Question: Is a blog like Twitter or Facebook?
Answer: It is not. It is used at school, here, as a publishing tool. When the children have written, or recorded something they want to publish for others to watch, read or listen to, they are able to publish it on their blog.
Question: How are the children able to have a blog when they are not 13 yet?
Answer: The blog belongs to the teacher. The children are able to be authors on the teacher's blog. The teacher is able to monitor the children's blog and delete if necessary.
Question: Is it safe?
Answer: Teachers will keep it safe. Photos of children's faces which are recognisable will not be published. The children are not allowed to write anything on their blog which tells private information eg they are not allowed to write what school they go to, where they live, their phone number, their parents' names, their last name, and any writing or recording that is posted on the blog is seen by the teacher first. They are taught in Year 4 that no one is allowed to know who they or any of their family or friends are.
Monday, 17 September 2012
Visit to Point England School BOT Report
Visit to Point England School on Monday 10th
September, 2012, by Shaun, Eric and Pam
One of the many benefits
of visiting Point England School, is what has happened since. We learnt how to
set up blogs for the students and I have never seen the students so excited
about their writing as they were when they started receiving comments about
their pieces of writing. Having an audience for their writing is such
motivation, and, because they are not allowed to publish it on their blog until
it is perfect, they have the motivation to quickly learn the writing
conventions that go with writing because they see the need for it. “If you want
other people to read your writing, it has to make sense and it has to be
readable.” So they want to make the effort to spell correctly, they want to
know where to put the fullstops, they want to know about paragraphing and using
interesting words, etc.
Their blogs are able to be
seen by their parents, grandparents, aunts, uncles, etc at any time and, with a computer each, they do
not need to wait for their turn to write their ideas. These can be written and
posted every day.
Other Benefits
- Collaborative
learning with the teacher is done using the Share tool in Google Docs. A
document is created and shared with everyone in the group. As the children in
the group record their ideas, everyone in the group can see the ideas being
shared. eg a script was being written for a play. As each child wrote their
lines, the rest of the group was reading and deciding what their character
would do next. To solve a Maths question, each person in the group was
recording how they would solve it and each person in the group could see what
strategy they were using – they didn’t have to squeeze around a big piece of
paper which is tricky for a group because some of them see it upside down and
it has to be turned around, and this way is so much more efficient and effective.
When partners are working on a piece of writing together, they can help each
other with spelling and other writing conventions, and students love to hear a
different voice from their teachers in their learning.
- Independent
learning – children are able to work at their own pace when they are given a
set of tasks to complete during the day and in any order.
- They don’t have
to collect worksheets and paste them in – paper trail isn’t necessary.
- Waiting for
instructions is minimal – the children have learning activities to carry on
with
- Teacher is able
to spend more time with individual needs while others continue with digital
learning activities eg Basic Facts practice, Spelling practice, independent
reading activities
- Students don’t
need to write, then rewrite, then rewrite again, if they can copy and paste
from their original
- Independent
learning sites eg xtramaths during which the student practises basic facts are
marked and results of each student are recorded for the teacher.
- A lot more
monitoring can take place because the students can use sites like xtramaths to
practise their basic facts daily and their work is marked and a summary is
immediately available for the teacher and parents to see. This is the same with
other sites Point England was using – Maths Whizz, which shows daily progress
of a range of maths topics, Reading Eggs which shows daily results of their
reading progress and Spelling City to practise their spelling. These
independent learning activities can be run alongside the class maths and
reading programme, as reinforcement and maintenance.
- Using programmes
such as these, produces for each student, an individual programme .
- Because the
teacher has immediate access to the results, the children realise they are
accountable for the amount of practice they do each day.
- Parents also are
able to see their child’s results and progress, without having to wait for the
beginning of year testing, the middle of the year testing and the end of the
year testing.
- The children are
engaged. With digital learning, the children see a lot of their learning in
colour, (we can’t photocopy colour for their worksheets or practice pages), so
it is more interesting for them.
