The wonderful Allanah King created this site to help teachers learn more about Google. It has some very helpful ideas for teachers.

Great work on Prezi with Room 30 teacher James from Red Beach School. Prezi created by Room 30 students.

Hekia Parata speaking at Albany Senior High about new strategies and the Festival of Education

WebQuests get new image!

A newish WebQuest site has a huge range of really good WebQuests for all levels and curriculum areas and also has a portal for you to create your own WebQuest. Go to Zunal
See an example shot here:

Go Animate

I was working with a Year 2 class today and showed them how to use Go Animate for learning conversations. Here is what a pair of children came up with in only ten minutes, I thought it was good as it was just a practice learning how to use the programme.

lion escape by roomfive on GoAnimate

Student Agency

This seems to be coming up all the time and I have been wondering how it differs from student centred learning. I happened upon Nick Rate's blog where he looks at various viewpoints on this concept including Brian Annan's presentation (Which I recently heard at the Leadership Symposium at Botany Downs Secondary School run by out Cognition team) 

Nick sum's it up as "enabling, empowering, self-monitoring, goals, feedback, meta-cognition, active, responsive, self-directed and meaningful." pedagogy.

See his blog post on this here.

Learning in a Networked World - Presentation by Derek Wenmoth

I read this on Derek's blog and thought it was so good it needs to be shared!

Learning in a networked world from Derek Wenmoth

I-pad apps to support literacy

One of the schools I work with is conducting an inquiry into the use of i-pads to support literacy in the junior classroom. We have been using a range of content creation apps such as Puppet Pals, Educreations, Show Me, Sock Puppets, My Story, Book Creator, I-movie and Tellagami. Most are the free versions.
One success we have had is around the use of Tellagami where the students create an avatar to tell a learning story. They write the dialogue for the avatar or record their own voice. The students have been very excited about this.

Mix and Mash competition

This is a great way for your students to share their know how about e-learning and create great content at the same time. Closing date for submission is Nov 8th and the theme is - Future.

E-Qualities

I am not sure how I acquired this compilation of e-resources but there is an attribution at the end to the ICTPD cluster in Nelson so this might have been shared by Allanah King
I think it is a fantastic resource so I'm sharing it here

My Story App

I worked with students in a year two class yesterday, they were trialling an app which would enable them to draw, write and tell their stories. We tried My Story, the children worked in pairs to create a page of the book each. Here is a link to an example

LEARNZ

LEARNZ is a wonderful NZ resource for schools. I remember using it and it was great to have audio conferences with real experts. The links and resources provided are really good and it is all free. There are two modules available for term 4. Great environmental learning about special aspects of our own country.

Maori Language Week

Check out the resources and activities on this site for Maori Language Week. A great place to go for Te Reo is also here. I also have some great You Tube videos and other resource pages on my Delicious site. You might also use this week to refresh your knowledge about Maori learners here. Have a great Maori Language Week! Don't forget it can carry on all year too!

Interesting ideas around future education by Tony Ryan

Hear how students use learning journals as their e-portfolio

Matariki resources

This is that exciting time of the year we can celebrate Matariki. Here are some links to resources you can share with your students http://www.nzonscreen.com/collection/the-matariki-collection http://www.matarikievents.co.nz/matariki-stories/ http://www.tepapa.govt.nz/Education/OnlineResources/Matariki/Pages/MatarikiTeacherResource.aspx

I created this Prezi to provide more ideas and resources for teachers wanting to transform literacy learning in their classroom using e-learning tools.

Prezi - great for online presentations

I spoke to teachers at the lovely Brookby Primary School today. It was one of those wet miserable days outside with rain thundering down but the teachers inside were buzzing with their e-learning day. While browsing around Prezi this afternoon I came across this Prezi about literacy written by one of our fab NZ teachers who presented at U-Learn.

Cyber Security Awareness Week

This week is a great one to reinforce digital citizenship and cyber security. Students need to be aware of their digital footprint and the dangers that come with the Internet. Recently Netsafe created a new web site filled with resources for educators, it's worth a look. The Netbasics Comic Creator was launched this week. Students can create their own comic about Net safety using the Netbasics family of cartoon characters. I like these video clips made by older students as part of a competition - they might be worth showing to the class to spark a discussion or as exemplars for making their own movie clips.

Minecraft in the classroom

After visiting two schools recently and seeing students using Minecraft as a tool to create environments I was interested to find out more. When I spoke to the children using it at one school some could not clearly articulate their learning intention and seemed to be just playing around. They were supposed to be designing a kiwi enclosure but had no success criteria to show what they needed to have to make it a successful enclosure. This made me realise how important it is to do the ground work before we set e-learning tasks. Even using the most creative and powerful e-learning tools are only successful for classroom learning if students have a clear purpose for their learning. This is an interesting video clip supposedly about using Minecraft for learning digital citizenship.

