Hard Fun: Logo and Scratch

Term 3 2008

Whew, it's a while since I've done one of these. Beginning of this term actually. During the term we have implemented KnowledgeNet as our intranet. I'll be doing some more PD on this early next term, but you should have logins for all your students now and should distribute these for next term.



Also on the PD agenda for next term is using PCSchool Spider to view class and student details, print of class lists, and mark the roll.



Meanwhile, here's some sites you may be interested in:

Book Wink - dedicated to inspiring children to read - uses video and podcasting

Whyville - social networking for primary age children in a safe environment.
Background for teachers

Terri Husted's Homepage - Maths for teachers

From Interface Magazine:

• Good idea #1 - Musical computers - Just like musical chairs except that you have to write and continue a story at each computer. Lesson Plan here.
  
• Good Idea #2 Colour coded grammar activity.

Virtual Body - good animated body part models. Smartboards?

Speaking of Smartboards, all smartboard computers will be upgraded to Notebook v10 in the next wee while. Notebook 10 has some new features which Aaron will be working with next term. New Features:

New Look
• improved user interface
• toolbar customization
• Welcome Center
Notebook Software File Creation and Delivery
• page grouping
• customizable themes
• Senteo™ software question insertion
• SMART Document Camera image insertion
• Magic Pen tool
• table integration
• active alignment
• object animation
• SMART recorder
• shape recognition tool
• color and gradient fill effects
• spell check
Other Tools and Features
• SMART Learning Marketplace access
• Online Essentials for Educators
• security features


http://www2.smarttech.com/kbdoc/118455




Or with the smartboard look at these space interactives.

http://highered.mcgraw-hill.com/sites/0072482621/student_view0/interactives.html#

Phases of the moon:













Got some time during the holidays? Add effects to some of your digital photos here:



http://www.dumpr.net/















Who has a Facebook Page? From a survey of 31,000 Employers:

More than 1 in 5 employers said they found information on social networking sites about prospective employees

Top areas of concern:

• information about alcohol or drug use
• inappropriate photos of information
• poor communication skills
• bad mouthing former employers

Careful what you put on your facebook site!

A New Term.

Teacher Day 25 July

Mathletics

This is all go for this term. Please make sure you have your teacher login so that you can print off the usernames and passwords for your class.

You should also spend a bit of time familiarising yourself with the teacher interface so that you are able to keep an eye on what your students are doing. I'll run you through an introductory session this morning.

Logon to Mathletics here!

Remember that Mathletics provides you with some detailed reports of what your students have been doing. It's worth spending a bit of time here.

Intranet

The new Wellesley website is due to launch on 4 August. Sneak preview:

From that date the existing website will be gone and the school network computers will point at the new public intranet page. The link to this page is below. This page will be available anywhere (not just at school) and has a initial list of links which will be refined and updated. It's not much to look at yet but it will be refined in the next couple of weeks.

http://wellesley.knowledge.net.nz/index.php?page=home

You will also see a school calendar which is a public version of the school calendar we all know and love. The plan is that this calendar will become the planning calendar which we currently use. Calendar items will be entered or edited by any staff members, and when you enter the item, you will need to decide who should view the item. Some may be for teacher view only, some may be student and/or parent as well.

Logging on to Knowledgenet (the intranet / Learning Management Site will give you a staff version or student version of the calendar, depending on who you are.

You will also see a notices section. Again, this is a public notice view, logging on will show you a student or staff version of these notices. Notices can be placed by any staff member for any group – whole school or class.

This all means that the calendar and notices can be prepared with the audience in mind. Students will only see student notices.

Logging on to Knowledgenet will also provide:

• E reflection area
  


• 
  
  Booking Calendars:
  
  
  
  
  
  • Mobile Trolleys
    
  
  
  • Technology Room
    
  
  
  • Hall
    
  
  
  • Van
    


• Personal web page/ work area
  


• Digital Learning object repository
  


• Collaboration areas
  

Library Development

The architect has prepared some basic drawings. Jane, Warren and I like the hall/ library/ICT area combo the best, but this will also be the most expensive.

Student Management System

This will be accessible from within the intranet as long as you are at school through a web browser. I am installing the web access to PCschool during next week. Again you will get a username and password – I'll try to integrate the usernames and passwords as far as possible! I hope the first stage will be to complete the roll through this. I would expect this to be under way during this term. Then we'll be able to provide access to assessment data like PAT and STAR. After that.......

