After reading Brian’s post I whipped out to the local hardware store clutching a photo of the laundry extensions from Brian’s blog. The chap at the hardware store was impressed with the weird things that teachers sometimes ask for.

The next day I gave the new ‘phones’ a try out in class. They were an instant hit- not only for their novelty value but how they helped children to hear what they had written as they read aloud. Using the ‘phone’ children were able to pick up mistakes they might have missed when proof reading on their own. Their voices dropped to an almost whisper as anything louder would shatter your eardrum.

I am giving it to readers as well as they re-read texts from guided reading lessons.

I now need to source a few more so that more children can use the technology.

The focus of the day was on practical metacognition, looking at the pieces of the jigsaw that it means to be a fluent and accurate reader.

We, as teachers,  can make a difference- we can help children make accelerated progress to improve reading fluency beyond  what a child will do by maturation. There is a need for explicit teaching. Alison started by posing the question, ‘How much focussed reading time do we spend in deep reading instruction- how many minutes a week would it add up to. I have five instructional reading groups in my class and they get 20 or so minutes with me twice a week. Times that by 40 weeks. I had to do the sums a couple of times- I thought I had made a mistake. Allowing for other events that get in the way of instruction Alison has figured that children get a frankly rather pathetic- 12-18 hours of focussed reading instruction a YEAR!!! So how can we made that eighteen hours the most effective as it can be. We need to make the learning time BEFORE and AFTER the focussed reading instruction as good as it can possibly be looking carefully at what the kids are doing when they are not involved in the direct explicit instruction. The Reciprocal Reading approach came from the metacognition theorists- it hooks into what good readers do automatically and explicitly teaches it.

Knowing when you are learning, knowing when you’re not learning, what to do about it, knowing why you are learning and doing the learning. What strategies (tools) might you use when you are reading?? Like gardening- you have to know there are tools that you could use and then use them- the right tool for the task. Researcher  Michael Pressley found  that there are 40 odd strategies that good readers do to read fluently. Reading is an active activity- not a passive one.

Before the instruction it is crucial to activate Prior Knowledge.

Formative assessment WALTs…  We know we have achieved this when… Because… Success criteria- show me… Self and peer assessment as long as there is criteria to assess that your assessing peer can SEE.
Eg We are learning to visualise what we read because good readers see images as they read. We know we are successful when we tell our buddy what we ‘see’ when we are reading and give a word from the story that gives you a clue to the image that the text invokes.

Eg Leading to what did you hear when you were reading- what do you hear when the text says ‘said’? How much that word ’said’ changes the tone of what is happening in the story? Exchange that word ’said’ with whispered, stated, offered, replied, and the rest.

Importance of prior knowledge- how important that is- give it more of a place in the reading process- before the lesson with the teacher- giving children an activity the activates prior knowledge. When we talk about prior knowledge of

• content- do they know about what is happening in the story
• text selection – eg electricity first lesson might totally on the vocabulary children need to know to access the text
• structure- main characters, characters, setting plot are things that happen in fiction but it won’t be there if you are going to read a non-fiction text. How an explanation differs from a narrative as a genre.
• personal knowledge- the personal and cultural prior knowledge that children bring to the text

Construct generic graphic organisers to give some structure to this. Here comes the plug- buy the ebooks based on our NZ School Journals by yours truly here!

Example One- before reading a book about fishing have children complete the graphic organiser below to activate prior learning about fishing.

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Example Two- This graphic was from a story one of my reading groups had used earlier this week- I had already made this one. I must be doing something right!

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Example Three- Children record the vocabulary they think they are likely to meet in the story and tick them off as they do meet them AND they can also tick off synonyms for those words.

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Example Four- Give each child a different picture/vocab from the book and get kids think about what they are going to meet in the story- thinking critically about what they are going to read.

Anything that brings kids to stickability so that it becomes automaticity.

Struggling readers use all the cognitive capacity into decoding so that less brain power is available to thinking about what they are reading. They reach a cognitive overload- there is just so much new stuff going on that child reaches overload.

For things to stick it has give kids something to hook their new learning into and it gives you some information on what holes and gaps that they bring to prior learning. I liken this a bit to putting the full stops in when writing. It has to be so STUCK that you don’t even really need to think about it- you just do it.

