Monthly Archives: May 2013

Facebook Furore!

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I came across this article on the Stuff website about children’s use of Facebook at a Wellington Primary School which had got itself in a bit of strife when trying to sort out issues around children’s use of Facebook.

Take a read!

http://www.stuff.co.nz/technology/digital-living/8716032/School-vets-pupils-social-media-use

I wonder if the paper is reporting the issue as it actually unfolded?

I see many underage children on Facebook. Most, I believe, are there with their parent’s knowlege and permission, over-riding Facebook’s own rules.

I wonder why the school, the parents or whoever, didn’t just go looking for themselves for what children are doing on Facebook, rather than having children expose their accounts?

In one place the article says that children should never surrender their passwords and indeed they shouldn’t but nowhere in the article did it actually say that the children ever did share their passwords, they just shared their timeline view.

And this from a concerned parent…

The woman, who did not want to be named because it could identify her daughter, was “computer illiterate” and had no computer of her own to monitor her daughter’s online activity.

She thought someone should be policing online age restrictions, but not schools. “I agree children shouldn’t be on Facebook under the age of 13, but it’s not the school’s place to be sorting this out.

“After school and weekends are a family’s time, not school’s time.”

She had consulted a lawyer about whether schools had powers to police pupils’ personal social media sites and she knew of other parents doing the same.

She doesn’t have a computer, is happily digitally illiterate and doesn’t think the school should be involved but has been to the police to find out if the school is legally allowed to be concerned. ‘Someone’ should check!!!!!!! Who does she think that ‘someone’ might be! I would say she is the parent she should act like one and know where her kids are and back the school for trying to do something about it.

Newspaper article of Facebook issue

Newspaper article of Facebook issue

What is a school to do when they know their children are behaving badly, parents are ignorate of the problem and will happily consult lawyers to see if the school is even allowed to intervene in on line activity that happens ‘in family time’.

The whole article makes me sad.

What would you do in the same situation?

 

School Newsletters

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A conversation with a teaching colleague today prompted me to think more deeply about school newletters and their uses as a means to connect home and school.

Pre-digital times they used to be typed up and photocopied off by someone and sent out to all families or one was given to the oldest/youngest child of a whānau to hopefully get out of the school bag and read by someone before getting lost in the melee of worksheets that often lie dying in the bottom of a school bag along with the apple cores, crusts and dribbling yoghurt containers.

Then people started adding photos which was lovely until they wanted to be in colour.

Then along came the internet and the newsletters are emailed out with the non-internet families still being given a hard copy.

I know of some school newsletters that are 4MB- imagine what that does to a dial up connection- yes there are still people who are on dial up!

Some schools just send out an email with a link to the newsletter- that wouldn’t take up bandwidth as such but I wonder how many do actually take the time to open the attachment or click on the link.

With the rise of social media I wonder where the school newsletter now sits? More and more schools are now using Facebook or Twitter to update what schools are doing and what is coming up for them.

Are emailed school newsletters are thing of the past?

This short Twitter conversation gives both side of the debate.

https://twitter.com/tonyandrewmeyer/status/337849044997140481

What do you think?

blackboard

Chalkboard Newsletter drawn by Allanah with Draw Board iPad app.

 

Almost as Good As Being There

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Today I had the pleasure of reading to the children of Tua Marina School as part of their fabulous book week. Barbara Keane had organised guest readers to come in each day at 10:30 to read to the children.

Today was their wonderful dress up as a book character day and I got to read the first chapter of one of one of my favourites classics….. The Iron Man.

I had managed to source an on line version of the Iron Man as well so senior children could continue reading and finish off the story if they were inspired to do so.

I used Call Recorder on my MacBook to record the reading, edited the length a bit with Quicktime and uploaded it to Vimeo for your viewing pleasure!!

We talk about working blended and flipping the classroom- well here is one way how that might happen. It certainly saves on travel and time. And I love reading to kids and seeing the light in their eyes.

And at the end I got thanked by a real princess Cinderella!!!

Iron Man from Allanah King on Vimeo.

One avid reader of this blog read the story to his children who set about on a wet Saturday to do a little creating. Very cool response to reading!!!!

 

Enhancing Workflow on an iPad

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At the end of last term I was asked to lead a couple of presentations for the Learning at School Conference Roadshow run by CORE Education here in Nelson. It was the first time such an event had been held in the provinces and was really well supported by locals and from those further afield as well.

The presentation that I had not done before was Enhancing Workflow with an iPad- combining apps to share the learning. Here it is below.

 

I didn’t want to just spend the time just talking to the teachers at the workshop I wanted them to talk to each other- to share the learning that they already knew and become teachers themselves. And to have a base level of knowing how to work their iPad to do basic things before we went on to more advanced learning.

I went down to the local supermarket beforehand and bought a package of the now famous iPad cleaners as prizes and made up a bingo board for each person.

The deal was that people had to walk around the room and find someone who could show them how to do the tasks on the bingo board, that person showed them, then they had to do the task themselves. Then they could initial the bingo board. When they had five squares initialled in a row they yelled ‘Allanah’ and got a prize!

I was surprised the number of people who carried on just as eagerly after they had got a prize because they wanted to learn more. Eventually I felt I had to stop people so we could move on to the more advanced learning but I felt the whole session went really well because it was an energiser as well as a great learning opportunity.

iPad Bingo Chart- click on it to go to the Google Doc

To make it easy for you to personalise and make the resource your own I have made the bingo form into a Google Doc that you can copy and make your own with your own email address and the like.

The activity with all the links to the pdf tutorials and activities can be viewed and downloaded from the presentation above. It is licensed under Creative Commons Attribution, Non-Commercial, Share Alike which means you are welcome to mash-up and repurpose the presentation but please acknowledge the source.

The activity was very well received with participants coming to me later saying how much they enjoyed the opportunity to move and talk and share rather than being talked to for the entire presentation.

You may like to try the same sort of thing when you next share your learning with others.

I later repeated the presentation at the BYOD Conference run by Learning NetworkNZ at Albany Senior High School in the holidays.

iPad Bingo at BYOD Conference at Albany Senior High School