Curriculum Support through ICT

Posted on September 23, 2014 by Mrs Whittaker

As well as using ICT as an essential tool for inquiry, communication, collaboration and content creation, St Michael’s students and staff have access to several fantastic websites and apps to support their learning in all areas of the curriculum. To access the websites, the school usually pays a subscription for each student, so that they can access all features of the site, login from school or home, and have their progress monitored by their teacher. The school also purchases apps for specific areas of the curriculum, as outlined at the end of this post.

Mathletics

http://www.mathletics.com.au/

Mathletics is an engaging eLearning website which contains over 1000 learning activities covering all areas of Mathematics. It is aligned to the Australian Curriculum, enabling teachers to easily find suitable content for their students. Students are given a username and password and they can then access the website from school or home, using an internet browser or an iPad app. Student’s progress is recorded and then staff can access powerful reporting tools to see individual and class strengths and weaknesses.

Students can also challenge other classmates or students from other schools in games of speed and skill.

Spelling City

SpellingCity Spelling City provides spelling, vocabulary and writing activities for our students, through it’s website and iPad app. Our student’s primarily use the spelling activities, where they can access their weekly spelling lists and access activities based on those words and also spelling and vocabulary tests.

Teachers can set up the lists or access lists shared by other educators, including many lists from the Jolly Phonics programme.

ABC Reading Eggs

ABC Reading Eggs is an online world where children learn to read. It supports each child’s learning by offering individual, one-on-one lessons that allow children to progress at their own rate. Reading Eggs makes learning to read interesting and engaging for kids, with great online reading games and activities.

Scootle

Scootle is a free website with thousands of digital resources to support the Australian Curriculum. For teachers, it contains videos, photos, audio, ideas and units of work that they can access and share with their students.

For students, there are also many interactive multimedia resources which combine still and moving images, text, audio and animation to provide engaging and motivating experiences for students. The activities are based on the most recent research into how children learn and how teachers can facilitate learning.

iPad Apps

Some of the most popular iPad apps we have purchased for curriculum support over the last couple of years include:

HookedOnPhonics Hooked on Phonics
By Hooked on Phonics
This digital reading program is based on the award-winning Hooked on Phonics Learn to Read system with which millions have learned to read.

rED Writing – Learn to Write
By Rogue Mobile
App for teaching children how to write letters and numbers using Australian education approved font. Co-designed by an Australian teacher for children aged 3-7 years old.

FriendsOfTen Friends of Ten
By Aleesha Kondys
App for use in early school years to introduce an understanding of numbers to ten, counting objects, subitising, counting on from a number, partitioning of objects & combinations that make ten.

Subitising Flash Cards
By Aleesha Kondys
App for testing subitising knowledge by recognising small groups of objects without counting.

Moofy Recognizing Pattern Games
By PlaySmart-Kids
App for learning alphabet and number ordering and recognizing patterns with simple shapes and colours.

Jungle Apps Jungle Coins, Jungle Fractions, Jungle Time
By Andrew Short
Engaging apps for teaching coin maths, fractions and telling the time.

ICT and the Year 7 PYP Exhibition

Posted on September 26, 2012 by Mrs Whittaker

The central idea behind this year’s PYP Exhibition was

There are major events in history which have impacted on the world and its people.

Our year 7 students researched, prepared and showcased their learning about a significant historical event. ICT played a large part in all of these stages and along with traditional display materials such as books, posters, artifacts and models, digital technology was used extensively during the exhibition performance and showcase. Here are just some of the ways in which ICT was used during the Exhibition process.

Printing information and photos for displays

Nicholas displays photos and information about the bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki

Creating an Exhibition Newspaper

A 4 page exhibition newspaper was created in Microsoft Publisher and printed on beige A3 paper to give the old looking effect.

Chloe made a crossword for the back page of the newspaper using a crossword making website.

Visitors enjoyed reading the newspaper which contained an article about each of the historical events that were presented at the Exhibition.

Displaying Prezis on the Student’s Tablets

(see previous post Presenting Prezi)

Alicia and Isabel presented their Prezis using a data projector

Macca created a Prezi about Hiroshima and Nagasaki

Campbell created a Prezi about Charles Kingsford Smith

Playing Video and Audio Recordings

Younger students watched videos relating to the exhibits

Olivia displayed information and played an audio recording of Kevin Rudd’s Sorry Day Speech

Kane narrated the events of the Cuban Missile Crisis with images in the background

Sam used his iPod to play an audio recording about World War II

Background Music and Video for the Exhibition Performance

Campbell created an amazing video clip to accompany the entire exhibition performance. It contained backing music, video clips, images, sound effects and strategically placed silences.

Year 4 Designers

Posted on September 26, 2012 by Mrs Whittaker

During term 3 the year 4 classes inquired into the central idea

People use their creativity as a tool for improving their surroundings

As part of their summative assessment task the students used some online design and planning tools to design gardens, kitchens, dining rooms and towns. They then responded to the central idea by listing down the purpose of their design and how it is to be used. The following online tools were used in this exercise.

Better Homes and Gardens Plan-a-Garden

This tool allows you to select a background, which may contain a house or simply an open area. You can then add structures, surfaces and plants and move or resize them to your liking.

