KidPix

Sunnynook Middle Syndicate ICTPD on KidPix

Friday 23rd April, 2010

Preparing for session - learnt a few things about th

e KidPix tools, also saving a slideshow as a Quicktime

movie so that individual slides do not have to be included in the sli

deshow - comes as self

contained movie.

Before the KidPix session began - explained how to log

onto server

The day was busy - morning spent looking at the tool buttons and giving colleagues the opportunity to explore the features. All agreed that KidPix is a powerful programme, especially liked the templates that are provided.

Discussed how we would use with our students - some apprehension about how we keep ahead in terms of our knowledge........... just let the students go for it and allow them to become the teachers. Encouraged staff to keep working with KP and develop a few steps at a time.

In the afternoon teachers worked through what we covered on their own or with a partner. Vivienne took one group to look at using data projector.

Also looked at how individual slides can be incorporated into a SlideShow and briefly examined transitions & sounds.

Sunnynook Middle Syndicate ICTPD on KidPix

Sunnynook Middle Syndicate ICTPD on KidPix

Friday 23rd April, 2010

Our first Middle Syndicate professional development day.

Our syndicate is using KidPix as a tool for illustration and recording of student stories.

Middle Team goals - 5 classes

Children will be able to create a personal short narrative and illustrate their text in the style of a sophisticated picture book. To give personal expression and voice to their narrative.

E-learning - Children will be able to use KidPix to create a visual representation of a personal narrative.

Stories will be published in KidPix using text and graphic tools.

Utilising the record functions available in KidPix to read their narrative aloud and record their text.

Assessment will be through reading and illustration success criteria and rubrics.

Self and peer assessment carried out through reading of text and assessment of accompanying illustration to the text provided.

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Created a short video in KidPix on the various functions available also printed out a book of the Slideshow.

Saved as QuickTime movie

Tried to embed video as QuickTime movie but only played last frame. Something for me to learn to do for future posts

Took staff through the KidPix tools using Slideshow & book as guide. We often stopped to play with the tools & gave staff opportunity to try out features.

Discovered new feature which was the template tool.

Covered a lot in the morning session and teachers appeared more comfortable using the tools.

The test will be when they begin using KidPix with their classes ans how they cope with students at different levels.

My advice is to sit back and let the students go for it. We can use some of our Senior students as ICT helpers for teachers who are a bit anxious.

Sunnynook Lead Teacher Day - Wednesday 31st March

Lead Teacher Day - 31st March 2010

Sunnynook Lead Teacher Day - Wednesday 31st March

Present: Peter Mulcahy, Anna Alison, Shelley Eaton, Vivienne Goldsmith, Rodger Darkens

Peter started by outlining his role as Director and cluster goals - also presented information from the survey.

Then group began looking at Lead Teacher job description, school goals, strategic plan & budget.

Have hosted Lead Teacher description and others on Google Documents not sure if this link will work.

The term "lively discussion" comes to mind for the day. Plenty of ideas and strategies floated and gradually we

honed them down to come up with ......

Lead Teacher description

Our syndicate goal

Some strategies for implementing the goals

Budgeting for this

Sunnynook Goals

Goal 3 from MOE contract:

increased capability of teachers and principals to use ICT to facilitate improvements in students’ learning and achievement

Our focus is the effective use of ICT to enhance student learning relating to literacy and reading.

Junior Team goals - 8 classes

Year 1 Children will be able to read known texts with appropriate levels of fluency and phrasing. This will promote greater comprehension of the text.

Year 2 Children will be able to retell main ideas of text to promote greater comprehension of the text. This will promote greater understanding of the material.

E-learning - Utilising GarageBand to facilitate recording and playback of read text and analysis of fluency and phrasing.

Middle Team goals - 5 classes

Children will be able to create a personal short narrative and illustrate their text in the style of a sophisticated picture book. To give personal expression and voice to their narrative.

E-learning - Children will be able to use KidPix to create a visual representation of a personal narrative.