Literacy resource

Have you ever thought of using You Tube videos to inspire students at writing time? Try asking your students to view this video and then describe carefully how the eagle catches it's prey. The class could view and discuss the video and build a word bank of words suitable to describe what is happening in detail. It's a great way to reach reluctant writers and scaffold the literacy learning.

Adding voice to Google Docs

Not sure why you would want to when you could have a hangout or chat but maybe you could be explaining something about the doc. Anyway here are the instructions for adding voice to docs (Drive)

Google Play vs i-Pad I don't think so

Google announced new initiatives on Wednesday. The new Google Play for Education is an attempt to compete with i-Pads in the classroom. I don't think so though. After seeing the wonderful classrooms at Ahuroa using iPads and seeing how motivated and engaged all the pupils were in their learning I am a real i-Pad fan.
This article shares info about Google Play for Education. Interesting to read the comments. I like the one from the caped crusader!

Junior Maths app

This looks like a good app for junior classes and it's free

IPad Research

(innovate) educate | 6 Studies Showing iPads Improve Learning | Diigo

BYOD day at Albany Senior High - reflections

Last week I attended a really great conference at Albany Senior High. It was all about BYOD (Bring your own device) in schools. I attended some really interesting workshops, Luke Sumich from Summerland Primary gave a really interesting presentation about his experiences while on study leave investigating schools overseas. This is where I first heard about the SAMR model and will definitely use this in my work. Above is a presentation about it.
Luke made an e-book about his experiences on his travels and it is available in i-Books.  He had many great ideas to share but his main point was PUT THE LEARNING AT THE CENTRE, NOT THE APP


The presentation by Barb Dysart  really intrigued me, it was all about QR codes and how they use them in the classroom at Summerland Primary. I didn't realise how simple it was to make my own QR code. Here is the one I made. This is the link to make your own  You can download the QR reader from the app store, there are heaps. I chose inigma (think thats it without looking at my phone)

 

The most fun presentation was of course Allanah King, she is full of practical ideas and the presentation was all about using i-pads. She has done an amazing amount of research and is very generous with sharing all her great ideas. Her experience is very relevant as she has had current experience in the classroom too. She is a very clever and knowledgeable lady!  

 Links to her work on creating i-books. 

Link to her blog

Her oral presentation on EdTalks

I also went to the presentation given by Georgie and Gemma from Stonefields School in Mt Wellington. They were discussing the strategies they used in the classroom and planning collaboratively using Google docs (Drive) As I had visited the school recently and seen all the amazing work they do in action it reinforced my feeling that this school really does have a handle on 21st Century Learning. Their pedagogy model is taken from James Nottinghan - The Learning Pit. The programme Teacher Dashboard overlays Google Apps for safety and organisation. The teachers have access to anything the children create including emails. It is worth a visit to see all the exciting things happening in the school. You can view the planning on their website and it is shared with the students too. 

Lenva Shearing's presentation about 'One Size Fit's All' she shared the experiences from her school at Bucklands Beach Intermediate regarding BYOD. Their digital citizenship model is based on trust and all students use a range of BYOD. Google Apps and Teacher Dashboard replaces LMS. Both teachers and students have e-portfolios for reflection on learning. Everything is stored on Drive for access all the time so students often complete work at home and parents can see what they are doing. 

 

Added more links to Delicious site

My Delicious site - I add to this nearly every day so you should find something interesting!

Link to language web site

This is the link to my language alive site

One teachers ideas for using i-pads in the classroom

Apple TV and I-pads

This clearly explains how i-pads link with Apple TV to provide a new way of collaborating in the classroom

e-learning presentation

Keynote whangerei from Angie Simmons

Find my i-phone

Make sure you secure all your devices such as i-phone, i-pads with the Find My I-phone app. It means it your device is lost you can track it through GPS as soon as it is connected to the Internet. People have been able to retrieve their stolen i-phones through this app so it is a valuable one to have.

A new job - Blended e-learning facilitator

I have started this year working for Cognition Consulting as a blended e-learning facilitator. This is similar to the role I had as ICTPD facilitator. One of the great differences is the scoping tool we use called the E-learning Planning Framework. This enables us to work with the school to establish exactly where the school is at in their e-learning journey. I am looking forward to building a rapport with the schools and helping to enable them to move forward with the use of relevant e-learning tools to add value to their teaching and learning. One of the things I have noticed is that schools are rushing out to buy i-pads but have little clear idea or rationale for using them. Apple TV's are popular too.
One of the great tools for professional learning for teachers is the VLN (Virtual Learning Network) which all NZ teachers have access to but many know little about it. It is a great community for discussing professional practice. The Enabling e-learning discussion is very relevant.
Other new ways of connecting teachers and students is through using Google+ Creating circles of different people such as students, colleagues, friends allows you to engage in discussions and share ideas and links to good things you have found. You can also have a google hangout (in the tools section) which enables you to have a synchronous discussion similar to Skype but with up to ten participants. Google is a one stop shop for educators, one of the Google web sites I have made which may be helpful for literacy is Language Alive