Lead Teacher Day at Shelly Park School

Today I learnt about RSS feeds and google reader. I now have to have a play as we were sharing laptops and didn't have a turn. All good. My thought with the RSS feeds was to link the school blogs to it as I hope it will help me comment on them. Belinda also showed us her igoogle page. I see the benefit of the page, although I am not sure I am ready for it yet.

I found it interesting that Belinda mentioned that EPS is going to Google rather than "the cloud" though I guess it is a type of cloud with google docs instead of having a server. Something to think about at BDS when our server lease is up for renewal in two years.

At the beginning of the day we did what was called a Smackdown where we shared new things like websites. I am looking forward to the mathzlinks and library skills websites. http://mathzlinks.wikispaces.com/home (also http://litworks.wikispaces.com
Library skills http://users.ece.utexas.edu/~valmstrum/s2s/utopia/library4/src/library4.html
The library skills will be good as a reading rotation during guided reading.
Mathzlinks is targeted at the numeracy project, so the interactive activities target the stages. What a find!!!!

Great to see all the activeboards in the classrooms at SPS.

Today has been very useful.

Solo Taxonomy Planning

Last Wednesday, I sat in on the planning sessions for each syndicate on our topic of inquiry of structure. It was a super experience. My understanding of the process has improved. I really like how Solo gives rich learning to the students. I notice this with our previous planning, and only doing a few of the activities, my students are enjoying some of the learning activites and really thinking about it.

Today, after watching a video (old technology from the National Library), I had one of my students come and say: "We could do a Solo activity with this." I inquired further and got we could now describe volunteering. Fabulous. Our WALT with the video was to learn to notetake. I gave them clues what to look for, and then covered together the information learnt.

more fodey.com

Was having a play after my last post and decided to use it to try and get the kids commenting.  Of course, there is the usual encouragement.

Fodey.com

class blogging

For the first time since I started blogging with my class, my students are making the blog their own. They are commenting at home, and searching for things to put on the blog even if it is silly video clips. With a little help from house points, they are now getting their parents to comment as well.  Several students have become very good at loading pictures, videos and finding their drafts to edit and publish. 
I am feeling good about the blog.
I just wish the background would work at school, not only just at home.  I tried to copy the background and load it but that doesn't seemed to have worked either.

ICT Cluster day

Today the cluster came to my school for the day.  We walked around the classes, and to see the amount of ICT going in on the classrooms.  Everyone had made a real effort. That was FABULOUS to see how far we had come.

Marie was using communication4learning.com with some of her students in Year 2.  I had a quick look at the site when we got back to computers.  I think if I was a junior teacher I love this site at the beginning of the year.  I have a special needs child and there is some great story writing ideas for her to use.

One of things I really like about the cluster day is the sharing of sites, ideas and our Dear Abby where we share problems.  It is good to know we are not alone with our problems.  The sharing of ideas and sites help me stay current.

My class blog

This past week, my students have been blogging on our class blog from home.  It has caused some to be more enthusiastic and they have been doing recounts.  I encouraged  (bribed) them with house points as well.  They are much more confident with posting and loading videos. The house points has made us share to check that the homework is done and allocated the points.  They like the sharing this way, and help each other.  I have added house points as homework this week to get their parents to comment.  I have also added a small slot in my timetable called Blog appreciation and we do a shared post, and look at other blogs and make comments as a class.
I have given permission for them to add appropriate, non racist, not rude etc and parental check.

They are very keen to change the voki.  I keep avoiding it.