I'll run a training session as soon as it's up and running.

ICT Prof Dev Cluster

We have completed a proposal to form an ICT Cluster for 2009 – 2011. This would mean ICT continuing to be a major focus during these years.

General

From the Google Blog:
Our Googley advice to students: Major in learning
7/15/2008 05:48:00 PM

Management guru Peter Drucker noted that companies attracting the best knowledge workers will "secure the single biggest factor for competitive advantage." We and other forward-looking companies put a lot of effort into hiring such people. What are we looking for?

At the highest level, we are looking for non-routine problem-solving skills. We expect applicants to be able to solve routine problems as a matter of course. After all, that's what most education is concerned with. But the non-routine problems offer the opportunity to create competitive advantage, and solving those problems requires creative thought and tenacity.

Blog Competition Winner for Term 2:

Darren's efforts in the sport area:

http://wellesleyhockey.edublogs.org/

http://wellesleype.edublogs.org/

http://wellesleycoltssport.edublogs.org/

Judges comment was that this was not an easy task!

Mathletics, Knowledgenet and other stuff.

Mathletics and Knowledgenet

I'll send around your teacher logins for mathletics this week. When you log in you'll be able to print out your maths class logins and passwords in case you want to get into it before the end of the term.

I'll go over the basics of teacher admin on teacher only day anyway. There is a login link on the Wellesley Maths page.

Knowledgenet is our new Learning Management system and Intranet. I've started populating this with our intranet stuff, and there will be usernames and passwords for this as well (but only for accessing certain parts of it. More on teacher only day!

And remember the blog competition. I've organised a judge to check them out next week, so make sure you blog is up to date before then.

Smartboards

Wordle

Have a play with Wordle – a tool which lets you create word clouds with examples of text. The clouds give greater prominence to words that appear more frequently in the source text.

For example, the cloud below is constructed from the Wellesley Philosophy as it appears on the school web site.

Which words are given prominence? What does it tell you?

How could you use this on the Smartboard?

Smartboard cartoons - Welcome to Hunkin's Experiments. Cool cartoons that will have you experimenting with food, light, sound, clothes, and a whole lot more!! Hundreds of cartoon experiments from cartoonist, broadcaster and engineer Tim Hunkin.

http://www.hunkinsexperiments.com/

ICT Sessions at Wellesley

These are some images relating to work done by your boys in ICT. First some edited digital photos using online editing web site Fotoflexer:

http://www.flickr.com/photos/27595273@N05/sets/72157605585388227/

And some 2d images of 3d designed vehicles in Google Sketchup.

http://www.flickr.com/photos/27595273@N05/sets/72157605578770018/

Young Minds, Fast Times: The Twenty-First-Century Digital Learner

How tech-obsessed iKids would improve our schools. Marc Prensky

http://www.edutopia.org/ikid-digital-learner-technology-2008

An interesting article. What do you think:

Turn teen texting toward better writing

Teachers who co-opt Web tools for class have the best of both worlds.

"Our student bloggers and digital writers of all backgrounds are part of a journaling culture which America has not seen since the great age of diarists during the Transcendental movement, when Thoreau and Emerson recorded their daily lives for eventual public consumption."

http://www.csmonitor.com/2008/0513/p09s02-coop.html?page=1

Thinking and Learning

21st Century Learning Skills:

From the Thinkfinity site mentioned below

In some respects, the potential of 21st century learning lies in the
exploration of how digital tools (cameras, presentation software, computing
equipment) and online resources can support and enhance traditional
subjects,skills and teaching practices. The Internet alone provides students
with enormous opportunities to access:

· A trove of primary source documents previously located on library
shelves, but now available online through digital archives.
· Authentic scientific data across a range of fields from current and historical
meteorological forecast data to economic statistics
· Geospatial tools that combine data with dynamic maps
· Global communications media that make distance collaboration, cross-cultural exchanges and rich media experiences possible

How many of these opportunities do we provide for our students?

