Storming St Josephs

Have a go with Inspiration! Supporting the Infolinkers at St Jo's with some Brainstorming practise - this time Inspiration was the tool. Brainstorming in this way allows us to group, colour, save and share easily. I uploaded trial versions around the school and had 'a play' with some classroom experts. To narrow the Brainstorm down into Key Concepts we used a technique I heard about through Michael Pohl last year in Wanganui.(Learning to Think, Thinking to Learn) called Question Mapping There is a basic guide to this on the Interact site. Spent some time investigating the questions asked online(Ask Jeeves) and discussed with the kids that there is no one answer to many of their questions. I now know more than I ever wanted to know about FROGS!
I spent some time with the lovely children in Room 1. Margaret is concerned as she doesn't know much about computers. Suggestions were to have the computer on and give the children time 'to play' as you do for any other activities - reading, writing. To get some help to install some kid friendly programmes, and shortcuts to kid friendly websites on the desktop. Don't be worried they can't break it (much :-) Working with Rae really hit home that there are 101 things to hook into online - all requiring usernames & passwords & all in different places. Leadspace, Talk2Learn, Auckland University Library (for the Infolinkers get on to it!), Interact... the list goes on. Did a familiarisation through these & SZ webmail. SchoolZone webmail really needs to be configured to download in Outlook the webmail is not user friendly for some of us who use email loads.
Also spent some time with Deahne and John...