Room 9 are doing some great things with their travel buddies – tracking their travels around the world, sending and receiving email & the odd postcard – lots of good questions to ask about what life is like on the other side of the world! We learned about using the digital camera today and this fitted in really well with the transactional writing focus – writing and following instructions. We had a play with KidPix & the photos we took. Again using the 3 seat model to help each other out. It was a bit tricky to draw over the photos when mistakes were made & you can only undo one action so we switched to the easier option of using stamps & stickers. The children dressed up the photos of themselves in interesting ways – giving themselves hats, sunglasses, bowties & other interesting decorations! It would be good to create your own stickers in KidPix but couldn’t work out how to do this though you can adapt the stamps.
Professional reflections on education in NZ - Dancing on the shifting carpet
Wednesday, 28 July 2004
Tuesday, 27 July 2004
Huiakama
Creating a school web site with the students & Vicky. They have their new Microsoft software so we have been using FrontPage 2003. This is a huge improvement on past versions – so easy to set up your pages with table layouts already set up, navigation is easier also with ready made buttons all set to go – just add the text & the links. The photo gallery options are really great & easy to use too. The hard work is tracking down all the photos & finding and writing content. Web hosting is the next thing to organise – Matau, Makahu & Mahoe have been down this track recently so we will follow suit. (www.cheapwebhosting.co.nz) Went online to check prices & found that webhosting is even cheaper than it was so will have to reinvestigate to look for the best deal. Internet access speeds are too slow out at here so there is another job when I get back into town. When the website is ready to go then we will upload it from Stratford Primary (as you can walk faster than the Internet!)
Spent some time with Marilyn working with tables in Word to create planning documents. Suggested she join the free computing course out at Toko on a Wednesday – these courses are also available through WITT in Stratford. Look at creating tutorials that will help – focussing on making documents that can be used for school.
Spent some time with Marilyn working with tables in Word to create planning documents. Suggested she join the free computing course out at Toko on a Wednesday – these courses are also available through WITT in Stratford. Look at creating tutorials that will help – focussing on making documents that can be used for school.
Wednesday, 21 July 2004
Eltham Primary School
Surfing safe & smart
With Kimberley & Megan’s classes in the computer suite – led a session on using the Internet to be safe, smart surfers – look for lesson plan to be posted to Interact. Focus on information skills & critical thinking – White Hat – What are the facts? Cyberpigs – Cyber Sense & Nonsense an excellent resource for this. These lessons need to developed further so teachers can use them confidently with their own classes – workshop it? Fits in well with a focus many schools have at the moment of developing their Internet Appropriate Use policy. I am currently investigating training modules from MultiServe for IT administrators & school leaders. PD team will organise for the cluster.
With Kimberley & Megan’s classes in the computer suite – led a session on using the Internet to be safe, smart surfers – look for lesson plan to be posted to Interact. Focus on information skills & critical thinking – White Hat – What are the facts? Cyberpigs – Cyber Sense & Nonsense an excellent resource for this. These lessons need to developed further so teachers can use them confidently with their own classes – workshop it? Fits in well with a focus many schools have at the moment of developing their Internet Appropriate Use policy. I am currently investigating training modules from MultiServe for IT administrators & school leaders. PD team will organise for the cluster.
Tuesday, 20 July 2004
Stratford Primary School
Working with Room 13. Years 1 - 2. Taking each others photos for their class scrapbook. They learnt all the steps from taking the lense cover off to turning the power on - & they worked it all out themselves! As long as they keep the strap around their neck - give them a camera & let them go for it. They can't do much harm and will only learn. Though we did have to talk also about 'framing' our shots, not cutting people's heads off, keeping our fingers away from the front of the lense etc!
Created a lesson plan with LOs from the English curriculum - writing, reading, & presenting; for the ScrapBook activity we did today. Make this available for sharing on Interact - useful for the teachers to include in their planning & to adapt for other activities too.
Would like to gather some resources of online material & work children have created themselves (like the Digital Picture Books) so that their can be a 'Reading Box' on the desktop of each classroom computer so it is included in the Reading Rotation tasks.
Will be working with the Junior School for the next four weeks - next week we will look at KidPix as a learning tool & give some feedback to the Management team to see if we will get more licences for this.
Created a lesson plan with LOs from the English curriculum - writing, reading, & presenting; for the ScrapBook activity we did today. Make this available for sharing on Interact - useful for the teachers to include in their planning & to adapt for other activities too.
