Friday 29 August 2014

Top Digital Citizenship Resources on Pinterest

It is never to late to promote, model and teach digital citizenship, in fact it should be integrated into all learning experiences.  These are some of my top digital citizenship posters and you can find many more resources on my Pinterest Digital Citizenship Board. I hope these help get the message across.
Do you have a favourite digital citizenship resources?




How May I Serve?

Loving what we do in our daily lives, and finding joy and peace in every moment blossoms when we ask, " How may I serve?"  This is especially true for those of us who teach.

This beautiful truth I learnt from Dr Wayne Dyer @DrWayneWDyer in "Your Journey To Enlightenment", I recommend following him.

I wanted these words as a wallpaper on my phone but most images online seem to be the wrong shape, so I made this one from one of my own photos. You are welcome to use it, the original is on my Instagram - mrwoodnz

Blessings & peace,
Shaun
@mrwoodnz

Wednesday 27 August 2014

This Young Poet Will Touch Your Heart



After my last blog post "Poems in the Waiting Room" I have had some wonderful conversations with poet Judy Billcliff about how poetry can reach the toughest and most hurt kids. 

She was kind enough to share this poem written by a boy dealing with the death of his father; it touched my heart. This really shows the power of poetry and how it can help heal the hearts of our children. So if you aren't exploring poetry every week in your classroom, I urge you to do so. If you need advice I know Judy can guide you.

Judy Billcliff (@judirainbow) writes poetry for kids and offers workshops too. She was the 2013 runner up in the National children's poetry competition, and the 2014 Duffy Books In Homes Role Model. Please visit her website and be to Like her FaceBook page Rainbow Poetry and Words for You  & Snail Mail Day 13th June and I'd love you to Like my Mindcraft Learning FaceBook page too.

How often do your kids write poetry?

Monday 25 August 2014

Poems in the Waiting Room

A Piece of Selfless Magic
This morning as I sat in the hospital waiting room feeling a bit anxious about having a small skin cancer cut from my shoulder, I looked for relief at the dismal pile of old Women's Weekly magazines. I sighed in dismay until a sky blue brochure caught my attention, it's white words "Poems in the Waiting Room" (PitWR) whispered with promise.

As I started to read, I smiled as the words painted pictures in my mind and lifted my spirits. Let me share one of these beautiful poems with you.

Ode to a Compost Bin
magical processing machine
taking in our potato
and onion peel
carrot tops and pea pods
that rotten apple
and the spotty slice of bread

giving in return
dark, crumbly compost
albeit with pieces
of undigested egg shell

like those sharp bits
of experience
still poking through
our reconstituted
success stories

Charmian Koed (1939 USB 3rd place)


Yours to Keep!
And yes I could keep this little waiting room miracle, take it home and soak in the magic of magic of these words again and again.

I was really touched and grateful for this gift of relief. These PitWR are supplied free to waiting rooms, hospices, prisons, and rest homes with new cards and poems distributed every season.  This project of love is run by a registered charity based in Dunedin, New Zealand and depends on donations to keep running, so please support them. You can also visit there website at www.waitingroompoems.wordpress.com.

Make a Difference in Your Community
After feeling blessed and a bit more at peace in that moment I wondered what if every classroom or school did a similar project for their local community?  Imagine your students learning to write poetry of love, kindness and sharing for a real product, a genuine context, to bring a bit of light and love to some special and perhaps lonely people in your community. I bet they could come up with some great community places to hand them out, perhaps even go read them to the local retirement residents.  The possibilities are endless and effect would be priceless. So to encourage you further, I've made up a basic tri-brochure template in Google Spreadsheet for your class or school to adapt and fill with beautiful words. I also have in in PPT format, just email me if you would like it, alternatively there are many free ones online.

Please pass this idea on, spread the love, and share back in the comments your thoughts and link to your projects.

"Love is a gift of one's inner most soul to another so both can be whole" - Buddha

Please signup to my email list today, and I'll keep you updated with my latest posts and specials, thanks Shaun.

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Thursday 21 August 2014

The Day Infographics Came Into My Life

Teach your students to read, comprehend , synthesize and create infographics. See the infographic about infographics below.

