My First GoAnimate Video

For one of my M.Ed topics I had to create a video that tells the story of the role of ICT in contemporary education.  Considering the time that went into this, I thought I'd share it here as well.

I've already had it pointed out that even in this, an assignment about ICT, I've managed to bring in my strong views around social justice. My answer to that is that the story of ICT in education isn't complete without it being mentioned.  I could create a video on just that.

I can't say that it was my favourite assignment ever, but I did get to fool around on GoAnimate for the first time (and learnt LOTS) so I can't really complain. If you've never had a look at it, I highly recommend it. The biggest downside is that it's a paid service so it's not super accessible for use with students. On the upside, it's quite intuitive and easy to achieve a reasonable looking result.  And again, whilst I didn't enjoy the assignment, I will admit that the thinking involved in synthesising a story was an effective way of pulling together the semester's learning.  I'm not sure that primary school aged children have the metacognitive capacities to pull something like this off, but perhaps I'm wrong. Anyone have any experience?

I'm also curious to speak with someone who's used both GoAnimate and Powtoon, for a comparison. I've never found Powtoon particularly easy to use so haven't ever persisted with it. Perhaps now that I've achieved a degree of success with GoAnimate I might find Powtoon more intuitive?

Can I also share that two out of my four topics for this semester are now FINISHED? (As in, no more classes, no more books, no more teachers' dirty looks... Ooops, they come from me when I realise we've still got an hour to go and I'm already so tired I could spit!) Actually, what I mean is that we've finished our classes and I've handed in all of the assignments. What a relief!

This is a tough post to relate to the Australian Professional Standards for Teachers because it demonstrates a high level of 'meta-reflection' on standards 1 through 4 & 7, but it's really about MY learning which is standard 6. *sigh* I'm curious to know how all y'all would link it? For now I'm going to relate it to everything other than standard 5, because it's the weekend and time to live it up a lil'!

Standard 1 Know the students and how they learn

Standard 2 Know the content and how to teach it

Standard 3 Plan for and implement effective teaching and learning

Standard 4 Create and maintain supportive and safe learning environments
Standard 6 Engage in professional learning and improve practice
Standard 7 Engage professionally with colleagues, parents/carers and the community

More than Just Cyber Safety: Tackling the Social and Ethical Protocols of the ICT General Capability

The material is licensed by ACARA under CC BY 4.0.

I need to start this post with a quick introduction to the Australian curriculum general capabilities for my readers who aren't based in Australia or are otherwise unfamiliar with - what many Australian teachers call them - the gen caps.  Please think of them as one of the ways our curriculum describes the knowledge, skills, behaviours and dispositions that will enable our young people to "live and work successfully in the twenty-first century" (ACARA, 2015). There are seven general capabilities:

• Literacy
• Numeracy
• Information and communication technology (ICT) capability
• Creative and critical thinking
• Personal and social capability
• Ethical understanding.
• Intercultural understanding

The general capabilities are, perhaps, some of the more ignored parts of the AC.  Whilst the curriculum documents do, in fact, provide learning continuum and explicit cross-curricular links some of the gen caps tend to be left in the too hard basket, or ignored all together.   Clearly these options aren't acceptable and regardless of what we think of the AC, it is our mandated curriculum so we have a responsibility to teach it ALL. 

Wow, that started to get a little preachie-preachie didn't it? Sorry about that! I get a little fired up because it frustrates me when I see teachers choosing to ignore one or more of the gen caps because they, personally, aren't confident or competent with the concepts.  Step up people, or step out.

And again! #sorrynotsorry

The material is licensed by ACARA under CC BY 4.0.

Back to the actual point of this post...

The first professional development session I attended in the last school holidays was run by Teacher Technologies and focussed on parts of the ICT general capability of the Australian Curriculum, specifically the social and ethical protocols and practices.

There were a couple of recurring themes throughout the day. One was the idea that we, as teachers, have a responsibility to model social and ethical behavioural choices for our students. (And not just when using ICT I might add!) This isn't a new idea but it's certainly an important one to consider. Think about the example we set when we - and I'm not saying that I, or you, do or don't do this - download an YouTube clip to use in class. Sure, we can justify it under the 'educational use' umbrella but do our students know that?  Do we explicitly explain to them what we're doing? Do our students know that they can't do the same thing? How would they know? And if, after we've downloaded a clip, we store it on our hard drive for next year is it still OK?

