Educating the Dragon

Today was the day for two training sessions.

Firstly, I ran ‘Digital Storytelling" workshop, sharing the online platforms of Voicethread, Teachertube, and Slideshare.

I always enjoy running these session because I find teachers bring just as much to a session as I do. We began a voicethread… My first really proper one and it is oh so basic but I am hoping that others whole attended the session will be adding there thoughts about it. The cough at the beginning of my talk is not me but an attendee who shall remain nameless.

Cliotech was good enough to allow me to share some of the input from her slideshare .

Second up was Stop motion animation. Some folk from this morning stayed into the afternoon. We played around with webcams for a while and discussed the usefulness of animation creation to support not only the literacy programme but also it solidfy learning in other areas, for example creating an animation to illustrate life-cycles in science. We even had one uploaded to www.teachertube.com by the end of the session. It’s entitled "Mr Mouse" Enjoy!

ps. It was also great to know about a couple of sound wikispaces today. One of the attendees has been struggling with establishing her class wiki on wikispaces. I would have loved to sit down with her and assist in creating her class wiki, but that would be another 3 hour session so I pointed her in the direction on Wonderfulworldof.wikispaces.com and encouraged her to look through the material there before she gave up. Often I find its better to have the pointers than to be able to ‘Fix it’ then and there. Thanks Chrissy

pps. Thanks Derek for sharing this . What a powerful illustration of Storytelling in the 21st Century

Spent a little morning tea time on the Dance floor… Dance pad more like. Easiteach has a package available to strut your move- educationally

But then Nat shared this fun activity you use with a Dance pad. http://www.stepmania.com/

You can hook to Dance pad up to a PS2, laptop and therefore an IWB.

If you want to see one in action I’ll be strutting my stuff at with it at ULearn….. hmmm, perhaps.

Another day with Sidney - Please not that it is Sidney with an ‘i’ and not with a ‘y’ as I spelt it when uploading the Flickr pics - doh!

We had a great day again sharing the Easiteach software - There is so much available, content wise. A fantastic resource for IWB schools who want to have their classrooms humming REAL fast. SOme of the content is very UK but there is more than enough of the content packages available that transfer over the miles. As you would expect History and Geography are very personal to the national setting- "OBVIOUSLY" I here you cry!

The whole Breathe Team were finally together today, from left to right: Bernie, Me, Lara, Nat, Jenny,  and Tanya.

Another oops! It was my intention to interview Tanya about her role in the whole outfit as she has an exciting title of ‘Flaxmere Project Mentor’. I’ll see if I can catch up with her this term and IF I have opportunity I will interview her and podcat it… I’ll have to ask really nicely I suspect;-)

I was on the road again, literally this afternoon travelling from Tauranga to Gisborne. I got training in the morning.

Today was our first opportunity to have a good long look at Easiteach . I have to say, on the whole, it is a great product for use with an IWB. Perhaps it’s because they have been working with Educators since ’73 or perhaps that they are all content (software) based that the resources for teachers are as extensive as they are. Whatever the reason, RM have a sound package available IWB users, whichever flavour they happen to be. I would love to here from anyone who is familiar with the Easiteach set up and have experience of its use in the classroom. They only drawback I can see for now is how the material available is so closely linked to the British National Curriculum. Perhaps the units need merely rebranding with links from the Australian and NZ curriculum. I’d put my hand up for that job for the right price.

I have been engaged in conversation with folk today about “What would it take to address raise the standard of achievement for students today”. The Gift and Talented roll is one that is currently in a state of flux. You have some schools around NZ who are going ‘hell for leather’ in their provision for such students, others that are paying ‘lip-service’ to the notion and finally others that are merely paralyzed with indecision.

Something that was talked about was the idea or funds channeled into an ‘academy’. But we hit the sticking point of the justification of ‘ring-fenced’ money only benefitting a small portion of the school community.

How would the argument go for such fund? Is it justifiable for the top 5% of students within a school?

Also I would love here about is the variety of models for addressing the issue. I know Melaine Holtsman works within the G&T domain and perhaps other of you could share your thoughts?

I’ve hit the road again today, spent all afternoon travelling from Hastings to Tauranga. I forget how beautiful NZ is and its not until you spend sometime on the road and actually look around as you go that you fully appreciate the scenery.

But that is not why I’m posting today. It is the middle of the school holidays and I have Breathe Technology Staff meeting in the morning. I’ve spent a lovely evening with my boss, her partner a colleague of mine and the Easiteach trainer. More of that tomorrow I guess. Sometimes it is really difficult to get out the conversation about Education but we did hit upon the topic of internet dating.

From what we talked about it seems to be;

a) a) a lot more common now and

b) b) a lot safer.

I was wondering if that were true or not or whether it is just our perception of it? If anyone has facts and figures on such things please comment.

My other question was surrounding cyber safety and the ‘internet dating’ thing. I fear that the Internet-dating will be the sex-ed of the cyber safety education programme. I remember the thoughts of:

‘Let’s not talk about sex in the classroom.’

‘If we start talking about it, more students will experiment with it and we’ll have a bigger social problem than we already have’

So my question being where in the ‘cyber-safety curriculum’ does internet dating appear?