Huiakama

Huiakama
Originally uploaded by rache65.

Kids at Huiakama are right into Ripper Rugby – it is happening all over the Eastern Schools – great to see! We checked out the Lions Game here today as well and the kids registered to join in. Zoe showed us her dance moves as she goes out with 80 other Taranaki girls in lead up to the real Lions Game on Wednesday night. Go Zoe!!
Clare got to show off her shiny new laptop and we registered for ULearn breakouts and ordered the Digital Learning Objects CD from TKI. The girls learnt how to use PhotoStory based on the idea of a big book the junior school is making told the story of the Huiakama trampoline. PhotoStory is pretty cool & soooo easy to use. You can download it from the Microsoft site, though you also need Media Player 10 to go with it. Check out their work on the new Kids Work folder on Interact.

Stratford Primary

Lee, Alison & Jim, with some groups of kids, have been learning how to use the video camera. Great to get an extra cool camera from Mahoe. Went through the basics – charging the battery, changing the tape, setting up the tripod, recording & playback, downloading and saving video to the laptop. They plan to do a syndicate video project documenting the kids learning during their major arts focus. Returned to the classroom a few days later to assist them with this. Feedback since this time show that maybe its not such a good idea to take on two big projects in tandem such as this (especially when there is so much new learning involved) OK so the principle was good – just not easily workable! Now the basics have been learnt they hope to pick up a simple fun video project after the arts unit is finished.

Eltham Primary

All the best to Graham as he prepares to move to the Merrilands as Principal next term. Eltham will miss you & we will miss you too! :-) Some big shoes to fill there. It’s great to see all the new Principals’ Laptops coming out into schools. Helped clear Graham’s laptop of the many important files ;-) before formatting the hard disk and restoring the laptop to its original state. Offered it out to other schools – some of these ex-lease laptops would be good for schools to pick up to increase numbers and access for our kids (should be many more coming up in the future with the 1st round of teachers laptops coming up to the expiry of their lease term) Keep an eye out for them, check out the history of their use and consider purchasing for your school. On the subject of laptops – news released in the budget is that the laptop scheme has rolled out to all teachers – check out the MOE website and prepare to order them for junior teachers. (Best PD initiative yet!) Worked with Megan & the senior kids on Digital story books. Showed some examples created by SPS kids. Eltham kids have been out with the camera taking Maths pictures around the school – some great pictures of objects illustrating maths concepts. Also did the tour round the Lions Games site – definitely an interest but some difficulty in establishing a class email address. Epals no longer have open email addresses (you can only email within the epal system & not to other people outside Epals). Bernadette has been busy publishing photos of school events – these get laminated and posted around the school. Used MS Frontpage photo gallery to collate these pictures and publish them to the Internet. Check out Eltham’s photo galleries from their homepage.

St Josephs

3 days @ St Josephs. Took the Lions Game Roadshow around the Senior classrooms at St Joseph’s this week. Whipped up some interest amongst the kids (boys especially of course thought it was pretty cool). I used the dataprojector to walk them through the site and talk about the activities. We also looked at the features of their SchoolZone email and how to use it as they registered their classes for the game. With the Year 7 & 8’s we also used the dataprojector to look at and talk about examples from Methanex Maths Spectacular. Schools are just starting to prepare for this – links to resources developed in the cluster from last year can be found on Interact. Share these with your kids if they need some ideas on possible topics or examples of presentation styles. I saw that some laptops (older ones) have not got up-to-date virus protection. If you are not sure about your protection please get Holly to check for you. You should be using E-Trust AntiVirus Version 2 – it is free to schools and subsidised by MOE. If your school has never had this you can register for it here.

Kiss & Drive

Kiss & Drive
Originally uploaded by rache65.

Confused? This is the traffic control system outside Waipahihi School Taupo where we went for our Regional ICT PD Meeting. Want to know more about a system like this 4 your school? Contact me and I will send you the other photos I took :-)
Carol Spragg, Megan England, Clarissa Coffey & myself attended on behalf of the cluster. There was a couple of hands on workshops. One was about using Interactive Fiction in units of work - (based around software like Carmen Sandiago) - resources shared are print based - let me know if you would like a copy. The other session was about Digital Storytelling using PhotoStory 3 - a bit like MovieMaker but different - I thought it was pretty cool because you could pan & zoom your frames in different ways, you could narrate your story and have background music as well. You can download PhotoStory3 from here - have a play its so easy to use - just follow the 'Wizard' instructions. Also on the agenda at Taupo was a team debate about the value of Inquiry as a Learning Model - this was really entertaining but pretty hard to follow as both sides held similar views!? Nat explained to us the structure of their cluster and how their PD programme worked - she also talked about the model of learning their teachers had developed called W.I.S.E.(will track down some examples to share on Interact)Murray Brown from the MOE was missing from the day - but Sherry & Hemi filled the gap with some discussion on 'Developing Communities of Practise" and another foray into Interact. Read Megan's report on Interact.

