Friday 2 December 2011

e-Learning Planning Framework


At Ulearn11 I participated in a workshop on the draft "e-Learning Planning Framework" (eLPF) led by Ross Alexander. The eLPF has been designed as a tool to enable schools assess what level of e-learning they are currently using to support there next steps for development and training.
It has been designed as a self review tool for schools and individuals to gather evidence, evaluate e-learning programmes and provide a road map for future development. Although it can be a valuable tool to provide evidence to the Ministry or ERO, Ross said it was not intended to evaluate school performance for external purposes.
http://www.vln.school.nz/pg/groups/19837/elearning-planning-frameworks/

While planning the 2012 e-learning for the school this week with colleuges, we decided to use the eLPF to set a baseline for where we are on our e-learning journey and to help us plan our next steps and any professional development required. It was easy to understand and decide on our level, and provided scaffolding for our next steps. 


As you can see below I used a printout, highlighter and just jotted down next step notes. Then later I got smarter and uploaded the Word version to Google Docs and used the highlight feature and just typed my notes directly onto the Doc. An added benefit is now our staff can do this collaboratively and we can revisit it later next year to track our progress, in a new colour.

The eLPF can also be used to evaluate teams and individuals, although the wording leans towards whole school use. I found the eLPF simple to understand and use. I recommend you try doing an assessment of your school, see if it helps you with your e-learning planning for 2012.

Friday 11 November 2011

Teachers do not need to be experts

This week my students got to play with and learn a new website (for me too) for making animations called Doink.com. I created a class account and gave each maths group a problem to solve (linked to our learning) but they had to show their strategy. Although most animations are still to fast, most students have begun to become proficient with the site, more so than me. Next week I'll make the problems more difficult, varied and again differentiated according to their levels. The students are engaged while having to really think about the strategy they are showing, and this could be used as a resource to teach other students. The students embedded them on our wiki here but below is an example. Although even in Term 4 not all my students have mastered embedding, they know not to ask me but to find a peer tutor to assist them. This is not because I am mean, but they know that they have experts among them and are expected to use them; they have grown to appreciate their own abilities and each others skills.


The lesson here is that teachers do not need to be experts with every bit of technology, give that power to your students and focus on being the guide of the real learning.


Macane's_place Value by BRSroom13, made at DoInk.com

Friday 28 October 2011

Do as I say, not as I do?

To often we ask our students to do what we are not doing ourselves, and I am thinking particularly about e-portfolios and reflective blogging. As life-long learners and inquiring teachers, I believe all teachers should be modeling these themselves.


This week I asked my students to do a reflection on their first week back at school, so I decided it would be interesting to do so myself.


We started the week discussing our treaty and values, our self management strategies and responsibilities, and very importantly, the Key Competencies which is the center of all our learning. This was finished off with an activity for mixed groups to practice what we spoke about. Each group had 15 minutes to create their most imaginative outfit out of newspaper and dress one of their members, then do a final self-assessment which they shared (see left). I believe it was a huge success but then you judge from the photos and comments on our class blog.







Thursday morning was a a ray of sunshine, so remembering something from Ulearn11 about using outside spaces and changing the environment, I took the class outside to do maths on the hall steps. I taught the groups to one side while the others work individually or pairs in the sun. It was actually going very well until some sports training began on the field, we eventually had to move back inside because I had lost their attention, but I will certainly do it again.


After last term's inquiry, I realised that my students really needed a lot more learning around researching, particularly finding the key ideas in text and then summarising it in their own words. We have been pioneering Diigo for Education (see my blog post here) and so we used the highlight function to find unknown words in one colour and then key ideas in another colour on an article on the  NZHerald website




Our science inquiry this term is magnetism, so we had our introductory lesson this week. We started with a brainstorm which produce an amazing amount of questions, considering I had only asked what they thought they knew. I had to bite my lip as I had decided not to give any answers or explanations, but just be a sponge. 


After that still without explaining or answering anything we moved onto the 3 station activities. This was an amazing and fun session that created even more questions, we are certainly set up for our inquiry.
Station 1 was a range of online games based on magnetism using laptops.
Station 2 was a table of magnets and objects to experiment with. A challenge to make something hover in mid air focussed the exploration. 
Station 3, I created a race car game with magnets and paperclips, but their challenge was to create their own game, and some exciting ideas develop from that. I hope to take that idea further as a unit challenge.
Again, I never gave any answers but just asked them, "why do you think that is happening?" "I wonder why . . .?"