The Thinking Aloud Strategy- making the strategies accessible to others by verbalising, telling others the processes, thoughts and ideas that you used to make meaning from texts. Describe what you did with your prior learning, make learning process visible to yourself and others- like we do in maths.

Knowing what ‘good’ comprehenders do-

• The ability to decode- phonemic awareness and knowledge, phonics and word attack skills

• Basic sight words- and strategies to work these out- read and SPELL in isolation and in context to automaticity- overtly taught- really high priority- a lot of them are not phonemic- so you have to get them BY SIGHT- they are high frequency in their own right but also because they are inside other words as well.

• Wide vocabulary- oral as well. The words need to be in there to start with!

• Fluency and strategies to be fluent- out loud, absolute need for prior knowledge- REPEATED READING. Kids need this so less of their brain is taken up with the decoding/struggling and more can be left over for comprehending.

• Accuracy and strategies for accuracy

• Comprehension and strategies for comprehension- main idea, summarising…

But each of these bullet points is itself huge.

So when the kids are not with you kids should be…..

Repeatedly reading
Word recognition- what to do when I come I don’t know
Basic sight words
Developing vocabulary
Focussing on accuracy
Maintenance of past taught- like visualisation

WORD RECOGNITION- Pg43 targeted observation of what to do when you don’t know- word strategies- making connections with spelling learning. A note here- I have always been a big fan of whole language learning and this focus on phonemes and the like has me close to the edge of my cognitive overload! I remember when my teachers tried to teach me long and short vowels I just could not hear the difference even though I was OK reader. It wasn’t until I tried to teach it that it sort of started to make sense to me.

Phonemic Awareness  a phoneme is the smallest sound you can hear in a word- eg d, dad, d-a-d. Whereas phonemic awareness is phonics when you see them written down. The 26 letters of the alphabet produce 43-46 sounds- long and short vowels are actually important eg cut/cute AND when you add a suffix that starts with i you loose the e- that sort of thing.

• Teach the most common rules- hard and soft sounds like hard c/ soft c. Understanding that there are exceptions but not that many with the more important ones.
• Segmenting and blending d-o-g
• Multi-syllabic words – list-en-ing
• Morphological – the knowledge of the rules like compound words, suffixes, root words ( I say ‘base word’ cos my kids snigger when I say ‘root’.)
• All of the ways that you can write that long ā sound- slay, straight, made, neighbor, prey, rein, rain, great,
• Make word lists that involve seeing the pattern that the one sound can be represented in different ways, play games based around recognising the patterns.
• Explicit teaching includes demonstration, explanation, information (what, why, when) scaffolded practice- guided to independent use, planned transfer access curricula, student demonstration, explanation and self reflection. Equipping kids with a range of tools they can use when they come to a word they don’t know.
• Onset and rime- there is a list of the most common rimes- Ake, ain, ake, all, ane, an, ank, ap, ask, at, ate, aw, ay, eat, ell, est, ice, ide etc…. I thought Alison had spelt rhyme wrong at this point- just to show my ignorance!
• Peeling away to shorter more understandable words eg un-surpris-ing-ly
• How would you help a child decode ‘hospital’ page 47 or ‘benefit’; beneafit, benifit, beneyfit- are the spelling mistakes kids making phonetically acceptable. Spelling Under Scrutiny is something else I have been exploring this year also.

Things to do when you know that you don’t know a word

• Sounding out
• Vowel alert-
• Tricky part alert
• Rhyming
• Peeling off the extras
• Look for little words inside
• Look for the syllables
• Read on/ read through

A new section on TKI to help teachers with this learning… Click on the graphic to take you there…

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Vocabulary Acquisition-

Looking up in a dictionary won’t advance stickability. Many new words are learned indirectly. ALL kids need to be read to, older kids just as much as little kids. Ask a bookstore near you with staff who know kids books or the National Library.

Even ‘little words’ have big meanings. For example do a dictionary search for the little word ‘run’ use Dictionary on the Apple and http://dictionary.reference.com/ if you are on line. They give 179 meanings for run- run up, run down, run in, run out…….

