Thursday 31 December 2009

2009 Reflection

Term 4 seemed to fly by so quickly and suddenly my first year of teaching is behind me and it is time to think about what I have experienced and learnt through this year.

I started out with my head in the clouds and many ideas about 21st century learning, luckily I was not given the class laptops until the 2nd term as I was just keeping my head above water that first term. Teachers really do need to manage a deluge of paperwork and in your first year everything is new learning curve. The 12 laptops I got for my class (8 with internet connection) were battered second hand laptops donated by Westpac. Some have keys missing or not working, but they were a blessing that enabled me to realise my dream of having a digital class.

Teaching requires that you manage data easily especially assessment data. I used Excel to run a spreadsheet of my students with tabs for each learning area. I could sort them in a way that allowed me to interpret and use the data to plan next step learning and groups. I am hoping to use the Google Docs cloud version this year, in fact I aim to try use Docs a lot more myself and with my students. A small step towards a paperless world and the many exciting opportunities Docs offers for collaboration and assessment.

Teaching and Learning

Reading: Thanks to ongoing Reading Professional Development (LPDP) at school, I have grown in confidence and run a good guided reading programme. I have also experimented and learnt a few useful teaching strategies like Readers Theater and Reciprocal Reading and using Google Forms for assessment.

Writing: Although I covered the required range of writing I felt I needed more time and structured programme of guided writing or workshops.

Maori we had a booked class time for a Maori representative from the local iwi to come ‘teach’ Maori. The ‘teacher’ only turned up 50% of the time and followed no learning sequence or planning that I could determine. I am hoping to teach my own Maori next year although I may not have a choice as the school views the Maori iwi connection vital, I agree but I have to wonder is our school just paying lip service to “community” and “maori language” learning?

Blogs

I first started blogging in my 3rd year of university, when I was inspired by an ICT teacher who had a blog. I realised at that point the possibilities for recording my learning journey, sharing my thoughts with a greater audience and as a self assessment tool. I have never been an enthusiastic writer but blogging certainly hooked me to write about what excited me and in turn through blogging I found other educators who did the same, who I could learn from, and it was the beginning of my professional self development and my first Professional Learning Network (PLN) . I use my personal blog as a tool of reflection, although my blogging posts declined to about one post a month near the end of the year as I waded paperwork and ensured a regular flow of class blogs and student blogs.

This Wordle of my blog shows my focus is still strong on collaborative teaching and learning. I have written 115 posts to date.

As the only blog I the school I had an enthusiastic attempt to engage the staff in the 21st century. I set up a wiki and ran a PD session for other teachers at my school to encourage and assist them in getting a class blog set-up and running. I got 5 teachers who came and 1 who used the wiki to set-up. I was happy to have any willing participants and for a week or two got a few posts. They all petered off and disappeared, the main problem for most was fitting it into class!

After discussion with the lead ICT teacher, we are making class blogs our main objective for next year. I will set up a plan and training to get all our classes blogging. I feel this is going to be a huge challenge as you can take a horse to water but …

Class and Student Blog’s

Our class blog is where we as a class, reflect and share our learning, most posts are posted by me or as a shared writing / reflection, often the students had a reading activity of commenting on a class blog post. Our class blog is going to be lucky enough to be featured in Interface Magazine’s Blog Profile next year.

They eventually got individual blogs in term 3, they have been used mostly for weekly learning reflection but as the year progressed you could see students really engaging and taking ownership of their blogs. Although it took lots of ‘marking’ time, I regularly commented and gave feed-forward on each blog, it was an assessment and next step that they actually read. I do wish to get students replying more to my comments and grow that conversation. and after teaching commenting they would comment on each others and other class/school blogs giving others positive feedback and feed-forward. The average number of blog posts per student was 20 posts with the highest number of post being 36!

Tools my student used regularly with Blogger were: Voki, Flickr, Wordle, Clustr Maps, Gadgets.

Parent engagement and supprt of the blog and wiki were really poor dispite my ploy of offering chocolate fish for each whanau comment. Net year I plan to run a parent evening early in the year where the students teach their parents how to use & comment on our blog, e-portfolio and wiki.

Wikispaces

Our class wiki turned out to be our main digital hub of learning. I created pages for each learning area on which the students knew they could find the weeks learning intentions and related activities.