Inquiry
Fantastic inventions site via the Smithsonian Institute:

Authors and Reading:

This is the link I sent around earlier in the week of Michael Rosen interviewing various authors:
http://www.teachers.tv/readingaloud

Video of the Week:

Principal from hell! Rowan Atkinson deals with the problem of boys not issuing books from the library.........
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YBeguUvuDzs
Actually we have some books taken without being issued; perhaps we could try this technique?

Searching

Just discovered this Boolean Search graphical tool! We have some information on Boolean searching on our search site and it is a tool all searchers for information need to employ to some degree.:

But this is a very clever way of seeing how it works. The example in the image uses a search for information on Wellesley College but not including USA but including New Zealand results.I would think this would be good to do on the Smartboard!

And if you have a Vista machine, have you tried the snipping tool??

Under accessories, it enables you to take images of anything that is on your desktop and either copy it to the clipboard, or save it to an image file.

Blogs

What’s a blog? 6 and 7 year olds from Nelson Central School talk about what a blog is:

http://www.teachertube.com/view_video.php?viewkey=601b9f31bf04019c8593

Smartboard Activities:

For Juniors, try Animal Riddles:
http://www.meddybemps.com/riddles/

The Kids Network has a large number of categorised educational resources.

Thinkfinity is another one with links to a large number of interactive resources.

More stuff for your Class - May

This could be useful for the senior school inquiry this term: Time Magazine's best inventions for 2006. Did they do one in 2007? I haven't found it yet.

From Interface mag ( In the staffroom, well worth a browse) These activities are interesting rather than being stupendously educational. They're worth a play, though.

Linerider – try it on the whiteboard – pure wet day fun!
http://linerider.com/play-line-rider-online

Grammar Ninja someone’s independent study!
http://www.kwarp.com/animations/grammarninja.html

Genius Boxing – Pick a fight with Archimedes, Einstein, etc
http://www.mrnussbaum.com/geniusboxing1.htm

Or if you really need a low intensity activity, try this on the Smartboard!! Virtual bubblewrap.....
http://smartboards.typepad.com/smartboard/files/bubblewrap.swf Manic mode seems to work best for me.(especially at the end of the day.)
where would you assess ithe thinking skills involved on the SOLO scale????

Or Have a look at Newsmap on your smartboard:
http://www.marumushi.com/apps/newsmap/index.cfm

Newsmap is an application that visually reflects the constantly changing landscape of the Google News news aggregator. A really interesting way of looking at the news.

And:

Scicity – Hosted by Otago Museum and IBM - SciCity is a rich learning environment that utilises innovative new technology to engage young New Zealanders in ongoing interactive experiences.
SciCity has direct links to the revised New Zealand curriculum. It achieves success by approaching many hard to reach curriculum areas in a fun and creative way.
Scicity is here I’ve used it in ICT sessions last year, so ask if you need help. Meet your class in Scicity!

Teacher resources are here!




Using your Smartboard with maths. Have a look at this video. Persevere, it’s worth watching as he is using the recorder feature of the notebook software. Maybe something to get an able child to try with........ say.....long division??
http://csdsmarties.blogspot.com/2008/03/adding-fractions-flash-student.html

Class tools of a varying nature : http://www.classtools.net/

Youtube Corner:
Classics:

Teenage Affluenza:


The Piano:


Kiwi:


And for a better ending for Kiwi:

Technology and Art

Is this Art?? This was created using a web based graphics editor ( http://fotoflexer.com/) by Vinay in 78T. He used the digital photo below as a base. Is this artistic? creative? or sneaky!? There are lots of ways of creatively altering digital photos. The darkroom of the past is What do you think Eve?

More for Smartboards

Great to see some of the maths basic facts games being used on smartboards around the place. I used the jetski race one with my maths class ( http://arcademicskillbuilders.com/games/jetski/jetski.html) -an excellent way to improve basic facts speed - Set up a hosted game and as well as competing against the computer, you could end up competing against some whizz kid from USA? China?

Try your smartboard with some of the activities below:

Geosense – pinpoint cities of the world. This is a challenging activity - good for able students

And from the same maker – a vocabulary game – try it in year 7 and 8 with able spellers. http://www.wordslide.net/

Or a simpler vocab game from Roy the Zebra:


Do you think you know the countries of the Middle East?? Try the map game from Rethinking Schools – fantastic for the Smartboard! It's harder than you would think.


