The beauty of a blog

One of the best things about a blog is the fact that like a website, you can store information here and then you know where you put it, unlike a filing cabinet or even the filing system on my macbook , always a mess. So I have come across many new things lately and decided to store them here for easy keeping.
it is a bit of a "have you seen" .... segment
Have you seen the Top 100 tools for learning website. How many are you familiar with?





I am often asked about how I download and save Youtube videos into my ilife as above. I used to use a great program called Cosmopod , however this is Mac specific, and I have had trouble with it lately, so try this site 100 Vixy.net. It is free and so far, works fine. You can choose whether to save videos as Mov files or Macs, AVI for Windows, MP4 for ipods or 3GP for phones.

If you are into making movies and concerned about copyright and the kids with their music, here are some sites that provide free music and sound affects (thanks to Michelle at Coburg Senior High for these)
incompetech
free play music
for free sounds
partners in rhyme

who says preps can't ......

I had two of the most exciting lessons this week, teaching grade one & two to make mini movies and teaching the Preps to play with PhotoBooth. The teachers at Manningham Park Primary have been blessed with two mobile pods of Macbooks however the staff were a bit nervous about how they could use them in the lower classes so i joined them in class to model some examples.

We had a ball. The Grade 1/2 class read their poems into imovie and made mini movies. The Preps manipulated photos of themselves. They had just been doing a topic aboput space and astronauts and martians so they enjoyed taking headless photos and morphing themselves into strange creatures. Even I was amazed at how quickly they took control and became creative and experiemental. I took my ipod out to record the laughter and enjoyment, it was truly an engaging lesson. We printed off the pictures and the teacher will now use them for writing pieces.

Catching up...

It has been a BIG few weeks for me. The conference at IGS for VITTA was great. Fascinating to meet all the people from cyberspace who I had been visiting but really did not know. I loved the 'just in time learning' that I experienced - it forced me to upload to Youtube, something I had wanted to do for a while. These workshops were really interesting in the range of people attending, from people who had never used youtube and didn't even know what teachertube was, to people like Sue from andanotherthing who taught me things. Thanks Sue for Animoto ... I must admit to wasting time playing with that now too.

The next day was my Full cluster Professional Learning day. And what a huge success that turned out to be, certainly helped by Colin Pidd and Gin and Trevor from Dramatic Edge . ( I 'm sure they will update their website soon !!) We ran workshops on Inspiration, Blogging, Comic Life, Movie-maker, Digital Portfolio's imovie and Photo-story. The staff loved it, think we even converted a few !! Requests arrived for more workshops on Blogging... it is interesting that many teachers are just unaware of what the possibilities are.

The next week I completed my Eleanor Davis School Leadership Program . That was a valuable and rewarding experience, although I am not sure it is the direction that I wish to pursue. I am still concerned about what Principals' know and how much influence they have on what is going on in their classrooms.

My first YOUTUBE

Tonight I am presenting a workshop at Ivanhoe grammar for VITTA on Youtube, Teachertube and Mojiti. However, although I play with these sites regularly I had not ever posted anything... so Talk about "just in time learning" - or learning for a purpose. Today I "uploaded" a little movie I made for the Year 10 Patisserie class. It is not perfect and there are heaps of improvements i will make over the next week but for now ....

experimenting with youtube

will this work


Linkin Park Lyrics

what happens ?

I haven't posted for a while, I have thought many things but just not made the time to stop and reflect. I know kids of today ( my own two included) claim they can work and think with music on and MSN chats happening and stuff going on around them but I cannot. Call me old fashioned, old school or just OLD !! For me to truly reflect I like quiet!

I have been reflecting on a number of things though. In my job I work with teachers from P to 12 and many things have hit me lately
1. I taught grade 1/2 today , read them a story and gave them a creative task. Watched as their teacher discussed the importance of planning and the questions they needed to ask themselves before rushing off and designing a 'chicken feeding machine. Their enthusiasm and creativity was delightful.

2. Then I helped grade 5/6 make movies for a project on Health. A few were creative, they were less keen to stop and plan, and I noticed they were far more conservative in their ideas.

3. THEN, I asked a friend how her year 9 science class went. We had spent quite some time trying to make 'elements, compounds and molecular structure' more interesting. Giving them the opportunity to make a model, allowing them choice in the method of demonstrating their understanding. But alas ... no real interest, no creativity, no enthusiasm. Yes VELS suggests making it 'real-life' learning and turning topics into true problem-solving activities - but the reality is 4 x 45 minute periods with 7 topics to cover and be assessed for the next report.

I found myself asking 'what do we do to these kids that kills that love of learning.' Why do they have to learn about 'elements, and compounds anyway !" How cold we have done it better ? We have tried many things with 9E in science - interactive websites, Comic Life, mobile technologies ... we just can't seem to engage them .... not at this particular school anyway. It disturbs me and I will be giving it more thought.

The Lakes School ... my vision in reality..

Many of us have a 'vision' of what best practice looks like, of how education SHOULD be. Well on Thursday i saw mine... It was The Lakes P-9 , a new school in Sth Morang. Based on the concept of a learning street, it was amazing. Principal Kerrie Heenan proudly invited me back. "i could tell you anything" she said to me, come back and watch us in action, talk to the kids. I intend to Kerrie .. Have a read about them in The Age article