New blog = "Woodmonstas"

My new class blog is called "Woodmonstas" and is at http://woodmonstas.blogspot.com/
Come and join us there :-)

Cyber Safety reminders

Hi kids - Room5ians, meet some Room 18 "Woodmonstas". They will soon have their own class blog [Gaboose will laugh - we have had no internet at school until today so blog plans have been slightly delayed] and will be becoming world famous just like you guys ... although, I believe they need some guidance from the experienced Room5ians to help them shoot to e-learning excellence.

Of course, another major requirement of successfully using e-learning in a positive way is to remain cybersafe. That means protecting your identity and avoiding trouble from cyberbullies.
Room5ians were so mature that we never suffered from any problems on our blog. We had 3 years of trouble free blogging with all the wonders of sharing our learning with people all over the planet.
If anyone had broken the rules, all children would suffer because schools and caregivers would make it harder to use the internet and to learn as connected, creative, responsible, self-directed, 21st century learning citizens of the world - just as the new NZ curriculum says we should be.

So, here are some internet safety resources online to share with parents who are concerned. Please also engage in dialogue with each other to share your experiences and knowledge. Remember the world is watching and hoping to learn along side you.

Enjoy!

http://www.netsmartz.org/index.aspx

ePortfolios

what is an eportfolio? how have you used them? what are the benefits or drawbacks?
In Room5 last year many of our books ended up being pretty lame as we did alot of work on things like blogs and wikis. Most parents never saw this wok for one reason or another. Yet i suspect the work online counted as an eportfolio of some kind. what do you think?

Cool teacher's blog...

Here is another teacher's blog for you to investigate. It has a post about "an amazing lady" [Suzie Vesper - cool name!] that might inspire you with new ideas for integrating ICTs into our term four inquiry projects.
Let me know if you discover anything useful or exciting and how you might use it.
HUZZAh!

learning by "doing" in a real context

I wonder if the Room5ians are starting to learn in a way that is embedded with the NZ Curriculum Key Competencies. . . ?

What are they? Well, read on and tell me how you have used them in your gardening project so far or how you think you could use them in the future.

Capabilities for living and lifelong learning

The New Zealand Curriculum identifies five key competencies:

• thinking
• using language, symbols, and texts
• managing self
• relating to others
• participating and contributing.

"More complex than skills, the competencies draw also on knowledge, attitudes, and values in ways that lead to action...As they develop the competencies, successful learners are also motivated to use them, recognising when and how to do so and why...The competencies continue to develop over time, shaped by interactions with people, places, ideas and things. Students need to be challenged and supported to develop them in contexts that are increasingly wide-ranging and complex."
- The New Zealand Curriculum [page 12]

Ideas for Voicethread

A class in Napier wants to skype us and use Voicethread [remember the thing we saw in class with the small boy who shared his monster pictures and where people left comments about them? That was Voicethread]. Their teacher, Chrissy Hellyer, [who is a Sagittarian and they are the best kind of person] and I thought maybe a photography competition might be fun. But perhaps you might come up with other ideas that tickle your fancy.
Let us know here...

:-)

is this site of interest?

http://www.bbc.co.uk/schools/ks2bitesize/games/questionaut/

what do you think kidlets?

Reading via the blog

Is the blog an effective way to supply you with reading lessons?
Can you please state the reading strategies here whilst at home to see if you can remember them...

Also, re-read earlier posts and comments to find hidden maths homework. First to find and answer the questions wins the prize! [extra weeding time!]

Mohamed spreads the word

You have been invited to share a moment. Click here to view this Telecom Photo/Video message.

Mohamad Tajeran visits the class to tell us why we need to plant trees.

Mobile Technology and our Fieldtrip

This Wednesday we will be walking into town to further investigate our city and how we can be positive contributors to it. Our goal of course is to create digital stories that showcase HamiltON's strengths and maybe investigate some of the less desirable aspects with a view to making some meaningful suggestions for the HCC to consider.

We will hopefully be meeting the Museum director to discuss how we can have input into the development of wonderful museum exhibitions and programmes involving kids.

We will also go to the library to meet someone important to discuss the exciting new possibilities relating to the library of the future... This is good timing because our own library is being redeveloped soon and you could share your ideas for that too.

The river banks will call us also so we can capture our wonderful Waikato River as Mlearning agents. Perhaps we will discover fascinating historical sites along the way.

For this trip we need to be able to gather information as we travel. Mobile phones are one means of capturing information on the run. We even know how to post it to our blog now. But what else can we use? How do we arrange it? And what if there isn't enough cool ICT to share around? Not everyone has a phone. How else can we gather our information? Can you think of innovative solutions to solve the problem? We need everyone involved at all times to avoid boredom, so how can we creatively get everyone involved?

Please post your ideas.

wireless network

does anyone have a parent who works with wireless technology or can advise us about what is the best way to set up a wireless network at peachgrove? i am currently posting using one...
:-)
p.s. today's professional development on the Marvin software was really cool!

a whopping great success!

