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

View more OpenOffice presentations from anjistar.

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

View more presentations from anjistar.

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!

Online Learning Resources2

View SlideShare presentation or Upload your own.

Teachers TV

There are some great video clips to share with your class here. At the moment there is a focus on bullying and some good clips to look at on this subject which unfortunately comes up quite often.

Mind Mapping

This is the web site I told some of you about at Marist - mind mapping with Inspiration. It is a Beta web version you can sign up for free. Has the capabilities of the programme Inspiration but it is online and at the moment free. Check it out here.

Mac Freeware

Some of my PC schools used a programme called BlockCad which the children can use to design in Lego. One school designed a new swimming pool for their school, it was a great challenge. I see in the Mac freeware there is a programme for the Mac from the Lego creators. Have a look around the Mac Freeware site, there are some interesting apps which may suit some of you.

Apple Bus Tour Gems

Thanks to Stuart Hale for the great trip last week - we only had 14 so went in the van.
Some great ideas - I liked the way Tahatei Coast School integrated the key competencies into their curriculum with the 6 C's - Compassion, communication, contemplation, creativity, conscience, citizenship. Selwyn Ridge School had 'The Kid on the Ridge' the image of a child in the school uniform with the tool kit of values and attitudes and some really great ways of empowering students to be leaders of their learning. Pt England had podcasting down to a fine art and the students were all engaged and motivated to learn with ICT tools as an integral part of the learning. Dorothy Burt's research showed that the podcasting had raised student achievement in literacy. At Summerland School we heard some great ideas for integrating ICT from the teachers - more about that later. Bucklands Beach Intermediate students could talk about their learning through their digital portfolios. I loved the way they used Glogster to create innovative cover pages. At Sherwood Primary the students were really good at using Fireworks and Flash to edit their pictures and create animations. They have 9 teachers in their e-learning team. They also subscribe to Scholastic Education's Lexile system which has encouraged children to read for meaning and get really excited about reading. www.mylexile.co.nz
Cool new programmes I learned about were Spore to create and animate creatures, iKareoke, a great music programme, MorphX (change yourself into someone or something else - an oldie but a goodie)and Sub Etha Edit.
I am looking forward to the new version of Hyperstudio coming out later this year or early next year hopefully. The students in a couple of schools were trialling it and I had a play - looks fantastic for web authoring and image/animation creation.

Wordle fun

Another cool tool is Wordle. Use this to make a word picture - great for poetry or making an unusual concept map. I used a poem about the sun.

Tag Galaxy

Have some fun with this cool tool using Flickr photos. You type in a tag - I did New Zealand and this tool creates a planet pic using hundreds of photos. Take a screen pic - on the Mac shift, apple and 4 to create cross hairs and make a selection or Print Screen on the PC and use for topic studies or any curriculum area!

New updates on the cluster wiki

I have uploaded more resources on the cluster wiki including links to my presentation coming up this week at ULearn. I am presenting a workshop called 'The Social Web' and also two small presentations on strategy planning and interactive mihi's.

ACEC08 Conference in Canberra

I got back from the conference in the early hours of Friday morning very tired but with loads of ideas for working with the cluster! One of my favourite workshops was learning how to use Scratch and scratching at the surface of programming with Python.
The Keynote speaker was Mitchel Resnick who is a professor at MIT university. He was an inspiring speaker.
I am compiling a report of learning experiences of all who attended from our cluster - (Robyn, Kathryn and Katherine from Marist) with links to workshop resources where possible. I will put this on the cluster wiki.
I also bought a small movie camera called a Flip. ($220As) It is the size of a large mobile phone and has inbuilt software for editing, you just put the USB which flicks out from the side into your computer and download and edit the movie clips. It works on 2 AA batteries and takes an hour of video clips. It will be very useful for my work in schools.
Another highlight at Canberra was the Floriade Festival. This is a national festival celebrating spring. I have put a movie together using my photos to show you how spectacular it was!

Check out this Map of Future Forces!

One of the links provided by our National Facilitator was this Map of future forces affecting education" Very interesting and well set out - worth a look!

Cluster website updated

I have just updated the cluster web site. More on curriculum ideas and links to our workshop for today. Please complete the survey!

