ICT in my Classroom

Two boys from Year 4 just about burst into my classroom this afternoon proclaiming that they had been left a comment from a teacher in Australia! They were the very picture of excitement and I was too, we loaded up their class blog and read the comment. I said that they needed to go and find where Geelong was on an map, they replied, in a very matter of fact way…

“We have already looked it up on Google Earth.”

Wow, missed that one. This is one very happy ICT Coordinator. Thanks John

Some new ones, why not drop them an encouraging comment to help them get started.

Year 2 Class Blogs.

http://priestsic22.learnerblogs.org/

http://priestsic2.learnerblogs.org

Year 4 Class Blog

http://priestsic4.learnerblogs.org

I know the children would be excited to hear from you.

This is a request for help and interest in two projects that are currently running at school. I would really appreciate any help or signs of interest from schools and classes willing to collaborate on the following.

Year 5 (9/10 year olds) Currently they are working on a project about Wateraid – it is incorporated into their topic of Into the Blue – so two requests really,

1. If there are any schools that are directly effected by water on a daily basis, it is either part of the geography or in some way is especially important to you.
2. Anyone who has been involved with the effects the Wateraid charity has had on people’s lives – to help give the children in our school a much better understanding.

Year 3 (7/8 year olds) They are beginning to look at the ways we communicate and would like to link up with schools across the world using Skype, blogging and email. Ideally this would be centred around an exchange of writing or some focused activity that they could collaborate on and share.

At school there is lots of buzz around the setting up of new blogs and I have been really pleased that so many classes and staff have taken on board some of my ramblings!

So to date the Priestsic family of class blogs has grown to 5!

Clare Dunnell’s – Year 3 Class – Priestsic3 – “DT Nets”
Rick Gascoyne’s – Year 3 Class – Priestsic33 – “Magic tricks and New York blogging!”
Andrea Pick’s – Year 6 Class – Priestsic66 – “jumping on the blog-wagon!”

Cathy James and Pete O’Brien’s – Year 5 Class – Priestsic5 – “How can we become good bloggers?”
…and of course my Year 6 class too.

I would once more ask any visitors to nip on over to the class blogs and leave some comments to get them started, or if you want to collaborate on some work just drop them a line – thanks to those who have already done so, the children have been so excited about it and they love reading them!

Today was another opportunity for us to welcome headteachers from around the UK to our school and to talk strategically about our use and implementation of ICT, via the NCSL SLICT programme. We had five colleagues from Birmingham, North and South Leicestershire, Milton Keynes and London.

It was exciting to be able to talk about blogging and the use of wikis which was brought up in the previous day’s workshops. I was pleased to be able to realistically demonstrate how these new read/write tools may impact on the classroom. (By the way “wiki” is taken from the Hawaiian word “wikiwiki” meaning quick, hence you can quickly add your own contribution to this sort of web 2.o media)

It was another successful day and both Dave and I would like to thank our visitors for the positive feedback that they gave us before they left. We hope we can support and help in the future with your own school’s ICT challenges.

Sorry that I have only just got round to writing the last of the three great conversations I had with colleagues last week. Unfortunately I have been very unwell over last weekend and very busy at school.

Nonetheless the conversation holds its resonance and comes under the “Exchanging and sharing information” strand of the National Curriculum which Claire and Rick have been exploring for there year 3 class. We ended up speaking about linking up with other schools using Skype, (a simple freely downloadable piece of software that allows you to make voice calls over an internet connection) to communicate verbally and then to use a class blog to provide written feedback and an exchange of ideas.

We worked together and came up with the central idea of poetry which would remain the refrain throughout a variety of work in geography, history and literacy. The ICT part will be contextualised and be an application of many new skills.

Rick and Claire have already begun and taken the first steps by talking to their children about communication and how that currently manifests itself – but also they have setup their class blogs.

If there are any schools out there who are willing and able to link up using Skype, to produce perhaps some writing that would great. Please let us know.

So I am on to explaining about the second of three great conversations I had last week with colleagues at school.

Since starting my blog I wanted to draw more of my colleagues into the experience and I set my own targets for this, well I am a little late on it but I have still managed it.

I had planned to support Claire and Rick, who work in Year 3, set up their blogs, but I decided to open out the session to other staff members and I had lots of takers! It was a chance to follow on the session I held before Christmas which was a great success and to tell them about setting up and getting on with the writing. After all that ‘s what it is, an opportunity to write.

So we had Year 1, 2, 3, 4 and Year 6 teachers there – I had a meeting with Pete and Cathy about blogging the day before as they couldn’t make it, so that accounts for Year 5. So from a voluntary session I covered all of the Ks1-2 classes, to me that is very promising and I must say a big thankyou to those who attended and supported the session.

I introduced learnerblogs.org and explained the other platforms that are available to blog, the importance of getting running and just to write, I broke it into 3 simple sequential stages of usage that seemed pretty useful.

