unless pupils and saying and doing things that show they are doing good thinking. There is no point talking about using PMIs with your class unless the children are able to independently use PMIs when it is appropriate. The children have to be actively selecting and using thinking tools rather than the teacher saying, "Now we are going to do a PMI class". Obviously, you would need to have built up to this with the teacher leading the process but the children need to take over the decision making at some point otherwise it is the teacher doing the 'thinking' and the work rather than the children. Clinton gave the example that this is like the teacher lifting the 'thinking' weights and expecting the children's 'thinking muscles' to get stronger in the process. Tony Ryan had a similar message in his workshop at Ulearn. When children are using his thinkers keys, he suggests having the keys on the table and asking children which key should be used and to explain why they have chosen those keys rather than being told by the teacher.

Make it Challenging
As teachers, we can worry about children experiencing failure and we therefore often scaffold tasks so that they children can progress with little difficulty through the content we are covering. However, doing this all the time is actually doing a disservice to the children in the classroom as then they are not experiencing real challenges which means that they are not developing problem solving and coping strategies for when things do get difficult. Clinton again used the lifting weights analogy. If we only ask children to lift light 'thinking weights' we can't expect them to develop their 'thinking muscles'. We therefore need to make things just a little too hard for them at times where the children don't know the answer AND don't know how to solve the answer. Then you can give them some strategies on how they could come up with a problem solving approach to that problem. Dr John Langley at Auckland University has also talked about the lack of challenge in many schools which means that children are a lot less resilient when they hit a problem they can't solve. This lack of resilience, at the most extreme end of the spectrum, may be adding to our high suicide rate. We also need to make sure that the challenges we offer students are around concepts that are important to explore and central to what we want the children to understand. We can focus too much on the processes of learning rather than exploring the underlying concepts behind these processes. For instance, we need to have discussions with children around what numbers are and why we use them rather than just teaching them how to count and add.

Add Rigor to Classroom Discussions
Clinton made many of us laugh with his description of a typical primary school teacher responding to answers in the classroom: "That's a great answer", "Well done Johnny" etc We want to reward children for participating in our classroom programme so will often accept all answers given regardless of the quality of the response. This again does not encourage good thinking in the classroom. We need to move away from a teacher-centred classroom where all the discussion is guided by the teacher with mostly teacher to student interactions as then it is the teacher doing most of the work. We also need to move away from a student-centred classroom where children are asked to respond to an answer with no connections made to the thoughts already contributed and where anything is accepted. What we need to aim for is an idea-centred classroom where ideas are offered by students and then these ideas are built on or examined by the other students. I have recently read a website that asked teachers to consider a similar approach. The site is a pop quiz for teachers on their teaching style based on how the brain learns best. See you you go with the quiz.

To help children learn how to participate in an idea-centred classroom, Clinton suggested that we need to give them a range of sentence starters to help them retrain their thinking. Examples he gave included "A reason against that is...", "Is what you mean...?", "To explain that further..." He pointed out that we need to give them many opportunities to practice these until they become 'thinking routines' and that we can't expect children to start using these automatically or naturally until they have done these for over 30 or 40 repetitions at least so you can't expect results overnight. We all have phrases that we find harder to use than others so we should help children identify which types of phrases they need to practice more than others so that these can become part of their thinking vocabulary.

Teacher as a Thinking Coach
The teachers role is still critical within a thinking classroom. Often we ask questions where we know the answer we are looking for and the children respond to our body language to figure out when the 'correct' answer is reached. We need to move away from sifting through the answers of children to see if they are 'right' and having the children play, "Guess what is in the teacher's head" to listening to responses and considering what needs to be done to help develop the thinking habits of that child. This first involves having enforced thinking times before AND after an answer is given. Wait time after a question is asked will improve the quality of the answers given. Wait time after an answer is given will help the children to consider this response so that they can further build on these ideas or express their opinions of the idea. Teachers need to have a repertoire of phrases they use to help children do this such as "Can you explain ..... in a different way?", What is a different idea about ....?", "What evidence is there to believe...?, "What now makes sense?"

This has been a fairly long post but I think that this is the heart of all teaching and learning. Clinton went as far as to suggest that if you don't put developing thinking as your first priority in the classroom, then you shouldn't attempt to put in place a thinking programme as the things you value above developing good thinking will always push the thinking programme to one side. An interesting point! This was a great session and if you get a chance to work with Clinton, you should do so.

Christmas Links New Home

2007-12-04T23:27:00.000+13:00

This is just a quick note to say that I have moved the Christmas links I had on our cluster wiki to a dedicated Christmas wiki so that I could spread the links out over a number of pages. This should make finding things a lot quicker.

The new address is http://christmaslinks.pbwiki.com