Free extra templates, themes and backgrounds for Keynote

I often have to make my own backgrounds for Keynote slideshows but having found this site where there is a great supply of cool themes and backgrounds I don't have to waste my time. Have a look here!
There are also I-Web backgrounds and themes too.

Christmas advent calendar

Try this activity with students - each day they open a box in the advent calendar and have to solve a clue to find out about a particular country in the world. When they click on the flag it opens up to show them how Christmas is celebrated in that country. Look at the side menu for other great Christmas activities!

Using Newsmaker

At Mt Albert Primary the children are using Newsmaker to share their learning!

Untitled from Angie Simmons on Vimeo.

Safety video - a culmination of our safety inquiry (Marist experts group)

Fathom Software for data analysis

I had the opportunity some time ago of looking at Fathom  which is a great tool for organising and interpreting data. You can download it free for 60 days to try it out. Watch this movie to find out more!

Ideas for using Wordles

Click on the small square at the bottom to play this in a full screen!

Holiday Trip to Lyttleton and Akaroa with daughter Chantal

Christmas ideas

(Blast from the past Ricky and Nicola!)

This site has all the Christmas ideas you need - thanks to Suzie Vesper from Core-Ed!

Clicker 5

For the teachers at Sunnydene and Carlson using Clicker 5 here is a link to a good online tutorial to supplement my workshop - remember that right click and Properties is a good way to do everything though. I have put a new tutorial in PDF form on my web site.

Copyright free music source

A new library of free music downloads - classical pieces which may suit as background music for your movies or for children to learn more about classical music.
This is what they have to say: Musopen is an online music library of copyright free (public domain) music. We want to give the world access to music without the legal hassles so common today. There is a great deal of music that has expired copyrights, but almost no recordings of this music is in the public domain. We aim to record or obtain recordings that have no copyrights so that our visitors may listen, re-use, or in any way enjoy music. Put simply, our mission is to set music free.

Online project for junior classes

Where the Wild Things Went Looks really good - need to register this month - all free with resources and quite timely as the movie is coming out soon.

Google Wave

This promises to be a great tool for the classroom. You need to request an invitation at this stage to try it out. I wonder! See here what others have to say about it.

Highlights from ULearn

The ULearn Conference in Christchurch was really great as usual. Not so many sellers, so a reflection of the economy I suppose. There were some great presenters from Oz and one workshop I went to on 'Real Maths' was great. One of the teachers had a wonderful example of a classroom blog, she has incorporated many web2 tools very successfully and the blog reflects a very exciting and positive classroom. Derek Wenmoth delivered a really interesting spotlight presentation. His blog is on my google reader and worth a read. As a Mac person I always attend a session with Stuart Hale, he always delivers a good workshop.
Had a great time at the dinner. Amanda (ICT leader from Birdwood School) and I sat with a large group (24 teachers) from Sutton Park School in South Auckland. They were a fun crowd.
Christchurch was freezing cold! After the conference my daughter and I went to Lyttleton and stayed at a cool little B & B overlooking the bay - called The Rookery. Went to the farmers market and bought stuff and this fantastic shop called Himalaya. We drove to Akaroa over the hills in the snow and went to this amazing place called The Giant's House.


A great end to the holidays but now back to all the schools and the millstone reports!

Students create learning centres

Students from St Josephs School were shown how to create learning centres last term. They have been working hard to create learning centres to help other students learn French, this is also helping to consolidate their own language learning too. They have created links to pages and language activities.

E Learning Center Siobhan

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Paint and Photostory show

One of the schools I work with as an ICTPD facilitator is Mt Albert Primary. The children from Angela's class (not me - another Angela!) created this show to share with other classes - they had a literacy focus on Myths and Legends. They loved recording their voices too. I just love their art work - aren't children just special!(Be patient - takes ages to buffer)

Retelling legends from Angie Simmons on Vimeo.

Cool tools for schools - Lenva Shearing

Lenva Shearing, Deputy Principal from Bucklands Beach Intermediate has put together a couple of fantastic wiki web sites. The first one I use a lot is called 'Getting Tricky with Wikis' and the other showcases most of the wonderful web2 tools and is called 'Cool Tools for Schools' I am sure you will find these resources a great help!

Interactive Periodic Table

I thought this was pretty good - passing on to you Sian!

I wonder how long this will be free?

Brightstorms is a one stop maths tutoring site mainly for Intermediate/Secondary students. I will be passing this on to friends who have children studying hard for their maths NCEA levels - it has real maths tutors explaining all those tricky problems (I was not good at maths so I am really impressed with this) Check it out.