Another example are the images that we put in our presentations, or assignment sheets. I don't know about you, but I take great pleasure in finding the perfect image and will openly admit that I don't always do the right thing. And so the example I set is to use whatever image I like regardless of ownership. I am slowly getting better though. Actually, you know how ex-smokers are the worst kind of non-smokers in terms of telling people to not do it? (And with good reason! High five if you're an ex-smoker!) Well, I'm that person in my  house now, with creative commons images: I'm pretty sure my husband is going to take away my internet access if I ever again look at something he's done with an arched eyebrow and comment "that doesn't look like a creative commons image to me".

Yesterday one of my own children approached me with a question about referencing a podcast using the Harvard system. After I quit shaking (because I'm an APA girl through and through) I pointed him in the direction of some websites that I've found helpful in attributing my sources recently.  And it dawned on me what had just happened. My 14 year old, who listens to The Naked Scientists podcast like I listened to the Top 40 at his age, was using an idea he'd heard in a podcast to help build his argument in an essay on parallel universes, black holes, space. He knew he needed to attribute those ideas appropriately. Yay! Somewhere along the line, whether at home or at school, this kiddo got it! He understands intellectual property.  I did, of course, wonder whether he'd picked it up from good modelling (ahem!) or if it had beeen explicitly taught, which brings me to the other recurring theme.

Whilst we must model social and ethical protocols and behaviours when using ICT it is just as important that we explicitly teach them. It would be lovely for young people to pick up on why it's not a good idea to click on every *enter now* button through osmosis, but it's not overly likely. As a teacher, I use a range of strategies to keep any personal information I keep (digitally)about my students secure. (And securely destroy the files when appropriate.) This isn't something I can model to my students though, it's the kind of thing that needs to be explicitly taught in developmentally appropriate ways right across the primary and secondary years of schooling. The ICT gen cap learning continuum is very detailed about when and what students need to learn.

I could write about the importance and value of this component of this gen cap all day because it's something that is of increasing importance to everyone. As you can imagine, I was tweeting all day. I'm sharing Selena Woodward's Storify today. Enjoy. (As you scroll through, you'll notice that we were a bit spoilt for morning tea! I think there were about 10 of us there...)

This relates to the following Australian Professional Standards for Teachers...

Standard 2 Know the content and how to teach it

Standard 4 Create and maintain supportive and safe learning environments
Standard 6 Engage in professional learning
Standard 7 Engage professionally with colleagues, parents/carers and the community


ACARA. (2015). General capabilities: introduction. Retrieved from http://www.australiancurriculum.edu.au/generalcapabilities/overview/introduction

QR Code Trail Update & Reflection

I'm super tardy in posting this update on my book week QR Code Trail (the original post is here). Sorry! All I can say is that during book week I found a whole pile of new YA novels that I wanted to read before releasing into the wild my classroom. I finally reached the point of being ready to read Divergent. (Gotta say that I'm loving it way more than the movie, but when do bookworms ever enjoy a movie more than the book.)

The codes went all the way around the school.
Parents had to visit many classrooms to find them.

Back to the topic at hand: here's the update.  We had a small but significant number of parents participate in the trail on the first day of book week.  Some others came back the next day to do it. (Yay!) Some of my kiddos met them, with their iPads, and acted as tour guides. Thank goodness they did! Not all parents had wi-fi, and some didn't have QR readers.   Our school internet connection decided to play hide and seek for most of the afternoon too which didn't really help.

However... The parents  enjoyed the experience. My kiddos were able to talk them through both the process and the literacy concepts that each video covers.  From what I could gather, this aspect of the trail was particularly appreciated. Pretty proud of the kiddos for stepping up like this. 

What did I learn from the process on the day?

In terms of the videos themselves: my learning journey continues. I need to improve the sound quality and reduce background noise. The best comments came from children who were guided through very specific - almost leading - questions rather than allowed to freely discuss the topic.  You're welcome to view the videos on the school's YouTube channel.  We've set them to 'no comments' but I'm keen to hear your feedback through this blog or via twitter (@markeetarp).

In terms of the logistics: iPads don't have the world's loudest speakers. I need to provide headphones, especially if it's windy (as it was). 