I am not ashamed to say that I personally hate homework, but that is another argument. However it is school policy and what the parents want, so I do it. I have been using "homework worksheets" and decided to ask my students what they wanted this term. Their answer was a choice of activities and projects, which would also cater to different intelligences and learning styles. I created next weeks homework and have it on our wiki already so they can give me some feedback by Monday. 


I have not forgotten about creative commons and giving credit on the document, but I won't put them on until the end of the week, as they also contain many of the answers.  To the left is my "Friday" t-shirt that I wore today, just to prove my viewpoint.


When I asked who had a fun first week of learning, I got a resounding YES, me included.

Saturday 22 October 2011

Testing Google Presentation Updates

It is wonderful to see Google improving Presentations and I couldn't help but have a play to see what the possibilities are. It it getting closer to having all the great features of PowerPoint (for digital storytelling) without the huge files and difficulty of getting it online without losing all the effects.


Below is my test presentation embedded and here is the link.
Do you have anything to add or have I missed out anything? 
How would you use it in the classroom?

Ulearn 2011

This year I got the incredible opportunity to go to the biggest education conference in New Zealand, Ulearn in which I was a first time participant and first time presenter. It was a magical experience being surrounded by like-minded passionate educators of all ages and backgrounds, which really reaffirmed my faith that passion, willingness to change, learn, explore, innovate and share is what makes a great teacher. Another exciting aspect of the conference was meeting people face-to-face from my online PLC, many of whom I chat with regularly on Skype and Twitter, and have worked with on collaborative projects. Friendships and bonds where made and strengthened, we all shared, supported and taught one another. One of the most exciting moments for me was meeting Professor Stephen Heppell, what an inspiration!


I left brimming with ideas, inspired and excited, although my brain felt ready to burst (like fireworks not a melon :-) after four days of intense learning. The sheer quantity of amazing presentations meant I could only attend a fraction of them, luckily with a spirit sharing some of us shared our notes and learning. See my notes below for more detail on presentations  keynotes and workshops I attended.


As a first time presenter I was somewhat nervous but with support from my PLC and a great audience I believe I managed to impart some ideas and inspiration on using Google Apps in schools. The allocated time was shorter than I expected so I did not get to do all I had planned, especially the collaborative activities and I found the participants ranged from very beginner to advanced which was difficult to cater for. Next time I think I need to be more specific in my target and state it clearly in the abstract.
Below is the Google Sites website I created for my Ulearn presentation.




My Notes:



It will take some time to process all this new knowledge and try out some new ideas. I look forward to sharing some of this with my school staff and spreading some of these exciting ideas. I will certainly be a next years Ulearn, and if you haven't been before, make sure you get there, you will be inspired!

Tuesday 18 October 2011

Ulearn Twitter Badge

I am busy packing my bags for Ulearn, and just saw a nice idea by David Kinane to add a Ulearn badge to your Twitter avatar. So I gave it a go and it really was quite easy, and if you want to see how I did it using Avairy check out my screencast below.

Wednesday 12 October 2011

The Art of Collaboration

Last week our school hosted our Art Exhibition in the hall for three days with an open evening the first day. Art from all students and classes were on display, and student singers and dancers entertained the crowd. I co-ordinated a interactive and collaborative art work that was painted by over 50 different students, in fact it was started by some kindergarten children who will hopefully see it displayed proudly when they one day join to our school.


Successful collaborative projects take some planning, I had an A4 colour daft print of the big picture stuck to a nearby chair. The canvas was primed and a pencil outline of the heart added by me. I had three students working on the painting at a time, one on the inside working on the heart, with a palette of only warm colours, and the two outside students with palettes of cool colours.


As each new student left the painting grew in depth and complexity, as facilitator my role was teaching brush techniques, discussing the effects of colours and layers, and as the evening progressed many students watched first before adding their touch. It turned out to be a beautiful painting that was created and owned by the students of the school.


Collaboration can take many forms, and together we can create beautiful things.

Thursday 22 September 2011

School Start Page and EduBlogs


This past year I have been giving lots of PD both at whole school meeting and for individual staff members and it has been gratifying to see staff using Google Apps, wikis and other e-tools with more confidence and regularity. However I noticed that the majority wasted too much time, trying to find the correct website, email or wiki. I decided to create a Start Page for our school staff to make their lives a bit easier.
I firstly considered iGoogle which I use, and also tried Netvibes for a few weeks, in the end after testing, I came to realise they provided their own challenges with all the widgets and was not centrally controlled. So as a good Google App man, I created a Google Sites page with a shared school calendar, an announcement box, links to all school websites and wikis, plus links to some of the more common websites teachers use daily like eTap, e-asTTle, ARBS, TKI etc. So far this has been well received by all staff who are finding the challenge of navigation slightly easier and quicker. What do you do at your school?.