Articles worth reading:

When Mum or Dad Asks To Be a Facebook 'Friend' Social networking and parents! A Washington Post article.

And the video selection for this week!
Some Brazilian Football Skills:

And the famous Bush Blair Duet:

Smartboards

Welcome to 2008!

Continuing on the theme of Smartboards, here are some links to resources you might find useful in your class.


The Wicked! website has some maths games and interectives which lend themselves well to smartboard use. Really good for students to work on their basic facts:


http://www.tki.org.nz/r/wick_ed/maths/interactives.php


Another basic facts site with some speed games to improve basic facts recall:

http://www.arcademicskillbuilders.com/



This looks like a good resource too - a blog dedicated to the use of smartboards. Spend a few minutes looking around here:

http://www.smartboards.typepad.com/


And courtesy of Interface, the NZ ICT in schools magazine, a growing list of NZ teachers who maintain blogs.

http://www.nz-interface.co.nz/teacherblogs/


And on the same site, a group of pdf files which contain ICT related lesson plans:

http://www.nz-interface.co.nz/lesson_plans.cfm


Perhaps your students could try some artwork on the smartboard at:

http://www.kerpoof.com/


That's enough for now! Remember to flick your projector off at lunchtimes, or if you're out of the classroom for a while.

Some more Useful Stuff!!

 In times of rapid change, the learners inherit the earth, while the learned find themselves beautifully equipped to deal with a world that no longer exists.
- Eric Hoffer

 

Try this cool tool. Great for the Smartboard.  Visuwords - an online graphical dictionary and thesaurus. Talk about making links... It's a stunning resource.

 Here is the link to the WickED site on TKI which Warren mentioned this morning. Interactives, games and I think the Information Station is a sound template for learners to base their information search on.

 

Another Web 2.0 site aimed at providing a publishing place for children to share their writing.

http://www.kidpub.com/

 

Hello, India? I Need Help With My Math - More evidence of a Flat World - get someone in India to take care of your domestic chores and homework support. From the New York Times

 

You've got an Ipod for your music; when will you get one of these for your books? You can buy books for it from Amazon.

 

We are moving from:
“do your own work” to “work with others”
“just in case” to “just in time” learning
“hand it in” to “publish it.”
- Will Richardson

 

 

Is the following a worry????

 According to the National Science Foundation (NSF, www.nsf.gov/statistics), the average U.S.
citizen understands very little science. For example: 

• 66% do not understand DNA, “margin of error,” the scientific process, and do not believe in evolution.  
• 50% do not know how long it takes the earth to go around the sun, and a quarter does not even know that the earth goes around the sun.
• 50% think humans coexisted with dinosaurs and believe antibiotics kill viruses.

On the other hand, according to the NSF, the general public believes in a lot of pseudoscience. 

• 88% believe in alternative medicine. 
• 50% believe in extrasensory perception and faith healing.
• 40% believe in haunted houses and demonic possession. 
• 33% believes in lucky numbers, ghosts, telepathy, clairvoyance, astrology, and that UFOs are aliens from space.
• 25% believes in witches and that we can communicate with the dead. *

 

And did you know that:

In Shanghai, a new building of 30 stories or more has been completed every 12 days for the last six years.

 

The computer is the primary instrument for intellectual and creative work in our society.
- Gary Stager

Skype, Voicethread and useful links

Skype is a great tool for the classroom. Suddenly video conferencing, once a complicated, expensive process is within the reach of any computer user. It's as simple as using a telephone, except that with webcams involved you can see who you're talking to!

If you have friends or family overseas, commiunicate with them via Skype or consider using Skype with your class in Term 4 http://share.skype.com/sites/en/2006/12/using_skype_for_global_telecon.html

This story is worth revisiting - a school using Skype to communicate with a pupil who has leukemia

More Class skype advice: http://coolcatteacher.blogspot.com/2006/10/using-skype-in-classroom-or-just.html

If anyone wants to use Skype to communicate with a class overseas this term, Let me know!!!

---

Web Tool for Learning:

VoiceThread is a pretty cool and easy way to produce audio visual photo albums. I think there are a number of ways you could use it in the classroom.

What is a Voicethread?