In terms of the 'entry form': people rarely carry pens these day so I needed to provide those (which meant my kiddos had to run back to the classroom to grab them). I think a better option would be to set up a google form but that would reduce the drama of pulling a winner out of the hat when we choose the winner of the book voucher (to entice participation). Having said that, it would certainly give us another opportunity to demonstrate another of the e-tools we use in the classroom (random name selector).

I'm inspired to build on this experience in the classroom - both the videos and the QR codes.

This relates to the following Australian Professional Standards for Teachers...
Standard 3 Plan for and implement effective teaching and learning
Standard 4 Create and maintain supportive and safe learning environments

Standard 6 Professional engagement

Standard 7 Engage professionally with colleagues, parents/carers and the community

QR Code Trail for Book Week

Tomorrow signals the start of Book Week 2015.  Our school has a whole pile of fun events planned - including a fancy dress parade on Thursday (eek!) - including a reading themed  'open house' tomorrow afternoon. We've turned our timetables upside down and are running our literacy blocks after lunch instead of before recess so that parents, grandparents, neighbours, family friends and anyone else interested, can  come and take a peek at the awesome literacy learning we've got going on!

We'll see how it goes. Last year we tried a literacy themed open house one morning and had very few visitors. One of the ways we're hoping to entice more people in this year is with the chance to win a book voucher. We're just that nice! Joking. We totally are that nice, but not made of money so to be in the running to win the book voucher people will need to answer a series of questions based on videos that they'll access using QR codes that will be placed around the school.

Fun idea huh?  I thought so. (Of course I did. I helped come up with it!) I even volunteered to make the trail. It'll be fun I said. It'll be a great learning opportunity I said. It'll be easy I said.

And it has been fun. It has a HUGE learning experience. It has been... Well... OK, it hasn't been easy at all.

I booked a reliever for a half day to get the filming done. And then a meeting was booked, so I lost most of my filming time. Not a huge problem, but it took a little longer than I expected and I was left with less than 2 lessons to film. A lot of the filming I needed to do was in my building, which meant I was right there to witness my kiddos' awful behaviour. Again, not a huge problem, but dealing with it ate up more of my time. A 'social media' related issue broke while I was in the building and I ended up sitting in on the initial discussions with some of the students involved. I'm glad I was there for it, but again... Time was ticking away.  I am so grateful to the teachers who lent me students for filming, rearranged their schedules to let me film and particularly to Ms Sally Slattery who filmed the junior primary students for me.

iMovie is not a daily use programme for me. In fact I'm pretty inexperienced. The movies are OK, but I can't see Spielberg calling anytime soon. I'm so pleased I pushed through and feel much more confident now.  I can't wait to do more movie making with the kiddos now - usually I feel really out of my depth but think I might be able to offer more meaningful advice now.

YouTube is driving me mad. To be fair, it's not YouTube's fault.  The internet speed at my house has been heinously slow on weekends ever since Netflix hit Australia. In the end I packed up my computer and head over to a friend's house with a bottle of red wine and my best puppy dog face. He works at home for HP so usually has a super quick connection. Even there it took a couple of hours! Not happy!!

Next up are the QR codes. No major problems there. Although when I printed the codes and questions I discovered that my son had left some delightful green paper in the tray and we're almost out of black ink. Of course we are. Nevermind. I'll either use these or reprint in the morning at school.  If only my laminator hadn't gone missing during the last school holidays... Hmmmm.

This whole process is gambling on participants having QR code readers on their devices. We've invited them to come to the school library before starting the trail and my kiddos will help them download one if necessary.  Keep your fingers crossed that the school internet is playing nicely! (It hasn't been for the last couple of days.)

I'll update tomorrow when I get some feedback from participants.  I so hope it works, but am pleased to have done what I have even if not a single soul participates because I've learnt a lot.

This relates to the following Australian Professional Standards for Teachers...
Standard 3 Plan for and implement effective teaching and learning
Standard 4 Create and maintain supportive and safe learning environments

Standard 6 Professional engagement

Standard 7 Engage professionally with colleagues, parents/carers and the community

Engaging Kids Today with Dan Haesler

A couple of weeks ago I blogged about gamification. Not my longest, finest, best researched or most thought out blog post ever but if you want to check it out you can do so here.  It was a blog post on the fly, written as part of a challenge during a day long professional development day with Dan Haesler.

