#educamprotovegas

An amazing turnout and packed room at #Educamprotovegus proved that there are many passionate educators striving to develop their own learning and guide their own PD. It was wonderful to see so many newbies to Educampnz and I believe they all felt welcome and not overwhelmed by the geeks. I especially liked how much focus was on got pedagogy that was not particularly elearning as their is often the misconception that these teacher gatherings are for ITC geeks only.


The Smackdown ruled the day with a huge range of incredible resources being shared. It was a truly inspiring experience and I'm still processing all the amazing things I learnt.


The Twitter feed tells the story of our day and conversations happening. 

Thank you Annemarie @mrs_hyde for bringing us all together.

Handwriting Fonts for New Zealand Curriculum

I originally wrote this post on "Handwriting Fonts for New Zealand Curriculum" in 2009, now after some discussion on the NZ Teachers (Primary) FaceBook page on New Zealand fonts for computers I'm updating it with a screencast on how to install the Jarman font onto your PC. Mac users can follow these instructions. This is the download link for the Jarman font. Enjoy and let me know how you used it.

Online Reading & Listening for Kids

As I reader I have moved to reading mostly digital books and particularly listing to audio books, both of which make great stations or reading activities for the classroom. Below are the sites I have found that are free and suitable for children. Please let me know of any others and I'll update my list.
I have create a Symbaloo of all the suggestions from the NZ Teachers Primary Facebook group.

Online Books

• Silly Books
• We Give Books
• Tar Heel Reader
• International Children’s Digital Library
• Classic Illustrated Comics

Online Audio Books (with subtitles)

• https://www.istorybooks.co
• http://etc.usf.edu/lit2go/
• http://www.professorgarfield.org/pgf_mrsp.html

Online Audio Books

• Audio Book Cloud
• Open Culture: children and adult classics
• Story Bee
• Books Should Be Free
• The Children’s Poetry Archive

Non-fiction Reading Websites for Kids

• National Geographic Kids
• Kids Should See This
• Wonderoplois

News Websites for Kids

• Kiwi Kids News
• Dogo News
• Time for Kids
• Tween Tribune Junior
• 
  

EduCampNZ Christchurch 2014 #educampchch

I love going to EduCamps as for me they showcase what I believe a model life-long learner teacher is. These amazing teachers take a Saturday morning of their own time to share and learn from each other, to connect and collaborate. So not only was this #educampchch a wonderful learning experience but also a great chance to meet those teachers whose passion for teaching learning is an inspiration.

Below is a copy of the Smackdown slides and they were all fanatasic, but some of my favourites where:
* Kahoot (Slide 6): which allows you to run a quiz, you do however need either a connected device per student or per group.
* The Five Sentence Challenge (Slide 10): which is an online writing challenge for emergent writers.

* Coding for Teachers (Slide 18): a community of teacher learning to code together.

Smackdown Slides

I presented some of my favourite free coding sites and apps for different primary school levels.

There was also a lively Twitter backchat and sharing happening which you can view below.
Twitter Feed
  #educampchch Tweets

Teachers Don't Own Their Own Content!

Last night I attended a presentation on Creative Commons in Education presented by Creative Commons NZ  and hosted by the Christchurch Connected Educators’ Network. To learn more about the background and basics of Creative Commons read Rob Clarke’s post “Knowledge Creation, Sharing and Creative Commons in Education.”  It is an interesting subject and one all teachers and schools need to understand. Copyright and Creative Commons is a major part of digital citizenship, and our students need to know how to avoid ‘stealing’ the work of others as well as protecting and perhaps even more important sharing their own creative works. However the point that created the most discussion and interest was the fact that teachers don't own their own content!

Did you know that New Zealand teachers don’t own or have copyright to resources they create! It is a grey area but essentially it means anything educational you create while employed, even on weekends is not yours. This is a worry for those of us who create and sell educational resources. According to the Creative Commons in Schools website, “The 1994 Copyright Act grants first ownership to employers, which in the case of New Zealand schools is the Board of Trustees (BoT).” Although some of us find this shocking, it is not a conspiracy, but an old legal default of policy that has never been changed. This is another reason why you as educators need to be aware of copyright issues, take charge of the contracts you sign, and take action to change policies at your school.

Why Open Education Matters from Blink Tower on Vimeo.

We all want to have a fair playing field and luckily the government is on your side. The New Zealand Government Open Access and Licensing framework (NZGOAL), advocates the use of Creative Commons licensing and encourages Boards of Trustees to take NZGOAL into account in their copyright policies. The solution is to adopt clear and transparent policies to allow schools and teachers to share and reuse content. The benefits are: teachers will not need to ask permission to use resources, they and the school can legally keep and reuse resources, plus the teacher who created the work can receive credit when their work is reused. Of course this doesn’t cover educational resources or books teachers may be creating in their own time, but the answer is to be upfront and talk about these issues with your Boards of Trustees. Preferably get any conditions included into your contract.

To learn more about Creative Commons in Schools and how to pass a Creative Commons Policy change at your school visit Creative Commons in Schools for more detail, including a policy template developed by Albany Senior High School which you can use.

It is an interesting barrel of worms, and here are some other things for you to consider.
- Who owns the content of your personal teaching / reflective blog?
- Students work is all automatically copyright, should they also agree to a Creative Commons sharing policy?

By Shaun Wood, teacher and consultant at www.Mindcraft.co.nz

Twitter:             @mrwoodnz

Blog:               http://mindcraftlearning.blogspot.com

Facebook:     https://www.facebook.com/mindcraftelearning