Picture Test

Just Checking how Posterous deals with pictures.

Bloggers are interested

One thing that the students at Southwell have done is that they have really stuck with their blogging.

It's not as easy as it looks.

The temptation seems to be to create a post that gives a quick message to others. I can understand this writing can sometimes be boring we often want to show pictures rather than spend a long time creating some of the people need to read. The problem I have with this is originality of ideas, a lot of the pictures that students use are being copied from somewhere else. What this means is that we have only really managed to identify the good ideas of others rather than to provide our own. How we can get around this. One of the things I think is important is that we consider the audience the people who are going to read our blog. They want to hear what we think, what we know, what we have found out and what we can add. 

Euan has been working hard to create a new unique post on as aviation blog where he describes a process that he is going to undertake to try and achieve his pilot's licence.

Dave Winter

Dean eLearning Southwell School

Ph 07 855-2089
Fx 07 855-9023
School Http://www.southwell.school.nz

Programme Director Connected Regional Community

Mob 021 1769425
Web Http://www.connected.org.nz
Blog Http://education-realitycheck.blogspot.com
Twitter: davein2it

Skype: davewin2it

Week Two of our Blogger's Cafe

Well we are in our second week of the Blogger's cafe we have added in some links on the side.

Each of the Bloggers has actually chosen a topic for their blog. 

We have :

Windurfing

Marvel Comics

Aviation 

Video Games

One thing that has come out of the second session is that other people can help us give 

ideas about what we can post.  We started talking about how you can get comics and that then became 

an idea for a post from Casey. I'll be looking out for it because who knows I might have to start reading comics.

Blogger's Cafe starts

I went to the Ulearn conference in Christchurch 

How Good is Good enough?

 
“A school or schools operating in isolation is no longer good enough in my mind.”
Why? this is the way things have always been done and it has worked.

The potential understanding of what is out there has changed we often apply this to our understanding of students learning.
At the school level we are now seeing this take place and I am happy to be part of groups that are trying to network develop and connect on behalf of their regions.
In New Zealand I think we are on the right track with regional capacity being developed by the key stakeholders. Regional groups extend pre-existing clusters and therefore connectivity. 
A fantastic example of this is

Manaiakalani an Auckland Community who are achieving multi dimensional improvements for their community.
The result is a ambitious project that is looking to bring 1:1 to a community without huge financial resources and includes wireless internet access to homes supported by Housing New Zealand.

This community is trying to transform itself led it seems by the Tamaki Transformation Programme Board. The complexity of successful change makes it vital that we look beyond ourselves and look to others while understanding that the sharing.

So what are the features of this project that we could look to for our preferred futures????

• Long term vision and community ownership of outcomes
• No constraining of dreams big expansive goals such as bringing connectivity to students in their homes
• Working with multiple agencies and supports
  • Housing New Zealand
  • Work and Income New Zealand
  • External consultancies eg Hapara putting interface layer over google docs that is purpose built for learners and schools.
  • 
  • Folksonomies by this I mean communities of goodwill eg software developers
• Focus on student achievement and well being
• Connected thinking and community

So what do we need to do?
At a regional level we can use presently operating networks such as principals associations and curriculum interest groups and add to them further collaborations with. Think LONG TERM 

• The willing
• Charitable Trusts
• Regional and local councils
• Multiple Govt agencies
• Libraries
• Tertiary institutions
• Community Educational Leaders

I like this video which tells a story about why collaborations are so powerful

 

Kia Kaha Manaiakalani

Reality Check Inventions

The Students have designed some inventions and spoken about the on ustream.
I was impressed by the creativity that went into ideas such as the “ultimate hair brush”,
”The Magniball wall” and the “Super Alpaca feeding station”. The ability to adapt, change and think in different ways shows that young students are able to move from designing to inventing. Well done.

It takes bit of strength to get up in front of the camera. There is a pause for about 30 seconds while one student gets up the courage to show what they invented.

 

Learning to collaborate? – Games can help

Did anything come out of our collaboration using the Xbox game viva piñata yes it did!

A recent Visit From Ewan McIntosh Reminded me of some key factors

• A shared interest or goal makes for a good opportunity to share: blogs and information. It creates that purpose for communication
• Problems often require communication to solve: a puzzle is a good place to start a collaboration
• When you are describing something new and dynamic you can’t rely on others you have a unique experience to describe
• The imaginary world of games reflects the real world, presenting lots of opportunity to think and bring ideas together

Next Term a Syndicate at school has decided to put an Xbox in each class and use them for Creative Writing. I am excited by the  prospect of this an hope that I can be involved in some way. Will blog about this as it takes place.

• There is still a lot of reluctance to recognise the

  potential

  of Games in Learning
• Viva la revolution

Learning to collaborate? – Games can help from Media team on Vimeo.

Connected Schools – Six mths in

We have been working as a professional learning community for six months and we can see impact in the video below.

With the project comes regional goals and as leaders what I see as crucial now is:

• Communication with other schools (newsletter coming)
• Collaboration with others like the University and Polytechnic
• Clear internal roles such as (organiser secondary voice)
• Sharing of successes and failures (learning)
• Strategic planning for sustainability and engagement
• The creation of Reuseable and AAA (anytime ,anywhere, anyhow) material

Great to watch a lot being picked up from our community development day and being used by the students,
EBooks , Voicethread, numeracy interactives. This will make for engaged learners and improved learning outcomes.