Would like to gather some resources of online material & work children have created themselves (like the Digital Picture Books) so that their can be a 'Reading Box' on the desktop of each classroom computer so it is included in the Reading Rotation tasks.
Will be working with the Junior School for the next four weeks - next week we will look at KidPix as a learning tool & give some feedback to the Management team to see if we will get more licences for this.
Friday, 2 July 2004
Eltham Primary
Thursday 1st July
Miriam was learning how to use features of Spreadsheets to sort & graph data. Introduced her to some basic formula & how you can sort your data to compare student achievement & to track progress of individuals. We also looked at formatting spreadsheets so they would fit on one page & be easy to read. We set up Miriam’s & Megan’s new laptops so they could access the Internet & Email. We looked at different ways of burning to CD. I suggested using Drag & Drop if you want to copy one CD to another. If you want to copy files, folders & programmes from your laptop then it is just as easy to open the CD drive as you would any other folder on your computer & drop your work in – Windows CD Wizard takes over from there.
Recommended that the school looks at tracking down it’s digital learning media – some can be made accessible through the network, & backup copies of CDs should be made of resources that are important. Ascent Technologies http://www.ascent.co.nz/index.asp are just one place of many online that you can purchase CDs in bulk (amongst other things)
I-Photo & I-Movie with Megan – I need more practise with this – Gavin please get your laptops configured so I can take one home!
Miriam was learning how to use features of Spreadsheets to sort & graph data. Introduced her to some basic formula & how you can sort your data to compare student achievement & to track progress of individuals. We also looked at formatting spreadsheets so they would fit on one page & be easy to read. We set up Miriam’s & Megan’s new laptops so they could access the Internet & Email. We looked at different ways of burning to CD. I suggested using Drag & Drop if you want to copy one CD to another. If you want to copy files, folders & programmes from your laptop then it is just as easy to open the CD drive as you would any other folder on your computer & drop your work in – Windows CD Wizard takes over from there.
Recommended that the school looks at tracking down it’s digital learning media – some can be made accessible through the network, & backup copies of CDs should be made of resources that are important. Ascent Technologies http://www.ascent.co.nz/index.asp are just one place of many online that you can purchase CDs in bulk (amongst other things)
I-Photo & I-Movie with Megan – I need more practise with this – Gavin please get your laptops configured so I can take one home!
Stratford Primary
30th June
Digital Story Telling – worked with Wendy to load the completed stories to the Intranet & to create links to them with a webpage that will also be stored on the Intranet. Teachers will be sent a newsletter with a link that directs them there & be given instructions on how to put a shortcut on the desktop. We also burnt the stories to individual CDs – we went through the process of saving as a Power Point Show so they would run automatically. We also used an auto run program on the cd so that it would start running without having to click on any files.
Spent some time problem solving the firewire connection & downloading video to the laptop – don’t know what I did but seems to be going OK now. The trick might be (as Penny suggested) that the firewire card needs to be in place before the laptop is started up so that the device is recognised.
Prepared with Vicky for next term’s in-school days with the Junior School – looking at IT literacies as outlined in the school documents – how they can be incorporated into planning & assessment. Sharing of Digital Stories with Sherrilyn’s class. Hannah & Kate – Y8 authors shared the stories with the younger children.
Digital Story Telling – worked with Wendy to load the completed stories to the Intranet & to create links to them with a webpage that will also be stored on the Intranet. Teachers will be sent a newsletter with a link that directs them there & be given instructions on how to put a shortcut on the desktop. We also burnt the stories to individual CDs – we went through the process of saving as a Power Point Show so they would run automatically. We also used an auto run program on the cd so that it would start running without having to click on any files.
Spent some time problem solving the firewire connection & downloading video to the laptop – don’t know what I did but seems to be going OK now. The trick might be (as Penny suggested) that the firewire card needs to be in place before the laptop is started up so that the device is recognised.
Prepared with Vicky for next term’s in-school days with the Junior School – looking at IT literacies as outlined in the school documents – how they can be incorporated into planning & assessment. Sharing of Digital Stories with Sherrilyn’s class. Hannah & Kate – Y8 authors shared the stories with the younger children.
