Monday, November 24, 2008

Teachers TV

There are some great video clips to share with your class here. At the moment there is a focus on bullying and some good clips to look at on this subject which unfortunately comes up quite often.

Friday, November 14, 2008

Mind Mapping

This is the web site I told some of you about at Marist - mind mapping with Inspiration. It is a Beta web version you can sign up for free. Has the capabilities of the programme Inspiration but it is online and at the moment free. Check it out here.

Tuesday, November 11, 2008

Mac Freeware

Some of my PC schools used a programme called BlockCad which the children can use to design in Lego. One school designed a new swimming pool for their school, it was a great challenge. I see in the Mac freeware there is a programme for the Mac from the Lego creators. Have a look around the Mac Freeware site, there are some interesting apps which may suit some of you.

Monday, November 10, 2008

Apple Bus Tour Gems

Thanks to Stuart Hale for the great trip last week - we only had 14 so went in the van.
Some great ideas - I liked the way Tahatei Coast School integrated the key competencies into their curriculum with the 6 C's - Compassion, communication, contemplation, creativity, conscience, citizenship. Selwyn Ridge School had 'The Kid on the Ridge' the image of a child in the school uniform with the tool kit of values and attitudes and some really great ways of empowering students to be leaders of their learning. Pt England had podcasting down to a fine art and the students were all engaged and motivated to learn with ICT tools as an integral part of the learning. Dorothy Burt's research showed that the podcasting had raised student achievement in literacy. At Summerland School we heard some great ideas for integrating ICT from the teachers - more about that later. Bucklands Beach Intermediate students could talk about their learning through their digital portfolios. I loved the way they used Glogster to create innovative cover pages. At Sherwood Primary the students were really good at using Fireworks and Flash to edit their pictures and create animations. They have 9 teachers in their e-learning team. They also subscribe to Scholastic Education's Lexile system which has encouraged children to read for meaning and get really excited about reading. www.mylexile.co.nz
Cool new programmes I learned about were Spore to create and animate creatures, iKareoke, a great music programme, MorphX (change yourself into someone or something else - an oldie but a goodie)and Sub Etha Edit.
I am looking forward to the new version of Hyperstudio coming out later this year or early next year hopefully. The students in a couple of schools were trialling it and I had a play - looks fantastic for web authoring and image/animation creation.

Wednesday, October 29, 2008

Wordle fun


Another cool tool is Wordle. Use this to make a word picture - great for poetry or making an unusual concept map. I used a poem about the sun.

Tag Galaxy


Have some fun with this cool tool using Flickr photos. You type in a tag - I did New Zealand and this tool creates a planet pic using hundreds of photos. Take a screen pic - on the Mac shift, apple and 4 to create cross hairs and make a selection or Print Screen on the PC and use for topic studies or any curriculum area!

Sunday, October 5, 2008

New updates on the cluster wiki

I have uploaded more resources on the cluster wiki including links to my presentation coming up this week at ULearn. I am presenting a workshop called 'The Social Web' and also two small presentations on strategy planning and interactive mihi's.

ACEC08 Conference in Canberra

I got back from the conference in the early hours of Friday morning very tired but with loads of ideas for working with the cluster! One of my favourite workshops was learning how to use Scratch and scratching at the surface of programming with Python.
The Keynote speaker was Mitchel Resnick who is a professor at MIT university. He was an inspiring speaker.
I am compiling a report of learning experiences of all who attended from our cluster - (Robyn, Kathryn and Katherine from Marist) with links to workshop resources where possible. I will put this on the cluster wiki.
I also bought a small movie camera called a Flip. ($220As) It is the size of a large mobile phone and has inbuilt software for editing, you just put the USB which flicks out from the side into your computer and download and edit the movie clips. It works on 2 AA batteries and takes an hour of video clips. It will be very useful for my work in schools.
Another highlight at Canberra was the Floriade Festival. This is a national festival celebrating spring. I have put a movie together using my photos to show you how spectacular it was!

Friday, September 19, 2008

Check out this Map of Future Forces!