Well, our expo day at the Meteor with the Hamilton City Council went really well. The Room5ians who took part were top shelf ambassadors for Peachgrove and HamiltON. Our agents were in the field doing mobile blogging to send evidence of our cool city in live as they found it. The head agent coordinator [Rosiegal] put in the hard yards to take our message to the people of HamiltON and to explain to the City Council folk how we innovatively use technology to make learning active, interactive, adventurous, intriguing, fun, and purposeful.
Sadly we thought we weren't able to include everyone, but as it turned out, we could have ! oh well, next time we'll know better.
The good news is that as a result of our time spent there from 9:30 until 3:30 we met the CEO of the HCC, Michael Redman, we might be visited by our Mayor, we might get in the newspaper, we are having a poster competition with prizes, we will be visited by people from the police and council to hear our views on the city, we will try to get the Team Kiwi Racing people in to visit us, we are going to win prizes, the director of the City Museum wants to hear from us, the PiL researchers have filmed us interviewing the head of communications for the council. Phew - that was a long sentence. Sarah, the communication director from HCC wants us to teach her how to mobile blog and use communications technology and in return she will cover the VIP tent at the V8s for us with her mobile phone and post directly to our blog.
Essentially, by getting involved, we created loads of new opportunities for ourselves to bring our studies alive - learning outside the classroom and with ICT rocks!
Viva the Room5ians!
SO, next we will have visitors in the classroom. We also need to get out more with everyone involved. I say we go on a walking tour to meet the museum director and experience the Waikato museum ...a picnic might be nice too.
We should also arrange to go to Kakepuku to read our finished stories that we have written about going there...Let's go Wednesday in the last week of term...confirmation pending feedback.

HamiltON - why we're cool

Saturday we will have Room5ians roaming the city looking for evidence of the positive aspects of our city. They will take digital photos on their cell phones and email them directly to the blog using a secret code. The images and your text explanation will show up on the blog for people to read at the HCC Creative and Innovative Strategic Expo at the Meteor in town.

Easter

Hello Room5ians - since I'm not a religious person, Easter for me has been about spending time with family and friends. The highlight has been visiting my beloved grandparents, Gwen and Claude Tucker, who are 87 and 91 respectively. Sasha and I filmed them with a handycam so we could make a digital story about the visit. They both told us stories and made us laugh with their amusing banter. Silly me - I forgot to take digital pictures because I was filming. D'oh!

I hope you have lovely grandparents to enjoy too.

Right now I am trying to work out how to post to blogger from my mobile phone. So don't be surprised if some odd seeming posts appear. See you on Wednesday!

:-)

emailing images to blogs

can you work out how to email images directly to the blog?
can you take that even further using mobile technology?
how could you use that for a field trip?
would that help you to learn more effectively? if so, how?
do you have tools at home we could use on such a fieldtrip?
can you devise a competition based around a fieldtrip between rooms 5 and 9? for example, a mini-documentary showcasing your learning from the "Mfieldtrip", using phones, cameras, video cameras, email, blogger, etc.

Measurement

Our maths for Term One is to do with measurement. I have attached some hyperlinks to NZ Maths online, digital learning objects, and TKI's eLearning sites...

http://www.nzmaths.co.nz/LearningObjects/

http://www.tki.org.nz/e/search/retrieve_search.php?&search_term_data=DC.Description%3BDC.Title%3BDC.Subject.Keyword%3BDC.Subject.Classification%3BTKI.SupplementaryTerm%3A%3Adigital+learning+objects+maths

Phew! That was a mouthful.

This is to backup what is being learnt and covered in class. You can find extra homework here if your parents want it. You can revise issues covered in class if you didn't understand. You can do it for fun if you really love maths.

Professional development conferences

Our blog was discussed at a recent educational conference looking at innovative ways to use ICTs, social software, collaborative learning environments, etc.
See Thusrdays presentation to findour blog being discussed:

http://www.breathetechnology.co.nz/conference

Thanks to Jenny from Breathe technology for sharing our blog and getting feedback on whether or not we should be allowed free access to the web for learning.

:-)

digital story telling

as a means of self expression, summarising, presenting outcomes, evaluation, reflection, etc, digital story telling* is a potentially powerful tool for learning and one that teaches technical and thinking skills, covers many key competencies and engages 21st century learners...

"Children see things in very unique ways. Capture that special view by allowing them to tell the story. Give them the chance to use photographs, videos, and audio recordings to create projects that will combine art and history, as well as reinforce reading, language arts, and research and technology skills."
- Christine Paradise, a 3rd grade teacher at Steed Elementary school

[found in...]
http://www.speedofcreativity.org/


* digital story telling uses digital cameras, still images, sound recording, narration, basic editing to make a concise anecdotal summary of an experience.

social, collaborative learning online

Sounds great - obviously with issues to be considered?
It's tempting for me to gloss over the potential negatives, but in responsibly educating our students, we must consider and discuss them - but with an open mind!

see these links to other blog discussions and an online documentary:

http://tinyurl.com/3cpge5

http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/pages/frontline/kidsonline/

please add to the discussion adn have a look at these interesting blogs for educators:

http://beyond-school.org/

http://123elearning.blogspot.com/index.html

http://www.speedofcreativity.org/

http://www.nextgenteachers.com/

question for educators [no doubt some of my students will read this and comment anyway]

do you believe the students should have access to the "real world" of the net, with guidance, advice, cyber safety education, monitoring by school IT administrator, etc, or should they be restricted from genuine net access and genuine collaborative social software and interaction because of the possibility of access to inappropriate content?
I ask because I am trying to achieve genuine interactive learning and there are pressures to restrict my class's access to the internet to avoid any possibility of "something going wrong".
essentially, my 10-12 year old GATE [gifted and talented education] students can learn online with greater richness and possibilities of interaction and feedback, or they can be restricted to a contained environment.
What do you think? In this case, a contract is signed by all students and if that is breached then they lose their rights to net access.
i sincerely hope some of our "readers" will begin to contribute to enable us to justify our current blogging format.