eastNet cluster Lead teacher day.

Another big day today. Starting off with our old favourite Donut. Spoke to M about Mathletics. Her school has just started using Mathletics and she was wondering how she could use it more in her y2 class. Suggested a whole class activity similar to what I do. Using the data projector I load Mathletics and we play 'Live'. I use the wireless keyboard and mouse and have a 'driver' who uses the keyboard. The rest of the class then have to yell out the answers. My class love this activity. She thought this would be great but she would be the driver for now. spoke to L about her blog and how she felt as though she needed to get something uploaded about the camp which her senior class has just been on. She used Movie maker but found that she did a lot of the work. Asked me what I use in my classroom to make movies using images. I suggested using either slide.com or animoto. L has never used animoto and she was very interested in this. Then spoke to L about who to effectively use the computers in a y3 class. L's senior teacher has come up with this idea of allocating 1 computer to a table and setting tasks. The children have a week to complete these tasks (for e-ports) and at other times when the computers are not in use she is beginning to use them in her literacy and numeracy program. This is great as this senior teacher was not very confident in using the equipment in class. Hopefully T keeps up with this idea.
We then put all these ideas of how we are using e-Learning onto scribblar. Some great ideas here.
We then discussed our Action Research! (that is all I am going to say on that topic!)
uLearn was next on the agenda. My big dilemma was if I was to present what would it be??? I had been thinking about this quite a bit and had not come up with any WOW ideas!! It was great to talk to L, V and B about different ideas on what we could possible do. SO . . . we have kind of got some ideas on what to do. Now we just need some time to get this organised. Along with the Cluster Expo!
The exciting part was getting to play on B's new iPad! WOW how cool!!!
I still think that I would prefer to use iPod touches in my classroom but I so want an iPad for ME!

eastnet Lead Teachers Metting 1

Started off this morning with a round of sharing experiences of L@S. 3 Lead teachers went and all shared positive experiences of their time in Rotorua.
We then moved onto a discussion about Action Research. As a team we (EPS Lead Teachers) have decided that we are going to work collabratively on "Incorporating e-Learning tools into a Literacy Program". Watch this space for more!

3 days off to do my own eLearning! a$$$

Woop Woop I thought. 3 days release. Imagine what things I could do in this time. Spend more than 30 mins with the digikids, maybe re-design our Y4 home page, go visit a couple of schools. . . ohh the possibilities!! The reality . . . spend 3 days visiting lots of classes to get most of them started on their ePortfolios!
Most teachers had at least STARTED updating their ePorts and were updating them to the set requirements. But there were some who must have been at the staff meeting only in body as their minds must have been off dreaming because Im not sure what they were doing!
It was good to go and visit the classes and see what they had been up to and to see the huge imporvements in confidence and abitily with the teachers.
I am glad though, that it is over and now I can sit back and concentrate on my own classes needs for now.

The beginning!!

Well it is week 3 and I am back into the swing of things. It took my body of couple of weeks to realise that there was no nana naps in the afternoon or snack food when ever I wanted!!
My class is interesting. I forget that you have to go back to the beginning and start all over again. I had one parent come in after day 2 and ask me if I was going to be grumpy all year! lol. I said "No not all year. Just until they remember what my expectations are in class!" Ha and I thought I was being nice!! WAIT till they see me really GRUMPY!
We started of this year (day 1) with reflections. I have set one of my homework note books up as a reflective journal. Each day (at the moment) the children have to write a reflection on what they enjoyed today, what they have learned today, and how they felt about this new learning. Most of the children got the language right after 3 days. Some children as always needed that extra support. Now that most of the class are able to do this we have moved onto writing a reflection, what are the next steps with our learning and what are two possible success indicators. I know that I will have to continually go over this with the children but hopefull it will make e-Portfolio reflections a lot more meaningful!
Today was the first of some release.
I worked with the Y4, Y5 & Y6 DigiKids.
We went over our Archives page, was this linked, did it have a table on the page and were our 2009 photos on it. We worked together on how to do all of this and the children went away feeling confident that they would be able to hlep their peers with this.
30 minutes went so fast!!!
Hopefully the Y6 children are going to come back with some ideas on what they want to cover during DigiKids time.

The End is Near

Well it has been a very busy, challengening and event filled year! I have truly enjoyed working with like-minded educators in the eastNet Cluster. I have learnt so many new things and have been able to take a lot of new ideas back to my classroom.
I am looking forward to working with 2 other great I.C.T Lead teachers next year to further develop eLearning in our school.
Now with the holidays approaching and the sun shining I am at a bit of a cross roads. My laptop has to go back for repairs and I am wondering if I am going to be lost without it or rather enjoy not having it. At least I will have an authentic excuse as to why I will have done no school work during the holidays!

Reflections

No not the kind you see in the mirror! I have spent quite a bit of time with the children who have not been making reflections on their goals for their ePort Folios the last couple of weeks. It made me realise that I didn't do a very good job at the beginnng of the year because these children didn't know how to write reflections!
We sat down and had a lot of discussion about what we could write. Using the templates that we got from AS the children were able to write what they had done but they were still having difficulity with what NEXT! More discussion and trying to get them to relate it back to their initial goal was a mission. But some children have got it and now hopefully there will be a ripple effect in my room.
Goal for myself next year: spend quite a bit of time on reflective writing and next steps!

Cluster Share

Last week we had our eastNet Cluster share afternoon. This was a chance for all 5 school to get up and show off the work that the amazing teachers and children have been doing. Lead Teachers at Elm Park were asked to show case the work that we have been doing. We decided on making a wiki where each team would have a page to upload examples of work. When I asked my team if they had any work that they would like to share they all looked at me with complete shock. I think they were a little bit apprehensive about putting their work up for display. In the end I just went and looked at their e-Port folios and took some work that their children had done.
This is the first time that I had ever worked with wiki's and I found it quite easy.
I was totally blown away by what schools had shared. It was great to see the journey that school were on. It was very exciting to see principal's also excitied about what their staff were doing.