One of the links provided by our National Facilitator was this Map of future forces affecting education" Very interesting and well set out - worth a look!

Friday, September 12, 2008

Cluster website updated

I have just updated the cluster web site. More on curriculum ideas and links to our workshop for today. Please complete the survey!

Wednesday, September 10, 2008

Podcasting in our schools

Richmond Road School has Radio Richmond and Marist has Magic Marist, these are podcast broadcasts which are shared in the schools. Students run the broadcasts and share current happenings and learning experiences. You may like to listen to them.
Magic Marist
Radio Richmond

Head in the clouds

I have embedded the quintura search engine in the side menu, we have been using this at Marist School and St Josephs - a nice way for children to use a search engine - they also have a very visual kids one too - more suitable for juniors. I found an interesting article which was noted by Derek Wenmoth in his blog post. The article is in The New York Times and is about the notion of cloud computing - the link is http://www.nytimes.com/2008/07/17/technology/personaltech/17pogue.html?_r=1&th&emc=th&oref=login

Wednesday, August 13, 2008

Visit to Pt England School

Last week a group of principals and ICT Leaders visited Pt England School. Dorothy Burt was a fantastic host, she took us on a tour of the school where we observed children engaged and on task using ICT to enhance their learning. We were very impressed with the podcasting studio and were also treated to a music performance in the music room. We came back with a lot of ideas for ICT in our schools!
Here is a slideshow about the learning at Pt England School.

ICTPD Cluster Sharing Day at Ponsonby Intermediate

Recently we had a great day at Ponsonby Intermediate learning about image editing using Photoshop Elements with Kathryn from Marist School. We also learned more about using Keynote and had an afternoon creating podcasts in the music suite. Here are some photos from the day.

Monday, June 30, 2008

Murrays Bay Intermediate School Visit

On Thursday we visited Murrays Bay Intermediate School and Sunnybrae Normal School to find out how they are integrating ICT into the curriculum. We had a very comprehensive visit to Murrays Bay Intermediate and saw into the classrooms where we observed students in the language classes using Voice Thread for language learning. We also saw students using the SmartBoards (one in every room) for group based learning activities. Colin Dale, the Principal and Shannon,the AP were really helpful in explaining the invitational learning philosophy and inquiry based learning model used in the school.
At Sunnybrae Jenny, the Principal and Steven the DP spent time showing us their school intranet and explained how the school has integrated Web2 tools into classroom learning.
The following slideshow shows photos of learning experiences at Murrays Bay Intermediate (including the visit from the drama group at
Rangitoto College to promote their Shakespeare Day!)

Wednesday, June 18, 2008

Teachers sharing learning outcomes

Thank you to the teachers who have offered to take workshops for our cluster share days in term three and four. So far Nigel is taking a workshop on digital learning centres, Kathryn is taking one on creating wikis and Kyra has offered to take one on Photostory. I look forward to hearing from others as I know many of you have some really great skills and ideas to share!

Tuesday, June 10, 2008

ACC Slideshow

ICT special groups

Our special student groups are working well on their projects.
At Ponsonby Intermediate the I-Tech group are learning how to create their own pages in Knowledge Net. They are then given the task of helping their teacher and other students in their class to create student pages and a class page.
At St Josephs the enrichment group is working on movie making and are creating a presentation with movie clips and Marvin characters to show the special and unique aspects of their school.
At Marist School the special group have been creating a podcast about their school. Their site is http://magicmarist.podomatic.com They have interviews and stories about their school uploaded to the site and next week will record work they have done in class and upload that. They will also be news gatherers so they can report on special happenings at the school.

Monday, May 26, 2008

Back to work!

