End of 20 10

2010!  Our post code, and the end of a great year.

ULearn, Eastnet Cluster days, ICT Lead teacher, classroom teacher, wife and mother!

BUSY, BUSY, BUSY year.
You can probably tell this by the great span of time that goes in between each post.

Prioritising my time has been key this year.

My class have been amazing.  They have put up with different relievers at random times and been great.

Next year is going to be another new challenge.  WATCH THIS SPACE.

uLearn10:3

3rd day. Although it is only day 2 of the conference. Sitting in a really uncomfortable seat in the Christchurch Convention Centre listening to Lane Clark.














Workshop 3 today is with Stuart Hale. OSX The new Cat - making it Purrr.
I am hoping to share some of my new found skills with collegues at work. If I miss anything Im sure Veronica will have my back!
Workshop 4 today is with Mark Buckland. 37 free tools on the net. Sounds interesting. Wonder if he is going to share the 4 tools that we are presenting about tomorrow?? Hmmmmm!

uLearn10:2

Breakout 1 was a bit of a disappointment. I guess not getting any wireless didnt help either. Time went by so fast. Only used 2 of the 7ish apps that I downloaded so will have to have a tutu with the apps in my own time. Used Strip Design, Instant Poetry and a piano app. Strip Design is a bit like Comic Life. I was hoping to learn how to put my design online but we didnt get to that as the network kept dropping off. So I emailed it from my iPhone to my laptop and here it is.














Instant Poetry is a bit like the magnetic poetry that you get for your fridge. You type out a whole lot of individual words (give a time limit) based on a topic. Our topic was ANZAC. So here it is.



















Googlefest was cool. There is so much more out there! Dorothy was ever the professional. Presenting in an art room and every time you moved in your seat it scraped along the ground and made an awful noise. The discussion and collabarative discussion that was going on was great. Googlefest.

uLearn10:1

Here we go again. 10 years ago I was sitting in the same spot having the same feelings about presenting. This time I got a jar of chutney instead of a coffee cup. Nice to see the thank you gifts haven't changed that much!
Yesterday a very interesting day of digital citizenship with Tessa Gray. Was aked to write down 3 'wonderings' that I had and that I may like to get some support with during the day.
1. Strategies for teaching digital citizenship to teachers, students, parents
2. Resources for teaching - parents, teachers, students
3. Safe blogging etiquite.
After unpacking each wondering I realised that this was not going to happen overnight but it will happen.
Lots of work personally for me in this huge area.
Today I am looking forward to workshop 1 with Megan Iemma.
Looking at apps for the iPod touch, iPad or iPhone which are applicable for a variey of subject areas using animation, comic tools, voice recording, blogging, picture editing, using sharing tools (whiteboard) and then sharing it to the computer/web all without cables!
VERY EXCITED about this!
2nd workshop for the day is with Dorothy looking at using g-docs!
Dorothy always does an amazing job so I am looking forward to once again taping into the knowledge that she has

Action Research

My Action Research has finally started!!! It has taken my 14 weeks to clear the fog and now I can finally see where this blog is going to. I started my class blog to show how we can incorporate e-Learning tools into our literacy program. I hope that we will be able to show this through our blog.

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!