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.