Photoface from Oddcast

I've been looking for interesting ways to add audiocasts to ePortfolios. I found this cool tool, and have been having fun with it for the last hour or so! It's called Photoface and it's by Oddcast. You can upload a photo or use one of their's and make it younger or older, fatter or thinner, add backgrounds, face art and all sorts of fun elements. You can add audio recordings, or just type in text and use one of the pre-recorded voices in different accents. I chose Tessa with her South African accent!


You can get an embed code, but for some reason I can't get it to work, so here's a link. You can also download or email the image. Fun, isn't it!

Teacher eTalk Wiki

It's not very flash yet, but at last the Teacher eTalk wiki has enough content to let everyone in!

You can access it by clicking on the link in the sidebar. Mostly the wiki is for teaching resources that I need in my Year 5 class. Please feel free to join the wiki, or to add to it if you are already a wikispaces member!

If you have a cool wiki to add, please do so on the Teacher's Wiki page!

My next task will be to add the bling! I have to figure out how, first, so if you have any ideas, please let me know!

Prior Knowledge leads to Making Connections

My classes' recent AsTTle results once more showed that my students' comprehension skills are greatly lacking. Two of the areas which they need to focus on are Finding and Processing Information, and also Making connections.

I found this excellent thought provoking video, in which Professor Daniel Willingham describes why content knowledge is so essential when learning to reading with comprehension, and why teaching reading strategies alone is not sufficient. He makes the point that the more a student knows about the subject content, the better he will score in a reading comprehension test.



As one of the commentors said, 'student's actually have to learn stuff' and not just rely on Google to get their instant knowledge! I think in our quest to move towards 21st Century Learning, we tend to forget that our students still need to know 'stuff' to have better understanding of the world around them! What do other educators think?

Posterize your learning!

One of my favourite tools is Glogster. We are looking at 'Change' as an overall topic this year. To help Set the Scene, I had my students do brainstorms, first by adding their ideas with sticky notes to large pieces of paper with some of the crucial questions they had formulated. I then divided them into groups, and had them sort and clarify the answers, and choose their five favourite responses. Each group then had to work out a way to work as a team to get their posters on Glogster.

Here is the first completed poster:

Extreme Playground Makeover.

Botany Life Church is upgrading our playground. Have a Look!

SOLO taxonomy in practice.

At the beginning of the year the lovely and inspiring Pam Hook from Hooked-on-Thinking fame visited our school, and introduced SOLO taxonomy to us.

I'm always looking for new ways to prepare my students for the inquiry process, for reflecting in their ePortfolios. To me SOLO seemed just the ticket, but I wasn't sure that my Year 5's would actually understand it. As with many other learning areas, they have once again surprised me. Not only do they have a good understanding of the model - they could actually define it, and apply it to their thinking!

Video removed.

I am so impressed by my students! The students in this video have a range of abilities, and some are normally very reticent to answer questions. Strangely enough, they loved talking to the video camera, and seem to find it less threatening than their 'dear old teacher'! What also surprised me is how quietly they sat while each got a chance to explain their thinking. Not one complained of boredom, or became disruptive. Obviously the idea that they could share their learning with the blogosphere was a great motivation for them. Also, there was no 'hands up', and each child got a chance to assess their definitions, write their reflections down, share them with a buddy, and then share them with the camera.

I'm looking forward to using this model over and over again, and can't wait to see how their new skills will reflect in their e-Portfolio reflections.

Crazy Professor Reading Game

I've loved Power Teaching since the day I stumbled upon it on Youtube. In Room 24 I have some rather rambunctious pupils, and Power Teaching is my saving grace. The kids love it, it keeps me sane, and the classroom management is a breeze.

This year I have a class with very low Reading comprehension skills, so I gave the 'Crazy Professor Reading Game' a go.

The results are not yet clear, but I certainly have students who are usually very reticent readers very excited about reading now!

Watch Room 24 enjoying the Crazy Professor Reading Game:

Video removed.

For more info on Power Teaching, see my earlier post, or go to the website where there are heaps
of free downloads, resources and videos.

Collaborate...or not?

The thing I love most about ICT conferences, is the ability to share, create new context and collaborate. During a given session I will twitter to my friends about what I'm learning, share my notes on Google Docs, look up websites and paste links, and all the while participate effectively in the Breakout. As I'm a tactile learner, this is the way I process, think and reconstruct ideas.

Sitting in my second breakout at Learning@school, I found myself next to a colleague from a different school. In the spirit of 21st Century Learners we decided to collaborate and share our notes using Google Docs. The presenter had asked us all to move the furniture into a kind of horseshoe shape, which had me inadvertently shifted to the back of the room. He then proceeded to instruct us that he wanted 100% eye contact. A bit tricky now that I was sitting at the back of the room, with my back to him. 'Well', I thought, 'I better get myself organized quickly, before he starts'. He sidled over at this point and in a friendly manner asked whether there was anything wrong with my computer. I assured him that I was fine, just getting myself organized. Gee, was I surprised when he pounced on my colleague and I a few moments later. (We had been quietly setting up a shared Google Docs document to take our notes.) We were told that we were annoying him, and that he wanted 100% participation. I was last so chastised by my Principle in Standard 5.

Needless to say, I was a bit switched off for the rest of the (double) presentation.

Moral of the story: Choose when to collaborate!

What do you think? Should we have boundaries to our collaboration, and if so, what are the boundaries?

PS: If anyone wants to share my notes on Google Docs, let me know!

Class TV Channel made easy!

For a while now I've been researching a way to have a class TV channel, on which we can add video's, images and news items.

I've been on various workshops to schools like Point England and others that have their own TV channel. (You can find more on the NZ Learning Channel.) I've also learnt to use Mogulus, which I find quite hard to get my head around. At last I've found something which is easy, quick and most of all practical to use in class with Year 5 students: WorldTV!

Here's a look at how I'll be welcoming my class on the first day, using our brand-new class channel, SparkleTV:



It's still under construction, but it gives you an idea of what can be done! I'm still trying to figure out how to convert the Keynote that I used for the intro, in such a way that it retains the audio. If anyone knows how to do that, please let me know!

Teacher eTalk Widget now available!

Widgetbox is a gallery of interesting widgets that you can embed into your blog to add a bit of bling.

You can also use it to create a widget of your own blog! This is a great way to promote your blog, and for followers to keep up with your new posts.

Here's my new widget. You can get it by clicking on the 'Get Widget' button in my sidebar widget! All you have to do is grab the embed code, and embed it in the sidebar of your blog.

Let me know how it goes!