Initially I set-up individual student wiki pages with idea them being e-portfolios but I never managed to plan it properly and get it running properly. I strongly believe e-portfolios are the future as they provide a record of self managed growth and development. It can also be used for both formative and summative assessment and a way whanau can see real work done by the students. This year I plan to use Google Sites for both blog and e-portfolio site as it is easy to manage both are on the website. Google Sites has a comment field for conversation and audience feedback but wikispaces has a very under-utilised feature called the Discussion Tab which I hope to teach, model & develop conversations and collaboration with students and whanau.

When I ran the staff blog PD in 2009, I started a personal PD wiki to assist as a digital learning centre. It started with a page on how to set up a blog and now I have a page listed some useful web 2.0 tool for teachers. I am planning to build this wiki with further helpful information and links for teachers.

Google Reader Trends

Google Reader is what I use for reading blog posts. I follow 170 blogs, mostly educators from around the world, from kindergarten teachers to academics. Aside from Twitter this is one of the main sources of my own PD, web resources and inspiration. The analytics show that I do not use it for social network purposes and show my strong interest in Google products, literacy and visual communication. It is interesting that I only read 33 of 165 articles, but I think that number is low as I read many of the posts in my iGoogle homepage.








Flickr

Flickr has been one of my favourite sites and the 365 Photo group has help been learn and appreciate so much more about photography and visual communication. I have also been lucky enough to build a supportive and friendly PLN with the group. My reflection from the Flickr site is shown below the image of my home page on Flickr. I included this to show the type of communication and conversation that we share daily.

I started out using Picasa Web Albums as our class photo storage, I like how easy it is to set up students folders and unlimited storage. However we eventually moved to a free Flickr account mainly because Picasa url link never works in others sites especially Blogger which is the same company, what’s with that?

















eTap

During Term 4 2009, I was asked to trail e-Tap digital register. Of course I still had to do my book and pen one alongside. I really liked the fact that at the end of the term you don’t have to spend a few hours adding up columns of attendance. E-Tap generates good results at the click of a button. Below is an example of information which can also be shown in chart format which I like being a visual person.

I found e-tap easy to use and I liked the range of attendance options. It did make me realize that we don’t always know and mark students attendance very well. For example, is it justifiable to be away from school for a week because you have overseas family visiting? I would like to be able to personalize the codes although I imagine they need to be standardized for the ministry to get reliable information.

eTap Negatives: If you put in a wrong username it won't allow you to re-login without opening a new browser or restarting your computer.









VoiceThread

One of the best and most fun web 2.0 tools I have used this year. I was scared and intimidated with it initially but really it is easy to use. I like that it has a number of ways to communicate such as text, voice and freehand pen. I used it for math problem solving, general commenting on artwork, to assessment (self, peer and teacher) of work done in class.

Other ICT tools I have used

Tutpup: An all-round maths testing program that the kids love, in fact it’s hard to get some to stop. I saw significant improvement in overall basic fact knowledge with many students using Tutpup.

Voki: My students loved using Voki, although I wish we could do recordings longer than 1 minute.

Audacity: Again a great tool that the students really enjoyed for recording and editing sound. It’s not Garage Band but because of that simpler to use.

Windows MovieMaker: I wish I had taught this much earlier in the year, I was amazed at some of the digital stories my students started to produce in just one term.

Word / PPT: We used both programmes but again next year I would teach all the basics as a whole class. PowerPoint and Keynote have the potential to produce sophisticated multimedia presentations, if you know how to use them! If you are taught to use them!

Glogster: A powerful multimedia online poster programme for education, which I highly under-utilised mainly because of poor wireless connection at the school. Luckily the issue has been recognised and been work on.

Etherpad: Fantastic for collaborative writing, I got some great results but believe I needed to model and scaffold the process more. It helps to have the shared pad projected onto the class whiteboard.

Edmodo: I tried this closed social network site for a term, but although I know

Stickies: I use these for daily, weekly task lists

Keyboarding: I tried a number of different programmes and sites but they all failed ultimately due my poor planning of fitting a structured programme for my students to follow with a site that I could monitor results and areas where teaching is needed. The same can be said for Spelling websites.

Goals, Plans, Ideas for 2010

  • Try Power Teaching
  • Ensure students measure their own levels and sets goals
  • Use Google Docs in class
  • Individual blogs and e-portfolios on Google Sites
  • Explore podcasting
  • Measure and assess ICT skills / learning
  • Give more grammar and vocabulary teaching
  • Extra focus for low readers and maths
  • Create and/or use webquests
  • More daily use of Thinking Keys or Thinking Hats
  • Help all the classes in the school get set up and using classroom blogs

Sunday 6 December 2009

Web 2.0 Upgrade. Plug Me In.

