Dennis Hong: My seven species of robot | Video on TED.com

This is an inspiring TED talk by Dennis Hong where he introduces seven all-terrain robots. I had no idea how far robotics had been taken and the robots are fantastic. The part that made me think about sharing this with my class, was when he spoke about the five creative secrets to his lab's success. He talks about the kind of brainstorming I try to encourage in the classroom, perhaps a real life example will inspire my students onward. Dennis goes on further to say that creativity itself is not enough, to support it and follow through you need the learning; lots of maths and science.

Pixton Click-N-Drag Comics

Pixton Click-N-Drag Comics is an amazing online comic site with a huge range of characters and editable features. You can resize, rotate and change clothes, colours and even move individual limbs on the characters. Backgrounds and objects seem just as versatile. Most comic formats from one row to twelve rows are included as well as a poster format. This is really click and drag storytelling that allows the story teller to explore the visual elements of storytelling.

I am impressed with the easy of use and versatility of this site. I especially like how easy it is to embed your comic creations on your blog or share on on social sites. All this is free, although Pixton also have a pay version with extra features.

While sharing this on Twitter @wmchamberlain mentioned that with the free version students had to be 19, or have parent permission to sign up their own account. There is an education version which bypasses this, but it is not free. As I don't like my students being asked for emails, I plan to use my usual option of opening a class account that we all can use.


Some other comic options are:
Creating Comics in Word written by Jacqui Sharp
Speak Up: good for bully stories and have a downloadable option.
Zimmer Twins creates digital movie stories.
Make Beliefs Comixs
Toondoo
PikiKids uses photos like creating comics in Word.
Myths & Legends 
Comic Creator by ReadWriteThink allows you to create comics to print out and colour. You cannot save or embed though.

Have you use an online comic creator with primary school students? How would you rate it?

Who owns your class blog?

I sometimes feel guilty that my personal learning blog posts have dropped to about two a month. On the other-hand, my class blog has grown in number of posts and comments. At the end of term one we had 36 posts and and amazing 320 comments.

So who is in the driving seat?
In the beginning of the year my students were new to blogging, so I started them off slowly but consistently, using it in our daily literacy programme. I wrote all of the first posts. I started off getting them to comment on a post, "How was your 2009?" was a fun slide-show and a chance to talk about themselves. Safety and responsibility online are always in our discussions.

Writing a positive and helpful comment has been our goal for term one. As part of the Edublogs Challenge we also commented on many other class and student blogs around the world. It is great see the progression of comments, the student 'comment conversations' on posts has been an extra wonderful surprise. Inspired by this I have now started exploring with my students what a blog comment conversation might look like. I am also considering making a  student the official class blog commenter, they would track all new comments and ensure they got answered.

Looking back, the posts have changed through the term. I am still driving the class blog and posting in fun ways like Animoto. The content however is driven by my students learning. Groups and pairs  often blog samples of their learning, then competed for comments. Comments really do make blogs an inspiring literacy experience for students, especially when coming from other kids. Twitter teacher group #comments4kids has been incredably supportive in giving comments. There are some amazing teachers who also let their students do the talking. Their wiki is Comments4Kids.
I had been concerned that I owned too much of our class blog? I manage the set-up, change the layout and do the actual blog posts. With 320 comments however, it suggests that my students are owning the conversation about their learning. Our class blog is becoming a literacy voice, a story that we are creating together. It is also a stepping stone towards their own personal blogs which they will get next term. Team 17's Class Blog

So who owns your class blog? You or your students?

Photo by plasticrevolver

That is why I teach!

"Mr Wood, I just realised I really like to read," said one of my students this morning. The piles of paper and assessments to analyse didn't go away, but faded in importance for the rest of the day. These are the rewards of teaching, those moments of revelation, seeing the joy of learning shining from our students eyes.

Photo by HappyHorizons

Restorative Conversations

Restorative Justice for K12 was my first exposure to this different approach to behavior management a year ago. Over the last two days I have attended a workshop on Restorative Practices run by Greg and Richard of restorativeschools.org.nz who delivered practical and informative workshop on Restorative Conversations. Aside from great food, Greg and Richard kept us focussed by scaffolding and modelling good practices. I often wonder why we teachers so often revert back to direct intsruction when delivering proffessional development to our colleagues.

