Wednesday 15 February 2012
Are We Ready For The Adventure?
I am in the process of creating a presentation, entitled,”Are We Ready For The Adventure?’ for our next staff meeting, exploring all the exciting work that’s going on with Primary schools, on the Web. Through the presentation I am hoping to develop, firstly, a positive argument for the cultivation and development of Blogs, across all classes, and secondly focus on the actual potential of Blogging when interest and momentum is seized and capitalised upon and steered into a multitude of directions, thereby accounting for and encapsulating many learning styles and individual interests. I am hoping to show a number of varied examples of Blog use across all primary age ranges, including both class Blogs and primary student Blogs, to hopfully really get our Blogging active and moving, dispell any myths about its lack of use for younger children and provide a firm footing for its development. Any help from existing, successful class and primary student Blogs will be most useful and appreciated.
Sunday 5 February 2012
Quadblogging, 100 Word Challenge, New Tutorial Centre and New Student Page, All in One Weekend, Now That’s What I Call Busy!
Well, it’s certainly been a busy weekend…Began with my finishing a Tutorial Centre on our Learning Platform, a direct response from our staff skills audit. I am really pleased with the result and hope that it becomes a useful element. The Tutorial Centre focuses on developing skills for using MS Word, PowerPoint, Publisher and Excel and other applications and programmes available on our school Network, such as LOGO, Dazzle, and Clicker. As always such an intiative remains dynamic and develops over time and becomes modified as it is used.
Then I created a new page on our Student Space entitled, ” What’s the Time Around the World?” Providing a variety of clock faces, all synchronised, showing the various ways we use and ‘see’ time, such as a basic anologue clock face with second hand, 12 hour digital clock, 24 hour digital clock with date, roman numerals and a face with no numbers. Alongside, were online links to various resources to help children complete activities as well as just ‘finding out’. A world clock in a useful table format for discovering time all around the world, a converter to help compare time in one country with another, a colourful night and day map, an online timer and a countdown timer which children can set for an important event of their choice. Colourful buttons link each resource and the working clocks help to make the page quite an engaging an active little space. Let’s hope the children like it.
I also spent time exploring the 100 Word and 5 sentence Challenge Website and developing a ‘persuasive argument’ to present to staff tomorrow, with a view to our joining in. I really like the fact that this reaches younger and lower attaining and less motivated children as well as children who love to write. I’m quite excited about our taking part and feel it would be a good step forward for our school. Providing an audience for our children’s work, can at the very least be a positive dynamic and a stepping stone towards greater things. So that’s on this week’s ’To Do List’!
At teatime, I joined David Mitchell’s, online class about Blogging and QuadBlogging. I must say that I have been exploring the idea of Quadblogging and how we can adopt this, so was a little conversant with the subject matter. However, Blogging is in its infancy and still somewhat spasmodic, but that leaves us with lots of room for discovery and development. The class provided further insight and it is always more than useful to speak to those who have experience of the initiative you are thinking of or are trying to implement. Helps you to develop a more informed picture with which to share with colleagues, and indeed more confident answers to purposeful questions. So a big thankyou to everyone who shared in the online class and to David Mitchell for being generous enough to share his experience and his ideas.
Then I created a new page on our Student Space entitled, ” What’s the Time Around the World?” Providing a variety of clock faces, all synchronised, showing the various ways we use and ‘see’ time, such as a basic anologue clock face with second hand, 12 hour digital clock, 24 hour digital clock with date, roman numerals and a face with no numbers. Alongside, were online links to various resources to help children complete activities as well as just ‘finding out’. A world clock in a useful table format for discovering time all around the world, a converter to help compare time in one country with another, a colourful night and day map, an online timer and a countdown timer which children can set for an important event of their choice. Colourful buttons link each resource and the working clocks help to make the page quite an engaging an active little space. Let’s hope the children like it.
I also spent time exploring the 100 Word and 5 sentence Challenge Website and developing a ‘persuasive argument’ to present to staff tomorrow, with a view to our joining in. I really like the fact that this reaches younger and lower attaining and less motivated children as well as children who love to write. I’m quite excited about our taking part and feel it would be a good step forward for our school. Providing an audience for our children’s work, can at the very least be a positive dynamic and a stepping stone towards greater things. So that’s on this week’s ’To Do List’!
At teatime, I joined David Mitchell’s, online class about Blogging and QuadBlogging. I must say that I have been exploring the idea of Quadblogging and how we can adopt this, so was a little conversant with the subject matter. However, Blogging is in its infancy and still somewhat spasmodic, but that leaves us with lots of room for discovery and development. The class provided further insight and it is always more than useful to speak to those who have experience of the initiative you are thinking of or are trying to implement. Helps you to develop a more informed picture with which to share with colleagues, and indeed more confident answers to purposeful questions. So a big thankyou to everyone who shared in the online class and to David Mitchell for being generous enough to share his experience and his ideas.
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