My students have also started the EduBlogs student challenge this week, it provides an exciting a real context for students to learn and practice their blogging and commenting skills, as well as connecting to classes and students around the world. 

Interestingly, a small group asked to move from KidBlogs to their own Blogger for the challenge because it allows them more control over the blog and to able to add widgets.

The blog challenge provides opportunities to teach digital citizenship, literacy and key competencies, all while the students are engaged and excited about 'real' blogging with a 'real' audience. 

Friday 2 September 2011

A Grey Tale in Storybird

I have had Storybird bookmarked for ages, yet somehow I never got around to trying it out myself. On Friday afternoons I run an e-elective, and today we all got to play and learn with Storybird, we were all engaged. It looks so professional yet it is so simple to make, it is easy to embed in both wikis and blogs, and it can also be downloaded as a PDF. The huge range of artwork really inspires the writer inside to respond, it is a great literacy tool. 


Next time I would teach the process of using the images to tell the story first, something like Flickr 5 Photo storytelling. I hope you enjoy my story.

Moody Weather
by MrWoodnz on Storybird

Thursday 1 September 2011

Scibblemaps Maths Scavenger Hunt

When considering how to use e-learning in your classroom, one method is to look at your planning and consider what ICT tools you could use to add to this learning experience. 

We have been learning about reading scales and maps, and we also had an introduction to orienteering last week, so I decided to find and use an e-tool to entend their learning. 


Using a free online tool called Scribblemaps I created the scavenger hunt above and embedded it into our class wiki. In pairs or triads they accessed the maps on laptops, working together to plot the placemarkers on their paper maps. When they were ready they came to me for their starting time. And they were gone. . .


My students have practiced and used the maths concepts in an authentic context using Scribblemaps as my e-tool. They had fitness (including those who usually find any excuse not to move), calculated time, and read maps. They were working participating cooperatively but still competitively, they used critical thinking to help choose the best route and method of completing the course in the fatest time with all the correct answers. 


As the rate of return to the classroom was spread out, I got my top group, to whom I'd taught Scribblemaps on Monday, to teach everyone else as they came into the room, it worked a charm. I watched mixed ability peer tutoring to now eager learners, other student discussions were either comparing answers, routes and times, it was real maths talk.


Our next step is for the students to create their own maps for the rest of the class to follow; plus some students have already asked to create ones based on our other learning topics. We also need to create a scale ruler, last week showed most students were getting more proficient, but still need some practice interpreting and using different scale types.
 

Wednesday 31 August 2011

Post-it War


I just finished reading a news article that oozes fun, creativity, collaboration and critical thinking. Reported by the New Zealand Herald, the 'Post-it wars' are a corporate collage contest held in Paris, where they create Post-it creations in their windows, challenging each other to do better.


I had to give it a go! I used http://linoit.com because it allowed different note colours, but perhaps my desktop stickies would do a better job. Lastly I took a screenshot, what do you think? Is it war?

Wednesday 24 August 2011

Daffodil Day

Friday 26th August 2011
Daffodil
Photo blju photo
Daffodil Day


Daffodil Day is the Cancer Society's annual spring fundraising and awareness campaigns in the country. The daffodil is one of the first flowers of spring, even now they are popping out in my lawn! Their blazing yellow flowers remind me of warmth and sunshine, light and hope. Hope, care, and help for the 1 in 3 New Zealanders affected by cancer and their families; this is what you help to deliver with each donation, buying a flow on Friday 26th August, or education. Teaching and educating about other about Daffoldil Day is a way you can help. The Cancer Society provide a range of school activities for low to mid primary students from colouring-in pages to maths problems on their web page.


New Zealand School Journals for guided reading (web site):
The Flower The daffodil JJ No. 22 2000 Pg 19 - <8 Article
Cancer - adultsAunty's raw fish - Pt 04 No. 1 2010 - Story - 9.5-10.5 years
Change of Life - YP No. 1 2003 - Story
Jack's auntie and her long brown hair  - Poem Pt 04 No. 1 2006 - 12-14 years 
Remembering Taua - YP No. 1 2004 - Story

Cancer - child
Spaceships and aliens Pt 03 No. 1 2011 - Story - 9-10 years

How could you give some hope?