Create your own newspaper story

This is a great little tool for literacy in the classroom. Students put their own text into the generator and it converts it to a look alike newspaper article!

Innovative new entrant class

I have worked with Marist School in Herne Bay for nearly four years and I am so impressed with the way the teachers there embrace ICT tools as part of their classroom practice. Here are some pics of the new entrant class - these children use ICT tools as a natural part of their learning.

Yarping!

I just got invited to a social occasion via a yarp! What a cool idea - have a look - really easy - invitations and surveys here

New NZ Citizenship web site for educators

Have a look at this new site - great for discussion about what it means to be a citizen in NZ - roles and responsibilities.

Online publishing blogs

There are some issues with online student publishing in the classroom. There is a great student blogging site which is set up to alleviate a lot of the privacy problems. It is specifically set up for classroom teachers to set up safe blogging environments. Check out 21classes

Maori Language week

This is Maori language week - have a look at this site - I use it quite a bit.

Visual wikipedia

Try out this interesting site

Welcome back!

A new term starts - amazing how fast the year goes! I have been away for the hols - also experienced a death in the family as our dear old grandma (93) died the week before the holidays. She had lived with us for eight years so is sadly missed. It was quite sudden though and it was very quick so at least she did not suffer. She was independent and on to it till the very end!
I have found this site really great in terms of ideas and lesson plans for integrating ICT. I have submitted some myself too. You need to log in and register but it is free and they don't bombard you with emails!

Digital Poetry

I have been working with different classes at Whangaparaoa Primary. In M2 we have started a digital poetry book using PowerPoint and including our 'vivid vocab' words. Have a look at our progress so far. We did some great custom animation for the words but this feature is not supported in Slideshare.

M2poetry

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Ideas for Wordles

The Witches by Roahld Dahl!
Vivid Vocab!
Learning about spiders!

We have been having fun with wordles at Whangaparaoa Primary. Students have been creating 'vivid vocab' wordles for wonderful words for stories. They have also made wordles about books they have read. Topic study wordles have been popular too!

A cautionary tale - reminds me of schools at the moment!

The antnewplick

Maori language site

At Richmond Road School we practiced Maori pronunciation using the interactive recorded sounds in this site. A great resource for Te Reo and Maori protocol!

Presentation software

I like this presentation software - easy to use and upload your presentations to embed online. Have a look at their examples. Great thing is it's free!

Netvibes page

I have set up a Netvibes page to store and show all my favourite sites - it is easy to see and access and you just store the favourites not the multitudes you may have in a site such as Delicious. I think it would be a great way for teachers to set up a page for their students with just the sites they want them to use.Change the look of the site every now and again for fun!

E-Portfolios

Lately I have been working with two schools setting up e-portfolios. At one school we used Google Apps. This was a small rural school and I had some concerns about connectivity but it all seems to be working. We set up a class site with list of names linking to individual student pages, each password protected. To do this all students needed an email address of their own. This was also set up in Google Apps. The idea is that each student in the class can upload examples of their work and write their own reflection on their learning. There is an emphasis on process rather than product with students taking charge of their next learning steps in partnership with the teacher. It was a relatively easy set up and appears to be working well.
At the next school we set up e-portfolios using Wikispaces for educators. Each childs name was set up in the side menu and linked to their own wiki pages. Again the idea is to engage in student reflections on their learning and posting their work on the site. Each page is password protected using the code script which Lenva Shearing has provided on her fantastic site
It is a wonderful learning experience for the students as well as keeping parents and caregivers up to date with their student's learning however I do have some reservations in that some students do not have access to the Internet at home and may be disadvantaged by this. This could be alleviated by having access to school computers for parents before or after school. There is also free Internet access now in most public libraries so I guess if they really want to see the portfolios there are ways and means.
I would like to see the students taking charge of their own pages and provided with specific times for this under the supervision of the teacher - not having this as extra work for the teacher to complete. It will require time for students to learn how to upload and work within a web space, however most students are more conversant with this than the teachers! I see it working with year 5 upwards. I have seen some interesting ones set up through Knowledge Net but many schools can't afford this option. I would love to see how other schools are developing e-portfolios using the free software out there!

Wolfram Alpha

There is a new search engine supposed to rival Google called Wolfram Alpha.
The search engine, or “computational knowledge engine” is the brainchild of British physicist and mathematician Stephen Wolfram, and has been touted as “The Google Killer”.

The difference between Wolfram|Alpha and a traditional search engine is that Wolfram|Alpha is able to compute data on the fly, rather than simply returning keyword results from existing pages.
What do you think?

