Top of the South Facilitators Meeting

At the Top of the South facilitators meeting on Friday 23 June, the facilitators, Directors and management teams from discover IT Tasman, Waimea and Waimea South clusters, and National facilitator Greg Carroll, enjoyed a practical day of sharing knowledge and ideas.

We discussed the 'how-to' and 'why' of various social software applications, in particular Del.icio.us - social bookmarking.

What is del.icio.us?

del.icio.us is a collection of favorites - yours and everyone else's. Use del.icio.us to:

• Keep links to your favorite articles, blogs, music, restaurant reviews, and more on del.icio.us and access them from any computer on the web.
• Share favorites with friends, family, and colleagues.
• Discover new things. Everything on del.icio.us is someone's favorite - they've already done the work of finding it. Explore and enjoy.

You can start your del.icio.us account at http://del.icio.us/

Kay's favourite for the day: I love the way Brightwater School is using Blogs to build relationships with their parent community. The class blogs they started are not only an excellent writing exercise, but have had an unexpected spin-off. The children are enjoying getting feedback on their blog from parents, including parents who don't live with the children! What a great way for parents to keep in touch with what their children are doing, and offer encouragement and support. How easy it is to allocate the writing task to one or two students once a week - add a photo or two and Hey Presto! You can view the blogs from the Brightwater School home page: www.brightwater.school.nz

NetSafe

Today our Principals were invited to attend a session taken by Robert Minahan – School Education Manager for Netsafe: The Internet Safety Group, the Ministry of Education’s agent for cybersafety and online security for NZ schools. 'Stand-outs' for me were:

As teachers/parents we should look out for:

- Instant messaging – MSN, Googlechat etc

- Chatrooms – MSN Groups eg Rate Girls – girls are including a lot of personal information, including photos.

- WARNING: If you see these on your child’s MSN screen: POS (parent over shoulder); TOS (teacher on scene) then you’d better have a look at the conversation that was going on before you got there!

- Growing interest of teenagers in: myspace.com / bebo.com: bebo includes all schools in New Zealand (and the rest of the world). Teens are adding their schools, mobile phone numbers, photos (some very provocative). Death threats have been added against teachers – currently with police.

- COMING SOON: (currently beta) imbee.com – blogging and social networking for kids ages 8 - 14!

- Grand Theft Auto: R18 but many kids using it. Can download many ‘extras’ like ‘Hot Coffee’ – uncensored dating. Includes rape scenes.

- Beyond normal curiosity: Pro ana websites: anorexia and self-harm – support and encouragement for our teens to continue with this lifestyle choice.

- Christchurch website “Perfection” one of largest sites of its type in the world.

- Cybertechnologies which can interact with cypberspace: PDA’s, iPods – show movies etc as well; cameras; data storage – easy to upload/download information eg programs / viruses – size makes it easy; memory card from camera will also store text etc; cell phones with pictures.

You should have:

- Policies and procedures

- Use agreements – signed usage agreements are essential for students, ALL staff, student teachers – you can develop your own or use those available from NetSafe (recommended)

- Electronic security (filtering software)

- Community education (staff, parents, students)

NetSafe Kit for Schools (2003) should be in your school. If you have mislaid yours, you can download from www.netsafe.org.nz . While you’re there check out the section for primary school children Hectors World – see the wicked wee educational movies they have developed for little people at http://www.hectorsworld.com/

Google Tools and Services

At our Lead Teachers meeting on Friday, we spent some time looking at a few of the multitude of Tools and Services available from Google.

Please take some time to have a look at the Google Tools and Services that are available, as I'm sure you will find it's a great time saver in the long run! In particular we looked at:

Google Images: remember that not only can you search for images only, but you can also choose the size of images displayed. This is particularly useful if you want a larger image, as this will help prevent the distortion you get when enlarging small images.

Google News: Google News gathers stories from more than 4,500 English-language news sources worldwide, and automatically arranges them to present the most relevant news first. Topics are updated every 15 minutes, so you are likely to see new stories each time you check the page. Pick the item that interests you and you'll go directly to the site which published that story. You can choose to display the Top Stories from New Zealand, or quickly and easily set up a News Alert. A ‘News alert’ is an email that lets you know if new articles make it into the top ten results of your Google News search. This is a very efficient way of tracking current events, or special events that your class are following.

Google Services: Click on ‘more’ to go to Google Services. A Directory Search can be useful if you’re just looking for ideas for your classes, with no specific topic in mind. Try Special Searches to find things specifically for Apple Macintosh.

Search Tips: Click on About Google on Google homepage to find links to Help and How to Search and some interesting search tips in Google Web Search Features.

Did you know: Type a word in the Google search box. If it has a dictionary definition, the word will appear in the right-hand side of the blue bar that stretches across the top of your search results.

For one-word terms, "[definition]" appears next to the word. Clicking on that link will display the word's dictionary definition.

If a query contains more than one word, each word will appear underlined. Simply click on a word to view its dictionary definition.

www.googleguide.com - Interactive online tutorial on using the search engine.