I found this fantastic case for upgrading teachers to web 2.0 on The Teacher Chronicles, via Twitter. However if schools and classrooms are not equipped with the computers and internet connections that compare with the business world, how do we prepare them for this future? How can we expect teachers to be web 2.0 literate, when our teaching and learning environments do not support web 2.0? Is it the teachers themselves, the schools, the Ministry of Education, or the universities that are keeping education behind the times? Web 2.0 is a big step for many, so as the only web 2.0 teacher in my school, what can I do? What do you do?

Sunday 29 November 2009

Why I use Twitter

Today I discovered a new reflection tool from my personal learning network (PLN) on Twitter. Tweet cloud generates a word cloud similar to Worlde does for websites but it creates one of your Twitter account. As a lifelong learner I am always looking for the easy (lazy) way of reflecting on my teaching and learning. A word-cloud does this in a fun and visual way.

It is interesting though not suprising to note that social language plays a major role here. It's focus is educational with 'blogging' standing out. The reason for this is that I have been using a Twitter group #comments4kids to promote comments on student blogs and content on our class blog. 'Students' is still a big focus of this cloud; as it was in my last Wordle cloud of my blog and my latest below.

I use Twitter for connecting to my PLN, finding and sharing good websites and tools to enhance learning. Grow as a professional, by listening to conversations on teaching and learning and adding my thoughts as my confidence grows. Seeking and sharing advice and thoughts.

If you are stuck with any type problem, need a resource or journal reading; your Twitter PLN are there! It's a place to share a laugh, share a gripe or get some support. It is not without disagreements and polite differences, it has it's minuses like spam and porn levels that vary from time to time. It is what you make of it.
Below is a Worlde of my blog taken today. Have you compared your Twitter and Blog word-clouds?

Friday 30 October 2009

October SHAdowsobAHS

SHAdowsobAHS
The 365 Photos Flickr Group is a group of everyday people (mostly educators) committing to do there best to take a photo every day of a year. We all do it for our own reasons but I believe a common interest is learning about photography through immersion. As you look for an interesting shot each day, you start to see the beauty around you as you look for a photo moment.

Every month someone in our group is tagged to come up with a theme for the month. Last month I was excited to be the one tagged. After much anxious deliberation, to do my predecessors proud, I chose "Shadows" as the October 365 Photo Theme. I remember I had chosen the theme and the 1st October arrived, except the sun hadn't. I waited hours for that brief sunny moment.
It turned out to be an exciting month, waiting to see would participate and having learning conversations along the way with other members.

I have learnt so much about photography and the importance of visual images. I regularly share my pictures with my students and hope to try a similar project with a whole class next year. There are hard times that have challenged and taught me responsibility, reliability and perseverance, skills I would love to see from my students. I also serves as a visual diary that I revisit and reflect on more often than I would a written dairy, plus it fits my 'intelligence', I can imagine how this would serve as a discussion and learning tool in the classroom.










This is a slide-share of all my 365 photos to date.


Tuesday 13 October 2009

Two Digital Firsts

Today, the second day of term 4 and my first year of teaching, saw me implementing two new digital tools into my classroom arsenal.

The first was EtherPad which is a collaborative writing site. I had six groups at tables, each with a laptop. I was signed in as the teacher and projected the site onto our whiteboard. We were exploring the features of explanation writing through shared writing with a focus on the Key Competency; Relating To Others. The whole class was fully engaged and I was very proud of the sharing and teamwork that happened throughout the class. This was truly 21st century learning taking place. It was great to be able to assign each group a colour while they chose a group name, while having it on the whiteboard allowed a sense of control and management for the few tempted to be too expressive. I did have to teach each group to avoid deleting each others work by finding a new blank line at the bottom of the writing to begin their next written line. Next time I would like to try this same exercise with individuals at seperate laptops writing a collaborative piece.

The second digital first was our use of VoiceThread in maths. VoiceThread is a collaborative multimedia slideshow on which you can upload images, videos and documents. The great part is that students can navigates pages and leave comments in five different ways; recording voice (microphone or telephone), text, audio file or video. Plus they can doodle all over the screen while they comment. Multiple identities can be created for your class and the Voice Thread can even be embedded into blogs or wikis, like below. My students loved it and had very little difficulty picking up the basics. It is a great collaborative tool as well as for diagnostic, formative and summative assessment, the applications are limitless across the curriculum. I would love to even try it to get parent engagement.

