Our school joins the Thinkquest portal

The Grade 4s, 5s, 6s and 7s at our school have joined the wonderful, safe Thinkquest portal where they will each have their own little website to use for school projects. Oracle Education, the software company that has created Thinkquest is the second biggest in the world (second only to Microsoft). We are hoping to join in some projects with schools in other parts of the country and the world using this portal. If you go to http://www.thinkquest.com you can find out about Thinkquest and the amazing competition they hold every year. Last year they added a projects competition to their list. The children had to beplaced in groups of six to enter projects in the competition. Last year a primary school from East London in South Africa who combined with a primary school in Port Elizabeth won the world title with their project called 'Tour of a Lifetime'. Two teachers and six students travelled to San Franciso for a week with six parents (one parent belonging to each child). The six children and the two teachers each won an Apple laptop and lots of money for the chool. We are hoping to enter teams from Fish Hoek Primary this year!

Last Saturday I presented a Thinkquest workshop to teachers from schools around Cape Town who want to enter the competition this year! One teacher even flew all the way from Port Elizabeth to attend the workshop. Here is a crazy pic of some of us at the workshop.

Innovative Teacher's workshop

I had such a lovely weekend (at the end of March) presenting the Microsoft Innovative Teachers' course to a group of wonderfully enthusiastic teachers. Wow! The 2010 course has been updated by two local 2008 Innovative Teacher winners and we enjoyed the new approach. If any South African teachers are reading this post, why don’t you consider entering the competition and developing your project this term? Entries have to be in by the end of the June holidays. All you need to do is take something you already do in your classroom, make it innovative and add some form of technology to it. For more information go to: http://www.schoolnet.org.za/itf/index.htm

There is also an online workshop to help you tweak your ideas: http://www.schoolnet.org.za/innovation/index.htm

Microsoft OneNote is tops!

Recently I facilitated a Microsoft OneNote course in our school computer lab. for teachers from schools around Cape Town. I suddenly realised what a fantastic programme OneNote is – it definitely has the potential to keep the disorganized person right on track. It just shows – often you have to teach something before you appreciate how valuable it is. I am definitely going to use OneNote more in projects and record-keeping at school and for personal use at home.