In the classroom?? Mrs Buchanan

Or a PD presentation Jack's monster cards


The ministry of Education is publishing some guidelines on dyslexia. You can find them here: http://www.tki.org.nz/r/literacy_numeracy/lit_dyslexia_e.php


Library Week is next week! This site has links to various activities designed to coincide with library week. http://www.libraryweek.org.nz/index.php

Interface is a New Zealand ICT magazine which you will be able to find in the staffroom. Lots of case studies, information and ideas for expanding the use of ICT in your class.
Interface free lesson plans! http://www.nz-interface.co.nz/lesson_plans.cfm


Make your own online assessment rubrics. These sites have web based rubric makers on them plus some useful templates.

http://rubistar.4teachers.org/index.php
http://myt4l.com/index.php?v=pl&page_ac=view&type=tools&tool=rubricmaker
And lots more stuff on rubrics:
http://school.discoveryeducation.com/schrockguide/assess.html

Comprehensive list of ICT related links from Western Australia. This site covers a wide range of areas with links to further information. Anything you wanted to know could be found here!
http://www.det.wa.edu.au/education/cmis/eval/curriculum/ict/index.htm

News Clips:

Second Life for 6 year olds:
http://www.stuff.co.nz/4225702a28.html

Club Penguin : In August Disney paid $US350 million for Canada-based Club
Penguin, with a promise of $US350 million more if it meets its traffic targets.
Club Penguin says it has 10 million users, of whom 700,000 have managed to
persuade their parents to pay subscriptions of a few dollars a month so they can
use virtual money to buy clothes for their penguins and furniture to decorate
their igloos.
They can go waterskiing, hang out on the beach, play games or
work as waiters in the pizzeria.

Something for the classroom in 5 years? CONTEX Z450 3D printer

Inquiry, Videos for Teaching and Google Earth/Sky

This post and all archived posts and links are available here.

Following on from Monday, I really believe that using ICT can help you implement meaningful inquiries in your classroom. It's worth reading the Min of Ed's action plan called Enabling the 21st Century Learner: e-Learning Action Plan

Consider the use of webquests or similar as a way of individualising the inquiry process using ICT. They also can help you with the scaffolding around the process.

This Wiki has links to various Inquiry resources : http://fitzil.wikispaces.com/Inquiry+Learning

Steve has mentioned Kath Murdoch and Tasmania. She has done a lot of work on ICT and Inquiry and is well worth listening to and reading about. There are a couple of her books in our library, notably:

Classroom connections: strategies for integrated learning and Planning curriculum connections: whole-school planning for integrated curriculum

Here are some useful links too:

• http://www.ltag.education.tas.gov.au/Planning/models/inquirymodel.htm
• http://www.ltag.education.tas.gov.au/Planning/models/default.htm

I don't really mean it!

Internet Video Tools for the 21C Classroom:

Animation and poetry. This could be a way of bringing poetry alive. A thoughtful animation of the well known poem:

The Highwayman - Alfred Noyes

Could this change the way you teach poetry? Children could create their own examples using Photostory 3 or Powerpoint.

UK English standards for year 5 for this poem (Note that the filename .nbk is for the Smartboard notebook)I thought this one was good too. The Piano Well worth a look and you can see the UK resources for this video here and here.

Another way of creating online slideshows is using Animoto. Here is an example created in just a couple of minutes......
Wellesley Football 2007

Animoto 30 second shorts are free to make - give it a go and consider how you could use it in your classroom.
Other online slideshows:

• http://www.slideroll.com/
• http://www.onetruemedia.com/otm_site/create_slideshow
• http://www.spresent.com/v2/

Not really video as such, but an interesting way of looking at the news through headlines. Click on the headline to read the story - You can play with the config to get just New Zealand stories..

http://www.marumushi.com/apps/newsmap/newsmap.cfm

This photo is amazing! Space station floating above Aotearoa! 12 Dec 2006 ( I can see Wellesley boys jumping off the wharf!) - http://spaceflight.nasa.gov/gallery/images/shuttle/sts-116/html/s116e05983.html

And continuing the space scheme, the latest version of Google Earth lets you look at space (our sky) in the same fashion with high resolution imagery. This has to be a great tool to use with a Smartboard. Download this version of Google Earth from the Wellesley Intranet. Let me kno if you have trouble installing it.