I admit I have known about this site for a long time but have always been a bit scared to take the plunge. I eventually got my confidence by viewing and copying what another teacher had done, here. I was initially feeling worried about this, but I think teachers also need modeling and scaffolding to learn and pass that onto their students, especially with all these web 2.0 tools. I am not sure who the teacher is, but a huge thank you for helping get my feet wet with VoiceThread. I encourage all teacher to give this tool a go, you will not regret it.

Saturday 26 September 2009

Word Cloud Reflections

Wordle is a well know and site for creating word or tag clouds from text or a websites URL. I like many people use this as a reflection tool as one of it's great qualities is that the more a word is used, the bigger that word appears in the word cloud. That allows a great visual means of reflecting on your writing. My students have just started using this for their blogs but are still developing their reflections of the visuals.

As you can imagine there are many different ways this can be used in literacy. I have used it to help students reflect on their own writing. It is a great way to show them how often they use AND! It is also a nice way to introduce a text, like a short story or poetry. Mark Warner has provided provided many Ideas to Inspire the use of Wordle in the classroom, I aim to expand the ways I use Wordle thanks to this awesome resource.

What I like about Wordle is that you do not need to sign up and it has a very easy control interface that most students manage very easily. The things I don't like are the main page can have inappropriate word clouds for children, although I have very seldom seen them and I link directly to the Wordle Create page which avoids that area. The other difficulty is that it does not provide code for embedding the final word cloud, but it is a good skill to teach students to take a screenshot of the image and upload it to their blogs.

Tagul shown below is another more sophisticated word cloud program that allows you to maniplulate the clouds shape, fonts colours, and adds a interactive rotational and zoom factor to the cloud. It also provides the code for embedding the word cloud into your blog. Although I like the effect it creates, it requires that you sign up with an email and the controls are a lot more complicated.











So what do these word clouds say about my blog?
I am please with my word clouds, as I read them as saying I value my students learning with a strong focus on reflection and inquiry processes. It also shows I value assessment and digital mediums for literacy teaching and learning.

Friday 25 September 2009

NetGuide Challenge 2009

This year was the first time my school has entered the ninth annual TVNZ6 NetGuide Schools Multimedia Challenge, which I promoted and guided students during lunch times.

Out of the many initial students interested in spending one of their lunch times in the computer suite, only two teams perservered and made it to the end with a final product. Interestingly both were primarily driven by a single student.

Three Year 4 girls created a website on the 3R's, Reduce, Re-use and Recycle. I got them using Webnode for as a free server, but on reflection Google Sites may have been an easier choice as they kept getting mixed up with the controls and editing text was a challenge. There website is called Recyclereducereuse.

The second team to complete an entry were some intermediate students who created a video to investigate the career of teaching. They had been studying careers and found teaching of personal interest, I wonder how they felt after this video? I was really impressed with the range of ICT skills these students learnt on their own during this process. So much so that I am going to get the student who did most of the editing to give me a lesson on iMovie next term. Below is their video, cut from 25 minutes to 5 minutes and completed just in time. I wish them luck in the judging but we will certainly recognise their efforts at our school.


What would I do different next year?
Yes, despite the missed lunches, I would love doing this again next year but I would like to try it as a whole class project to reflect the learning we have done and consolidate it while building new ICT skills. I imagine it would be good for team work and spirit and an opportunity to work on roles and responsibilities. I would be interested in hearing how other classroom teachers shared and managed the process of a whole class NetGuide entry.

I may also run more website building teach/model sessions to develop the skills and confidence of more students, perhaps that is why so many dropped out. What experiences have you had as a teacher facilitating this or similar competitions with students?

Tuesday 8 September 2009

Reflection on an Inquiry Learning PD

At our staff meeting today we were lucky enough to have Jill Lunn guide us through some thinking about how we use the inquiry process in our school and classrooms. We began by brainstorming in groups what inquiry learning meant to us as teachers at Bailey Road School. My group as with most others discussed our own tailored approach 'TEACH' and our personal ideas about what we expected from using this approach. Although our group said that the inquiry journey was just as important as the end result, Jill pointed out that the end result was still very important, as it is a product the students produce that shows their learning journey.

