Music blog at school

Well, last year, after I had had my classroom blog for a while, I thought it would be great to have classroom blogs for all the grades. So we started one for each grade with the Grade 7 monitors collecting the news and u0ploading it regularly. My aim was that ultimately teachers would take their own responsibility for maintaining their blogs and to my delight this happened this year with our music teachers' blog. One of our teachers, Fanie Zondagh now takes responsililty for uploading to his blog himself. He uses his music pupils. It is WONDERFUL - one less blog for me to worry about! Their blog address is http://musicfishhoekprimaryschool.blogspot.com

Thinkquest teams

Last year I had the privilege of presenting three Thinkquest courses to teachers around Cape Town. Thinkquest projects is an amazing interface and the children love it because of its mini-Facebook (as they call it) appeal. Teachers love it because of its online safety approach. I was very keen to enter a team into the competition this year. When I asked my Head for permission he wanted ALL the Grade 6s and 7s to enter. Well, I know that is an almost impossible task, I mean around 50... but why not get them all doing Thinkquest projects I thought. So that is what we are doing. They have all thought of their own fascinating projects. Every break the computer room is buzzing with enthusiastic project workers. As it turns out I have a very good one emerging for the Digital Media event, and about three others in the Thinkquest projects event that I will enter. The other groups will get a Technology mark. It has been a good way of teaching them about plagiarism, royalty free music, not only using the internet for project but also finding out from experts, field trips, and polls, not to mention working in a team, sharing the workload, brainstorming, uploading information, repecting other people’s right to privacy of information, and online safety etc. Here is a slideshow of some of the budding Thinkquest teams. The prizes for the winners are awesome - a trip to America (with one parent each) and an apple laptop for each winning team member is the main prize on offer.

Here is a Picasa slideshow of the Grade 6 and 7 teams

Tools for the 21st century

In my internet ramblings today I came upon this fascinating guide to 21st century tools. I see there's a part 2 as well. Thank you to the author, Michael Zimmer. It is presented in that application I love so much - Youblisher (which is free!!!) at http://issuu.com.

Open publication - Free publishing - More 21st century

http://issuu.com/mzimmer557/docs/tools_for_the_21st_century_teacher

And here is Part 2

Open publication - Free publishing - More web 2.0

http://issuu.com/MZimmer557/docs/tools_for_the_21st_century_teacher_2nd_edition

I think I will add his one on 21st century lecturing as well:

Open publication - Free publishing - More education