Marco School

Marco School
Originally uploaded by rache65.

It was hard to choose which photo to put up here - go to my flickr site for more on Marco's Gumboot Garden & Kiwiana. Or better still drop in and say hello next time you're passing :-)
A lot of things to talk about and look at when you only get to visit once a term & it was great to catch up with Shaun, Kerry-Anne & Tania. Marco is having a big focus on Wearable Arts culminating in a fasion show at the end of the term - all the community is in behind the effort collecting interesting items for the kids to turn into fashion creations. Introduced Shaun to a number of things coming up in the cluster & beyond - Lions Game, Digital Learning Objects & planned cluster workshops. Spent the afternoon helping Shaun with the basics of FrontPage and developing a structure of pages to start building a Marco & community website. Watched the kids play Ripper Rugby & rehearsing their catwalk struts! (Not at the same time) Plan to get back to Whanga before next term on a Saturday night to hear Shaun play (they tell me he has quite a fan club :-)

Whangamomona

Whangamomona
Originally uploaded by rache65.

Of course I had to stay at the pub! Though it was very quiet being a Tuesday night - the front door was closed at 8 o'clock & I was busy doing my homework. (Honestly I was!)Thanks Claire the meals are great.

Tahora Autumn Shoot

Tahora Autumn Shoot
Originally uploaded by rache65.

Learning the basic skills of video production. The kids had learnt a lot with Mike last year about point of view and taking a good photo. Had to borrow the Firewire card & cable from SPS - took a photo of the gear so Carolyn could send it into her IT provider and order the right bits. The kids worked out pretty well how to download their video on the laptop - pretty easy with XP – Wizard takes u right through the process. Used Richard's idea about the 10 second (well maybe 15 second shot) rule to avoid miles of editing and to get kids thinking carefully about the direction of their scenes.
They then went on to edit, add music, work with sound – narration, muting video, jazzing it up with transitions & titles, saving as a movie etc.
Lots happening on the Internet now we've all got FAST internet access. The kids are doing a topic study on Ancient Egypt and are following a webquest – the tasks in this webquest don’t just have them looking up facts on line, but give ideas that they can follow up in off the computer activities – eg making games, preparing food... (What is the address of that website Carolyn?)
Demonstrated Digital Learning Objects and went onto Te Patika with Carolyn to register for some for Tahora School.

Stratford Primary

One on one PD time again with a few teachers at Stratford. Introduced Clarissa to the Sina administration tools in School Zone. Recommend that she run a quick check once a week to see all are cybersafe – check Top 100 sites (for appropriate use), check the weekly security reports and check the filtered spam to make sure there is nothing caught there that should have been sent through. (I found a number of personal messages for me in there!!! Oops but glad I found them :-)
Penny & Lynn learnt how to make basic web pages (using Word or FrontPage), link them together and add them to the school intranet. Lynn is going to teach the Computer Mentors so they can get a homepage up for all the classes. Lynn would also like to be able to use the Intranet to direct teachers to relevant resources either online or on the school network.
Had lengthy discussions with Penny about server requirements, network structure & desktop configuration as we examine a couple of quotes for a much needed server replacement. Liaised with IT providers & Douglas from MOE about these server specifications & quotes - won’t go into details here…
I supervised Holly’s) first exam (our DigiOp technician – all done online, submitted and marked right away – 100% and it took her 10 minutes!! Well done – obviously been studying hard.

Toko School Learning Stars

Toko School Learning Stars
Originally uploaded by rache65.