Next we brainstormed the challenges that we felt we faced when teaching the inquiry process. My group came up with many ideas but the top priority ones were:
1. Questioning; students asking good open questions, relevant to the topic
2. Engagement; inspiring and motivating students
3. Providing appropriate age level resources
4. Students summarising and making the information their own

They best idea I got from this PD was at this point Jill ask if if was better to teach a child to question or to create or inspire their curiosity to ask the questions. Well no doubt for me is that I do want my students asking great questions, which means I need to develop the way I engage and inspire my students that awakens their curiosity to do so.

This is when Jill introduced the concept of 'Front Loading'. I love the image, just like my old washing machine, load it up! Front loading is about providing inspiration, vocabulary and engagement through a series of interesting activities that generate curiosity and questions from the students. A great one to start with is giving the kids each a number of sticky notes with topic related words on them and getting the kids to stick them in a pattern / grouping of their own devising, without telling them what the topic is, This is a great excerise to develop the topic vocabulary. This could be followed by WWWWH discussions. Having a large related picture covered in sticky notes slowly being reveled, creates lots of excitement and questions. Another activity in that lesson could be to give groups of students 'answers' and let them make up the questions, I really like that one! This could be followed by a game of Jeopardy and then drawing out questions that the children are now beginning to wonder about.

Overall an inspiring PD and has made me quite excited to start my next Inquiry Process with my class. Do you have an inquiry activities that you could share with me that work for you?
This slide show shows a range of thinking strategies we could be teaching and using.

Sunday 30 August 2009

Google Forms as a Self-Assessment Tool

We use our classroom blog for sharing our learning experiences. An important part of the learning process involves reflecting on our learning. One way I get my students to reflect is to do self-assessments. It seems to me although many teachers are using web 2.0 tools for teaching and learning, not many are taking the many opportunities to use them for assessment.

Our most recent ICT venture of recording readers theater podcasts was posted on our blog so that we could share our work and get reflective feedback. As my students read blogs and comment on them as a reading task, it seemed a good place to embed a form that would serve as a reflective assessment.


Why I like using Google Forms rather than services like Polldaddy is that it is easy to set up and embed, but more importantly it sends all the poll data to a Google Spreadsheet in Google Docs. From there you can get your data presented in various chart or pie displays with a few button clicks. Of course you do need to sign up for a free Gmail account, but then in my opinion if you are not already using Gmail you should be.
An example of using Google Forms embedded into a blog for self-assessment.
Some other online poll and testing services are Yacapaca, Zoho, and Mystudiyo.
Below is a video on Google Forms.

Saturday 22 August 2009

Adding Audio to your Blog

My class did their first readers theater this week, and after recording the audio story we wanted to add it to our blog in order to share it with the world and receive feedback to improve ourselves.
See our Classroom Blog Podcast.

However most blog servers do not allow you to upload and embed an audio directly from your computer. The file (this is the same process for video) needs to be hosted on a web server and then linked to the blog. There are many sites that cater for audio and podcasts, we however used Podomatic. You do need to check that the school does not block the audio server you choose, if they do you can usually get it unblocked by placing a request through your ICT lead teacher.

Another thing to remember is that your file needs to be a mp3 or mp4 file before uploading to an audio server. This usually involves exporting it from GarageBand / Audacity or other recording software. One thing I learnt was when recording with GarageBand, change the metronome setting to get rid of the clicky sound that we got in the background.

Once you have your audio recording saved on a site like Podomatic you are offer html code to either link to the server site or code to embed the recording into your blog, as we have done here.

For further guidance you should read Bloggers help file "How do I post audio/music to my blog?"

Other podcasting server sites are:
Kid-Cast
Gcast

Sunday 16 August 2009

Web 2.0 Teaching Tools

I believe bringing web 2.0 into the classroom and into student hands to enhance learning is an essential step to encourage 21st century learning. It is also important for teachers to use web 2.0 tool tools to teach and guide learning, we are role models in all aspects of learning.

I created this wiki page as my own shortcut to some web 2.0 teaching tools that I find useful and use regularly. I hope you find it helpful and if you know of any websites that are worth adding, please leave a comment.

Web 2.0 Teaching Tools
This is a collection of some great web 2.0 tools I have found for teaching and modeling. Although great with an interactive whiteboard for whole class, I often will just use my laptop at the conference table for small groups.

Math Tool Chest: This is a wonderful tool to help explain and teach maths. It is basically a toolbox of web materials, I find the counters and place value helpful. It is simple to use with a sound off option.

Maths Playground: A collection of math manipulatives for teaching and learning.