Friday 19 August 2011

A Week of E-learning Learning

Last week David our school e-learning PD trainer introduced Glogster to two of our e-learning teachers. I had not used it in the last year but decided it would be great for presenting an inquiry project. I set up my class but forgot how to make a few changes so asked one of these teachers for help, she was so excited to be teaching me something and I was pleased to see her confidence grow. It goes to show teaching someone else is the best way to grow and learn.

I try to provide many opportunities for my students to write collaboratively, and today they proved that they are become more proficient at it. In the past I found that too many people editing a Google Document causes more sharing problems, so this time they worked in smaller groups (around 5 student each) to and wrote about their previous day. This worked really well and we copy and pasted them into our blogs. See them here http://brs-year8.blogspot.com.

Screen_shot_2011-08-19_at_10.42.07_PM.png
Screen_shot_2011-08-19_at_10.41.41_PM.png
Diigo became my favourite bookmarking site when Delicious had it's troubles many months back, and soon after I discovered Diigo Education which allows you to create student accounts. However it is not the bookmark feature which makes it such an awesome programme but the Highlight and Sticky Note features. One example of how I use it is below. We have been learning to skim and scan for information so as one stormy cold day activity I sent my student 'group' to the Metservice website where I had left a sticky note with questions for them to practice. I will be talking about this further in our e-learning 'Smackdown'.

Lastly this Friday we had a community Rugby 'World Cup' afternoon with students playing students and parents/teachers playing students. As I usually do I took our class camera and handed it over to my students to take photos, events like this provide great photography training. Students from other classes took notice and also wanted to take photos so I convinced one of my team teacher's to get their class camera and the student got snapping, I noticed she seemed slightly nervous about having the camera out of her control and after 15 minutes it was back in it's case and returned to the classroom. This made me realise that as teachers it is important that we learn to let go, give control and trust to our students so they can learn and experience technology for themselves. Learning is doing!

Monday 15 August 2011

Literacy and Maths through Music

Although I may look like a rock star ripping through the chords, I am neither and unfortunately don't have a musical bone in my body. However if you were standing next to me you would hear me counting out beats 8xE, 8xG, then the chorus 2xD, 2xG etc. that I was reading from the whiteboard. I really wanted to read the lyrics and sing along too but could not focus on both. My point being that even as a adult I was using maths and literacy skills while having lots of fun.

We were lucky enough to have the "Rock Van" at our school for a week. This group of musicians taught the students instruments and the whole class become a rock band after short daily practice. Aside from whole class participation and engagement, I noticed plenty of counting and discussions about the number of beats and students talking about 'reading' the music.

This experience has certainly opened my eyes to how subjects like music can be used to teach literacy and numeracy, however to make that really effective teachers need to be doing more collaborative planning and integrated teaching.

What experiences have you had with music adding to learning?

Saturday 6 August 2011

Take responsibility for your own learning


EduCampAKL 2011
Today I attended the EduCampAKL 2011, a user-generated unconference. The focus was on sharing e-learning and education ideas and knowledge. It was also a great opportunity to catch up with my online PLN, some of whom I had not met face-to-face before.


I think the slogan really captures the spirit of the event "go with the flow ~ follow your passion ~ take responsibility for your own learning." We are all self directed learners taking our own weekend to develop ourselves professionally and share our learning. Most importantly we are taking responsibility for our own learning, not waiting for school mass PD to choose our learning journey. 


Claire Amos began the unconference talking about how Epson Girls (our host) use ICT for teaching and learning. We then had "Smackdown" where each speaker had 2 minutes to share tools and ideas with the group. We used a shared Google Doc to recorded everything and it will be a resource I will be revisiting many times this year. There was so many exciting ideas and information that it is hard to absorb it all in one go. You can view the document at  http://goo.gl/m9T9M 

I participated in the following workshops / discussions / sharing:
iPad Ideas, lead by Stuart Hale
- use QR code with built in ipad camera
- Redlazer for scanning QR codes as well as other bar code types that are not generally readable by the standard code readers.
- use QR codes on library book spines that link to student book reviews (video) on a school website.
- Augmented Reality using AcrossAir to view panorama’s.
- Anywhere links an image (instead of a QR code) to web site.