Huiakama
29th June
We were going to work with using the scanner to scan drawings & artwork. Could not get the old scanner working with the new xp computers – looking for a compatible driver online was like looking for a needle in a haystack. Introduced next term’s email game to Vicky & a group of older students. We checked out Toko’s website & the two Official Olympic games sites & bookmarked them. Bandwidth restrictions will make research difficult but enthusiasm will make up for that! Practised spreadsheet & graphing skills with a mock tally sheet & briefly looked at formula (because that is why spreadsheets are so cool). Photographed line drawings (instead of scanning) & worked on them in Paint. With these big files either scanned or photographed they need to be resized in a Photo Editor so they are manageable to work with. To be able to use fill tool we had to make the outline transparent.
We were going to work with using the scanner to scan drawings & artwork. Could not get the old scanner working with the new xp computers – looking for a compatible driver online was like looking for a needle in a haystack. Introduced next term’s email game to Vicky & a group of older students. We checked out Toko’s website & the two Official Olympic games sites & bookmarked them. Bandwidth restrictions will make research difficult but enthusiasm will make up for that! Practised spreadsheet & graphing skills with a mock tally sheet & briefly looked at formula (because that is why spreadsheets are so cool). Photographed line drawings (instead of scanning) & worked on them in Paint. With these big files either scanned or photographed they need to be resized in a Photo Editor so they are manageable to work with. To be able to use fill tool we had to make the outline transparent.
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.
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.
Monday, 28 June 2004
Eltham Primary
Friday June 25th
Working with Sue. Downloaded photos into i-photo & then i-movie to create a slideshow. Sue has been inspired by Mike Whiteman at a recent PRT day to use video for assessment & has been doing this for their recent Communication unit. Check out www.freefoto.com used this with a student to collect images (of cars) to create slideshow (book) using AppleWorks. Apples are great for working with images – you don’t need to copy & paste or even save pictures & insert into documents – you can drag them straight off the web page & onto your work – so easy! Introduced Sue to Interact – downloaded PowerPoint workshop resources, looked at Maths resources & found IDP & survey forms. Sue (after listening to Jill at the Mini-conference) has rearranged the computers in her classroom so they are more accessible & easy to see to support sharing of their work. Need to load Microsoft Office programmes so there are more tools for the students to work with. Eltham has not completed their Microsoft relicensing – reviewed & discussed the documents with Jocelyn – these will be signed & sent in on Monday.
Working with Sue. Downloaded photos into i-photo & then i-movie to create a slideshow. Sue has been inspired by Mike Whiteman at a recent PRT day to use video for assessment & has been doing this for their recent Communication unit. Check out www.freefoto.com used this with a student to collect images (of cars) to create slideshow (book) using AppleWorks. Apples are great for working with images – you don’t need to copy & paste or even save pictures & insert into documents – you can drag them straight off the web page & onto your work – so easy! Introduced Sue to Interact – downloaded PowerPoint workshop resources, looked at Maths resources & found IDP & survey forms. Sue (after listening to Jill at the Mini-conference) has rearranged the computers in her classroom so they are more accessible & easy to see to support sharing of their work. Need to load Microsoft Office programmes so there are more tools for the students to work with. Eltham has not completed their Microsoft relicensing – reviewed & discussed the documents with Jocelyn – these will be signed & sent in on Monday.
Stratford Primary School
Wednesday June 23rd
Senior Team Digital Story Telling
Completing Power Point – digital stories. Recorded narrations – resource rooms make a good sound room! Some students away but with the help of others we located all the Power Point files from the network – saved them to my laptop to be narrated next week when students are there. I had previously worked with a group of ‘experts’ who in turn were to support others in their class – this didn’t happen due to time pressure in the classroom. This highlights the need to have IT activities integrated as opposed to added-on. This project may have been more successful if it had been built in at the planning stages so that teachers would be taking the activities on board & structuring time and resources to support that. Next week we will hopefully be able to set up time for students to share their stories with their buddy classes – load them to the Intranet & burn them to cd so they can be part of the school library resources.
Also worked with Lyn the librarian to load learning media stories (Swimming with Sharks, Punk Junk Mailer etc) to the Intranet so that teachers can access them & load to the classroom computers. These cds can be run over the network but they are slow and unreliable so they do need to be set up on each classroom computer. Have shown Lyn how to copy cds so that extra copies can be placed in the resource room. Need to create opportunities for teachers to preview these resources – just as they preview print materials – usually in the staffroom during interval & lunch. Load them to a laptop & share them around or some time during staff meetings. Lyn is creating a newsletter with hyperlinks to the resources we have copied to the Intranet.