Before reading- subject specific vocab- don’t be afraid to teach the vocabulary particularly if its subject specific. New vocab needs to be taught in context AND morphology in tandem to enhance vocabulary learning. Pg 106

• SPOTLIGHTING- Teacher writes a list of the vocab that might be challenging. Spotlight the words- seek and destroy. If there are red words we need to teach the meaning and its root word.
• RED if you have no idea- we need to learn these words
• ORANGE I have a bit of an idea- talk about them
• GREEN-  I am sure I know that word- look at the green words- is it a word with more that one meaning. What is the meaning of that word in this text.

Loosing me a bit here after lunch and being a Friday afternoon and all……. Just found a free wifi access, checking mail, why won’t Twitter allow me to post…. Drifting……. Drifting……. Re-focus……

• FOCUS on the base word eg if you don’t know ’sustainability’ but you do know sustain then you are much better placed to keep the meaning of what you are reading.
• Tier Words- Tier One Words- most frequently used- sight vocabulary- the must haves. Tier Two Words- frequently used- what are the words that are most important for children to know about Tier Three- subject specific- not often occurring in instruction to learn on as ‘on need to know’ basis.

AFTER THE READING VOCABULARY LEARNING

Again some graphic organisers

Organiser One- synonym web- the word in the middle and synonyms spider out from it.

Organiser Two- The Cline- put the words into steps- rate the word on a scale-

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Organiser Three- Word Families- build the family eg happy, unhappy, happily, unhappily happiest, happiness, happier. Then talk about the  grammar of these words- which of these is a noun, adjective etc

Sketch the word. How would you sketch a word like sustainability but as you do you explain why you drew that, write your own definition, write the clues for it when used in a crossword puzzle, cloze procedure and the discussion that surrounds the marking of tense, syntactically or grammatically correct.

Focus on a word- in your teaching group…

• Someone finds the base word

• Someone finds a definition

• Someone finds a synonym

• Someone finds a example

• Someone finds a antonym

Categorising Page 92 eg  focus on the word ‘irresistible’ find a place that is irresistible, a person who is irresistible, an event that is irresistible- cements the meaning of the word into your schema (things that you know)- stickability.

COMPREHENSION STRATEGIES page 127

Teaching Children to use these strategies for understanding reading, to learn a number of different strategies either intentionally or unintentionally, used before, during and after, direct and intentional teaching is effective in promoting reading comprehension.

• Summarising
• Construction of mental images, visualising
• Question generation and question answering during reading
• Activation of prior knowledge
• Prediction of up coming content
• Inference
• Clarification
• Analysis and synthesis
• Evaluation
• Self monitoring
• Ability to correct faulty comprehension

And at that stage we finished up the day. I found the challenging and informative and could well have spent longer delving more deeply but it was time well spent with some easy to construct and useful ideas for taking back to my classroom and sharing with teachers. Thanks Alison

Putting this post together was a bit of a mission but blogging it helps me ’stick’ the learning in my own head if nothing else.

Greg Carroll added a really useful link to his post on a similar theme that I post here in case you don’t have a mind to read the comments directly.

Below is my takeaway from the meeting. I probably got it wrong in places but it is not my job to be a reporter. One thing I do know that at least I will quote myself correctly when I publish- unlike this chappie from the Nelson Evening Mail- apart from getting my name wrong he got what I said wrong as well. My question was ( and I quote ‘cos I wrote it down before I asked it ) “If a child is identified to be at risk as a consequence of National Testing what will be done to support that child above what is already been done now”. That answer was that the Ministry has put aside $35m for National Testing. I replied that I didn’t think that would be enough. Don McClean asked more eloquently than me,

“If we measure a kid’s height it doesn’t make them taller, so how is measuring kids nationally going to make them achieve more?”

To write my thoughts I have added my questions/thoughts in CAPITAL LETTERS in a Wes Fryer sort of way in order to separate them from the messages I took from the presentation.

The learned people engaged in reading the Ministry spiel made sure that they stuck to the script so that everyone who came to the meetings throughout the country would hear the same message. Anne Tolley, our Minister of Education started off virtually with a video. In the video she said that formative assessment informs our teaching.

OH SO I GOT IT WRONG. NATIONAL TESTING IS INTENDED TO BE A FORM OF FORMATIVE TESTING!

HOW WILL NATIONAL TESTING RAISE ACHIEVEMENT?