Visual dictionary

Have a look at this dictionary - great if you want to grab some images for your topic study or enable those visual learners to 'get the big picture'

ACES Unconference 2009

It was great to get together again for an unconference - this time at Pt England School, a very inspiring and well organised place for learning. I was intrigued with the presentation by Pete Somerville of Summerland School - the notion of transparency in the classroom where students are made fully aware of their own levels of achievement and of others in the classroom. Teachers as social engineers. Food for thought.
I found Lenva Shearing's workshop on e-portfolios very valuable as several schools are working on this and are asking me for help. She advocated self responsibility as students reflected and reviewed their own learning on their e-portfolio so it went beyond a mere report by the teacher.
I already work with i-movie 09 so didn't find out much more about that but I went along to the workshop just in case there was something I didn't know - it confirmed that I am on the right track and inspired me to try the green screening option - something I have not done yet.
I am very interested in Fathom - the data anlaysis tool workshop - it looks amazing and I am sure it will be a great tool for schools in terms of analysing data to inform teaching practice. I like the concept - I notice - I wonder. Check it out here.
I look forward to keeping up with the educators who attended through the shared wiki resources.
Fiona Grant and Dorothy Burt set up a great day for us - thanks!

Gifts of Life website

I have been helping my oldest son with his web site for living gifts business, he has opened a shop in Albany and sells unusual and beautiful pot plants in amazing planters. It has taken the last three years to set up the business and the web site is looking pretty good I think. He plans to deliver potted plants instead of flowers - a gift that keeps on living. Check out the fantastic living gifts here

Interface ICT Lesson Plans

Click here to find a page of great lesson plans put out by the creators of the Interface magazine. This is a really great magazine for schools and only $1 per copy if ordered in bulk for teachers.

Photobooth for literacy development

Lately we have been using the video feature in Photobooth to record students reading their stories and poems to create small video clips which can be inserted into a Keynote or Powerpoint as a class digital reader. This provides students with an audience for their writing and motivation for their writing. We have also been creating small movies of students interviewing a partner about a book they are reading or about their topic study. This creates a learning opportunity to script open ended questions and also for the students to articulate their learning. The movie clips can be shared with other classes as well to share the learning and provide an extra audience. The movies can also be a reflective tool for students to reflect on their literacy skills.

Media competition for schools

Here is a chance for your students to showcase their talents as media producers. You have till September so this could be a good project to work on this term. Check it out here.

Manaia View ICTPD Cluster Conference

Thank you to the wonderful people at the cluster conference in Whangerei. It was fantastic to see the Pukeko Echo Television station project which was opened last year after a few years of setting up. I met the people from Channel North who were working at the TV station and saw the wonderful set up for the students to take part in the production of film clips to be broadcast to the public. What a wonderful learning opportunity for the students to take part in a real life learning situation. You can find out more about it on this link
I have uploaded the web version of my keynote but you can access a copy of it with links intact on my site

Keynote for Manaia View ICTPD Cluster

Autumn weather!

All the leaves are falling off our oak tree outside and it's getting colder so I thought I'd add a suitable page for the blog! I'm off to Wellington on Saturday and I bet it's cold down there!
Book two in the ICT and Creative Arts will hopefully be sent away to the publisher tomorrow - I will be glad to get it sent so I can get on with my life!

Map of forces affecting education

Have a look at this map outlining the future forces affecting education. Read the one about supporting teachers roles!

Pedagogy to Practice presentation

This is a copy of the presentation I gave at the Nav Con conference in 2004 - I found it in my slideshare so thought I would put it on here - still relevant especially with our new curriculum!

Pedagogy To Practice

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You Tube

I am busy finishing another set of books at the moment. The Key Competencies set have been very popular but I am really enjoying writing the latest books which are called ICT and the Creative Arts. The first one is about visual art and music and the second one is about drama with moviemaking and animation. While working I am easily distracted, especially by You Tube when I am finding good movies for teachers I tend to get carried away and before you know it I have been on You Tube for a couple of hours. I have tried Teacher Tube but the best stuff for teachers is still on You Tube. Do you know that you can set up your own playlists and have several for different kinds of movies. I have one for the classroom movies students have made with me, several for different curriculum areas, one for amazing stuff and a personal one which I have made private, just for family movies, trips and events. If I find a good movie I can add it to a suitable playlist.
Here is one which was made by 13-14 yr olds for juniors - I love their music and animations!

Alternatives to Microsoft Office for the Mac

I was at a school the other day where they had some lovely Mac computers but didn't use them much because they "could not write on them!" I suggested they download Neo Office which is a free alternative. I have since looked into Open Office and like it better as there is a wider range of functions which could be great for schools. The presentation tool is much better and the Draw programme is fantastic. There is also a maths programme which looks very useful. Have a look yourself here.