I attended the day as part of a team of teachers from my school. (We form the 'digital learning' committee, and as a team advocate for, facilitate and support digital learning in our school community.)   On the surface the content seemed to be a funny, engaging mix up of all the great ideas of the moment. It was polished, it was engaging and it was personal. It was enjoyable and I came away buzzing. BUT… Later that night when I started reflecting to my husband I couldn't come up with anything particularly new.  Don't get me wrong I loved the session. I was NOT disappointed.

Fast forward a couple of weeks and my thinking has changed somewhat. It was engaging. It was personal. It was polished. And… It was practice changing. It was inspiring. It was foundational to some of the small by vital changes I've already made in my classroom.   It might not have had any new ingredients compared to anyone else but by golly, Dan put the ingredients together in way that came up with a fair trade artisan made chocolate truffle instead of the canteen's stale rock cakes.

So, what made 'Engaging Kids Today' such a powerful learning experience for me? Dan asked more questions than he answered. He forced us to think. He moved through his material at a rate of knots.  And he demanded action.  The last session of the day was given over to the gaming session during which I blogged on the fly. The game was all about putting our money where our mouths are in the search for connection.

One of the most powerful reminders of the day, for me, was that the power of technology is in the power it has to connect people. This has driven the changes in my classroom. We have recommitted to twitter and are engaging with people on a daily basis.  My students chose to participate in Kid President's #Socktober social media campaign and use the internet for 'good rather than evil' (you can read our class blog about it here or my own post about it here). The students are blogging regularly and we've signed up with Quadblogging. We're still hoping to get involved in a mystery Skype but that's a work in progress at the moment.

I can hear many of you asking 'but what does this have to do with learning?' My answer is simple, and combines a few thing Dan said that day. It's all very well to prepare our students for the future but the future is tomorrow. If we can't engage students today then we have no hope for the future. So, how do I get my classroom to be so engaging that my students would choose to be there even if they didn't need to turn up? Connections. With me, with each other and with the world. How do they make those connections? Often in writing, other times in video, other times in designs. All of which need to be learnt. The learning enables the connections which in turn feed the learning.

It was a BIG day, and I'm incredibly grateful to have been involved.

There were a number of us live tweeting through the day so you get a good idea of our immediate reactions to Dan's presentation at this storify made by Jess Ottewell a year 6/7 teacher at the host school.

This relates to all of the Australian Professional Standards for Teachers… Really.

Gaming

So... I'm sitting in a @DanHaesler workshop working with my colleagues from #hackhameastps to accrue points in a gamified mission to explore the concepts we've been discussing today. (The topic focussing on engaging our students TODAY because their future is only as far away as tomorrow.)  The game has been presented as a series of levelled missions and we've been invited to choose the level that best matches with our learning point. Each task allowed us to accrue a number of points for achieving particular goals in using web 2.0 tools that encourage connection between and within learning communities.
Anyway...
Are we engaged? Yes.
Will we win? Hopefully.
Is our desire to win based on a deep desire to learn. Possibly not.
I'm not saying we don't want to learn but we definitely want to win! Win! So... By way of a super quick reflection on gamification: I'm keen to look deeper but I'm a bit wary of the motivation behind it.

UPDATE: We won in such a big way that just MY score was higher than the next team. We may possibly have taken the scoring just a wee bit more seriously than anyone else… :)

This relates to the following Australian Professional Standards for Teachers…
Standard 3 Plan for and implement effective teaching and learning

Standard 6 Engage in professional learning.

Standard 7 Engage professionally with colleagues, parents/carers and the community.

Tweet tweet!

Follow me at @markeetarp
Or my class at @the67vrps

Do you tweet? I, personally, tweet and so does my class . I can't say I'm the world's most proficient user of twitter, and my class are still REALLY new to it BUT...

And this is a really big BUT...

It's fantastic! Get on it!!!

Just a sampling of reasons. (I'm sure there are a myriad that I'm not mentioning.)

• I've connected with a whole range of amazing educators I wouldn't otherwise 'know' or be able to learn from/with.  I am building my own PLN.
• Hashtags rock. No. Seriously. I could go on for quite some time about them but here are two great examples: 


• #hackhameastps: This is my school's hashtag. Primarily used by staff (and classes) this hashtag serves as a filter for things that we want each other to see. It might be our literacy coach @MelissaThiele1 passing on a great resource, or one of the other 6/7 classes (@MsLipczyksclass) sharing their latest media studies learning.
• #mathphotoaday: Every day for the month of June, my class will be tweeting a photo of a particular Maths concept.  We've used a google doc to arrange who will do what, and when. So far, admittedly it's only June 4th, it's been great. Our very first photo (about division) was 'favourited' very quickly by a Grade 3/4 class in Canberra. As you can see from the photo above, the very next day the same class tweeted back with the fact family for this particular division fact.  Amazing huh?