Teacher Dashboard, lead by Dorothy Burt
- If you use Google Apps for your students then this is a must have software which allows the teacher to manage and view all student Docs, Blogs and even Picasa.
- Links to and shows Blogger plus comments.
- Point England School are paper free and do not allow printing, kids take screenshots, saved in Picassa.
- Also shows student Gmail (inbox – sent – trash – sharing) *security
- Automatic computer generated student emails, simple password reset.
- Work within G Apps can be transferred to other cluster schools.
- $4 student per year.
- Can set up templates for Shared Folders and Blogger for all students – set up widgets / looks /links etc. – in Edit HTML, download XML and make as a template.
- the same idea can be used for e-portfolio’s using Sites.

NIE – Newspapers in Education, lead by Becky Hare
- A fantastic online newspaper with a daily dairy (Nikki Newsgirl)
- e-links to topic – questions and students can submit their writing (3 published weekly)

Digital Storytelling, lead by @HeyMilly
- Five Photo Storytelling with a focus on photography (visual language)
A wonderful day of learning, sharing, and connecting with my New Zealand PLN>

Saturday 9 July 2011

How to set up Māori macrons on your keyboard

Instruction to enable typing with Māori macrons on you computer for a range of operating systems are available at: Typing Māori easily / Te māmā hoki o te patopato
or follow the instructions on the video below for Mac OS X (10.6 Snow Leopard).

Unable to display content. Adobe Flash is required.



By using and typing Māori words correctly in digital form you are demonstrating a key indicator of the Registered Teachers Criteria:
Professional relationships and professional values
Criteria 3: demonstrate commitment to bicultural partnership in Aotearoa New Zealand.
i. demonstrate respect for the heritages, languages and cultures of both partners to the Treaty of Waitangi.

Sunday 22 May 2011

Mapping My Web Presence

I started out creating a using Mind42 mind-maps to track my schools web presence, as my e-learning teachers were getting confused between our wikis. 


Being a visual person myself it was fantastic to see this structure clearly laid out with links.



School Web Presence (mosts wikis have been created by myself)


Having been active online educator for a number of years now, I have created and collaborated on a few websites. I decided to do the same with my own web presence.
MrWoodnz's Web Presence



Friday 20 May 2011

Sharing e-learning with my team

Reflection on a day of working with syndicate teachers to and model e-learning and empower their students.

In Technology I was assisting and modeling and the plan was to use a worksheet to answer questions about Physical & Functional Attributes of potato peelers. I put the questions on her wiki, and added a Wallwisher for the students to collaboratively brainstorm. Slow wireless connection in that area really hindered the process, I wonder if we can use the Ethernet plugs in the Tech room, or better an extra modem like in room 13? I had prepared a Google Drawing Venn diagram as an alternative the writing out questions, but it would not load. So we used Mind42 a mind-mapping tool to do the same thing.


In the middle block I took Room 16 class in the ICT suite. The aim was to start developing their wiki e-portfolios, while empowering and equipping his students to use their wiki themselves, and become peer tutors. This will allow the teacher to focus on ways to use these tools in his teaching, he mentioned in his reflection that he was thrilled with the engagement.
  • They learnt about signing into wiki’s and websites safely and protecting their identity.
  • While adding Bling name tags, the students learnt to copy html code and use a widget to embed it into their wiki page.
  • They learnt to add a new wiki page for themselves, using their first names and to manage their own pages.
  • They learnt to create text hyperlinks.
  • They learnt how to make a Weeworld Avatar, and why. I suggested they could do some character description writing on their wiki pages based on their avatars.
  • They also learnt to screencapture on a mac and insert an image from file.
Two more girls from his class asked to join the wiki wizards on Friday’s Electives.
I ran a similar session with Room 12 in the ICT suite in the afternoon. As a past class of mine they are more experience so we worked on developing their wikis as future e-portfolios. Then we explored using Mind42 first as a class Word Wall on their wiki, then students created individual mind maps to help them structure and brainstorm their next narrative.




I believe the students are more empowered and likely to take ownership of their class wikis. A big focus was on protecting our online identity; this message needs to be part of an ongoing digital citizenship programme. I hope the teachers have seen new ways they can use the tools, and student expertise they already have to engage their students in e-learning and integrate it across the curriculum areas. It is also fantastic to see teachers becoming more reflective on our e-learning professional development wiki.

Tuesday 10 May 2011

Spontaneous Collaboration


Although I am leading e-learning PD in my syndicate, and teaching staff about Google Apps for Education, the potential pedagogies of e-learning with Google Apps, have not yet been realised. A common mindset and misconception is that we are adding the ICT into current teaching, giving it a obligatory slot in the subject tumble. Sometimes however it is the first step for some teachers; getting familiar with new tools. As we know from maths, knowledge frees the mind for critical thinking.