I have been away for a few weeks as I had my eye operation. I can now see the road without shutting one eye!
We have had some interesting happenings in our cluster. At Ponsonby Intermediate we are setting up a Tech Expert group with two children from each class training as tech experts who are helping with class pages for Knowledge Net and other ICT initiatives.
At Marist School today we had a focus on the Key Competencies for the teacher only day. I have set up a web site for info on the way the Key Competencies have impacted on curriculum delivery change. Mainly because I wanted to try the web editor - Weebly! It is so easy to use that everyone can have one - try it! See my one at http://learningforlife.weebly.com/

Friday, April 4, 2008

Cluster Workshop






Today we had a cluster workshop on the Key Competencies and ICT at Ponsonby Intermediate School. Thank you for a great venue - the facilities are superb. Thanks to the participants from Newton Central, St Josephs, Richmond Road and Ponsonby Intermediate schools. I hope you enjoyed the day and were able to take back new infor for your schools!

Wednesday, March 12, 2008

Check out our cluster wiki web site for resources and PD ideas!

Auckland Central Cluster Wiki

Back to the classroom

Well we are really getting on with term one now. There are some great happenings in our cluster. Firstly the gifted and talented groups are really excited about their ICT projects. At St Josephs School the students have planned a 3D animation movie showing the special character of their school. They are scripting interviews with the people who make the school a special place and are about to conduct the interviews, recording them with a digital movie camera. This will form part of the presentation movie which will include interviews with students about their learning, slideshows of the inside their beautiful church and information about their history. The Marvin characters will guide the viewer through the movie with interesting snippets of information.
At Marist the students have set up a podcasting site and are in the process of planning for the episodes. Watch this space for the site access!
Also at Marist several classes have set up wiki spaces for their class web zines.
At Richmond Road School podcasting and an internal student led radio broadcast will be the focus for this year. Students at this school may belong to the French immersion unit, the Samoan or Maori bi-lingual units and will be broadcasting in their heritage language.
At Ponsonby Intermediate the staff are meeting regularly for quality learning circles and sharing expertise in various areas. There is a big focus on info-literacy and the Knowledge Net learning management system.
In April we will be having a full day cluster workshop so teachers from all schools can network and share ideas. Our focus for this workshop will be on linking the key competencies to the use of ICT tools. More on that later!

Saturday, February 23, 2008

Why do we need to integrate ICT in the curriculum?

Student Expo 2007

BubbleShare: Share photos - Play some Online Games.

Learning at School Conference

We got back last night to a blustery wet Auckland after a great time in Rotorua at the conference. As usual it was a great venue, fantastic food, interesting exhibitors and inspiring workshops and presentations. I went to some of the Mac IWorks 08 workshops so I can work with teachers from Richmond Road, Newton Central and Ponsonby Intermediate Schools on these apps. I am really impressed with the new features on Keynote, these features integrate with the other apps - Pages and Numbers and I am looking forward to sharing these with you at our PD sessions.
I went to the all day workshop on Marvin as well. I can't wait to share this with teachers! It is a 3D animation tool which has been provided for schools at very little cost ($200 per school unlimited license) I can see this will be great for working with our bi-lingual and immersion units to create exciting digital stories in their heritage language! If you want to have a preview of this and download the evaluation version go to the Marvin web site. The evaluation copy has a limited amount of characters, there are many more when you purchase the license and it is being upgraded all the time. I noticed an article about this programme in the Herald last Wednesday.
Interactive whiteboards featured in many exhibitor stands. There are so many options out there! I was very interested to find out about the first multiple user interactive whiteboard which has been made in NZ. I spoke to Pablo Garcia (you may know him from Manzana - SMARTBoards) who explained about the special world first features - multiple touch means that several users can use the board at the same time so this would be great for collaborative grouping activities.
If you go to my delicious site (see link on side menu) and go to the IWB section on the cloud list you will see I have many links to the different IWB sites and templates.
I will also be posting some extra resources and tutorials from my learning experiences at the conference on our cluster wiki
Cheers,
Angie

Wednesday, February 6, 2008

Welcome to our cluster blog site!

I hope you have all enjoyed your holidays and are feeling refreshed and ready for a new year in the classroom. It is the last year of the ICTPD contract and I look forward to working with you all towards integrating new ideas about using ICT tools in your classrooms. Please contribute your comments to this blog. Our first discussion will be about successful experiences and good ideas you have about using ICT tools in the classroom. Please share your good ideas with us!