Our Stories - Exhibition Coming Up

''My Story. Our Story. Your Story' 

The result of a year long project initiated and co-ordinated by the Ahuroa School Photography Club, and facilitated online via the VLN Primary School.

The Project
An exploration of photography as a means of telling and sharing a story, for primary school aged children.  “My Story” - individual journey’s of self discovery; “Our Story” - the combining of individual photographic stories to become a representation of a school community; “Your Story”- school communities stories are compared and combined to tell one story - our exhibition.

Our Story
We are a small, rural country school.  We have a story to tell. But are our stories different to those of kids who live in the city, or kids whose cultures are different from ours, or from kids who have had experienced natural disasters?  What about kids who live in isolated places?  What about kids who live in different countries to us?  Will their stories be different?  How?  Or, will their stories be similar?  Will their be a common connection?

Participating Schools:

New Zealand
Kaikohe West School (Kaikohe); Mulberry Grove (Great Barrier Island); Kaitoke School (Great Barrier Island); Ahuroa School (Warkworth); Hobsonville Point School (Hobsonville); Devonport Primary School (Auckland); Te Poi School (Matamata); Toko School (Taranaki); Moanataiari School (Coromandel); Pahiatua School (Palmerston North); Rewa Rewa School, (Wellington); Dipton School (Otago); Burnside Primary (Christchurch); Glenorchy Primary School (Glenorchy); Half Moon Bay School (Stewart Island)

International
Flowery Branch Elementary (Hall County, USA); Lakeview Elementary (Robbinsdale, Minnesota, USA); Nexus International School (Singapore);
AMMAC, Chihuahua (Mexico); Beaconhouse School (Islamic Republic of Pakistan)"

from http://www.estuaryarts.org/currently-showing.html

My Story Our Story Your Story - Call for interest collaborative project

Ahuroa School Photography Club would like to invite interested schools to join them on a photographic journey around Aotearoa/NZ (& beyond?) 

My Story. Our Story. Your Story.

Image Attribution - Ahuroa School Photography Club

Each student is working on photographing their own personal stories (who am I, what am I about).  The end goal is to present their work as a collective (who are we, what are we about). How amazing it would be if we could then compare our collective photographic story, with other collective photographic stories from a wide range of similar aged kids...within NZ and (hopefully) from other countries too.

The end goal would be a public exhibition "My Story. Our Story. Your Story."
The uniqueness of your students location would make their photographic "stories" so interesting.  Students would not need to be photography experts at all just enthusiastic!

Participation in this project is open to all children aged 5-12 years old, although space will be limited to 10-15 schools.  If your school is interested in being involved please let us know as soon as possible! Further information here.

Contact Theressa to participate. tbutler@ahuroa.school.nz 

Happy Birthday Bardwired - 10 Years Old Today!

Wow what a milestone, I am feeling old today as my baby hits double digits!

I was introduced to blogging by Richard & his students at Matau School & thought this would be a great way to keep schools in touch with what was going on around the Bardwired ICTPD cluster. Sure beats stuffy reports to Principals' once a month. It has been quite a journey over that time, with many highlights and in the last couple of years quiet patches too. My first post was a very factual account, in fact a list, of what i did at work that day...i think it only got better after that.

To start with it was text only, you had to have some working knowledge of  html to make anything else happen. Pictures weren't easy and it was four months before any images appeared on my pages.

Flickr arrived early in 2005 and that was the beginning of my love for Flickr. That was also the time i began to use hyperlinks but it was still awhile until hyperlinks became part of my deliberate writing style. My writing here waned when blogging became a professional requirement for my two other roles with the VLN Primary & VPLD; Twitter & Facebook also took over my attention. As with any pride & joy there are special milestones & highlights - here are a few of mine.

Here are some of my babies milestones:

First podcasts May 2006 - Prensky@School Marc Prensky's keynote from Learning@School
First video May 2006 on Vimeo - Kidz & Kitez @ Makahu,
First flash animation - Christmas 2006
First friends -  Tom & Graham - when i learnt that blogging is about conversations and learning together
First blog post from my phone - moblogging February 2007
First Youtube video embeds TUANZ 2007
First embedded slideshow - Around te Maunga May 2007
First avatar - Meez May 2007
First Panorama - Panoramic Pitt August 2007
First slap on the wrist for this post May 2009

Highlights:

Where Are We Going??????? - 2005 thoughts about Google
Connecting with others - Edubloggers Offices Photostream
Starting nzedublogs with Jedd
Life changing highlight - getting to know my darling Rick
Time 4 Online Conference
Dead Cats & Laptops - most interesting/gross picture
Helping Bruce update his blog
Connecting with others - 8 random facts meme (great to be reminded of those connections :-)
VLN Primary kicks off at Matapu School
The Future of Education (i just like this post)
Being 'published'
eLearning eBooks (i liked this one too)
N4L consultation  early conversations

Wow–3D Printers & Thingiverse

I guess i had heard of this before but in the realm of the technical people and not something that any of us or our kids could pick up and use. Awesome potential for creativity and ‘hands on’ learning – something to watch out for!

Maker Bots and the future of identity

A Universe of Things - http://www.thingiverse.com/

Bright Sparks @ Matapu School

Today students from Matapu School got to explore some electronics with Andrew Hornblow from Bright Sparks. It was a very quick introduction for them, as the main purpose of Andrew’s visit was to show me how he works with kids and what Bright Sparks is all about. Never the less, though the sessions weren’t linked to any integrated learning objectives, they were very engaging, lots of fun and we learnt a lot about circuits, electronic components, control & programming. In fact it was very cool, creating preprogrammed ‘robots’ or cars, with a garish array of LED lights, having burn off competitions, developing sensors for measuring light and temperature and seeing how the data can be logged into the computer.