- As digital
learning becomes more popular ( as we speak to people around the country, they
say, oh yes, we are using digital learning too), more and more digital learning
programmes are being written and, with competition, the quality of these
programmes are improving all the time.
- If a teacher is
sick, there is minimal disruption – the children carry on with their
learning -it is there available them. If
a child is sick, he/she can carry on the learning at home. If a child misses a
lesson, it can be posted on their drive, or on the class blog, and the child
can learn about the lesson in their own time. Videos of children teaching
children and teachers teaching children can be uploaded onto their Drives and
this can be watched again for children who take more time to learn things.
There are also many teaching videos on youtube which can be uploaded onto the
children’s Drives.
- Digital learning
is the way of the future, and if a teacher leaves St Paul’s, there will be a
wealth of applicants to join this go-ahead staff.
- Homework can be
done on-line, and the children won’t have to use books that are in terrible
condition through being taken home and brought back to school daily. They get
used to seeing quality presentation.
- Children learn to
spell a word faster when they see it typed, because they see it in perfect
formation, rather than in their lettering which is often not perfect when
written by hand. Handwriting still needs to be practised though.
- Parents won’t
have to buy so much stationery. Pens, pencils, erasers and exercise books will
not be used as much and less photocopy costs; less trees cut down.
- We were also
shown how to create reading comprehension and maths worksheets using Google Sites
and Google Forms. We are still getting our heads around this, but it is a very
useful tool. Worksheets can be created online, then they can be collated in a
spreadsheet.
- Students at Point
England School have mastered drawing on-line. Their artwork is beautiful. In Years
1 and 2, the students begin learning to use tools for drawing.
Thank
you to the Board of Trustees for making it possible for us to attend Point England
School for the day. What we learnt from the experience was huge, and has impacted
already on the children’s learning.
Friday, 14 September 2012
14.9.12
Point England School was amazing.
Room 13, a Year 5 class, all had their own netbook. They started on the mat with the teacher revising recount writing. the children had a choice of three topics - the rugby day that some of them had had on the previous Friday, the netball prizegiving some of them had gone to in the weekend or a speaker who had come to school. @ groups were sent to talk about their writing, then write. The other group remained with the teacher and the teacher went over features of good paragraph writing. After 20 minutes, they were all writing recounts. They were able to write straight onto a page in Drive, edit and proofread it, then post it with a picture onto their blog. Most of them got started straight away, but a couple were not able to connect immediately, so they created a document in Office Word which they would upload, or copy and paste to their Drive at a later time. When they had completed their writing, they moved to the class computers which were Apple (better movie maker programme) to work on their movies. One girl had set up a digital video camera and the children were coming to her so that she could record their statements about their learning.
During their writing, the teacher showed me their blogs and showed me how to set them up. Blogs don't belong to the student; they belong to the teacher. blog owners need to be 13 years old or older. The blog is known by the students' name, and students become the authors of the blog. The class also can have a blog to record what the class has been working on.
Since then, R5 and R4 students have been set up blogs and are beginning to post writing on them and a Room 4 class blog has been started..
The teacher sets the students' learning intentions, success criteria and tasks using Google Sites. In Google Sites, each subject is contained in labelled folders. The classroom timetable is shown there, the timetable for groups in each subject is included and the weekly planning in each subject. It does not need to be printed and is available at home and at school because it is all stored in the clouds.
In talking to one of the teachers about Chrome Books versus Netbooks, in my opinion, it is better to have Netbooks because on Netbooks one also has access to Office, in case the internet connection is slow or down. Chrome Books are purely Browsers, which means that Office cannot be loaded onto it.
In the late morning, I spent time in a Year 7/8 Maths class. The teacher taught groups while the rest of the class worked independently on the day's set tasks. Some were working on the Internet programme, Reading Eggs, where children sit a placement test, then work at the level which has been set for them, on Comprehension and Vocab activities, some worked on Maths Basic Facts in xtramaths.com where the children's progress is instantly recorded and available for teachers to see, and some worked on a very good Maths programme, Maths Whizz. The teacher showed me how he could monitor their progress as all their data is collated instantly and progress is recorded automatically. This programme runs alongside the teacher's maths programme. Maths Whizz and Reading Eggs cost the students; Xtra Maths is free.