Virtual Dice: One, two or three virtual dice, great for math games.

Super Teacher Tools: A resource where you can generate games, set up a seating chart, create groups, and generate random names. Very easy to use especially if you set up a class list, which you only need to do once.

Tuesday 14 July 2009

Cyber Bullying: Where to start?



I have discovered as a beginning teacher that Cyber Bullying is not just something we have to deal with once then we can forget about it till next year. I have noticed that most of the bullying that goes on in schools seems to happen away from the teachers sight. As a developing digital class I feel it it time to tackle this issue as my students are very ICT literate.

I started off this year teaching my students about Internet Safety. Using the Netsafe Hector's World programme, we watched the online animated episodes and followed the lesson plans and related activities. We also use the Hector Safety button on our PC laptops (unfortunately they haven't figured out how to create a safety button for Apple Macs yet). It is a small animated character from the series that sits on the screen, if a child comes across something 'bad' or inappropriate they click the button and a fun screen-saver pops up with advise to get an adult.

Last term I found another free resource in the form of two DVD's supplied to schools by Netsafe and produced by Childnet. Both are cyber bullying stories told from the perspective of students, along with guiding questions and further supporting resources.

'At A Distance' is aimed at primary students up to about Year 6, while 'Let's Fight It Together' is aimed at intermediate to secondary students. Both stories show technology being used to bully and resolutions that help fix the problem. The DVD's are well supported with teacher resources. The DVD's have guiding questions and further activities, and lesson plans are available online.

As I have a Year 6 class, I will be starting the new term with 'At A Distance' which we will watch and discuss the questions.
As well as being able to order your free copy, there is also downloadable (is this a real word?) advice for teachers, principals and students here.




Where to next?
The next step which ties in well with our literacy narrative focus is a website called 'Speak Up!" This is a fantastic site that allows your students to create comics that tell stories of bully situations and how they could be resolved. Although you will need to model, scaffold your students to use this part effectively, it is very easy to use, as the settings and characters are chosen with a click. Here is where it get's even better, a big thanks to Learning Media. You can download the entire programme as a zip file and install it on your non internet classroom computers!

Just to make it all a bit easier, I found this great brainstorm or mindmap from Online Professional Development which will help you guide the same exercise with your students.

So what do you do to teach your students about Cyber Bullying? Do you have any resources you can add? Please share them in the comments below.

Monday 6 July 2009

Students Assessing the Teacher

As a beginning teacher I am very aware that being an effective teacher requires constant self evaluation.

I first encountered how a teacher used Google Forms to assess his students view of his teaching, when reading the blog belonging to Larry Ferlazzo; Results From Student Evaluation Of My Class And Me. This inspired me to try it out with my own class at the end of term 2.

It is a scary prospect allowing your students to openly tell you how they feel about your class and your teaching. Still it was an eye-opening experience that has given me some
insight into my students view of my teaching and how I can improve myself.

It was an optional assessment that only 73% of my students completed. It shows they seem to enjoy my class and feel they are learning although not giving 100% effort, so I should raise my expectations.

I was concerned that 37% of my students felt I was not concerned with what was happening in their life. It tells me I need to ensure I spend more quality individual time with all students, especially those ones who hide in the corners!

The results show I need to be more patient, and use a softer voice. Although I suspect some of my students understanding 'patient' and my view my be slightly different. I do believe I must try using a more positive approach in my everyday teaching.

I have not had much art this term because 80% of my class is at kapa haka or choir for an hour every week, which takes up my arts time. My students obviously miss art, as do I, but finding time to squeeze it into our busy timetable is hard. I will be making a big effort next term to teach art by integrating it into other subject areas.

Some further student comments:

What could you (the student) have done to make this class a better learning experience?

I would make the class room listen to Mr Wood to listen more so they could learn more.

I could try to work with other people in the class. I could try to work with everyone in the class .

Be more responsible.behave better. Enspire some other people. Be good share all the ideas to the class.

I think maybe its good to more art because on Friday we have Kapa Haka and some people have Choir and we should change it to a different day so we can do more art.


What could Mr. Wood have done to make this class a better learning experience?

Mr. Wood doesn't need to do anything - hes already doing enough.

Be more patient

By disciplining the people that don't listen to him most of the time.

Give us our own laptops so we don't fight for laptops

Showed us some more good learning sites.

shout at some people lesser - talk to people more softer.