Yesterday marked a breakthrough in staff collaboration for my team. After a long team meeting we realised that we had not done out term newsletter. I promptly copied one from term 1 and shared it with the team, who all (without any glitches thank goodness) started working together on the same document. 

It was only after about five minutes when one teacher exclaimed that "this was fun the way we were all working on the same document", that they realised were were collaborating. I added the image below with the revision history tab open to show that they were all taking part. They all liked that they could see where the others were working in the document, and one teacher who didn't like her assigned colour figured out how to change it. I was very proud of them, now I am waiting for the penny to drop, "hey we could get our students to do the same thing!"


Thursday 5 May 2011

Vegetables and Monsters and Algebra

After a recent staff professional development (PD), I came to realize that my students really need to be doing more problem solving. It is so easy to give text book practice and teach 'step by step' from the Numeracy Project books. Yet our students seem to lack the ability to solve problems that require critical thinking.


This TED video of Dan Meyer also really made me challenge and reflect on the way I have been teaching maths. He says we are teaching "paint-by-numbers" and depriving students of not just solving problems but formulating them. Follow Dan on Twitter here



Lucky algebra is our term focus and is an ideal vehicle for this. One of the problems we were given in our staff PD was solving a vegetable garden problem. I like to use my interactive whiteboard as a group activity and so created an e-version that my students could use and contribute their own problems to. I am also a Google Apps for Education freak, and on my way to becoming Google Apps Certified (2/6 tests passed so far) so I used Google Drawing to create the one below. 


Originally I planned on using problem solving to extend my higher Year 8 students but the activities, games and my problem solving teaching approach have transformed my class. Even my most reluctant students were engaged and talking mathematics enthusiastically, which made me enjoy teaching maths more than I have ever before, a double win. Below is an open copy of my Google Drawing, please feel free to test it and copy or change it for your own use.





I also found a fantastic and free game called "Lure of the Labyrinth" which is a mixture of comic strip story (which I used for shared reading) and monster video game. It is a challenging digital game for middle-school pre-algebra students with fascinating puzzles intertwined into an exciting narrative with it's own mythology (my class are exploring myths this term too) that is a perfect accompaniment for literacy. They support educators well with a wealth of resources and teaching material around the game puzzles. It is also encourages collaboration amongst the students and sharing of strategies.
Do you have any great algebra problems to share, I am always looking for more ideas?

Saturday 23 April 2011

Determine Reading Age of Websites for your students

Early last year I wrote a blog post about how to analyse text and websites for reading age using Lexile Analyzer. It is a Lexile Text Measure based on two predictors, word frequency and sentence length, of how difficult a text is to comprehend.My tests showed it to be reasonably accurate, however the downside is that it is it not simple or quick to use.

One of the hardest tasks for me as a teacher is finding websites for my students that are at an appropriate reading age for them, especially when the range of those ages is large. Depending on your students reading and comprehension ability, it is usually better to provide website links for your students to visit, even when they are doing inquiry research.


Yesterday I discovered, via the blog The Daily Cafe, a  site called Twurdy; a play on the words "Too Wordy" but somehow reminds me of Disney's 'Tweety' bird (Tweety & Sylvesta). The web is becoming a bit of a flock!
Twurdy search engine (powered by Google)
analyses the text on each page, it displays the results of each page shaded with their peachy colour code system. I did find it a bit hard to distinuquish between the colour shades, yet I found the readability level key easy to read. Actually I enjoyed the Twurdy's simple design, pleasant colours and ease of use.


Although this site is much easier to use, you will need to have your ever present teacher judgement at hand. As you can see from the results above a Wikipedia page got a 8-10 age range (wrong) yet in another search Wikipedia rated 18+ (believable).
I choose the text from taitokerau.co.nz/matariki.htm and used the Lexile Analyzer and Google Reading Levels to compare.

Lexile measures 1050L which is a reading age of approximatly 13 years old.


Google Reader Levels (found under 'More Search Tools' ) gives it an Intermediate Reading Level. I could not find a qualification for actual reading age. Intermediate in schooling usually refers to age 11-13 years old

Twurdy shows this website reading ages at around 15-18 years old.

Google Search 'reader levels' seem to be more reliable for now, although Twurdy is powered by Google they not not seem to use the same ranking system. 


Below is my screen-cast on how to use Google Search 'reader levels'. I would love to hear whether you use any of these websites and which you think are most effective.
Unable to display content. Adobe Flash is required.