Blogging Again!

What a great session today - well I enjoyed it anyway! Our lead teachers all set up their own blogs - they all found it easy to do, with very professional looking results. The uses are varied:

• Janine and Julieanne set up class blogs for Room 5 at Mapua, and Room 9 at Motueka South. Within the hour the Motueka children had added comments with suggestions for their blog. Nathan wants to know if he can add his PowerPoint to the blog - sorry that's not possible, but what you can do is take a copy of one of the terrific drawings, paste it into 'Paint' and save it as a picture. This can then be uploaded to your blog (see drawing here teaching the Japanese word for 'rubber').
  
• A communication tool for Josh, our Outdoor Ed teacher to transmit information and photos to students and parents. With an option on the blog for parents to have an email sent when the site is updated, this will be very easy to manage. Of course the permanently archived entries will also be great - no more searching for old newsletters! Have a look at www.mhs-outdoored.blogspot.com
• St Peter Chanel - Jill created a team blog to replace the old email system of sharing photos and work with a teacher in Australia. I know this will be so much easier and far more exciting seeing your work on a webpage!
  
• Todd set up a department blog for the PE dept to communicate/discuss departmental issues - an easy way to have a discussion without being tied down to a meeting time.
  
• Kelvin created a blog for "A discussion of teaching and learning plus related issues surrounding Brooklyn School, Motueka". Really interesting first entry - why don't you have a look: www.brooklynmotueka.blogspot.com
• Sara's blog for the bi-lingual unit at Parklands, is "to comment on the mahi of our tamariki, keep in contact with the kaiako and enjoy the journey of learning with us".
  

This is just a beginning for us - I can't wait to share the journey you're embarking on!

Jill's ICT Experience

"I started off with a unit from TKI on using technology for a "Toys and Games" unit. The unit was written by another ICT cluster. It involved the epals* website to correspond with other cultures about their favourite toys and games, and comparing them to ours. I found the epal site a bit difficult to navigate. After sending off a dozen or so emails to various countries we finally received a reply from a very enthusiastic teacher in Melbourne. This wasn't the cultural difference I had been hoping for but it was a start. Anyway we (as teachers) emailed about what we wanted our kids to learn from each other and then we had a go at emailing photos which was a flop as we were trying to send too many at once. We corresponded through our own addresses rather than going through the epal site. We then reverted to the old-fashioned system of posting work samples and digital photos as well as Movies on CD. So although we used digital cameras and MovieMaker, the original idea of the epal website and emailing wasn't happening. Both classes were really excited to see each other on the Movies. We used the data projector to show the movie. The Melbourne teacher and I are going to continue to swap children's work and for this term's letter writing unit we are going to write letters on paper to send, as well as email. It's great fun having an epal class and my kids just love receiving work from their epals. Rob (the Melbourne teacher) and I email quite frequently. So although the original unit didn't quite work out as planned we made good use of ICT and are continuing to learn about it as a class."

*www.epals.com

Jill Harrison, St Peter Chanel