Keeping Ourselves Safe

Every second year the whole school learns more about Keeping Ourselves Safe. The programme is supported by parents, police and a variety of videos as children are helped to understand more about being safe and getting help.

farmfinsihed.mov
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The Year Five and Six class prepared this animation using the Apple application I Can Animate. The animation script follows closely one of the support videos ‘Home Alone’- what to do if you find yourself arriving home and your parents aren’t home yet. Everyone in the class had some role in the production- script, set,animation, filming or production.

It was a great effort- deserving of a wider audience. It has been published on our podcast page but I thought it was so cool that I would share it with in case you don’t subscribe to our podcast.

12.7MB 3 minutes 5 seconds

VoiceThread

I have spent the last few days exploring VoiceThread, a newish collaborative tool for recording voice with photos and inviting oral comments from others.

VoiceThread

To support and record my own use of Voicethread I have made a new post on my tech blog Bling4yrblog along with an actual Voicethread. It takes you through step-by-step how to create a VoiceThread. VoicceThread has lots of possibilities and I look forward to using it in my class next term.

Here is my first effort with Voicethread.

[kml_flashembed movie=”http://voicethread.com/book.swf?b=4748″ width=”400″ height=”300″ wmode=”transparent” /]

Thank you John Pearce for your expertise in embedding VoiceThread in Edublogs. You are a star.

Of course you are presently reading the blog of one of the biggest clutzes known to man! You need to make sure your Voicethread is public otherwise you will be the only one on the planet that can see it!!!!! Thanks Paul and Steve from Voicethread himself for your feedback.

Handbrake and Animoto

Today I had a lot of success playing with a couple of new finds.

Download at HandBrake

Uploaded with Skitch!

The first was a link from Paul HarringtonHandbrake – a cross platform application that lets you turn DVDs into something that can be published in a podcast or played as a movie. I was a bit skeptical but will give anything a try. A quick download later and I was surprised just how straight forward it was.

We had written a DVD a couple of years ago when iMovie was new and the source files had long ago been forgotten. Ten minutes later my selected DVD chapter was an MP4. I then turned that into a podcast with a much wider audience than it had sitting on a classroom shelf. This is one for the rugby fans with the World Cup coming up soon.

[kml_flashembed movie="http://www.youtube.com/v/LtjmZAgpXj4" width="400" height="360" wmode="transparent" /]

get images [step 1/3]

The second find from Ewan MacIntosh was Animoto. With Animoto you upload your photos and they can add the music and make very jazzy slideshows.

I also added a ‘How to’ post on my Tech blog on how to use Animoto.

Here is my practice run

Thank you to Lynne Crowe via Twitter for the heads up that Animoto now embeds in Edublogs. Yay!

[kml_flashembed movie="http://widgets.clearspring.com/o/46928cc51133af17/46c9693f3e1682ce/46928cc51133af17/f679a29c/autostart/false/file/c29a1f7ffabd21844c3f6e19e0df7939" width="420" height="350" wmode="transparent" /]

Second Life and Real Life

There has been quite a discussion in the Blogmeister forums about Imageshowing images of children on class blogs. The debate goes on about whether or not we should post children’s photos. I think it is great that we in NZ aren’t that paranoid as to believe that everyone is a potential child molester stalking class websites for victims but with this Reasonably Clever website you can create your own avatar out of lego and put that on your blog instead. I know a couple of boys in my class that will love a go at this! Here is my creation.

At the same website they combine lego with Comic Life and make clever cartoons. Kids would enjoy that as well.

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Talking of other lives- Scrumples Schnyder, Jojash McMillan and Pippi Ballinger met up on the roof of the Bloggers Cafe in Second Life. I took a screen shot while we were sitting round the campfire chatting. Jojash is really good at it and she teleported me there in a flash and gave me a blogger’s T-Shirt. Over the last few days I have been tweeting a lot with Twitter as well- username AllanahK. Sherryl hinted that Twitter might be a fun thing to try. Another means of communicating with like minded individuals via the internet. I can even tweet through my cell phone and receive tweets via txt like Dave Warlick does!

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And now to real life…

Through Twitter Jason Hando from Macarthur Anglican School in north Sydney put out a call for educators from around the globe to discuss their experiences using Web2.0 tools.The call was taken up by Sheryl Nussbaum-Beach, Jen Wagner and my good self. I was aware I was boxing above my weight but am always up for new learning with others around the globe. These opportunities always present opportunities for me to learn as well as share.

Jason made a wiki to co-ordinate the venture. The concept was a fun one- that of speed dating!!! The idea was that participants would have 15 minutes to speak with each of the experts via Skype and then move on. Sheryl, Jen and Jen’s cat, Mac were on one computer and I had to hold the fort on the other. Scary stuff. I can really recommend you listen to Sheryl and Jen’s podcast which is much more eloquent that mine but here is the link anyway! Allanah’s chat with Sydney teachers.