Since then, I have signed up for a month's trial with reading Eggs. Our system is too slow for it at this stage. One open slows down all the others. Two open makes the system even slower, etc. Xtra Maths does not slow the system and the children in R4 are using it daily to speed up their Basic Facts.
Later, in the afternoon, we spoke to Dorothy, Manaikalani's Learning Facilitator, who is based at Point England school. She talked to us about making our own Home Page and cleared up a few of our questions, including how to use Google Forms. Her advice was to get a site manager to set up a page for us - either Spike at School, or a Cambridge Company at a charge of $500 per year. She thought $500 was expensive.
We came back with our heads full of new learning and introduced the rest of the teachers to setting up class blogs on Tuesday afternoon, and setting up Comprehension or Maths worksheets.
The students at Point England School begin to use ICT in their learning from Year 1. In Year 1 and 2, they learn to use Paint, a drawing tool, and they learn to save their work. Interesting that they learn to save, in that on Google Drive, work is automatically saved. it is something that the user does not have to worry about.
Point England School was amazing.
Room 13, a Year 5 class, all had their own netbook. They started on the mat with the teacher revising recount writing. the children had a choice of three topics - the rugby day that some of them had had on the previous Friday, the netball prizegiving some of them had gone to in the weekend or a speaker who had come to school. @ groups were sent to talk about their writing, then write. The other group remained with the teacher and the teacher went over features of good paragraph writing. After 20 minutes, they were all writing recounts. They were able to write straight onto a page in Drive, edit and proofread it, then post it with a picture onto their blog. Most of them got started straight away, but a couple were not able to connect immediately, so they created a document in Office Word which they would upload, or copy and paste to their Drive at a later time. When they had completed their writing, they moved to the class computers which were Apple (better movie maker programme) to work on their movies. One girl had set up a digital video camera and the children were coming to her so that she could record their statements about their learning.
During their writing, the teacher showed me their blogs and showed me how to set them up. Blogs don't belong to the student; they belong to the teacher. blog owners need to be 13 years old or older. The blog is known by the students' name, and students become the authors of the blog. The class also can have a blog to record what the class has been working on.
Since then, R5 and R4 students have been set up blogs and are beginning to post writing on them and a Room 4 class blog has been started..
The teacher sets the students' learning intentions, success criteria and tasks using Google Sites. In Google Sites, each subject is contained in labelled folders. The classroom timetable is shown there, the timetable for groups in each subject is included and the weekly planning in each subject. It does not need to be printed and is available at home and at school because it is all stored in the clouds.
In talking to one of the teachers about Chrome Books versus Netbooks, in my opinion, it is better to have Netbooks because on Netbooks one also has access to Office, in case the internet connection is slow or down. Chrome Books are purely Browsers, which means that Office cannot be loaded onto it.
In the late morning, I spent time in a Year 7/8 Maths class. The teacher taught groups while the rest of the class worked independently on the day's set tasks. Some were working on the Internet programme, Reading Eggs, where children sit a placement test, then work at the level which has been set for them, on Comprehension and Vocab activities, some worked on Maths Basic Facts in xtramaths.com where the children's progress is instantly recorded and available for teachers to see, and some worked on a very good Maths programme, Maths Whizz. The teacher showed me how he could monitor their progress as all their data is collated instantly and progress is recorded automatically. This programme runs alongside the teacher's maths programme. Maths Whizz and Reading Eggs cost the students; Xtra Maths is free.
Since then, I have signed up for a month's trial with reading Eggs. Our system is too slow for it at this stage. One open slows down all the others. Two open makes the system even slower, etc. Xtra Maths does not slow the system and the children in R4 are using it daily to speed up their Basic Facts.
Later, in the afternoon, we spoke to Dorothy, Manaikalani's Learning Facilitator, who is based at Point England school. She talked to us about making our own Home Page and cleared up a few of our questions, including how to use Google Forms. Her advice was to get a site manager to set up a page for us - either Spike at School, or a Cambridge Company at a charge of $500 per year. She thought $500 was expensive.