Senior Team Digital Story Telling
Completing Power Point – digital stories. Recorded narrations – resource rooms make a good sound room! Some students away but with the help of others we located all the Power Point files from the network – saved them to my laptop to be narrated next week when students are there. I had previously worked with a group of ‘experts’ who in turn were to support others in their class – this didn’t happen due to time pressure in the classroom. This highlights the need to have IT activities integrated as opposed to added-on. This project may have been more successful if it had been built in at the planning stages so that teachers would be taking the activities on board & structuring time and resources to support that. Next week we will hopefully be able to set up time for students to share their stories with their buddy classes – load them to the Intranet & burn them to cd so they can be part of the school library resources.
Also worked with Lyn the librarian to load learning media stories (Swimming with Sharks, Punk Junk Mailer etc) to the Intranet so that teachers can access them & load to the classroom computers. These cds can be run over the network but they are slow and unreliable so they do need to be set up on each classroom computer. Have shown Lyn how to copy cds so that extra copies can be placed in the resource room. Need to create opportunities for teachers to preview these resources – just as they preview print materials – usually in the staffroom during interval & lunch. Load them to a laptop & share them around or some time during staff meetings. Lyn is creating a newsletter with hyperlinks to the resources we have copied to the Intranet.
Thursday, 17 June 2004
Thinking to Learn: Learning to Think
Tuesday 16 June
Thinking to Learn: Learning to Think - Michael Pohl workshop in Wanganui. 7 from our cluster (Eltham, Stratford, Mahoe) – good to talk about what is happening in our schools, what we can take back & work on in our schools with other teachers. Thinking skills I want to be doing more of this in school visits!!! As Wendy@Mahoe says this is the foundation of everything we do.There are great opportunities for me to introduce & work with teachers with these strategies & ideas in classrooms. This day really made sense for what before for me was a hotchpotch of different ideas about teaching thinking skills that till now I have been pretty confused about – so many models to work with – what should we use when? Michael helped with ideas about creating structures for the explicit teaching of thinking skills & what strategies are useful for different situations. Also how important it is to have a whole school culture of thinking – shared understandings – and some good tools here to implement this into schools. Bought a CD of Michael’s presentation – will be the major focus of our next PD facilitation team meeting.
Thinking to Learn: Learning to Think - Michael Pohl workshop in Wanganui. 7 from our cluster (Eltham, Stratford, Mahoe) – good to talk about what is happening in our schools, what we can take back & work on in our schools with other teachers. Thinking skills I want to be doing more of this in school visits!!! As Wendy@Mahoe says this is the foundation of everything we do.There are great opportunities for me to introduce & work with teachers with these strategies & ideas in classrooms. This day really made sense for what before for me was a hotchpotch of different ideas about teaching thinking skills that till now I have been pretty confused about – so many models to work with – what should we use when? Michael helped with ideas about creating structures for the explicit teaching of thinking skills & what strategies are useful for different situations. Also how important it is to have a whole school culture of thinking – shared understandings – and some good tools here to implement this into schools. Bought a CD of Michael’s presentation – will be the major focus of our next PD facilitation team meeting.
St Josephs
Monday 15 June
Good session with Vicky’s class introducing Tech Buddy model to Vicky & the students. Class was beginning a study on NZ birds so our learning activity was based around what they knew about NZ birds. Modelled the 3 seat tech buddy coaching system to the whole class & Vicky & went through a few rotations of the students being involved in their activity. Small, simple steps - create a new slide, identify the picture of the bird they are writing about & insert the picture, think about what they know about the bird & key in text, save. Students can repeat this activity at the end of the unit to record what they have learnt during the topic study. Reinforce the learning team rules about the roles of helper, doer, watcher. This should be a manageable system for ICT based activities in the classroom – revisit to see if they are keeping the momentum for all the students to be involved.
Need to look for ways to be working in similar ways in other classes so teachers can be involved in the learning process as well. Time in the computer bay with students alone does not contribute to teacher development. Ideas?? – creating shared presentations; visual images – discussion starters for lessons, topics; digital story telling; movie making (role play); graphic organisers – mind mapping; micro-quests, web quests; internet safety, searching, evaluation; epals; data gathering & manipulation; involvement in online collaborative games, activities – writers window, TKI interactives……………
Good session with Vicky’s class introducing Tech Buddy model to Vicky & the students. Class was beginning a study on NZ birds so our learning activity was based around what they knew about NZ birds. Modelled the 3 seat tech buddy coaching system to the whole class & Vicky & went through a few rotations of the students being involved in their activity. Small, simple steps - create a new slide, identify the picture of the bird they are writing about & insert the picture, think about what they know about the bird & key in text, save. Students can repeat this activity at the end of the unit to record what they have learnt during the topic study. Reinforce the learning team rules about the roles of helper, doer, watcher. This should be a manageable system for ICT based activities in the classroom – revisit to see if they are keeping the momentum for all the students to be involved.