No relevance to videos or ICT but this link has a good diagram of the main coffee types - so that you know what you're asking for (or making). I heard some order a Vienna coffee the other night but I don't know how it's made. Can't see any mention of a Vienna here though. Any ideas??
http://www.lokeshdhakar.com/2007/08/20/an-illustrated-coffee-guide/

Google, Digital Natives and more on Smartboards

Google are a major force in ICT and their influence is growing. I'm currently playing with igoogle, which partly points to the future direction of the web - a more personalised home page - IGoogle .


I believe Google earth have improved the resolution of imagery over New Zealand. Might be worth a look. Found your house yet??


More in Google Earth

• 2007 Tour de France route
• New 7 wonders of the World see the winners in Google Earth
  

There are a number of tools for educators available from Google. Here's a list: http://teachdigital.pbwiki.com/googletools

What you don't want to see when you've just run out of petrol:

And, I love signs which provide clear information:

Try this New Zealand Census at School - register your class to take part: http://www.censusatschool.org.nz/

Digital Native

Marc Prensky's suggestiuons for useing Cell Phones in the classroom: http://www.marcprensky.com/blog/archives/000043.html

This page has links to more of Marc Prensky's work: http://www.marcprensky.com/writing/

Smartboards.....

Some more sites with interactive whiteboard resources:

• http://www.waukesha.k12.wi.us/WIT/SmartBoard/specificapps.htm


• http://eduscapes.com/sessions/smartboard/


• http://www.clarion.edu/admin/computing/classrooms/resources.htm


• http://www.prometheanplanet.com/uk/server/show/nav.914

This is an interesting world clock with a lot more data besides. Watch the earth gradually warming up and CO2 emissions increasing.

Put it up on a Smartboard and stimulate a discussion. How many bicycles is that now???

Finally, Do you drink green tea? Concentrated chemicals derived from green tea dramatically boosted production of a group of key detoxification enzymes in people with low levels of these beneficial proteins, according to researchers at Arizona Cancer Center. See Biosingularity

Links for Learning July 2007

Try some of these learning links:

http://www.time.com/time/photogallery/0,29307,1626519,00.html
What different families eat in a week - photo essay from Time magazine which is an interesting and graphic way of showing what different families from aroud the world eat in one week.

Maths Week 2007: http://www.nzamt.org.nz/sites/cms/

Reading Books - have a look at the forum, quizzes etc in the Reader's cafe
http://english.unitecnology.ac.nz/readerscafe/
Or take a look at Book Backchat: http://english.unitecnology.ac.nz/bookchat/home.php















More Maths? MC Escher? Try the Schmuzzle site - a mildly addictive, gentle sort of maths game...http://shmuzzles.com/shmuzzle/shmuzzle.htm
More stuff here: http://shmuzzles.com/more_shmuzzling.htm








New to Te Ara (NZ Encyclopedia)
Sea life web site. Fantastic looking resource http://www.teara.govt.nz/EarthSeaAndSky/SeaLife/en
Weather Resource: http://www.teara.govt.nz/EarthSeaAndSky/ClimateAndAtmosphere/Weather/en
Natural Environment: http://www.teara.govt.nz/NewZealandInBrief/NaturalEnvironment/en



Worldmapper is a collection of world maps, where territories are re-sized on each map according to the subject of interest.
There are 366 maps, also available as PDF posters. Use the menu above or click on a thumbnail image below to view a map.
http://www.worldmapper.org/



Why news organisations are edgy: More than 59 million people (37.3 percent of all active Internet users) visited newspaper Web sites on average during the second quarter of 2007, a record number that represents a 7.7 percent increase over the same period a year ago, according to custom analysis provided by Nielsen//NetRatings for the Newspaper Association of America. In addition, newspaper Web site visitors generated nearly 2.7 billion page views per month throughout the quarter, compared to slightly more than 2.5 billion during the same period last year. The second quarter figures are the highest for any quarter since NAA began tracking these numbers in 2004.


And finally, ever noticed the blindspot in your car when you are about to change lanes? Try adjusting your mirrors slightly:
http://www.cartalk.com/content/features/mirrors/index.html

ICT Learning Challenges #3 - Digital Photos

Using your Smartboard.

This teacher has used the record feature of the smartboard so that her children can create small videos of maths strategies - then posted them to Youtube. Could be a powerful tool for creating learning animations...... (If you can't see the embedded video, click here.)