My focus was to look at how we could take this into an online environment through the VLN Primary initiative and extend this type of learning to students around the country – particularly to those who would not otherwise get this opportunity (that is the big picture philosophy behind the VLN Primary). Bright Sparks has a website and a club for students who are keen on electronics where they can earn points and access free electronic equipment, project ideas, mentoring support and enter Bright Sparks competition.

This is definitely a programme that could be adapted to the online environment, through real time tutorial support in our Adobe Connect classrooms and one that would have benefit younger students by introducing them to electronics and bringing those keen ones into the Bright Sparks fold. The challenge now is to find someone with the time and expertise to work with us to develop and deliver and online introductory electronics class for our kids….. I will keep knocking on doors.

Global Connections – Join the Roof of the World Tour!

NZ schools are warmly welcomed to participate with their students in this ‘ANZAC’ connection with the the people of the Himalayas and celebrating the work of Sir Edmund Hillary's Himalayan Trust during their 50 Year Anniversary.

Visit their website to join or contact Maggie. 

Roof of the World Tour Spreading laughter and fun… sharing cultures, sparking imagination : 20 April- 20 May

Come and visit the Himalayas with us as we travel to 25 schools, teach juggling and theatre skills and learn about life in the highest mountains in the world. Ask us questions and watch our site for updates on the adventure.
Our group are a performing troupe, 2 Aussies and 2 Kiwis, performing for 25 schools in the Himalayas in April and May this year. We have been invited to provide performances in physical theatre and comedy as part of the 50 year celebrations of Sir Edmund Hillary's Himalayan Trust. While we tour we will also be finding out a lot about Hillary's legacy, the history of the country and a range of other lessons. We will be posting quizzes, hosting a forum and providing lesson plans and teaching resources free to use. We are keen to enable as many NZ schools to participate.

Christchurch Schools – Where is the vision?

http://www.stuff.co.nz/national/christchurch-earthquake/4731463/Christchurch-earthquake-Plan-to-get-kids-back-to-school

“Re-locatable classrooms may be put onto sports grounds to house more than 10,000 pupils whose schools are closed”

I continue to be disappointed by the lack of vision our Ministry of Education has in responding to the needs of Christchurch school children – both immediate and long term.

What is this huge preoccupation with bricks & mortar as the necessary foundation of schooling for our children? Why should we be relocating buildings to create overcrowded schools when learning centres can be (and are being) set up within the community? Why should you be encouraging teachers from around the country to offer relief assistance when eteachers around the country are willing and able to take on more students into their classes and provide new classes? 

As the Christchurch Council bravely starts to espouse a vision of a very different city rising from the rubble how is a vision being developed for education? Where is the creativity in changing ideas and approaches to meet the learning needs of our students?

Quakeboarding: Photo by Alicia Krueger

The VLN Community is well positioned with the networks, people and expertise to help make a difference now and into the future for so many of these affected students but this requires some higher level thinking on behalf of the MoE and strategic planning and support.

Here is the VLN Community response:

“The VLN Community is working now to increase capacity in all our existing online classes as well as exploring how new classes and online learning support can be put in place to take more of our displaced students. There are a number of teachers who have indicated their willingness to support these students with keeping up with their learning, some who are even willing to do this in their own time. With some increased staffing from the MoE there is quite a pool of experienced eteachers that can come online and offer learning opportunities for these kids. The VLN Community can give professional support for teachers who want to connect with their students online by assisting them with accessing and using online tools available to them through the MoE.”

The Creative Internet

The world IS full of interesting things. Just need the time to check it all out!

Digital Storytelling with Comics

http://pixton.com/uk/

http://www.comicbrush.com/

Online Audio Editing

This is the coolest thing i have seen for a long time. We have seen online video editing, online image editing now with the functionality of GarageBand or more simply Audacity is Myna.

Great for students composition, developing original soundtracks for podcasts or movies. Great also for language teachers to record & share audio (though you can do this on Podomatic)

You have 10 tracks, and can upload your own sound files, or record directly into the online application. They also a comprehensive library of sound files that you can use in your creations. You can download in a number of file formats & share by linking or embedding, as i have done just below. Try it out!

Rachel's 1st Play.egg on Aviary.

Comic Life 4 Windows

If you were like me and thought Comic Life was just for lucky Mac users think again!
Try it out with your kids :-)

Thanks to Anita Year 6 from Matapu School for sending me her Comic Life story :-)

Just Playing

Scratch!!

I've been waiting for this one & finally MIT has opened it up to the rest of us :-) Cool!

Scratch is a new programming language that makes it easy to create your own interactive stories, animations, games, music, and art -- and share your creations on the web. Scratch is designed to help young people (ages 8 and up) develop 21st century learning skills. As they create Scratch projects, young people learn important mathematical and computational ideas, while also gaining a deeper understanding of the process of design.

I wish I had my own class to play with this. Find out more about Scratch here.

Wots Hot?

It was great to meet Sheryl at Tuanz yesterday. She tirelessly worked throughout the day one-on-one helping teachers set up their first blogs. Every revolution starts with small steps & another step closer to the Tipping Point today :-)

The hot video at the moment resounding around the blogosphere and shown at all the conferences so far this year is Web 2.0... the Machine is Us/ing Us

And another on the must watch list is Ken Robinson "Do schools today kill creativity?"
Ken is keynoting at Principals conference in Auckland in a couple of weeks.

This can also be downloaded from Ted Talks along with a host of other interesting speakers.
" Each year, TED hosts some of the world's most fascinating people: Trusted voices and convention-breaking mavericks, icons and geniuses. The talks they deliver have had had such a great impact, we thought they deserved a wider audience."