Auckland Central Cluster Wiki
Wednesday, March 12, 2008
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!
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
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
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!
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