What is this? (answer below)

Digital Photos.

Extract from the Infinite Thinking Machine Blog:
http://www.infinitethinking.org/2007/05/youve-got-to-see-it-to-learn-it.html

Marzano's (2001) strategies for increasing student achievement are important in Visalia (and in many other districts), so we discussed ways digital cameras (and Picasa) could be used to support several of these research-based strategies, including the following:

• Ask students to compare or classify images.
  
• Ask students to delete, edit, or re-order images to facilitate analysis of the information at a deep level.
  
• Create a slide show to recognize student effort, achievement, and mastery.
  
• Create a slide show to illustrate time-sequence, or cause-effect patterns.
  
• Use images to document individual and group accountability - or to facilitate group reflection.
  
• Use images to support “corrective” feedback. (The instant nature of digital
  images – and means of sharing digital images – can facilitate timely
  feedback.)
  
• Use images taken with your digital camera as cues and advance
  organizers.

In preparation for the workshop I also combed the web for inspirational ideas using digital cameras and Picasa in the classroom. I offered the participants a list of a dozen ideas:

1. Slideshows for Back to School Night or Open House
   
   
2. Slideshows of Performances, Celebrations, Assemblies, or Field Trips
   
   
3. Photo Yearbooks (For a school, a class, or a club!)
   
   
4. Photo Journalism, Documentaries, or Dramatizations
   
   
5. Time Lapsed Photography (Especially in science!)
   
   
6. Class Books (Think big books!)
   
   
7. Story Books (“Digital Story Telling”)
   
   
8. How-To Guides (Address non-fiction standards!)
   
   
9. Exercises in Classifying, Categorizing, or Compare and Contrast.
   
   
10. Photos as Anticipatory Sets, Writing Prompts, or Review
    
    
11. Document Learning (Great for parent conferences!)
    
    
12. Photo Portfolios (Can be used for student presentations, too!)
    

Other ideas for using digital photos in the classroom:

http://its.leesummit.k12.mo.us/digitalmedia.htm

100 ways to use digital cameras in the classroom (Scholastic)

10 Tips for Taking great photos

The Register of Known Spam Operations (ROKSO) database collates information and evidence on known professional spam operations that have been terminated by a minimum of 3 Internet Service Providers for spam offenses.
200 Known Spam Operations responsible for 80% of your spam.

And, sadly, for the conservation club:

10 animals that won't exist in 10 years

Answer:

Shift Happens

This is a really compelling slideshow - interesting for anyone but especially for teachers. You might want to share it with your class.



This slideshow comes via Slideshare a an online application where you can share slideshows - useful for a class??

ICT and Challenges #2

We can all take digital photos but everyone can benefit from editing photos before using them. Computers come with simple tools for photo editing, but Web 2.0 has meant you can now edit your photos online for free.


In the sites below you can resize, remove redeye, change the colour and add a huge number of other creative effects. Sometimes it's appropriate to edit them for effect. The photo at the top of the page has been cropped, recoloured and darkened to produce the effects shown. However, even if you only use the rotate, cropping and brighten tool, you'll end up with much better quality photos.


If you take digital photos and don't use an editor, you're only doing half the job.

Digital Photo editing:
http://pixenate.com/
http://pixer.us/
http://www.picnik.com/

How could you make digital photo editing a challenge for your learners? Powerpoint, Photostory 3 and Moviemaker are all tools which can be used for creating a photo story.

Photo stories are really powerful means of persuasion and Moviemaker and Photostory will let you add text, commentary, background music to your digital photos and produce the end result as a video. Have a look at the examples embedded in the 7N Blog and Performing Arts Blog


More on Searching

One of the major issues I have is kids searching for information using a search engine like Google and very general keywords - needle in a haystack stuff - 50 million hits - might as well drop them off outside the National Library on a Saturday evening for all the quality information they will find....

A solution: As well as teaching them to be discriminating and clever searchers, try this: A Google tool which will enable you as the teacher to select which websites Google searches. Got that?
Tell it which websites you want it to search! Easy to set up and place in your Class blog. Remember your class blog doesn't just have to be used for communicating with parents. Use it as a classroom tool as well.

Why wouldn't you do it????