The MOE people reitereated that National Testing is not about publishing league tables and it was all about noble ideals of developing partnerships between school/whanau/community. IT MAY NOT BE THE INTENTION BUT I FEAR THAT LEAGUE TABLES MAY WELL BE THE END RESULT.

The National Standards will connect with NZCEA Level Two and work backwards to what children will need to know in order to be successful participants in society. Benchmarks will be set at the end of each year level. Year 1, 2 and 3 will be reported at the end of a complete year at school and thereafter at the end of the school year.

IF NATIONAL TESTING AND PARENT REPORTING HAPPENS AT THE END OF THE YEAR HOW WILL NEXT STEPS OF FORMATIVE ASSESSMENT BE ACTIONABLE?

ESOL and Special Education children will be exempt from the testing regimin. WHAT ABOUT THOSE WHO AREN”T SPECIAL NEEDS AS SUCH BUT ARE STILL WORKING AT LEVEL ONE OF THE CURRICULUM? WILL THEY BE EXEMPT? EVEN COMPLETING PAT TESTS IN YEAR FOUR IS A DODGY PROPOSITION?

If I got my listening right it is expected that 75% of Year Six children will achieve the standard and only 50-60% of Year 7/8. SO WHAT HAPPENS TO THE 25% OF CHILDREN WHO WERE SUCCESSFUL WHO NOW SUDDENLY AREN”T?

The mathematics part of the testing is not necessarily based on NUMPA learning but on the ‘big ideas’ in each learning area of maths. LOOKING AT THE ACTUAL TEST SAMPLE IT APPEARS THAT ANSWERS TO THE QUESTIONS ARE HAND MARKED BY THE TEACHER AS ARE THE LITERACY SAMPLES. WORKLOAD?

I did like that the literacy samples be marked OBJ- On the teacher’s Balanced Judgement. GREAT BUT WHAT SORT OF MODERATION WILL BE IN PLACE TO ENSURE THAT DIFFERENT TEACHERS IN THE SAME SCHOOL AND ACROSS SCHOOLS WILL BE JUDGING AGAINST THE SAME MODERATED CRITERIA?

I did like the use of the term ‘readability level’ of text as opposed to a reading age. I have long held to the belief that it is readability that is more of use in grading a text than reading age that implies that having on its own a high reading age, is more important than a deeper understanding of the reading material in itself. THE LITERACY SECTION OF THE NATIONAL STANDARDS WAS ADDRESSED BY JILL FORGIE AND I THOUGHT SHE SPOKE SOME SENSE. I HOPE SHE IS BEING LISTENED TO.

ANOTHER COUPLE OF QUESTIONS CAME TO MY MIND AS WE WERE TALKING….

WHAT STEPS CAN BE TAKEN TO PROTECT INFORMATION FROM THE ZEALOUS PRESS IN PUTTING THEIR OWN SLANT ON RESULTS? The response to that one was that principal’s should draft their own press releases. MY RESPONSE TO THAT ONE IS TO LOOK AT THE WRITE UP IN TODAY”S PAPER- I WAS MIS-QUOTED AND DIDN”T EVEN REALISE THAT THE PRESS WAS REPORTING THE EVENT!

WHAT EVIDENCE BASE IS THERE TO SET THE STANDARDS AS THEY INTEND TO DO???

I HAVE A FEELING THAT THESE TARGETS ARE ASPIRATIONAL ONES WE WOULD LIKE TO ACHIEVE. THE MATHS STANDARDS WERE WRITTEN I THINK BY MATHEMATICIANS- A RARE BREED APART FROM ORDINARY FOLK. DO WE NEED TO BE MORE REALISTIC IF THE GOAL IS NOT TO PUNISH GOOD SCHOOLS BUT TO RAISE THE LONG TAIL OF UNDER-PERFORMING SCHOOLS? WE ARE ALL GOING TO BE LUMPED TOGETHER.

HOW DO WE REPORT TO CHILDREN THAT THEY ARE BELOW, BELOW, BELOW STANDARD. I AGREE WE HAVE TO HAVE HONEST REPORTING BUT FOR SOME KIDS THIS SORT OF REPORTING COULD BE CATASTROPHIC. I WAS TOLD AT SCHOOL THAT I WOULD NEVER PASS SCHOOL CERTIFICATE MATHS- SO WHAT WAS THE POINT OF TRYING? I AM STILL TRYING TO GET OVER IT!