Have you ever done a self-assessment of this sort before, and do you think it would help your teaching?

Sunday 28 June 2009

Translating Class Reports

I have just finished writing my student reports for parents. This was the first time I have ever had to do this, and I found it a difficult and unpleasant task. Writing individual reflections of learning for 26 students, including their strengths and needs for each one, made me realise I should take more anecdotal notes during the term to assist me. I have started a note book but am considering writing interim report comments weekly on different students to help break the task down, and also make the messages more relevant. I found remembering each and every students strengths and needs at the end of the term in one wild report writing frenzy, a stressful task.

Yet through this process I did find a light at the end of the tunnel that wasn't a train. It was Google Translate. Although many of the parents at my school seem reluctant to talk to the teachers about their child's learning, some want to but cannot. I have one student in my class who's parents do not speak English, only Thai. I have often felt frustrated that I could not share some of their child's classroom successes with them, until now. I recently discovered Google Translate and decided to try it out by translating this student's report into Thai. I had no idea how well it actually translated, but explained my intentions to my student, asking her to then pass this onto her parents. The next day she told me they were very happy that they could, for the first time, get feedback from the school that they could understand, although I still do not know how well it translated the grammar.

Free web software like this has the potential to assist schools in creating bridges of communication, with parents and family of students who are not English speakers. This can only help our students improve their learning, because as we know, parent involvement in student learning makes a huge difference. I imagine this could also be used with students in the classroom, assuming they are at the level of reading their home language.

How would you use a programme like Google Translate in your classroom?
คุณจะให้ใช้โปรแกรมเช่น Google แปลภาษาในชั้นเรียน? Hoe zou u gebruik maken van een programma als Google Translate in uw klas?

你將如何使用程序像谷歌翻譯成您的課堂?
¿Cómo utilizar un programa como Google Translate en el aula?
कैसे आप अपनी कक्षा में Google अनुवाद की तरह एक प्रोग्राम का प्रयोग करेंगे?
Comment pourriez-vous utiliser un programme comme Google Translate dans votre classe?

Image by by Randy Son Of Robert


Friday 5 June 2009

Hot Potatoes a Hot Literacy Tool

If you haven't heard of Hot Potatoes you are in for a literacy treat. I discovered Hot Potatoes a few months back and have been trialing it in my reading programme this term. It is a suite of programmes which allow you to create interactive educational exercises such as gap-fill exercises, multiple-choice questions, crosswords, and matching /ordering quizzes, that are easily saved as a HTML file (web page) for online or offline use. To answer them all you need is a web browser (Safari, Firefox etc) , a net connection is not even necessary.

The programs included are:
JQuiz: multiple-choice, true-false, text-entry or short-answer
JCloze: gap-fill
JCross: crosswords
JMix: jumbled-sentence
JMatch: matching and ordering

Once you have downloaded Hot Potatoes you will find they are very easy to use. You do not need to know JavaScript or HTML in order to use any of these programmes, you just need to to enter your data into the spaces proved and press a button.

You will need to register Hot Potatoes to use it, as Hot Potatoes is not freeware, but it is free of charge for those working for non-profit-making educational institutions. It is available for Mac OS X, Windows and Linux.

Uses in the classroom: You can create follow-up activities for your reading programme using any text. You can type in a journal story and quickly create a cloze activity for any reading level targeting the grammar or vocabulary suited to that student with varying degrees of support. You can use it in so many ways, get creative and come back and share your successes.

I highly recommend that you give Hot Potatoes a try, it will add a new ICT component to your classroom (even with just a few computers with no web connection) that will enrich your literacy programme.

Some screenshots of Hot Potatoes in use.

Wednesday 20 May 2009

Creating Class Blogs

Today was my first experience at sharing some of my web 2.0 knowledge with other educators. I presented a professional development workshop for the teachers at my school on creating class blogs. Only a small fraction of them actually turned up, but the ones who did were enthusiastic about using this new tool for learning.

I eventually used my own personal wiki to create a site that would guide my own teaching but also guide the teachers if they needed to go back and review what we covered. It will also serve to help those teachers who were not able to attend. One of the teachers said she found it easy to create her class blog from the instructions.