• There are literally hundreds of twitterchats each week. Free, fun, fast, friendly professional development on a topic of my choice? Um, yes please. I've been tuning to one in particular: #teacherwellbeingchat (Sunday at 8:30pm Adelaide time which is GMT +13.5) A teacher here in Adelaide facilitates a chat each week about a range of topics that all relate to teacher wellbeing. It's a great chance to check inand start the work week all zen. :) It meanders from sensible to silly and everywhere between. There are an absolute plethora of chats to try... I have a long list.  This blogpost talks about the importance of twitterchats. 
• Global connections - you know the kind that we all talk about being so important for the kids in this day and age? -  are very easy to make over Twitter. My class has now interacted with a handful of classes around the world; some close to home and others across the globe.  The content has been somewhat superficial to start with, but it's a start and the kids are excited.  Next we're planning to use twitter to get involved in a mystery skype session (ten minutes of asking another class questions to work out where they are located).

Lakewood is in Canada.
Woodend is just down the road.
(Mr Lamshed used to teach at our school.)

My last reason for loving twitter is that the last two days I've been able to follow the general gist of  Edutech 2014 without being there. Gotta love a hashtag that makes it possible to follow the back channel of a conference! 

Amusing sidenote: a few weeks ago I had a rather heated discussion with my principal (@bobthiele13) because he's uber keen for our whole staff to get on Twitter and use #hackhameastps as a way of supporting ongoing professional development etc. while I was trying to make the point that not everyone likes or feels safe in the very open environment of Twitter so we can't force them to do it. Well. Haven't I shot myself in the foot of that particular argument? Since that discussion I've jumped up and down with excitement over things my class is doing on Twitter (yes, physically jumped) IN FRONT OF HIM. And now I've blogged about my Twitter-love. Oh dear. There goes my credibility with that point. Maybe he won't read this... 

This relates to the following Australian Professional Standards for Teachers...
Standard 1 Know students and how they learn.
Standard 3 Plan for and implement effective teaching and learning.
Standard 4 Create and maintain supportive and safe learning environments.
Standard 6 Engage in professional learning.
Standard 7 Engage professionally with colleagues, parents/carers and the community.

About Those Goals I Shared...

I just realised that I never checked back in to report on the goals I set myself last term and we're already halfway through the first week of this term. Oops.  Better late than never.

Numeracy

Scratch

• Linking technology with our numeracy program: I've read, and I've surfed, and I've played with a whole bunch of apps BUT I still don't feel particularly confident in this area. The best numeracy lessons in which technology has played a part have been ridiculously simple. (Not that simple's bad, it just feels like I'm letting the team down by not pushing the boundaries more.) One lesson I gave the class free rein to use the computers to create a 3D shape and demonstrate their understanding of that shape. There were triangular based pyramids hand drawn in MS Paint, there were rectangular prisms built in some Lego programme I wasn't even aware was on the computers, there were videos created on Scratch and a whole range of other offerings.
• Reflection during maths lessons: The whole class is regularly explicitly reflecting at the end of lessons. I either ask a specific reflective question or simply ask the students to reflect on their learning (and because my co-teacher is much better at this reflection caper than I am, and has been doing it all year, the kiddos are pretty comfortable with it). There is something incredibly satisfying to hear the students identify the strategies they've used and make links to other strategies and contexts. Sharing their reflections is such a powerful activity: it's almost possible to actually see the  links being formed in their brains as they listen to it each other. I. Love. It. 
• High quality assessment tasks: I may not have blogged about the development on all of these goals but I did a blog specifically about this one. You can read it here.
• Number sense development: I haven't had terribly much practical progress on this goal at all. I've been reading a pile of papers and articles but I'm still trying to synthesise the information into something practically useful. Some of the articles I'm reading give rise to other questions; for example this article by Heike Weise which links number development with language which set alarm bells ringing as I considered the literacy development of the students with weaker number sense.  I also found a not-insignificant school of thought that claims that number sense can't be explicitly taught, but "is a way of thinking that should permeate all areas of mathematics teaching and learning" (Reys 1994 quoted in Berch's 2005 article on Making Sense of Number Sense) which is both reassuring and terrifying. *sigh*  I think my challenge with this goal is related to the age of the children I'm teaching and my perception. I need to keep looking and learning. In the meantime I'll keep reinforcing basic number sense through all of our learning activities.  (As a side note, I did a great problematised situation - with a grade 2 class a few weeks ago - that demonstrated place value wonderfully. I can't take all the credit for it, as I 'borrowed' the idea from Ann Baker, but I will say that it involved over 2000 popsticks and less than 20 children counting them. I'll share photos when I get a chance.) 