Here's an example: I have put the panel below onto our Climate Change page and also onto the Wellesley Search Page. It will only search the websites on that page. I can continue to add or remove websites from the search engine as I need to. Is this useful? I'd call it essential!

Try it:


Create your own custom search engine here: http://www.google.com/coop/

When a Question becomes a Challenge

I like the idea of learning challenges. We used to do technology challenges - things like create a sequence of events which will result in a mouse trap being triggered and a balloon bursting or firing table tennis ball as below. I remember that small groups of children spent lots of time discussing, planning and executing their process.












I guess we don't tend to do this stuff any more because of "curriculum pressure" but I have been thinking about challenges and learning lately. Children often respond well to challenges. Often when I do some work with a class on Logo - a simple maths programming program - I find them in the ICT room at lunch time trying things out ....playing ...experimenting. This is in preference to more sophisticated bells and whistles type games which they could be using at lunch time. What is it about Logo which captures them?
I once set a challenge to design one click Logo bicycle using simple logo commands. Here is one boy's response:
















How much time would this code have taken to think about, experiment with and check? Believe me, a lot of time!
Here's the result:

It's the same with something like Google SketchUp. Show children the basics and they will always take it further. Go into the ICT room at lunchtime at the moment end you will find half a dozen children experimenting with SketchUp.

Perhaps we need to include more challenges in everyday learning. Jamie McKenzie encourages questions which set up a challenge with the very nature of the question.

• What did James Cook get wrong?
• Was James Cook a good leader?
• Which is the better city - Wellington or San Francisco?
• What is the best thing about living in Wellington?
• How will Helen Clarke be remembered?
• What makes a good leader?
• Why do people live at Castlepoint?
• Should all endangered species be preserved?
• What is the price of progress?
• How is a hero different from a celebrity?
• Why does the rain fall?
  

Or the challenge of "decoding" an image. Look for an image you can use on Flickr:



What is this all about?
How was it created?
Is there a story behind it?
What does it say?


Creative Commons Originally uploaded by ocean.flynn.

Or a riddle:
What is so fragile that when you say its name you break it?

It amounts to persuading children to leap off the scaffolding - both that provided by teacher support and the "scaffolding" of raw information. Any learner can copy and paste but can any learner use the information to answer a challenging question or resolve a challenge?

In the next few weeks I want to reinforce the ways in which ICT especially can help create think inducing challenges.

Questioning

Well done all of you who are maintaining your class blogs. They look good especially when they are regularly updated. Wednesday afternoon we will look at blogs if you are having trouble or have any questions.
























One of the key parts of the Inquiry Process relates to questioning. This is so critical and difficult to fine tune in the classroom. Andrew does a lot of work with Essential Questions with 78T and Jamie McKenzie deals with questions comprehensively. It's worth revisiting some of his articles:
An index of a large number of questioning articles.

Some useful J McK articles:
http://www.questioning.org/sep04/irrelevant.html
http://www.questioning.org/questionpress.html
http://www.questioning.org/may04/serialquestioners.html

And especially the gargoyle article - Christine and Andrew probably remember this:
http://fno.org/feb01/pl.html

Socratic Questioning - http://changingminds.org/techniques/questioning/socratic_questions.htm

And I have ordered a copy of these books:















































Another take on essential queations:
http://mrscaldwell0.edublogs.org/2007/03/09/166

Interesting Stuff on the Web:

Well then, who's responsible for global warming on Mars??? If Mars is warming up as well, and there are no humans or motor vehicles on Mars.....
Mars is being hit by rapid climate change and it is happening so fast that the red planet could lose its southern ice cap, writes Jonathan Leake.
http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/uk/article1720024.ece

Videos for educators: http://www.nextvista.org/ A growing site with downloadable educational videos.

Sir Ken Robinson makes an entertaining case for creating an education system that nurtures creativity, rather than undermining it:
http://www.ted.com/index.php/talks/view/id/66


http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lrp-FT51zPE Table tennis but not as we (I) know it!


Using tags in art museums - a new way to find things you're interested in: http://www.nytimes.com/2007/03/28/arts/artsspecial/28social.html?ex=1177646400&en=7a58b2951a48dbad&ei=5070


Student Art - Sydney: http://www.insideartexpress.com.au/exhibition/walk_through