WE WERE TOLD THAT OUR FEEDBACK WAS VALUED AND WANTED BUT FEEDBACK IS DUE ON JUNE 30th- NEXT TUESDAY- ONE WEEK IN WHICH TO SHARE THE LEARNING WITH OTHERS NOT ABLE TO ATTEND THE MEETING. NOT LONG TO GIVE CONSTRUCTIVE FEEDBACK ON SUCH AN IMPORTANT CHANGE IN NEW ZEALAND’S EDUCATION GIVEN THE EFFORTS BEING MADE TO IMPLEMENT THE NEW CURRICULUM.

I MAY HAVE GOT THE WHOLE THING WRONG. PLEASE FEEL FREE TO WADE IN THE MURKY WATERS AND HELP CLARIFY MY THINKING ON THIS.

GIVE THE MINISTRY YOUR FEEDBACK BEFORE NEXT TUESDAY!!!!

Other articles you may like to read

http://www.nzherald.co.nz/opinion/news/article.cfm?c_id=466&objectid=10576265

There’s even a National Standards Ning started by the NZEI http://www.nationalstandards.org.nz/

Greg Carroll has some views also that are worth reading here.

Don’t know who Subversive ICT blogger is but he/she makes some good points also.

“The point is that kids come in a variety of sizes and having a standard “height” for 6-year-olds is absurd. Someone will always come up short – not meet the standard. There will always be a distribution of height, weight – or achievement. Go find your Plunket book. If you set a standard “height”, all those short kids get hurt and resentful, and their parents fret, when it’s just normal for some people to be shorter (or just grow slower).”

Derek Wenmoth expresses himself on National Standards here.

Herald Newspaper Article written in March on Anne Tolley’s election promises.

Isaac Day’s Reflection on National Standards.

MOE National Standards Forum Comments

I am adding more links here as I come across them.

If you know of any other places people can go to find out more then please add them in the comments and I will link from this main page.

Cheers

Edublogs still won’t let you embed iframes so you will have to click on the link to see the document.

It fits well inside Blogger. A bonus is that as it embeds you can chose to only have the audio play when you click on the little speaker icon. That’s great ‘cos I find it irritating to have audio play on a blog when it hasn’t been asked so the audio doesn’t come to you uninvited. The only downside I can see is that comments go live immediately. For school I would like to see some form of comment moderation or at least notification of new comments but I don’t think it would be a huge problem.

For next year I thought it would be fun to take a photo everyday- children could add a photo highlight a day and we could grow our portfolio over the year embedded in our blog.

Give it a whirl and create one of your own!

This video found by lurking on Dean Shareski’s blog blends and fuses art in the 21st century. Bill Hanson’s work is amazing.

Here is another great find that came to me from my Twitter network- Timez Attack via Barbara Read, @Barbs1.

It is a downloadable game for PC or Mac. I downloaded the free base version. The full version has the same basic facts learning but without the extra levels of complexity. This maths game would really appeal to my gaming Year 4/5 boys. It is really built like the old game Wolfenstein 3D game without the killing. Every now and again you come across an ogre that you neutralise by knowing your tables. I was very impressed with the graphics and the attempts to build number knowledge as well as straight recall. Give it a go. I am sure you will be hooked. I would like to hear what the paid for version ($40US for home use) is like if you decide to buy it. Something for my next year’s class maybe.

Then you can share that document with others just as you might do in Google Docs. But here’s the really cool thing you can do as well. On the far right hand side of the screen you can see the icon- MEET. Thought I would give it a try and find out who I might meet.

Turns out it takes you to Adobe ConnectNow- through which I can share my desktop with others. OK this looks fun but I need someone to share with. Enter Skype and Twitter. Raewyn from school was on Skype and I sent out a general Tweet asking if anyone wanted a little playtime! Colin Warren a educational tertiary level blogger from from Geelong, Australia, answered my call. Together we played and found out pretty much how to work the screen sharing application by talking about it with Skype and sharing the iSite video. The screen capture is of how it looked from my end as Colin opened up his desktop for us to look at. Through this medium we shared photos and movies directly from my desktop.