National Library update

I wonder how many of you are aware of the wonderful resources for students on the NZ National library site. Have a look around the great list of resources. The Living Heritage site is worth exploring. I remember working with a school to produce a learning experience about their community and putting it on the site - the templates are easy to work with and the students love to see their work on display with the other schools who have contributed.

Calling online gamers! Be a freelance scientist!

Harness collective brainpower through online gaming!
Games with a purpose to harness idle computer gamers (is there such a thing?) hope to enlist the help of gamers throughout the world to solve problems. As a spin off from this Google have set up a game to label objects as quickly as possible to help improve the image search engine.
Another one is Foldit which involves puzzling your way through folding or designing protein structures to help biologists design the next generation of drugs!
Or how about classifying images of a million different galaxies to help answer some of the biggest questions in cosmology.
(from the New Scientist magazine Nov 2008)
Here is an interesting article about how Web2 can save the world, mmmm!

Create a Band in your classroom using mobile phones

While researching for my latest book which is about music and ICT I came across a new application for mobile phones which let you turn your phones into musical instruments. It is based on the motion you use, for instance if you strum your phone it makes a guitar sound, if you wave it up and down it becomes a drum! Probably causes a cacaphony rather than music but find out about it here.

Learning at School 09

I had a great time learning more about ICT tools at the conference. I went to a Scratch session - I had attended one at Canberra last year but the NZ teachers were fantastic and really well prepared with good ideas for linking Scratch to the curriculum. Check out the Scratch forum for some ideas on how to use this in the classroom.
I also learned about green screening on the Mac 09 (I must upgrade my programmes on my Mac!) I had a great session with Stuart Hale pm RED learning more about Hyperstudio 5 which has just been released. I saw this in operation at Tatahai School last year on the Apple bus tour and the students were really doing some great stuff with it.
The keynote speakers were very inspiring - perhaps you could search for them on Academic Earth They all have blogs and it is worth it to put them on your Google Reader to keep up with latest thoughts and ideas. I particularly like Pam Hook's blog Artichoke, she has an interesting way of stating things!Derek Wenmoth has a great blog - that's where I found out about the Academic Earth site.

New web site

I have almost finished my Language Alive web site for the conference in Rotorua next week. I am presenting in Breakout 1 which is great as from then on I can enjoy the conference. I hope you enjoy the site, if there is anything I have left out let me know. I will keep working on it!

New slideshow maker

Live performance with your photos
PhotoPeach helps you share your memories in a lively and vivid way by moving your photos like a video with your choice of background music, captions on each photo, fun effects, and more.
A bit like photostory but more fun and can be used on both platforms.
Thank you to Allanah King - I read about this on her blog! I will look forward to having a go with it!

Fun with words

I thought this site might be fun for spelling - your letters are sourced from images from buildings in Google Earth. Check out my message

Updated version of Google Earth

I've just downloaded the latest version of Google Earth and spent an hour roaming the new features. There is so much here for the classroom - check it out!
It would be a good idea to also check out the help site which gives you information about how to get the best out of the programme.

New Features in Version 5.0

This version of Google Earth has a number of exciting new features, including:

* Ocean - Fly and navigate under the ocean and explore underwater terrain. You can also display the ocean surface.
* Touring - Record, play and share custom tours that capture your actions and movements in Google Earth.
* Historical imagery - Explore images of the recent and not-so-recent past.
* Mars - View imagery and terrain of the red planet.

Happy New Year!

It has been a wonderful break with great weather, we stayed home as we live by the beach and managed to get a swim in most days. All the family have stayed at one time or another over the hols so it has been a busy household - that's what you get for living here by the sea though. The dogs have had plenty of walks and don't realise that it will slow down when I get back to work!
I have just put my fabric art work in the exhibition for the Rodney 'Verses and Visions' exhibition - it will be held at the Estuary Art Centre in Orewa over February. The local writers group have written poems which the local artists have illustrated so it will be an interesting exhibition with a range of different media.
My son has opened a shop in Albany and has a web site for his fantastic plant creations which can be seen on www.giftsoflife.co.nz
My work with the Auckland Central Cluster has now finished however it is great to continue working with two of the schools - St Josephs and Marist! It will be great to see the teachers again as we get into the new year at school.
I also look forward to working with new schools - Birdwood Primary, Kohia Terrace, Carlson School, and Mt Albert Primary. I am working at these schools through Globo Consultancy headed by the very wonderful Sue West!