One on one with Megan & Heather this morning. Heather's kids have done some interesting & very effective art work with digital photography. The aim was to produce some creative work based on the child's photo of themselves and also to build the skills of photo-editing. I introduced Heather to TKI Learning Experiences a collection of learning resources with an ICT integration focus and helped her work through the submission process to add her work. It turned out that Nina (TKI Editor) felt that this lesson had more of a ICT focus than a cross curricular focus so recommended it go to Share-It (another digital collection of shared resources) Check out the links for Share-It & Learning Experiences and have a look what you could use or adapt for learning in your classroom. Heather's digital photography art lesson is also posted on Interact in the Learning Resources folder. Thanks Heather.
Megan and I looked at using Pegasus mail - saving and sending attachments. We also had a go at putting assessment data in Excel & creating and customising graphs. As we worked together I shared a few basic application tips about working with tables, using short cut keys, word formatting documents. It made me think more about the need for some straight out skills learning (forget about the pedagogy & ICT integration for a bit). So how do you approach this in our cluster? Online tutorials www.atomiclearning.co.uk , is a huge collection of short videos that demonstrate small steps of learning (some clusters are using this and have to register & pay for this), www.electronicteacher.com online text-based tutorials (plenty of screen shots to illustrate); real text books like The Easy Way series that Toko had used for their Community Education computing classes last year; after school workshops (not like Wine Not Networking) - bring your laptops & the files you want help with and we'll work on them together. Perhaps a blend of those things??
Spent some time with Richard working on the Lions game. Richard has done a great job on the construction of the flash web pages and bringing together the ideas. We would like to get some feedback/input from teachers and then put together the final details. You can view the draft version of the game from Toko School's homepage.

Eltham Primary School

Action_Learning_006
Originally uploaded by rache65.

Graham's kids mapping their keywords last term.

Have spent the last few days working with Eltham's Tech Buddies. Megan is starting a computer mentor system to support teachers & students with basic computer skills and trouble shooting.
The sessions were quite intensive - 3 hours each day - more details on Interact. This would be a good start but to sustain a tech buddy system – the students would need regular shorter sessions to reinforce & transfer prior learning and to introduce them to new skills. The opportunity to play around in their own area of the network was really engaging for the students - their feedback on the sessions was that they had just been mucking around and weren’t doing ‘work’ – they didn’t realise how much they learnt until they went through the checklist of LOs. Sustainability of a student mentoring system also requires that these students be used to support others in the school. Give them a profile within the school so teachers & other students know they are available to help. Maybe timetable into other classrooms for short periods during IT activities could help build the tech buddy relationships throughout the school.

Hanging Out at Toko School

Hanging Out at Toko School
Originally uploaded by rache65.

What better way to spend the last day of term than hanging out at Toko School. Everyone feeling quite relieved that ERO had done their dash & been & gone. I went to see the great presentations that the children had done on their Action Learning. But the Toko curse hit me again & after this picture my batteries went flat! There was a variety of presentations about Mt Taranaki from Claire & Kelly's children from Tourist attractions on the mountain to what to do if there is an eruption. I enjoyed the musical presentation and visuals from Cathy's class who had illustrated the song Horse with No Name, presented on the Data Projector and with musical accompaniment & singing :-) Heather's children had some interesting digital artwork to present based on photographs of themselves - look out for the teaching resource for this on TKI Learning Experiences. They were really effective. Have a great holiday everyone :-)

Farewell Simon

spspukeariki
Originally uploaded by rache65.

Off to Puke Ariki to farewell Simon Pickford today. Simon has been managing the Taranaki Information Network - Puke Ariki Portal computers in our schools for the last 2 years and is off to work for the New Plymouth District Council on another IT project there. Here he is with our SPS children impressing the ComputerWorld judges to gain a Digital Excellence Award. Thanks Simon for your contributions to our cluster - delivering workshops at our first Teacher Only Day & after school workshops. Also for continuing to work with us right up to the end and setting things in motion for our 6 Eastern schools to get their PukeAriki computer (& Internet subsidy) - Don't forget Principals from these schools to get back in touch with PukeAriki and say YES - your computers are ready and waiting to be delivered and installed to your networks!

Infolink Over (Nearly)

Infolinkers
Originally uploaded by rache65.

Our last Infolink session at St Josephs. Phew what an effort guys! Well done for your hard work, persistence, patience & enthusiasm - all in different measures from different areas :-) We chose Infolink as a PD focus because of course we think Information Literacy is really important in the skills set of a 21st Century learner, but also because this course is school based and is based on affecting classroom practise. There has been some awesome things happening around our schools as you all work through Action Learning with our kids. The big positives have been the sharing within and across our schools and the excitement in learning that has been articulated by some of our children. I hope you have all fed back your evaluations on the course, some of which we have already discussed in other forums. Still one assignment to go which I guess some of you will be working on over the holidays - check out the links on Interact that may help you with this.

