Cluster Share 20 October

Participated in the 'celebration' of our e-learning journey so far and represented the year 2 team to talk about what we have learnt/enjoyed/achieved. Had some fun posting samples of work on the wiki - just a couple of hiccups when others' work overwrote mine - but got it sorted. Presentations by the other cluster schools were very interesting and informative and everyone seems very enthusiastic still. The question now is how to sustain this positive through next year and beyond...

Holidays!

and e-portfolio catch up time! Kids spent some time on Kidpix making cool Spring pictures - one of the better ones! Also had a play with comic life and put the results into the kids eportfolios - have nearly filled up all the boxes. Now it's just teacher comment time on goals - at least it's better than report writing!

Cluster day 26.08.09

Another busy information filled day fuelled by lollies and lunch! Got some useful new websites to share

http://www.tutpup.com for literacy and numeracy games

http://www.literactive.com for reading and games

Fiona Grant from Team Solutions also talked about use of Digistore - they are introducing a new search engine which should be much more user friendly. Also the links to NZMaths etc which is helpful.

Must remember to acknowledge sources eg use of photos from flicker when using them in a public forum.

Became a follower for Room 3's blog - must comment on their work sometime with my class.

Started planning our cluster share presentation for next term.

Wordle fun

Finally got Wordle to work - had to install the latest Java - will try out with class to see what they think.

Connecting

Have just spent 9 hours at school today and it's the holidays but have had a great time learning even more ICT tips and tricks. It was a really well organised day thanks to Belinda and her band of helpers. New plans for this term to bring my kids into the real world? Skype - nice talking to Raenette in Singapore lucky thing! We will start with another class and see where it leads us - I'm hoping for a relative overseas or even an educator somewhere. Start my class blog - I think my kids are ready for lots of learning this term - their reading is taking off and I want to consolidate that with their writing as well. Also looked at Voicethread today - may give it a go a bit later.

Lead Teacher Workshop

Another big day for this ICT lead teacher. Belinda held a workshop day for the cluster and saturated us with lots more learning, links, web tools etc. She showed us some very valuable sites namely

Suzie Vespers website

and

Cool tools for schools

We all felt we could spend the day searching around these sites for tools etc - bring on the holidays!

We are also planning for our Cluster Expo in the holidays - a first for all of us - very exciting.

E-Portfolios

We have all worked hard on our E-Portfolios and are looking forward to sharing them with students and parents in the conferences next week. I had some issues with using Divshare to post evidence - the div share was there but not loading or working for some unknown reason so had to redo - bit annoying. Hopefully all will go well on the night!

Cluster Share day 25 March

About 35 teachers all got together at Botany Downs Kindergarten yesterday to share their experiences and learning - it was great! Thanks a lot Belinda for organising this - I learnt heaps and have already tried out a couple of ideas in the class. Awesome to see so many teachers sharing and collaborating.

Trying Out New Things This Week

We have been working towards making self portraits this term - beginning with how to sketch eyes, noses etc so I showed the children on the projector the clip on Youtube on how to draw eyes - they were pretty much all fascinated and impressed! They wanted to know how it was happening! Then we went on to watch a sketch of how to draw face - was a valuable lesson - let's see how the portraits turn out!

Kidpix Mondrian Magic

Today I played with Kidpix using an idea from learning@school conference in Rotorua last month. Using the straight line I drew lots of intersecting lines then filled in random boxes in primary colours and voila - my masterpiece!

This is fun and simple for 5 & 6 year olds to get familiar with Kidpix tools.

2009!

Belinda and I spent a profitable time yesterday setting up my blog and one for Room 26. Not sure about being her guinea pig tho - seems I'm the first to try out blogspot - oh well we'll see - this is all new to me!