1. Write together as a class using admin login on class blog.
2. Assign children unique logins to write individually on the class blog.
3. Children have their own blog to publish to and manage.

For many early years teachers it seemed that they would remain at 1 as their usage would be primarily writing together.

I am really pleased to see colleagues at school embracing the technology and many thanks to those who have already commented on the priestsic3 blog, I will keep you all posted of any more newborns in the ward.

So after a few great days of interesting staff meetings with colleagues at school, two new Year 3 blogs have been created. (And many more on their way soon)

I am sure you are all aware of how important these times are and I would really appreciate any readers just popping along and leaving an encouraging word or two.

http://priestsic3.learnerblogs.org
http://priestsic33.learnerblogs.org

Ever since I decided to run some workshops in school about some new web 2.0 tools, I have been thinking about what set of resources (physical and digital) would best make up a sort of blogging toolkit. A starter pack for teachers to make the most of the technology.

So what would you need in an ideal situation in your classroom to get the most from a blog. I would be really interested in creating an ideal situation, something that perhaps teachers new to the technology can look at in a practical sense.

So lets make a start on the digital or online resources:

> A blogging account – we have been using a free Learnerblog

> Bookmarking storage – a place to store and share your Favourites, del.icio.us is popular

> Image storage – we use a free class Flickr account so we can link to photos we use – these pop up nicely in Learnerblogs as a Flickr bar underneath where you type your post.

> We also use a wikispace for ongoing work that is less appropriate for blogging. We have been using some for poetry and other stuff. They are also very good at embedding all sorts of media, scroll to the bottom of the literacy page for some work on Bubblr and look at our history page for work in Quikmaps

What about the physical resources:

> A digital camera in the class is really useful – currently we have a Sony Mavica

> Laptops with a strong wireless connection available in the classroom full time would also be ideal. This would help facilitate and make regular the process of writing. Hopefully we are to have some soon, so I will see how they go.

> An mp3 recorder would also be great for working with and creating podcasts etc.

I would really like to hear what views you have about what you would include in this “starter toolkit”.

Image Citations:
Neil T, “Toolkit” Neil T’s Photostream. December 25th 2004 <http://farm1.static.flickr.com/2/2517652_156aaa68b4.jpg>

So many people are in a reflective mood – lots of “reviews of the year” and “best bits” going on. I don’t understand where everyone gets the time! I still have 12 draft posts that I started thinking about since September I have not written!

I suppose the title of this post suggests a mini review and one thing I will get back to later is the targets I set a while back for our progress.

But this is about real change. Real difference. John and Will have been thinking about whether or not blogging is making a real difference. I think there is a long way to go. As I commented on John’s post:

I would have to say that if we are just talking about writing, given that there are many more other aspects involved with blogging, it relies upon “audience” and “purpose”. My Google Reader is full of people who are dedicated to this great world of web 2.0, the read/write web – but it is much harder to actually attribute specific educational achievements and progress to blogging. This is generally because some time in May my class and thousands of other children will sit in a hall with a booklet and a pencil and will be tested.

This year I would like to make the most of the blogging global community to give the children more PURPOSE to their writing, to take advantage of the huge AUDIENCE they have when they blog. How/Will/If this actually happens, well I am unsure…

I am positive about having a class blog, let me explain some of the great things that have happened since having a blog in September.

• Children realise much more readily that when they blog their work may be scrutinised. They are very, very keen to get the spelling and punctuation spot on – that can only be a good thing. More please.
• Through the simple use of GeoVisitors the children know that they not only have commentators but readers from across the globe.
• One of my children said that they really enjoy blogging and told me it gives her a voice. Enough said.
• We have been able to link up with schools and children from around the world really easily.
• Reluctant readers and writers enjoy exploring other schools blogs and commenting; writing posts on our own space.

But what more is there…John says he is starting his 4th year of blogging and still only scratching the surface, not sure then where we are after only 4 months. But I am determined to exploit the power of this and other tools more readily in our work, we need more communications between schools asking for (again focusing on the writing) specific tasks to be done by others – giving us a REAL LIFE PURPOSE to the words we write. And we need the REAL AUDIENCE to be part of the writing process.

One of these great moments happened this year when we saw a post about Flic-Flacs by the 5/6P Allstars in Sydney. We read it with great interest as a class but struggled with the instructions – so we commented and that’s what we asked for, better, clearer instructions. Well they really set to it and the resulting piece of writing was just great and proves my point about REAL PURPOSE and a REAL AUDIENCE. Take a look. We then made our own and closed the loop by commenting further on these improved instructions. Take a look at some of the comments we wrote back to them.

I think this is precisely what we should be using our classroom blogs for, making it real.

Image Citations:
Zesmerelda, “Massive Change” Zesmerelda’s Photostream. October 21 2006 <http://farm1.static.flickr.com/80/275391899_50e20a57b6.jpg>

Flic Flac image from the 5/6P Allstars Blog