Literacy

• Explicit teaching during guided reading: I've been linking specific teaching focuses from our literacy genre and using Sheena Cameron's Teaching Reading Comprehension Strategies work to guide my planning and teaching. I've been linking my texts to our history and science topics which has really helped as well. I'm still not super confident in this area but I'm improving. 
• Improved use of resources during writing activities: With my assistance the students are each creating their own Writers' Tool Box to use as they write. In a folder (that they keep in their desk drawer) they are compiling pages of helpful words and tips: synonyms for said/went/good/bad etc., lists of conjunctions and contractions; challenging spelling words and... Anything else we identify as useful. I encourage them to refer to their toolbox instead of asking me for help when they need writing help. It has some value, but I'm sure we'll keep refining it.
• Edublogs: You can read about that saga here. It's an ongoing challenge.
• Proofreading:  Um. Yep. Can't say as we've progressed at all here... *sigh* What c
  an I say? Watch this space?

So. Not an all around success but certainly not no progress either. I'm constantly learning. There have been a multitude of other new areas of growth over the last term alongside these goals I identified. I feel like I've grown and am eager to keep going.  Next steps in my learning?  I want to learn how to use ipads/tablets in the classroom in a meaningful way; I want to reflect on my planning process; I want to become conversant in the new geography curriculum; I want to learn how to be intentional about work/life balance... The list is endless really.  Anyone have any suggestions to help me prioritise?

I worried a bit about my priorities in this blog so I 'wordled' the text. (Did I really just turn a noun into a verb... Ugh! Ugly ugly ugly. Sorry!) Pretty relieved by the result though... I think the emphasis is in the right places. What do you think?

This relates to the following Australian Professional Standards for Teachers...
Standard 6.1 Identify and plan professional learning needs
Standard 6.2 Engage in professional  learning and improve practice

Standard 6.3 Engage with colleagues and improve practice

Standard 6.4 Apply professional learning and improve student learning

Student Blogging Challenges

In the weeks leading up to the start of my current teaching position, I discovered that my co-teacher was keen to get our class started with blogging. Yay! Student blogging was a rather appealing idea to this little newbie teacher and so my brain raced off at a million miles an hour with all kinds of plans. Fast forward a couple of months until today and... Well... It's still a rather appealing idea. The practicalities of it, however, are rather less appealing and overwhelmingly rather more challenging.

We chose to use Edublogs because it has a great security record (we're able to hide the blogs from websearches too which is pleasing to many parents), it's NOT blocked by our school system and offers a really wide range of options - in terms of formats, files, and memberships.  My co-teacher actually signed up as a premium user last year (but for a range of reasons her kiddos' blogs never really took off) so we're sliding in on her paid subscription - pretty lucky huh? (Thanks Miss B.!) This level of membership allows our students to upload files which is great for allowing them to showcase their learning. I'm slowly learning more about the functionality of the platform, but there are some pretty interesting features.

However... For reasons that tend more to user error (mine) than anything else, the process of setting up our students' blogs has lead to actual tears of frustration  (again, mine). Without boring you with the whole saga just let me say that it took the two of us HOURS to sort it out to the point that we currently have 16 (out of 30) student blogs set up and linked to our class blog. ONLY 16! The issues have grown to include the expected 'forgotten passwords' (even after being asked to set their password to a given shared password to avoid this very problem); blogs mysteriously appearing archived; students mysteriously not having privileges to access even their own blog; some students' requiring additional support to use the technology; and challenges posting particular file types. We're working through the issues as a class, in small groups and one-on-one, but it's taking time and is - as you can imagine - rather frustrating.

Creating a 3D shape which was later
labelled and shared on the blog .