We came back with our heads full of new learning and introduced the rest of the teachers to setting up class blogs on Tuesday afternoon, and setting up Comprehension or Maths worksheets.
The students at Point England School begin to use ICT in their learning from Year 1. In Year 1 and 2, they learn to use Paint, a drawing tool, and they learn to save their work. Interesting that they learn to save, in that on Google Drive, work is automatically saved. it is something that the user does not have to worry about.
Thursday, 30 August 2012
31.8.12
31.8.12
Today, one of the children, who has trouble 'tracking' with his eyes, was able to highlight the word he wanted to spell while he was writing information from his research onto his question sheet, so that when he took his eyes off the research to write the word, he knew exactly where to look back to.
The class learnt about Venn Diagrams today, when we discussed the similarities and differences between the Opening Ceremonies of the Paralympic Games nd the Olympic Games. A photo was taken of the Venn Diagram we had filled in on the whiteboard and the photo was then uploaded onto all the students' sites, so that they could use it as a resource when they were answering the enquiry, what was the same and what was different in the Opening Ceremonies of the Olympic Games and the Paralympic Games.
Links to the relevant and safe sites have been saved in each of the students' on-line folders, so it is not necessary for them to go searching for the information on unfamiliar websites when they are doing their project on the Paralympic Games. The information in the linked sites is relevant and up-to-date eg they can see photos of Sophia Pascoe winning the 200m swim this morning when she won the first Gold medal for NZ.
Today, one of the children, who has trouble 'tracking' with his eyes, was able to highlight the word he wanted to spell while he was writing information from his research onto his question sheet, so that when he took his eyes off the research to write the word, he knew exactly where to look back to.
The class learnt about Venn Diagrams today, when we discussed the similarities and differences between the Opening Ceremonies of the Paralympic Games nd the Olympic Games. A photo was taken of the Venn Diagram we had filled in on the whiteboard and the photo was then uploaded onto all the students' sites, so that they could use it as a resource when they were answering the enquiry, what was the same and what was different in the Opening Ceremonies of the Olympic Games and the Paralympic Games.
Links to the relevant and safe sites have been saved in each of the students' on-line folders, so it is not necessary for them to go searching for the information on unfamiliar websites when they are doing their project on the Paralympic Games. The information in the linked sites is relevant and up-to-date eg they can see photos of Sophia Pascoe winning the 200m swim this morning when she won the first Gold medal for NZ.
Tuesday, 28 August 2012
28.8.12
28/8/12
We, in Room 4, have been using Google Apps for Education for about a month now. It has been hard work to get it up and running. Thanks to Hapara, it is manageable. To begin with, the students in Room 4 were introduced to Drive and Docs and the documents which I loaded into their folders in Drive and Docs - a page of links, such as Basic Facts links they could click on both in class and at home to practise their Basic Facts , a page on which they could practise their spelling homework, and a piece of writing they could show their parents at home. With these documents, they also learned about their user name and password to get into their webpage and about the importance of signing out.
Next, I introduced them to creating their own document and sharing this with others in the class. The children took this on-board big time - it just goes to show how important sharing their learning is in motivating children - it gives them a purpose for creating. The children created maths problems for each other to solve, based around the current learning in our maths programme.
When Margaret Mahi died, we created powerpoints. The students had immediate access to the very good Christchurch Libraries website, which had a very good easy-to-read section on her life and her writing, with photos. Unfortunately, at that stage, I couldn't get the Google powerpoint to work, so they created their powerpoints on Powerpoint in Microsoft Office, and we learnt to upload it onto their sites, and convert it from a read-only, to a Google presentation which could be edited on-line.
During the Olympics, the students had access to up-to-date information which they could use to research aspects of the Olympic Games. Having 26 students and only 8 computers took a bit of organising - Teams of 3 were set up, each team having a student who is very able, a student is is moderately able and a student who needs a lot of help. As a team, the students work well together at accessing and reading information for their learning.