Connected Schools Six Months in from Media team on Vimeo.

Hamilton Schools working together to create a professional learning community for themselves and other educators.

Digital Citizenship – a big ask

We have students with connectivity and a number of choices to make.
We can protect them to a certain extent and of course we do by filtering and
education B U T in the end we can only do so much ….

I have spoken to students about this and asked them to collaborate on a document where they are asked

What we think as students about digital citizenship.....
What the school should do about students who download age restricted material is ...
How the School should try to protect students from things on the internet is ...
Should the school lock down computers so that we can't install anything ? Why ? Why Not?
What we should be able to do with our computers is...
What we shouldn’t be able to do with our computers is...
Questions we have around digital citizenship are.

Will post back what this group thinks soon

6 Word Stories

6 Word Stories

Describe / Reflect / Wonder about these pictures in 6 words. Remember to write your name

Attribution: www.flickr.com/photos/14239765@N00/535851460	Attribution: www.flickr.com/photos/21222992@N00/1682989	Attribution: www.flickr.com/photos/7764981@N05/2646109147

Leave some feedback for someone else in a different colour

Inventions Scamper

Inventions Scamper

When we invent something we might have to look at something a different way and change things. This one way to help us think about things in a different way.

• S = Substitute
• C = Combine
• A = Adapt
• M = Magnify
• P = Put to Other Uses
• E = Eliminate (or Minify)
• R = Rearrange (or Reverse)

dog bowl

Substiute - change metal for waterproof foldable plastic

Combine - a bowl that has a cushion pillow as part of it

Adapt - build the bowl into the deck of the house so sunk into floor

Magnify - make it so the bowl collects water from the roof or get fed from a tank

Put - it over a dogs mouth as a muzzle

Eliminate - foldable makes it flat and small

Rearrange - use a muzzle or a lead

Work as a team to make a Scamper

digital citizen ideas from Derek Wenmoth

Reality Check -Inventions

After a long time of being busy helping setting up a new professional learning community I finally had a chance to work with students again. So what Am I trying to concentrate on.

• lots of opportunity for students to contribute, think, do and to create flow
• using visual material and offering some choice for students to select material
• reflection on what we have created and opportunities for students to outline where their learning is at
• looking at habits of mind as prompts for just in time learning opportunities “what habit of mind do you think could have helped you get past this point?” “taking responsible risks”
• letting student thinking and communication exist in its own right ie not all thinking needs to be reported on or commented on it can just “be”.
• integrating literacy work into just in time teaching moments with questions like “If this is going to be read by others what might we need to in terms of editing?”
• Having student share reading and retelling of others oral and written ideas

 

The investigation prompts and some outcomes are below

 

 

We are going to look at a couple of movies to find out.

 

Here are a few more links to inventions, and kid inventions; have a look.

• Kid Inventions file

• The Fun Theory file  

• What is happening to mobile phones? Resource  

• Heaps of inventions to look at. file 

• Kid inventors on Ellen Show Resource  

 

This is what 4km thought what  they did was to use typewith.me to describe everything they thought about where inventions come from and then we put them into this Wordle This is what we thought.

Where do Inventions come from? from Media team on Vimeo.

What we think about inventions and where they come from.

How students advertise.

Education Quotes

Please help me collect some of the great educational quotes. You can even make your own ones up. If you are good ;-)

Motivation

Daniel Pink talks about motivational aspects in his book Drive

Motivation requires three aspects

• Real sense of purpose
• Sense of Autonomy
• Sense of potential Mastery in what they are attempting

It concerns me that sometimes we seem to focus on things we think they should know rather than what motivates them.
Dan’s talk on the subject has a lot to offer educators looking for improved student outcomes.

At the school where I work I heard some students who were working on a market day project the other day say to a teacher "I have never worked so hard before". The way the student said it was with immense pride. The project has obviously struck a chord and motivated students to learn and achieve.

Connected Kids Solve Problems

I was at my computer when the noise that Skype makes when a message has arrived did its thing ie announced a message was there. It was from a student who I had worked with using Google Sketch up the year before his computer had a virus.
What impressed me was the language punctuation and genre that went into I have included the conversation below. The student is in year 5 and quite smart. What he managed to do was outsource his issue to me and get my advice to solve his virus issue. We need students who are able to work in this way because they are independent problem solvers. Note the last line of the conversation I even got thanks when the problem was solved.

These are the key competencies in action. Isn’t the action the best evidence of learning.

 

Google search Tips

I was Looking for a quick reminder about the power of Google search and my friend Barbara Reid sent a link to a Google site where I found this. I’m keeping it handy as i find it takes a few revisits before something like this sinks in. What this has reminded me of is the power of search literacy in helping people be productive in their use of the web. I am one global citizen who backs Google’s removing itself from China on the basis of the information censorship being exerted on Chinese citizens. Click on the Play button and maximise the screen if you want to.

Google Search Tricks on Prezi

Printing in Gmail

For those of us new to gmail there are a few things to learn. While I try not to print emails and be paperless many of us often need to. Here is a video pointing out howto without getting all the stuff on the side.