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I liked the interface and it all worked smoothly after we had played about for a bit trying to get the sound working. We nearly had to resort to using the HELP tab but resisted the temptation.

It is great to have a PLN that is so wiling to try new things and learn with each other across the globe.

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A couple of years ago I asked the powers that be in NZ if we could have a NZ font- you know the one we’re supposed to teach in school. They said that would be a good idea and that was the end of that. So I hit the internet and found John Greatorex in Australia who makes fonts. I emailed him and he said he would make me one if I snail mailed him with how they were supposed to look.

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About a month later he sent me the trial to test. I have used that font ever since. It is great for wall displays and making up really neat personalised writing exemplars.

A teacher asked me today where I got my font from and it prompted me to pass on this really practical find from a few years back

Click on the font graphic to see the whole set- $60 for a school site licence.

This is not an endorsement as he would probably no longer remember who I am but I thought it was worth a shout out!

Just because it’s out there doesn’t make it good!

All about Ferdinand Maggellan…

“This Portuguese explorer was born on October 12, 1492 in southern Spain. It is an amazing coincidence that he eventually became a world explorer, because that is the day Christopher Columbus first landed in El Salvador, thus discovering a New World. Magellan is best known as the first person to travel completely around the globe.

Early in his career, Magellan was first a soldier. During the Battle of Hastings, Magellan was seriously injured. His leg had to be amputated as a result. The wooden leg that replaced it never fit him properly, and he walked with a limp for the rest of his life. He also lost an eye after being shot by an AK-47 during the same battle.

It was not long before King Ferdinand of Spain noticed this rising young star with whom he shared a name. In 1519, at the age of only 27, the King enlisted the support of several wealthy businessmen, including Marco Polo, Bill Gates, and Sam Walton, to finance an expedition to the Spice Islands.

But Magellan, was not content to travel the ordinary way. He had to be different. Magellan took his five ships, led by the Trinidad, west instead of east. In the process, he discovered a new route through the Panama Canal, which shortened travel times to Asia considerably. In the process, he also discovered the Pacific Ocean, which he named after his daughter.

While in the Orient, Magellan traded with the Chinese for spices, silk, and small plastic toys which he could bring back to Europe and sell at huge profits.

In another bid to buck the trend of the day, Magellan continued west after this, and his expedition completed the first circumnavigation of the globe on February 29, 1562. Magellan, unfortunately, did not live to see the completion of the trip. He died of old age only six months earlier, but his accomplishment still stands today as a testament to human willpower and the spirit of discovery.”

“Here in the UK we use the term “ICT” — Information and Communications Technology — rather than “educational technology”, and in many schools it is taught as a discrete subject. So what is it that makes an ICT lesson excellent?

In this list, I have tried to suggest some of the characteristics that may be present — although I hasten to add that one would not expect to see all of them in the same lesson!

This is taken from a much larger list that I published in my newsletter, “Computers in Classrooms”, back in December. You can download the newsletter from here, if you wish to look at the whole list. Look at the list below and tell me what you think:

• The lesson forms part of a unit which forms part of a scheme of work. There is a good starter activity, one that gets the pupils settled down and in the right frame of mind to do the work the teacher has planned for them.

• The teacher spends time at the start letting pupils into the secret of what the objectives (intended learning outcomes) of the lesson are, ie what is intended to be achieved by the end, and how this lesson fits in with the preceding and following lessons

• Pupils are given open‑ended tasks (as far as possible), or at least not tasks with a glass ceiling. (Even lessons designed to impart a set of skills can still be more interesting than “drill & practice”).

• There are plenty of resources for the pupils to use, enabling the teacher to give quality guidance, ie not confined to explaining how to save the document! Such resources will include “how to” guides and posters, on‑screen help (which the pupils will have been taught how to use), and each other.

• Ample time is allowed for the plenary, thereby allowing it to be somewhat more useful than the POLO model: Print Out and Log Off. The plenary is an essential part of the lesson, used to check what learning has taken place, consolidate learning, and prepare pupils for the next stage. In fact, a lesson might have two or three plenaries rather than just one at the end.

• Homework is set in order to consolidate and extend the pupils’ understanding of the work they have been doing in lessons.

• Pupils are given plenty of time on the computers, with the teacher helping individuals and small groups.

