Today the Grade 7s created 'movies' about blogging using xtranormal.com to put on their blogs, only to find that xtranomral is no longer free. One person successfully created a movie which generated code and I am putting it below. I suppose all these great applications will eventually start charging a fee!
Thursday, June 23, 2011
Wednesday, June 22, 2011
PD in my PJs - an online organisation webinar for teachers!
I love this PD in your PJ thing!!! I have just participated in an awesome SimpleK12 webinar on keeping oneself organised as a teacher using online tools, by Kyle Pace. Some of the tools he mentioned I already know about and use, but there were some great new ideas. This is a very abbreviated summary of Kyle’s talk.
FILE MANAGEMENT
He spoke about Dropbox, Google Docs, and Evernote. I use all three and love them!
WEB RESOURCES
a) He spoke about Diigo (my favourite). I think I must try and follow Kyle Pace on Diigo. When he showed us how it worked he had some amazing looking resources!
b) He mentioned Livebinders. This a lot like One Note in its layout. He gave us the web address of his collection on Using Livescribe in the classroom. The address is: http://bit.ly/livebindersexample. I saw a nice one there on the LiveBinders site on Ipads in Schools by Mike someone.
c) The third tool he looked at was Bridge url (http://bridgeurl.com). Using this site you list like tools together and it saves them as a group.
d) Google Chrome. Apparently Google Chrome syncs on all your computers. It has great educational apps and also great extensions. To learn more about Google Chrome apps he gave this address: http://bit.ly/ericSchromeextensions - a useful blog post.
STUDENT WORK AND SOCIAL LEARNINGThese are sites that can be used for social collaboration amongst students in a class. I haven’t tried any of them…YET!
a) Edmodo.comb) Collaboriseclassroom.com (Kimberley from SimpleK12 mentioned at this point that they have a past webinar on this application for people to listen to. These are stored at http://simpleK12.com/webinars).
c) Sophia.org
KEEPING UP WITH CONFERENCES ON TWITTERI liked the sound of this. Kyle mentioned that Iste is starting next week and we can keep up with it on the following hashtag #iste11. He also mentioned other conference tags - #rscon3 and #blc11.
UTILITIESHere he mentioned:
1) Bit.ly.com to reduce website addresses
2) Readability.com to cut adverts etc out of online reading matter.
3) Viewpure.com to cut advertising clutter out of videos.
4) Google Forms to do polls etc. He showed how amazing Google Forms is for this and how it translates the findings in Google Docs.
Well, this was a very worthwhile webinar and it all happened in my PJs. There was someone else from South Africa attending, from Joburg – Bronwyn D! She must have also been in her PJs! She has just followed me on Twitter! I tried something new as well – I recorded using Audacity while the webinar was going and saved it as an MP3 recording.
FILE MANAGEMENT
He spoke about Dropbox, Google Docs, and Evernote. I use all three and love them!
WEB RESOURCES
a) He spoke about Diigo (my favourite). I think I must try and follow Kyle Pace on Diigo. When he showed us how it worked he had some amazing looking resources!
b) He mentioned Livebinders. This a lot like One Note in its layout. He gave us the web address of his collection on Using Livescribe in the classroom. The address is: http://bit.ly/livebindersexample. I saw a nice one there on the LiveBinders site on Ipads in Schools by Mike someone.
c) The third tool he looked at was Bridge url (http://bridgeurl.com). Using this site you list like tools together and it saves them as a group.
d) Google Chrome. Apparently Google Chrome syncs on all your computers. It has great educational apps and also great extensions. To learn more about Google Chrome apps he gave this address: http://bit.ly/ericSchromeextensions - a useful blog post.
STUDENT WORK AND SOCIAL LEARNINGThese are sites that can be used for social collaboration amongst students in a class. I haven’t tried any of them…YET!
a) Edmodo.comb) Collaboriseclassroom.com (Kimberley from SimpleK12 mentioned at this point that they have a past webinar on this application for people to listen to. These are stored at http://simpleK12.com/webinars).
c) Sophia.org
KEEPING UP WITH CONFERENCES ON TWITTERI liked the sound of this. Kyle mentioned that Iste is starting next week and we can keep up with it on the following hashtag #iste11. He also mentioned other conference tags - #rscon3 and #blc11.
UTILITIESHere he mentioned:
1) Bit.ly.com to reduce website addresses
2) Readability.com to cut adverts etc out of online reading matter.
3) Viewpure.com to cut advertising clutter out of videos.
4) Google Forms to do polls etc. He showed how amazing Google Forms is for this and how it translates the findings in Google Docs.
Well, this was a very worthwhile webinar and it all happened in my PJs. There was someone else from South Africa attending, from Joburg – Bronwyn D! She must have also been in her PJs! She has just followed me on Twitter! I tried something new as well – I recorded using Audacity while the webinar was going and saved it as an MP3 recording.
Monday, June 20, 2011
Using Blabberize for projects is great fun!
Some of my Grade 6s did mammal projects earlier on, so in computer lessons they reduced their informations to what the mammal would actually say about itself and put it into blabberize. This was great fun, I must say and really good for synthesising information.
James’ cat
Matthew's elephant
James’ cat
Matthew's elephant
Tuesday, June 14, 2011
Microsoft Partners in Learning Institute, Seattle #1: Invited
In May I received an email from Microsoft in the US inviting me to join their inaugural Innovative Teacher network in the Partners-in-Learning interface. This invitation was given to 500 teachers world-wide whom they recognise as being 'top tier' teachers. Once you joined the network you would be given an application form to apply for the first ever Global Partners in Learning Institute Professional Development training in Redmond, USA, for a week at the end of July. 50 teachers would be selected from the 500. Well, I have applied!!! Can you imagine anything more exciting than that! Part of the application was that you had to make a two-and-a-half minute movie about yourself and put it on You Tube for the selectors to view. That part was a bit daunting, I must say. Well, that movie has been there for about a month, but this morning I though I should keep a record of it in my blog. So here goes. We should hear about the success of our application towards the end of June.