Stories will be published in KidPix using text and graphic tools.

Utilising the record functions available in KidPix to read their narrative aloud and record their text.

Assessment will be through reading and illustration success criteria and rubrics.

Self and peer assessment carried out through reading of text and assessment of accompanying illustration to the text provided.

Senior Team goals - 5 classes

Within a narrative focus students will be engaged to use a range of ICT tools to help understand the deeper features of their writing and their reading material. Evident through the students deeper analyse measured through PROBE

E-learning - using a variety of ICT tools to enhance student literacy

Setting up a Class Wiki

Making A Class Wiki

The student uptake has been good (16 of 30 students have joined).

The next step is to work with students to show how to create their personal wiki pages and edit information.

I intend to utilise students for this and use exemplars of their pages as starting points.

See Helen's wiki page if you are unable to view please contact me for permission to join.

(At the moment we are restricting to members of the school community).

Created a supplementary page on class wiki for out topic on MAGNETS

Created a Glogster account for our topic on spiders but not got round to working on this.

Setting up Class Folders

Accessing & Setting up Class Folders on the Server

Today I worked with group of teachers showing how to connect to the server and create student folders.

To begin click Go ........ then when drop down menu appears select

Connect to Server

The next drop down menu confirms the location of the server 192.168.0.1

Click connect

Remember that we are logging on a student so enter the class name e.g. room5 and password which is the same as the room name

Click connect

We are now connected to the server and need to select our group which is .... Students

Click OK

Now we can select our class folder

Once we have done this we can create student folders by going to

File ....... then click ..... New Folder

An untitled new folder appears which can be renamed with the student name

Making A Class Wiki

Wiki Wacky Wiki

Well of course we all wanted to create Wikis after our Lead Teacher Day.

Use wikispaces for teachers - it's free and no adverts

This site has a good introduction on Wikis - squidoo.com

I've created or belong to a number of different Wikis

My personal wiki: RodgerDarkens no content as yet (used to join arataki-cluster wiki)
Arataki Cluster: Arataki Cluster this is our cluster meeting place
Sunnynook School - has a number of sub-wikis - one of which is an ICT-Cluster-PD area playground (great place to try out wiki features)
Our Class Wiki: Room 5

It's important to keep track of your details like, wikiname, user name, password as you begin to create a wiki as often names may already be in use and you need to restart the process. Also to keep track of your wikis.

The next step is the creation of a blog area on the wki to enable students to post comments and content.

Have a look here: Room 5 glog

Have fun.

Lead Teacher Day - 10th March 2010

Lead Teacher Day - Tuesday, 10th March 2010

Cluster director (Peter Mulchay) led the day and outlined the Cluster goals, structure & year overview.

First Cluster Goal
Goal 3: Developing Collaboration & Relationships
Second Cluster Goal
Goal 4: Developing Strategic Planning

Set Friday April 30th for 2nd lead teacher day

Also examined the CORE PD online: base survey and amended to fit our needs

Ian Suckling (Cluster Facilitator) introduced himself and examined the role of the Lead Teachers and as a group we went through exemplars of LT job descriptions. Schools would look to develop their own job descriptions. A good site Ian directed us to was: Suzie Vesper's Wiki
that provided a clear outline and description.

Learning & e-learning.
Learning is reflective, relevant, shared, linked to prior learning/experience with sufficient opportunities to learn.
Focus on e-learning and pedagogy and referred to NZ Curriculum:

The afternoon sessions
Learning about Wiki: Mauricio Vas
Teachers logged onto arataki-cluster wiki
Mauricio talked teachers through utilising features of the Wiki and how to post
Teachers experimented with posting & examining links

Learning about vocaraa: Ian
Ian explained details of vocaroo -
Teachers experimented with features

Reflection/feedback
Teachers felt that a lot had been covered. Would have liked more time to explore the features of the various elements covered. As a cluster we covered a lot of ground in a short time - important to now try and embed some of this into our learning strategies.