Need to look for ways to be working in similar ways in other classes so teachers can be involved in the learning process as well. Time in the computer bay with students alone does not contribute to teacher development. Ideas?? – creating shared presentations; visual images – discussion starters for lessons, topics; digital story telling; movie making (role play); graphic organisers – mind mapping; micro-quests, web quests; internet safety, searching, evaluation; epals; data gathering & manipulation; involvement in online collaborative games, activities – writers window, TKI interactives……………
Eltham Primary School
Friday 11 June
At the Tech Centre with Peter, Gavin & Brenda. Looked at Sound & Music software – Audacity, Music Maker & Super Dooper Music Looper. Super Dooper Music Looper is aimed at very young children & really easy to use. Good starting point for learning about recording sounds & making compositions. Costs around $50 NZD. Peter investigating buying this for the Tech Centre. Demonstrated using the head set microphone to capture sound in Audacity. Also investigated Extranets – KnowledgeNet, Interact (logged Peter on as a new user) & Think.com. We really liked Think.com – free, online software, not available to us at the moment as being piloted in other NZ schools. I will contact Doug Harre about being able to access this software. This ties in really well with the needs of the whole cluster & the Tech Centre wanting an online area for students from all their schools to share and display their work. Talked about upgrading and networking the Tech Centre computers. They are currently networked through peer to peer shared files. Need to install network operating software if you want students and classes to have separate logons & folders. Windows NT, 2000 or 2003 available through the Microsoft agreement. This only needs to be installed on the server computer & desktops configured. Checked out the new cameras with Brenda. Loaded software to main computer and practised downloading pictures. Created an album "On Holiday at the Tech Centre" :-)
At the Tech Centre with Peter, Gavin & Brenda. Looked at Sound & Music software – Audacity, Music Maker & Super Dooper Music Looper. Super Dooper Music Looper is aimed at very young children & really easy to use. Good starting point for learning about recording sounds & making compositions. Costs around $50 NZD. Peter investigating buying this for the Tech Centre. Demonstrated using the head set microphone to capture sound in Audacity. Also investigated Extranets – KnowledgeNet, Interact (logged Peter on as a new user) & Think.com. We really liked Think.com – free, online software, not available to us at the moment as being piloted in other NZ schools. I will contact Doug Harre about being able to access this software. This ties in really well with the needs of the whole cluster & the Tech Centre wanting an online area for students from all their schools to share and display their work. Talked about upgrading and networking the Tech Centre computers. They are currently networked through peer to peer shared files. Need to install network operating software if you want students and classes to have separate logons & folders. Windows NT, 2000 or 2003 available through the Microsoft agreement. This only needs to be installed on the server computer & desktops configured. Checked out the new cameras with Brenda. Loaded software to main computer and practised downloading pictures. Created an album "On Holiday at the Tech Centre" :-)
Thursday, 10 June 2004
Stratford Primary
A day in the office split with 'school visit'.
Building houses with R20 - animated ppoints using shapes to construct houses.
Kerry - burning to cd with autoplay feature - make a 'How To' file on that one.
Library - problem solved loading school journals to intranet - Lyn will be sending newsletter out to staff with the link to the exe. files so that the school journal cds can be loaded direct from the intranet to the classroom computers. Also made teachers notes available on the Intranet with links to them in the newsletter.
Talked about making backup copies of cds & practise on a couple with Toshiba Dragn'Drop. Goal to do a stocktake on digital media & software - load where appropriate to the Intranet & make backup copies of everything.
Building houses with R20 - animated ppoints using shapes to construct houses.
Kerry - burning to cd with autoplay feature - make a 'How To' file on that one.
Library - problem solved loading school journals to intranet - Lyn will be sending newsletter out to staff with the link to the exe. files so that the school journal cds can be loaded direct from the intranet to the classroom computers. Also made teachers notes available on the Intranet with links to them in the newsletter.
Talked about making backup copies of cds & practise on a couple with Toshiba Dragn'Drop. Goal to do a stocktake on digital media & software - load where appropriate to the Intranet & make backup copies of everything.
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