I like the fact they they call it Restorative Conversations, Restorative Justice still has that old punative judgement ring to it. I now see that it is more about listening and calm conversations. It is about realising the effects of behaviour on those around you, taking ownership and making it right.

We begun by exploring our own and school values because like any path of growth you need to know where you stand now. This led us to explore punative (What rule has been broken? Who do we punish?) verses restorative responses (Who has been affected and how? What needs to happen to put things right?). We then went on to examining the types of restorative practices. For each type we did role play, and even though I was just in a role I could feel the power of the scripted questions which cut to the heart of problems, revealed feelings and required reflection to respond. Powerful stuff!

The Pyramid of Restorative Practices has at its base the Restorative Conversations that would be quick daily classroom chats. The next step, Mini Conferences, are for issues that require a facilitator (usually the classroom teacher) to solve the conflict. Next up is the Classroom Conference for bigger whole class issues, and lastly for the most serious problems, the Full Community Conference. Although at different levels, they all hold they same basic ideals and format.

The restorative process involves three key parts, adptly named the Three Keystones. The most important is the first, Preparation. Next is Participation which should run to a plan concieved in the preparation stage. Lastly and often the most forgotten, but a vital part, is the Follow-up (Have the consequences and support agreed upon been done? Have the relationships been repaired? Can both the victim and offender move forward with dignity?).

The basic restorative conversation is based on these four questions (from the handbook):

1. What happened? (tell the story)
2. Who do you think has been affected? (explore the harm)
3. What do you need to put things right? (repair the damage)
4. How can we make sure this doesn't happen again? (move forward)

If just a few students leave our schools knowing that they can resolve a serious conflict with their dignity intact, then we will have taught something far more valuable than any National Standard can measure. Some things I have taken to heart and plan to follow through on are, reconnecting with my students after they 'finish' any consequence steps by having restorative conversations, and starting a habit of having restorative conversations in our school.

Where does your school deal with behaviour issues?

Photo by Brymo

Testing WordItOut Word Clouds

WordItOut has been doing the buzz around the twitter network today, so I thought I'd try it out. What caught my attention was that you can embed or link your word cloud to your blog. This was something that I found lacking in Wordle (Wordle site at this date was down due to trademark claims).
A Learning Odyssey - Word clouds - WordItOut

Word cloud made with WordItOut

Although WordItOut has fewer features than Wordle, it's control panel is simple. I liked that you can vary the word size by count, no variation, and randomly. It could do with a few more cloud shaping features, but produces a great effect. You do need to save with an email to store the word cloud, however no password is needed so I will use our class email.

I have blogged about other word cloud programs before such as Tagul which is a more complex word cloud site. So there you go, give it a try on your own blog or even better with your students.

If you need ideas on how to use word clouds in the classroom then you must check out Mark Warner "43 Interesting Ways to use Wordle in the classroom" below.

Parent / Teacher Meet

Yesterday evening was our Meet the Teacher evening. Last year's experience of 4 parents showing up, led me to expect a low turnout. Getting parents involved is difficult at our school, and initially it seemed that this would be repeated.

I decided to give the parents a sample of our class life by putting a laptop on each desk. Parents of four students came in and took seats. I had my own list of talking points on the whiteboard which were: Rights and Responsibilities, Expectations, Digital Learning, Homework and Reading, Assessments.

I then took them through a brief explanation of our class wiki and blog. Here comes my sneaky parent / child blog engagement trick! After a fast hard sell of the magnificence of blogging and learning, I asked the parents and whanau to use the classroom laptops to leave comments on their child's group post. Naturally their children took charge and drove the process, bonus.Actually I didn't plan that trick of engaging the the parents, it just happened. In the past I have tried chocolate fish bribery!

As I moved around the classroom chatting to parents, I noticed that another three families had arrived, and a few more would turn up later. All the parents were really interested in their child's behaviour and learning. They were friendly and eager to participate in the future. I wonder if the fun, high energy whole brain teaching and the co-operative learning programme that I have implemented this year has contributed? Most parents said their children love coming to school and seem more focused this year. Perhaps it is that the school whanau have gotten to know me over the past year, the passing smiles and greetings now paying their dues?

A successful evening making connections with parents and whanau.

Photo by oooh.oooh