One downside is that only 8 students can research at a time; it takes quite a bit of organisation to maximise the use of the computers, as the children are in different groups according to the subject we are doing at the time eg when the class are in reading groups, one group can be researching while the other groups can be doing different reading work. That's good, but then we go onto Maths and the children are in different groups, so some children who have already been researching on-line may find themselves back on-line with their maths group working on a maths activity, then at writing time, the writing group they are in may be doing an on-line activity; on the other hand, other children may find themselves in groups that do not have computer time that day. Once the students have a computer each, this problem will not occur, as each child will be able to use the computer when it fits in with their learning, rather than when a computer is free to use.
We tried to create a graph on a Google document, using a table. We were not able to colour a column - the whole table coloured, so we made a graph using a table in Microsoft Office Word; however, when we uploaded it, the labels jumped around out of position. We will learn how to use a spreadsheet to make a graph during the Paralympics when we graph the results of the countries participating.
Two things I want to do next. Show the students' daily programme on their web pages. This will be possible when the children have a computer each - they can go into their webpage each morning and see their individual learning plan for the day, instead of having to wait for the teacher to get to their turn - less down-time. The other thing is to get a school front page like we had with spikeatschool. On this page, we could access classroom pages where examples of children's learning could be displayed and shared with others.
We, in Room 4, have been using Google Apps for Education for about a month now. It has been hard work to get it up and running. Thanks to Hapara, it is manageable. To begin with, the students in Room 4 were introduced to Drive and Docs and the documents which I loaded into their folders in Drive and Docs - a page of links, such as Basic Facts links they could click on both in class and at home to practise their Basic Facts , a page on which they could practise their spelling homework, and a piece of writing they could show their parents at home. With these documents, they also learned about their user name and password to get into their webpage and about the importance of signing out.
Next, I introduced them to creating their own document and sharing this with others in the class. The children took this on-board big time - it just goes to show how important sharing their learning is in motivating children - it gives them a purpose for creating. The children created maths problems for each other to solve, based around the current learning in our maths programme.
When Margaret Mahi died, we created powerpoints. The students had immediate access to the very good Christchurch Libraries website, which had a very good easy-to-read section on her life and her writing, with photos. Unfortunately, at that stage, I couldn't get the Google powerpoint to work, so they created their powerpoints on Powerpoint in Microsoft Office, and we learnt to upload it onto their sites, and convert it from a read-only, to a Google presentation which could be edited on-line.
During the Olympics, the students had access to up-to-date information which they could use to research aspects of the Olympic Games. Having 26 students and only 8 computers took a bit of organising - Teams of 3 were set up, each team having a student who is very able, a student is is moderately able and a student who needs a lot of help. As a team, the students work well together at accessing and reading information for their learning.
One downside is that only 8 students can research at a time; it takes quite a bit of organisation to maximise the use of the computers, as the children are in different groups according to the subject we are doing at the time eg when the class are in reading groups, one group can be researching while the other groups can be doing different reading work. That's good, but then we go onto Maths and the children are in different groups, so some children who have already been researching on-line may find themselves back on-line with their maths group working on a maths activity, then at writing time, the writing group they are in may be doing an on-line activity; on the other hand, other children may find themselves in groups that do not have computer time that day. Once the students have a computer each, this problem will not occur, as each child will be able to use the computer when it fits in with their learning, rather than when a computer is free to use.
We tried to create a graph on a Google document, using a table. We were not able to colour a column - the whole table coloured, so we made a graph using a table in Microsoft Office Word; however, when we uploaded it, the labels jumped around out of position. We will learn how to use a spreadsheet to make a graph during the Paralympics when we graph the results of the countries participating.
Two things I want to do next. Show the students' daily programme on their web pages. This will be possible when the children have a computer each - they can go into their webpage each morning and see their individual learning plan for the day, instead of having to wait for the teacher to get to their turn - less down-time. The other thing is to get a school front page like we had with spikeatschool. On this page, we could access classroom pages where examples of children's learning could be displayed and shared with others.
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