I remember when I saw my first infographic, it took my breath away! I wasn't sure if it was a really cool poster, or an well designed advert; I nearly put it up on my wall anyway.  I learnt a lot about my favourite superhero that day and fell in love with a new and booming literacy form. 
The funny thing about synchronicity is that once you are captivated by something wonderful, you see it everywhere. Every newspaper, magazine, and website seemed to be using infographics to sell, inform, and entertain in the most beautiful ways.  Being a really visual person I loved that I could read the main ideas through art, plus the text was usually short and to the point, my kind of reading! 

Right there I knew this was important, I was drawn to them, they seemed pervasive in both business and media. I knew this was a literary form that my students had to learn about.  Not only did I know they would love it and be totally engaged in these inspiring and creative multimedia texts, but they would be learning some deep critical thinking skills along the way, and I could think of 50 different ways teaching infographics that would align to “THE STANDARDS”. 

On that day an idea was born in me, and I knew I’d needed to do lots of research and planning to make it happen.  At the time another great teacher and mentor of mine also became fascinated, and together we started the brainstorm process of what teaching infographics would look like in schools. A different approach was needed to the business world design professionals.  After many months of letting ideas stew, collecting good examples and doing extensive research, I eventually put all my ideas together in a teachers guide and a unit plan of lessons on how to teach infographics.  I believe this topic is too important and way too much fun not to share. I encourage you to give it a go with your class. Be prepared to be teaching across the curriculum: reading strategies, writing styles, advertising, visual arts, statistics and much more. Soon after you’ll find your students making infographics on every subject they can and thinking in ways you always dreamed of.

Below is my infographic “The Tree of Infographics”, a breakdown of the elements and components of an infographic.  I hope this will help show you the depth of potential learning you can get from teaching your students to better understand, analyse and create infographics. They are a new literacy media that cannot be ignored.

Why use infographics with your students?
Make connections more obvious.
Tell a story.
Explain something.
Persuade your audience.
Help students make sense of huge amount of information.
Learn to infer layers of information.
It is a popular media form used in business, news and marketing.
Use it to develop critical thinking skills.
Make data more interesting to all learners.
Develop a deeper understanding of complex relationships and ideas.
Information is easily accessible to all readers.
Common Core emphasizes:
 “Integrate and evaluate content presented in diverse media and formats, including visually and quantitatively, as well as in words.”

Have you used infographics to introduce or teach a topic before?  
Or have you taught your students about infographics and how they can use them?  
If so please share your experiences in the comments, or send me an email, I’d love to hear from you.

If you are intersted in viewing my “Teaching Infographics” pack, please visit my store at http://www.teacherspayteachers.com/Store/Mindcraft-Learning

Infographic Tree Infographic

* Please feel free to copy, share, link to, or embed this infographic.  

Reviving My Logo

I was still fresh into teaching, actually still doing my degree in October 2008 when I first designed my personal and now professional logo, check out my post about it here. Wow, time sure has past fast and when I look back on all my blog posts I'm a bit embarrassed by some of my past thinking, and proud at the same time seeing my growth.  



But back to my logo.  Having recent started focusing on developing educational resources to help serve teachers and make their teaching easier and more effective, I rediscovered my old logo when trying to decide on a new business logo. The funny thing is that it still resonates in my soul, it's still relevant, and I still love it. The original design was based on the Maori poutama pattern which represents the steps and scaffolding that guides learning. I then created Tetris blocks to represent the many different personalities and communities that come together and collaboratively construct knowledge, forming a strong foundation for learning. What makes it a strong structure is that it depends on each piece being different. The bright Tetris blocks were also originally designed to represent the digital age, integrating ICT and 21st century learning, and now years later as an expert in e-learning and game based learning I can only smile at how it still reflects my passions and education beliefs after all these years.

Now with the start of my business and new FaceBook page, which is creating educational resources to support teachers, I feel it still belongs and is part of my identity. So welcome back my old Tetris Logo.  Check it out on my blog and FaceBook page, and let me know what you think of it.

Sunday 17 August 2014

How to Change Page Size in PowerPoint

PowerPoint is a fantastic program that you can use for many other purposes aside from slideshows.  I now often use it to write lesson plans or other text that I want to print onto A4 paper. I have also used it to print A3 posters, make website banners, and square cover pages for my TeachersPayTeachers site. The video below will teach you how to do this simple but handy trick.