• Work is set at an appropriate standard, taking into account the pupils’ prior learning and attainment, and what is expected of their age group in terms of national standards.

• There is a lot of questioning – probing questioning – and assessment for learning techniques are in evidence.

• There is a good range of material to provide for differentiation (higher attainers and children with special educational needs) and personalised learning.

• The teacher is aware of individual pupils’ needs, such as their individual education plans – and makes use of the assessment and other data she has – remember: data only becomes information if you do something with it!

• Not all work takes place at the computer: there is ample opportunity for discussion and reflection. What is important is not the use of technology per se, but the appropriate use of technology.

• Pupils respect the equipment and the room. For example, they do not leave discarded print‑outs on the floor.

• Pupils are happy and confident enough to try out things which the teacher has not actually shown them: they ask help from each other or look at the posters and manuals that are available for them.

• Pupils keep looking at the clock on the wall, because they want to get to a certain point in their work before the end of the lesson. They have a sense of urgency.

• Pupils want to work at lunchtime and other non-lesson times.

• Pupils want to show off little tricks they have discovered, such as keyboard shortcuts.

• Pupils ask questions that the teacher is unable to answer.”

I feel bad because I have taken Terry’s post in it’s entirety to post here. I do so because it is such a great list and I identify so much with his points and I want to encourage people to read it who may not necessarily follow my encouragement to click and read. Posted with permission from the man himself- thanks Terry.

article that you can download as pdf.

Life is not a race to be first finished pdf

To see what it looks like click on the above link or the graphic. Great if you’re not fond of reading on line. A thought ran through my mind as I re-read the newspaper- without this blog I would not have the motivation to write at all- and I have written and shared quite a bit over time!

And then to finish off I uploaded it to Issuu an on line publisher to give a cool little page turny look to the whole thing. To see it in a better size click on OPEN PUBLICATION.

It’s not like I don’t have plenty to do but I keep getting sidetracked by new finds and interesting conversations. The school holidays are great.

The writing of my first cluster milestone is starting to weigh heavily on my mind. I suppose its a bit like writing school reports- a necessary evil.

Good for Animoto for sharing their educational account so that teachers can now create longer than 30 second videos for free and download them for playing and keeping on your computer- great for playing and sharing if your internet is slow and spends a lot of time buffering.

As Ewan McIntosh says- it takes zero skill levels to create great videos. To access the educational side of Animoto use this link and ask Rebecca for an educational registration key. She does ask to be kept in the loop as to the kinds of things you are creating.

The quick example I made celebrates my first term as ICT facilitator for Discover IT Tasman.

Here is one just for Kiwi Primary Schools! Today I got a few requests for Twitter followers and two of them were from the guys at Selwyn Ridge School in Tauranga. Through these links I found out aout the Movie and Digital Excellence Awards for NZ students. They say…

“The MADE Awards were started from a collaborative exploration of finding ways to celebrate student achievements in community settings by Tahatai Coast School and Selwyn Ridge School.

Students love to use digital media to discover, explore and communicate learning. Much of the fantastic work completed by students has an audience limited to their class peers, sometimes a school assembly, and occasionally to a proud parent who has popped into class.

The MADE Awards seeks to establish an outlet that enables students to show their work with a much wider audience, to be proud of their efforts and to share their learning. The MADE Awards, in partnership with business sponsors, seeks to reward the best efforts of entrants with fantastic ICT equipment which will further enhance the place of ICT in the learning world.”

I need to get back in a classroom to have go in one of their categories- commercial, music video, storytelling, curriculum and static image. Hope they do it again next year!

They will be judged in three ages levels to give everyone a go- Year 1-3, Year 4-6, Year 7-8.

Thanks to Paul Harrington et al for this little quest. Questionaut is a fun quest as it attempts to get your brain to think logically and go exploring! At first play I found it rather frustrating until I realised that there was a rhyme and reason to it all. There are eight levels in the quest and at the end of each level you get asked a variety of science, maths or English questions.

For example in this level you have to put an icicle in the test tube, open the box of matches, open the LPG gas, strike the match, light the burner and turn the gas up to boil the melted icicle which forces steam onto the fan, which lifts the plug hole to let a wee man out to ask the five questions which you have to answer correctly to fill the fuel to get you on to the next challenge.