Huiakama School

Huiakama kids have been doing some great work this term! Good to look at their portfolios and I love the little business cards they have been making. Some of the work they have been doing on Len Lye, animations & flip books fitted in well with the work we did today on cartoon animation. The children storyboarded a very basic 8 scene animation. I showed them some animation examples & they set to work - creating characters in Paint & animating them using PowerPoint. They made the connection very easily between flip books and the changing slides in PowerPoint. Learning outcome - not sure - an extension on the work they have been doing already & a bit of fun at the end of the term. Clare and I went onto Interact where she learnt to upload documents for sharing G & T Policy - this is a great forum for sharing so keep putting stuff up there guys.

Stratford Primary School

Yay, after a year puzzling Kerry and I finally worked out how to use the school Intranet. All you need is an index.html page saved in the right place & voila you have a 'front end' - web interface instead of seeing a load of directory files. Don't follow that - no matter - you have to see it in action to understand. We have spent 3 days working with a team of Y8 students creating webpages for their class page. These pages are to showcase the what is happening in their classroom. The children brainstormed ideas for appropriate pages then chose the ones they thought most relevant - Our Work, Art Gallery, Sports & Events + the Home Page. They discussed a design theme but once they got started on individual pages the theme went out the window as the kids experimented with banners, colours, buttons, linked pictures & shapes - so every page was very different. They looked at other school sites for ideas - & I didn't tell them (honestly) the first site they looked at was Toko School! One student was straight into Paint trying to create a road sign that he could cut up into Hotspot links from FrontPage - this didn't eventuate as he got frustrated with his Drawing skills & opted the easy way into Frontpage buttons. The hard lessons learned were in File Management when on the second day one of the students overwrote the home page with his own page & it was completely lost. We had an interesting discussin on using mistakes as learning experiences :-) The children were enthusiastic about using their Intranet pages as a media to publish their work and communicate with the school. They were wanting to take it further and publish to the web where they would have a wider audience. This would be the logical next step and easy to do through SchoolZone hosting. Now the structure has been set up and some skills learnt, the challenge for Kerry is to keep the enthusiasm going and continue to make opportunities and time to publish to the school through their pages.

Makahu School

Makahu Tunnel
Originally uploaded by rache65.

Welcome Eden, Jenny & Hannah to Taranaki. Good to visit today & touch base with where you are at and where you want to go through the opportunities provided by the cluster. Eden has some great ideas about using MSN to communicate & share with the wider school community. Today we helped all the kids set up their own group area in MSN which they are going to use as an online portfolio of their work. It was a good opportunity as we worked together to reinforce cybersafety issues. Though their groups are private they are only so through invitation and anyone can email them to ask to access their sites. We talked about keeping personal details private and what to do if they received email or found sites that were not appropriate.

Te Maunga Taranaki

Te Maunga Taranaki
Originally uploaded by rache65.

This is why I am not very good at time management when I make my way to our Eastern schools - I keep having to stop & take photos.

St Josephs

Mindmapping
Originally uploaded by rache65.

Busy time supporting Infolink at St Josephs. Working with John, Vicky & Kim. Here are Kim's Y2's mapping their ideas - see the beginnings of a Venn - to sort their ideas that fit between categories. Lots of good discussion & questions - you can nearly hear the brain cells ticking over. Good stuff :-)We spent some time (hard work it was too for the little guys) formulating good questions. We talked about fat questions and thin questions by thinking about the types of answers their questions might generate. Moved on to looking at a variety of information sources and practised using the internet to search for relevant information on key words.

Rocky Shore

Rocky Shore
Originally uploaded by rache65.

Vicky's classroom display on the Rocky Shore showing some of the various stages of the Action Learning process. It was really hard to find book information sources on this topic as every other Taranaki class seemed to be doing it too. On the day this class visited the rocky shore at Kawaroa there were 3 other schools there too! Can you imagine over 150 kids & teachers out on the rocks. It is great to see so many of our schools turn to our environment for their learning focus - if they weren't out on the beach they were up the mountain. Look out on Interact for some links to Rocky Shore resources.