Mediasnackers Podcasts

When trolling the internet I came across this Mediasnackers website with a series of very interesting ten minute podcasts from Wales I believe. My eye was immediately caught by podcast #88- an interview with ImageSir Ken Robinson. I have long been a fan of Sir Ken Robinson but there is plenty more of great listening here as well, focussed on creativity and youth using and creating technology in the 21st century-

Some names I know and some new ones to explore.

Embedding audio in your Blogger blog

Download Cross Country Podcast

First of all this only really works if you convert your enhanced podcasts or audio files to .mp3 files which is fine if you are OK with only listening to audio but I prefer to look and listen but there you go. Blogger is working on embedding video from within Blogger which is really cool as well.

To make the files in the first place you can use Garageband, Audacity, Audio Hijacker, Skype’s Call Recorder or whatever.

You then need to have your files hosted somewhere on line like File Den or Ripway or your own website I suppose.

Get the file location URL that will look a little like this…

Now copy and paste this into your new post surrounded by the code in red.

<embed src=”http://www.fileden.com/files/2007/7/2/1233706/COUNTRY.mp3″ autostart=”false” loop=”false” controls=”console” height=”62″ width=”144″></embed>

Skype call to Rob Waddell in Valencia

Last night we had a bit of a highpoint for our podcasting and Skyping endeavours- through one of our Appleby parents we made contact with Rob Waddell, Olympic gold medalist and now grinder on Team Emirates New Zealand yacht in the America’s Cup challenge in Valencia, Spain. Image

Children had prepared fat questions to ask and we had all gathered back at school at 7pm on Monday night.

In order to overcome the problem of feedback when Skyping to a larger audience I plugged a splitter into the headphone jack and had one pair of headphones in one socket and speakers into the other. Perfect!

To add a little spice to the session TVNZ had got wind of it and were filming in Appleby, NZ while a second crew were filming in Valencia.

Rod proved to be an excellent spokesperson for Team New Zealand and had an easy rapport with the children.

You can view an edited version of the call on our podcasting page.

And to top it all off we made it onto the nationwide TVNZ six o’clock news tonight. How’s that for being globally connected with a rich, real authentic context!

Our Podcast

Jane Nicholls has just made a podcast about our Allanah’s Appleby Showcase Podomatic podcast and I was thinking about how far we have come with our podcast since we first started podcasting in August of last year.

ImageI have not mentioned it recently as we have had some trouble with the podcast being linked through our school website but that’s a whole ‘nother story and it is all sorted now thanks to Steve fixing the permissions on a server in Auckland from a hotel room in Bankok!

I am very proud of our podcast and the recognition it has received around the globe. I publish it in two different places because I want to show teachers who are not familiar with web design just how easy it is to publish to a site like Podomatic where you have a good level of control over the podcasting process. Linking it to play through the school website is reliant on the school’s web designer (me) having the time and inclination to help out!

I have made a ‘what a podcast is all about’ wiki if you are interested in taking podcasting further or if you would like to add your podcast to our Podcasting People Page so we can share our podcasts would be great. The page should be easily editable- if you have problems please let me know.
I would love to have more podcasts added to the list.

Using Web2.0 tools in my classroom

Paul Harrington started a thread in Tapped In that I am responding to about the uses of Web2.0 tools in my classroom. Paul and I are helping in an on-line mentoring programme through links with Sheryl Nussbaum-Beach with pre-service teachers at the College of William and Mary in Williamsburg, Virginia. I thought you may be interested.

My class comprises 25 Year Four and Five year old children (8-9 yr olds) in a small rural five teacher school in NZ.

In 2005 we began a three year ICT contract in which the government financed targeted teacher professional development in Information Communication Technology. The funding did not cover hardware or software but in 2006 our school was fortunate enough to be able to finance a pod of 12 Apple laptops that came in a COW (Computers on Wheels) that we are able to trolley around the classrooms on a shared basis.

This year the pod is broken up between classes throughout the morning to allow support for reading/writing/maths programmes and available as a unit for whole class instruction in the afternoons. The COW is supported by wireless access through an Airport Extreme base-station and we all have eight wired access plugs in each classroom. All classrooms have access to our library collection catalogue through the class desktop networked iMac. Our internet access is filtered but our watchdog is happy to unblock any sites we ask within a couple of days.

I had been given the task of constructing a school website and this I managed to do with Claris Homepage- it had individual class pages, a page for newsletters and an email contact address and that was about all, but at least we had a web presence.

In late 2005 I attended a workshop on On-line Learning Environments with Mark Treadwell a NZ educational leader who intrigued me by taking a photo of us and putting it on the internet while we were in quick discussion groups. That was my first experience with blogging. He said it was easy and that he used Blogger.

I went home and made myself a personal blog which I practised with over a month or so and after that felt confident enough to have a go with children. At first I did the writing and taking of photos for our class blog but as we got better at it the children took over! All classes now have a blog and all the school blogs link together with children encouraged to contribute to each other’s blogs through commenting. Each week we have a new pair of blogging monitors whose job it is to record at least one post per week but we often blog much more than that as interesting things happen and I contribute class notices and the like as a means of communicating with parents.

In the blog we have links to a myriad of Web2.0 tools. For example

I made a Bling4yrblog Blog to help you put these into your blog if you would like a few tips.

