St Josephs

Monday 28th June
Looked at features of Paint with Dee – copy & paste to repeat shapes – resize, rotate, flip etc to create building blocks that again can be repeated. See Koru unit on Interact. Magnification tool for finer detail, opaque toggle button to get rid of the white background around an object, curved line tool. Writing text freehand – better to use the brush tool than the pen – thicker with more control. Talked about gathering digital media – making available through the network, with hyperlinks to find them & also copying backup cds. (similar to Stratford)
Scanning line drawings to work with Paint – Michael’s class has been problem solving through, file sizes, access to the scanner through the network. Downloaded scanner driver & canoscan toolbox to the shared network drive (Install T:) but need an administrator password to load new software on classroom computers. Worked with students to find optimum scan settings that the programmes would allow us to work with (Photo Editor & Paint).
Room 5 has done some awesome work on their power point since last week – they have worked out how to put in backgrounds, and do animations. I worked with a small group to create the transitions. When looking for bird pictures online we discovered bird calls. Children downloaded these and I worked with them to insert them into their work. They were able to show Vicky how to save pictures and sound from the Internet. Vicky would like some help in creating tables in Word for admin things like assessment checklists etc.
Discussed data collection and analysis with Rae will look at taking some time next term to work with MUSAC & Excel. There is lots of data generated by MUSAC but how to manipulate it to answer the questions we want to ask eg improvement in comprehension levels, what groups (girls, boys, Maori, non-Maori) are achieving etc & to create graphs to represent those questions.
Interest in WebChallenge from the senior school – support in this area next term.