Podcasting in our schools

Richmond Road School has Radio Richmond and Marist has Magic Marist, these are podcast broadcasts which are shared in the schools. Students run the broadcasts and share current happenings and learning experiences. You may like to listen to them.
Magic Marist
Radio Richmond

Head in the clouds

I have embedded the quintura search engine in the side menu, we have been using this at Marist School and St Josephs - a nice way for children to use a search engine - they also have a very visual kids one too - more suitable for juniors. I found an interesting article which was noted by Derek Wenmoth in his blog post. The article is in The New York Times and is about the notion of cloud computing - the link is http://www.nytimes.com/2008/07/17/technology/personaltech/17pogue.html?_r=1&th&emc=th&oref=login

Visit to Pt England School

Last week a group of principals and ICT Leaders visited Pt England School. Dorothy Burt was a fantastic host, she took us on a tour of the school where we observed children engaged and on task using ICT to enhance their learning. We were very impressed with the podcasting studio and were also treated to a music performance in the music room. We came back with a lot of ideas for ICT in our schools!
Here is a slideshow about the learning at Pt England School.

ICTPD Cluster Sharing Day at Ponsonby Intermediate

Recently we had a great day at Ponsonby Intermediate learning about image editing using Photoshop Elements with Kathryn from Marist School. We also learned more about using Keynote and had an afternoon creating podcasts in the music suite. Here are some photos from the day.

Murrays Bay Intermediate School Visit

On Thursday we visited Murrays Bay Intermediate School and Sunnybrae Normal School to find out how they are integrating ICT into the curriculum. We had a very comprehensive visit to Murrays Bay Intermediate and saw into the classrooms where we observed students in the language classes using Voice Thread for language learning. We also saw students using the SmartBoards (one in every room) for group based learning activities. Colin Dale, the Principal and Shannon,the AP were really helpful in explaining the invitational learning philosophy and inquiry based learning model used in the school.
At Sunnybrae Jenny, the Principal and Steven the DP spent time showing us their school intranet and explained how the school has integrated Web2 tools into classroom learning.
The following slideshow shows photos of learning experiences at Murrays Bay Intermediate (including the visit from the drama group at
Rangitoto College to promote their Shakespeare Day!)

Teachers sharing learning outcomes

Thank you to the teachers who have offered to take workshops for our cluster share days in term three and four. So far Nigel is taking a workshop on digital learning centres, Kathryn is taking one on creating wikis and Kyra has offered to take one on Photostory. I look forward to hearing from others as I know many of you have some really great skills and ideas to share!

ACC Slideshow

ICT special groups

Our special student groups are working well on their projects.
At Ponsonby Intermediate the I-Tech group are learning how to create their own pages in Knowledge Net. They are then given the task of helping their teacher and other students in their class to create student pages and a class page.
At St Josephs the enrichment group is working on movie making and are creating a presentation with movie clips and Marvin characters to show the special and unique aspects of their school.
At Marist School the special group have been creating a podcast about their school. Their site is http://magicmarist.podomatic.com They have interviews and stories about their school uploaded to the site and next week will record work they have done in class and upload that. They will also be news gatherers so they can report on special happenings at the school.

Back to work!

I have been away for a few weeks as I had my eye operation. I can now see the road without shutting one eye!
We have had some interesting happenings in our cluster. At Ponsonby Intermediate we are setting up a Tech Expert group with two children from each class training as tech experts who are helping with class pages for Knowledge Net and other ICT initiatives.
At Marist School today we had a focus on the Key Competencies for the teacher only day. I have set up a web site for info on the way the Key Competencies have impacted on curriculum delivery change. Mainly because I wanted to try the web editor - Weebly! It is so easy to use that everyone can have one - try it! See my one at http://learningforlife.weebly.com/

Cluster Workshop

Today we had a cluster workshop on the Key Competencies and ICT at Ponsonby Intermediate School. Thank you for a great venue - the facilities are superb. Thanks to the participants from Newton Central, St Josephs, Richmond Road and Ponsonby Intermediate schools. I hope you enjoyed the day and were able to take back new infor for your schools!

Check out our cluster wiki web site for resources and PD ideas!

Auckland Central Cluster Wiki

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!

Why do we need to integrate ICT in the curriculum?

Student Expo 2007

BubbleShare: Share photos - Play some Online Games.

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

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!