I cannot take all the credit, I borrowed heavily from two of my favourite New Zealand teachers and part of my PLN, Jacqui Sharp and Allanah. Thank you both, I used links to your blogs so I did not have to reinvent the wheel.
http://jacquisharp.blogspot.com
http://www.bling4yrblog.blogspot.com

My class blog wiki guide:
http://shaunwood.wikispaces.com/About+Blogs

I have encouraged these teachers to get their feet wet and post a few blogs, as well as introducing it to their classes. Our next step will be to comment on each others blogs to encourage participation and show the kids that they have a wider audience. I also plan to run a few short workshops to help the teachers start adding all the fun extras once they have gained some confidence.






Saturday 2 May 2009

Graphs and charts made easy

A big thanks to Kevin Jarret I discovered Chartle.net a flash based site for creating graphs and charts.

You can create pie, bar, line and a few other fun charts with just a few clicks. It is easier than using Excel or other spreadsheet programmes.

I especially like that no sign in is required which means it is easy for K12 students to get in and create awesome graphs.

Another great feature is it alows you to create further graphs based on one already created. For example I created this temperature graph sample for my class as they are tracking and graphing temperature. They will be able to use this model as the basis for creating their own graphs, thus scaffolding them in their introduction to Chartle.com.

The only issues I found was using the embedding code. You need to be able to embed it in both the HEAD and BODY html which is not always an option when you are working with blogs and wikis. I found the easiest method was to create a screen capture on the chart and insert it as a picture.

Monday 27 April 2009

Presenting an Inspired Classroom

I am presenting my observation of Jacqui Sharp's inspired classroom at our staff meeting, my first ever presentation to the entire staff. I decided to present it as a BubbleShare on my blog to illustrate the simplicity of integrating ICT into the classroom and using it for ourselves. I believe teachers need to take the first step, and use the 21st century learning opportunities available. It seems a big scary leap to most teachers but I am hoping to introduce it to my collegues in small easy fun steps.


BubbleShare: Share photos - Easy Photo Sharing

Sunday 12 April 2009

Handwriting Fonts for New Zealand Curriculum

I wrote this in Word and screen captured it to retain the handwriting font, although I struggled to get it to a readable size (something about importing pictures into Blogger). Still aside from the odd spelling error I think it turned out fairly well. I would appreciate any feedback.








Wednesday 8 April 2009

Observation of an Inspired ICT Classroom

Today I went to observe Jacqui Sharp’s digital classroom at The Gardens Primary School. What struck me first as I entered the room was that it was so open, no ‘personal’ desks or spaces, no rows or group tables, rather a less formal learning environment with digital centers. It looked exciting, I am sure the other classes must be envious every time they walked past.

Jacqui is a confident and an inspiring teacher, she never talks above a normal voice and she doesn’t lecture. I realised how teacher directed my own classroom is compared to hers. She begins class by reviewing expectations and work choices, she then models, explains and off they go. Quick, detailed and well scaffolded. Despite having four observing teachers in the classroom with whom she chatted, she still moved around and conferenced individual students according to their needs.

I found the whole experience inspiring, the students worked away at their tasks, of which there was a huge variety. They have a board to guide their activity choices, I saw students regularly referring to it in order to decided on their own next learning step. They all seemed to be on different but related activities, working individually, in pairs or small groups, yet they were all engaged and on task. I sat near a group of boys who were comparing each others Hero avatars and teaching each other ICT skills as part of their discussion. I don’t think they were even aware of how they were learning and tutoring each other, they were just having fun!

I could write on and on about the many fantastic and inspiration ideas I observed in her classroom, but then you can get most of them by reading Jacqui’s blog. There are two elements however I would like to share that had the most impact on me and that I believe made this digital class such a success.

First routines and expectations were WELL established. Jacjui only had to say ‘Stop’ not even loudly, and she had the instant attention of the whole class. The students did not waste time or get distracted by visitors, they all knew their timetable and what they needed to do and how to find out their next step. From the moment they came into the classroom they were fully engaged.

Secondly, with Maths, Reading and Writing, they had a huge list of possible activities to choose from and as a result there were no students asking what to do next. Every curriculum area had a broad range of activities that the students need to complete. In writing there were a range of activities for the draft, conferencing and publishing stage. Most of these were set up as digital learning centers in folders on the server, with everything from WebQuests to Inspiration comparison charts.

I mentioned to Jacqui that it must require an enormous amount of preparation getting so many digital activities for each curriculum area together, and starting from scratch it would take months. Her advise was to start with your higher ability groups, create for them and teach them, so that by time the next group has progressed you already have all those resources ready and waiting, plus those students can be your experts to tutor the next group.

Thank you Jacqui for an inspiring experience in an inspired classroom.