The challenges have been huge but so too are the benefits. The students are eager to write on their blogs, and excited to share their learning. Knowing that their work will be seen by someone other than a teacher makes the task much more authentic. Pride is being shown where previously it wasn't. Students are demonstrating their learning using web 2.0 tools (many of which I'd never previously heard) and sharing links in their blogs. Peer tutoring as one student learns a new shortcut or tool is more and more common. Greater levels of independence and engagement are already evident. These are all fantastic developments!

They'd be even better developments if the whole class could access them, but we're not quite there yet. Student blogging is all about learning though so we'll keep trying and looking forward to our next point of learning. I'm really looking forward to reaching a point along our journey at which parents and families are able to be engaged in our teaching and learning programme through our student and class blogs. I love the idea that our students will be able to use their blogs to both showcase their learning and reflect on it. The opportunities for connections that can come from blogging are quite exciting, and I hope that our students are able to take advantage of them. This project, for all the frustration and challenges, remains appealing and exciting.

Do you have any tips for us?

This relates to the following Australian Professional Standards for Teachers...
Standard 2.6 Information and Communication Technology (ICT) 
Standard 3.3 Use teaching strategies

Standard 3.7 Engage parents/caregivers in the educative process

Standard 4.1 Support student participation
Standard 4.5 Use ICT safely, responsibly and ethically
Standard 6.2 Engage in professional learning and improve practice
\

Cough, cough. I'm getting there.

OK, so I've been a tad quiet missing for a couple of weeks thanks to a delightful bout of some unnamed virus that masqueraded as whooping cough. Fortunately (for everyone) it wasn't whooping cough and after nearly three weeks I'm finally on the mend.  I've learnt a few things these past few weeks:

• Children have a sixth sense about their teacher's voice and grow quiet to watch it disappear.
• As soon as it's gone they make up for the loss by increasing the volume of their own voices.
• Children's empathy and concern for illness in others is matched only by their need to remind everyone that coughing and hacking is 'gross'. (They're correct, of course, but the constant refrain of 'ew' everytime I turn blue from coughing is not overly helpful.)
• Creative writing  (or not so creative, which in our case meant dictation straight from a novel) soothes the savage beasts has a calming effect on children.
• My tolerance for noise is distinctly lower after four nights of broken sleep, and almost imperceptible after five. (Good thing a school week has only five days!)
• Small group work sounds like a good idea for a teacher with little to no vocal range, except when all of the students are working in small groups and the associated noise, whilst full of rich learning discussions, is slightly higher than the five sleepless nights can tolerate. 
• My class works well while listening to quiet music: their previous teacher taught them that if she couldn't hear the music, they were too loud.  (Thanks Mrs. Jane!)
• It's OK to not plan every moment 100% thoroughly. Feeling like death warmed up has meant I've not planned quite as meticulously as I'd generally like to BUT by keeping my eye on the goals and intended outcomes has enabled me to plan  loosely but carefully. I'm still reflecting but aside from a few organisational hiccoughs (not having appropriate resources because I was slow off the mark before school and didn't collect them) I'm pretty happy with how we've traveled. I'll let you know as I reflect more.

A day off didn't kill me. I thought it might. Genuinely. I took only one day off  (and that had to be forced by my husband and a visit to hospital) and suffered through it feeling guilty and anxious. I needn't have. My class was shared by the principal (!) and a good friend so they were in great hands. And if they'd copped a shabby reliever? They would have coped. And so would have I.

So. I'm feeling somewhat better... 

Look out world, there's only a week and a half of school left from which I intend to squeeze as much as I possibly can. I wonder if my class realises that we're working right up until the end of the last day?

Using Evernote to capture a student using a
particular strategy during maths stations.

On another, related but different, note... Isn't technology wonderful? This isn't exactly groundbreaking news but these last few weeks have reinforced for me the value of technology: both in the classroom and for me as a professional. Just by way of a quick example, I've been using my tablet to snap photos of the kids as they work. I have the Evernote widget on my tablet which enables me to upload the photos directly to a notebook - either for that particular student or for the particular project.Using Skitch I can directly annotate the photos to point out exactly what I'm trying to capture. Or I can record the children's discussions and upload that directly to their folders. Love. It. Professionally I'm forming a network of other professionals to whom I'm linked on Twitter (and elsewhere) and from whom I am constantly learning. Whether they realise it or not, this quasi-PLN has kept me company (and interested) through many nights when sleep was not an option.