Last year I also linked the blog to a class Delicious account which is invaluable for being able to direct children to a particular web site without them having to type the URL exactly.

We added a Clustrmap to show where in the world our viewers were and a hit counter gives the children a quick idea how many visitors there are to our blog. This give the students an idea of their real audience and we recently celebrated our 5000 hit party with Easter eggs and a healthy shared lunch!

Next term we will use Dave Warlick’s Class Blogmeister blog as a reflective tool – not really for sharing as I want all children to be able to post to the blog at the same time and not be overly concerned with correct grammar, spelling and punctuation as it would be in a more open published blog like Blogger. Blogmeister lends itself so well as a reflective journal for children to record their thinking.

After this blogging I felt more confident with writing on the web and iWeb came out as an Apple web authoring tool. It is SO much easier and simpler than other methods so I was able to re–construct the school website to be more interactive and thought I might have a go at podcasting because Point England School in Auckland had got an international award for their podcasts and they were on TV so I knew someone else was podcasting in NZ. The ICT contract financed a flight for myself and a local principal for a day trip to the big smoke.

Their podcasting was inspirational and I was hooked. Point England’s podcasts are focussed on improving literacy skills but ours are more general interest focussed on the happening s and learning in our classroom. If we can’t think of something to podcast about we do a book review! After considerable struggle I managed to get our podcasts subscribe-able through iTunes.

Every week I have three monitors who podcast- one to concentrate on the technical side and the other two to do the talking. The children are getting better at the technical side and I am fortunate enough to have a couple who really took to Garageband (our podcasting application) and can do the business pretty much without input from me- I just do the tidying up at then end. I believe every child should have the opportunity to have a go so the quality of our podcasting fluctuates a bit- but hey- we are all learners here! Sometimes we do whole class podcasts so everyone gets a go.
Through commenting on our tagged podcast we made a number of links around the globe- significantly with Paul Harrington’s class in the valleys of South Wales! They sent us a small geocaching bear- Tiny Ted and we sent them a Cuddly Kiwi that we share travels with via the blog.

A natural follow-on from this contact has been a number of Skype conversations, firstly with a local school and then further afield to Wales and Beth Sullivan’s class in Binghamton School, near New York. Again to start with a found one other person to Skype with and practised personally until I got the hang of it.

The biggest difficulty here has been the time differences but when there is a will there is a way and Paul invited his class in one evening so we could chat to them in our early evening. We are soon to do the same as one of my children is intending to spend the day in Paul’s class as he travels back to the UK on a family trip in late April. How cool is that!

In order to share our photos of our geocaching I started a ImageFlickr account and have recently begun tagging photos and blog posts having been showed the simplicity of RSS and the use of Bloglines to aggregate the blogs I follow. We have a class digital camera but I have bought a second hand digital camera that I allow children to take home and take photos with- of specific subjects- and then the child then posts it to our blog. A couple of children have recently started their own blogs which I am really pleased about.

Last year we played with creating a wiki with PBwiki related to our learning on Flight and that was very successful with children contributing from home as well as at school.

This year we are using wikispaces as it is a lot simpler and writing content is easier for my level of children to master.

Children also like to play with Google Earth and look at where they live but we haven’t really used it as a learning tool.

We don’t use a lot of emailing as my class email has been inundated with spam. I will create a new email address for the class when I get a spare minute and we will do a bit more emailing!!!

That’s about it really. There are challenges in using web based educational technologies in the classroom but the rewards are great in the way of communication and engagement from students.

As Paul said these tools were not all started at once and as Sheryl said- you have own something before you can give it away. I think the answer is to become comfortable with the tools yourself and introduce them in a meaningful context and you are sure to succeed.

Parent-Teacher Interviews

For me, parent-teacher interviews have always loomed large over the end of Term One like a large, dark, storm cloud gathering strength. I have always felt that parents expected instant recall of test scores, stories written and conversations held. I always felt nervous about the possible catastrophe lurking as I put my foot in my mouth and say the wrong thing!

Over the last year we have been moving from the more formal teacher-lecture type arrangement to more of a discussion. Children are invited to be the centre of attention and showcase some highlights of their learning throughout the term and set some new goals that parents can have input to.

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This model is proving to be very effective- children are taking control and give insights into their thinking and learning that I would never have discovered if I had been doing all the talking myself.

The photo credits go to Kathy Cassidy from her Blogmeister blog. Kathy is a Canadian teacher who teaches Year 1/2 and links with Jody Hayes who teaches in Palmerston North who I met at the Learning at School conference in Rotorua earlier this year, who links with Paul Harrington in Wales that we link with from Appleby. Kathy and I have discussed technical issues of using speakers when Skyping.

ImageOn that subject has anyone got any clever ideas on how to avoid feedback when Skyping when you want the whole class to be in on the conversation. We are fine when we use headphones but it is tricky when the audience is larger?

This photo is of a Skype conversation we had with our link school, Cefn Fforest in Wales late last year. It was podcasted and shared but at the time only one child at a time could really join in as there was a lot of feedback without the headphones on!