Resources link

Here is a link to a great online resource page!

i-pads in the classroom?

A lot of schools are considering i-pads for the classroom. Our school purchased six and they were distributed around but no one used them as they were unable to load any decent programs as the IT person was the only one with a password and had uploaded what she thought we would use. Not a good idea, they have been in the school a year now and sit on shelves. I would love to have a set in my room as they could be used in so many ways - using the apps I know would be of use. I wonder how many times this sort of thing happens in school. There are downsides though - small and portable means easily lost or stolen, especially as they are a very popular item.
Here is a link to a wiki made by a school using i-pads.

Pics from my classroom

I thought I would try a different slideshow generator for showing photos - this one - Photopeach seemed very easy and quick to upload photos. I tried Onetruemedia but that was very limited and photos took far too long to upload. These are some images of a couple of walls in my classroom
Pics from my classroom on PhotoPeach

Maths site

We are learning about lines and angles this week, I found this great maths site activity - a lot more on maths topics too.

Ambleside also has some great interactives too! Scroll down the page to check out the numeracy interactives.

My new job

I am starting as a writer for the Newspapers in Education programme at the NZ Herald in a couple of weeks. It is a part time job so I will also be working at Sherwood Primary for one day a week which is great as I have such a fantastic class and would miss them. Check out the web site for NIE, it is a great way for teachers to link current affairs to the curriculum.

Flags of the world

With the rugby world cup representing many different countries you may be interested in sharing this site with your class. Roll the mouse over different countries in the world and the flag and a blurb about the country appears.

Want to make a wiki web site?

I have made a web site which shows you how to create your own wiki web site for yourself or your classroom. There are step by step instructions and ideas about how to use this tool effectively in your classroom.
Check it out here.

Wordlings

Create a montage of words inside a shape. I have made one for our biodiversity PYP theme. Sign in for kids and take a screenshot when it is ready - it takes a little while to load the words into the shape but result is great - put on the web site or blow up into a poster for display in the class!

school report helper!

Prada loves to eat newly written school reports, especially after she has chased them around the room and caught them!

Latest published book!

Just got the latest book in post today - it looks great. Tanya has made a great job of editing, I am really pleased with the way it has turned out.
Still working on the Assessment for Learning book but with taking a holiday break and school reports to write it has taken a back seat.

Myths and Legends Generator

This looks like a really fun tool for creating a story - there are images, sound effects and word tools to choose from. I will try this out in our class!

New National Geographic web site for education

The new National Geographic site for teachers and students looks great - I like the cartoon slideshows explaining about geography.

Colder mornings!

Is approaching fast and with it the school holidays in a week! Hard to believe the eleven week term is nearly over. Our class has been creating interactive mihimihi using Keynote and hot spots to link pages from their cover page which has been created using the Kid pix art tools. They loved learning how to make hot spots and are telling me other ways they could use this process. That's one of the reasons I love teaching. Kids are so creative!

Art on your computer with Mac (playing around with Voice Thread)

Trying out Image Chef blender

ImageChef.com Poetry Blender

Evian Roller Babies | Kideos

Ok, this is not very educational, but how did they do it??? Power of computer animation!

Evian Roller Babies | Kideos

Our new Mimio Interactive Whiteboard

This week we received our new Mimio and the children used the capture feature to present their group findings in the jig saw activity about the rights of the child (from the UN Convention list of children's rights. Each group had a page in the Mimio Notebook. We will review the notebook and make changes as the children find our more in their inquiry.

Back to School!

This has been the first week back at school and I am so glad it's Friday! I have a wonderful class, they are all so keen to learn which makes me feel quite inspired. They all made Comic Life posters yesterday to show their class essential agreement rules. They had to brainstorm rules relating to each learner profile (there are 10 learner profiles in our IB PYP programme) and take a photo of themselves in role demonstrating the agreement.

Tizmos Home - SEE and Access your Favorite Websites in One Place

Tizmos Home - SEE and Access your Favorite Websites in One Place

We site resources

I have been really busy creating a cache of relevant web sites for school on a Tizmos page. I have tried to categorize but it is hard sometimes as they could fit in anywhere so I have made a general one size fits all called educational resources. I make digital learning centre pages for each inquiry topic and for maths and reading/writing groups so these sites are very handy when I am creating these pages - usually a one page in Pages as our students only have access to Pages on their Macs. I make a colourful background and use images with all links to make it more exciting. I make each link open in a new window.
My tizmos page is here!

Holiday time is for lazing around!

Who shows this more than our latest family member - Smoky!