Click here to go to the website

Here are a couple of the students’ designs.

Karlani’s Garden Design

Zoe’s Garden Design

IKEA Kitchen Planner

This tool allows you to select a room layout from many different options and then add doors, windows, fixtures, furniture, appliances, plants, decorations and so on. You can work in floor (birds-eye) view or 3D view and you can zoom and pan around the room.

Click here to go to the website

Here are a few of the students’ designs.

Matilda’s Kitchen Design

Walter’s Dining Room Design

Kyle’s Outdoor Room Design

Molly’s Dining Room Design

City Creator

This tool allows you to create a medieval, snowtown or conventional city or town. You can add buildings, roofs, people, vehicles, roads and walkways.

Click here to go to the website

Here are a couple of the students’ designs.

Keifer’s City Design

Ethan’s Medieval City Design

Presenting Prezi

Posted on September 25, 2012 by Mrs Whittaker

Prezi calls itself zooming presentation software.

Prezi is a web based presentation tool for exploring and sharing ideas on a virtual canvas. The canvas is an open space upon which the user places and navigates between text, images, videos, and other presentation media. Take a look at this short promotional video.

Prezi was an ideal tool to introduce to the Year 7 class as they prepared for their PYP Exhibition. The central idea for this year’s exhibition was

There are major events in history which have impacted on the world and its people.

Students researched and prepared to showcase their learning about a significant historical event. Along with books, posters, artifacts, models, video, soundtracks, music and other display items several students chose to use their Tablet PC’s to display a Prezi presentation of their topic as part of their ‘booth’.

In order to learn the Prezi tool, I gave a short introduction and demonstration of Prezi to all students in the class and links to the following prezi help sheets from their Learn webpage.

Get Started

Go to the Next Level

Share your Prezi

The students very quickly learnt how to use the Prezi tools and here are some of the resulting Prezis. (If you wish to view these Prezis on an iPad you will need to download the Prezi Viewer app and then follow the links below).

The Pacific War on Prezi

cks on Prezi

Hiroshima and Nagasaki! on Prezi

Voice and Sound Recording

Posted on June 19, 2012 by Mrs Whittaker

Recently, I talked to the year 7 class about the many uses for recording their own voice, music or other sounds on their tablet, computer or other recording device.

To create narrations for presentations
To create soundtracks for video clips or animations
To practice reading and to listen to themselves reading
To tell a story
To create podcasts
To create read along books for younger students
To record themselves singing

We then had a look at two methods of creating a sound recording here at school.

Windows Sound Recorder

Sound Recorder is a Microsoft Windows accessory that records sound through an internal or external microphone and saves it as a Windows Media Audio (wma) file.

Easi-Speak Microphones.

These portable microphones record sound directly into the microphone’s memory. The recordings (mp3 or wav files) can then be downloaded to a computer by plugging the microphone into a USB port.

(See my previous post on Easi-Speak Microphones for more details)

We then had a look at the 3 different types of sound files that are produced by these methods (wma, mp3 and wav), how to convert files from one type to another and briefly mentioned how sound files can be edited. For more details about all of these things, please click here.

Collaborative Websites

Posted on June 18, 2012 by Mrs Whittaker

Collaborative software and websites help people to work together, sometimes over geographic distances, by providing tools that aid communication, collaboration and the process of problem solving.

During this term, the year 7 class have had a look at few collaborative websites, including Wallwisher, Dabbleboard and Edmodo. The first two sites offer simple ‘walls’ or ‘whiteboards’ for sharing ideas, pictures, videos and documents, whereas Edmodo offers a more sophisticated resource sharing and communication platform (see former post on Edmodo).

Collaborative websites like Wallwisher and Linoit are fun and simple collaborative websites that are great for many primary school year levels. In their simplest form they don’t require each student to have an account and they have a nice graphical interface in the form of a pin-up board with sticky/pinned notes. These sites lend themselves nicely to sharing brief snippets of information, ideas, viewpoints, pictures and so on.

Wallwisher
(click to enlarge)

Linoit
(click to enlarge)

St Michael’s staff have also had a look at Wikispaces and Google Docs as sophisticated ways of collaborating to share knowledge and to edit documents simultaneously with another user.

Wikispaces
(click to enlarge)

Google Docs
(click to enlarge)

Click here to view a more detailed document that was prepared for the students and staff about Collaboration and Collaborative Tools.

Edmodo – Turning a Classroom into a Community

Posted on May 8, 2012 by Mrs Whittaker

To quote from the document The role of ICT in the PYP, written by the International Baccalaureate Organisation (2011). .

ICT provides opportunities for the transformation of teaching and learning and enables students to investigate, create, communicate, collaborate, organize and be responsible for their own learning and actions. ICT allows students to make connections and reach a deeper understanding of its relevance and applicability to their everyday lives.

At St Michael’s, the year 7 class has been using the Web2.0 tool Edmodo to practice the 21st century skills mentioned above, especially communication, collaboration and connections.

To quote from the Edmodo website

Edmodo provides teachers and students a secure place to connect and collaborate, share content and educational applications, and access homework, grades, class discussions and notifications. Our goal is to help educators harness the power of social media to customize the classroom for each and every learner.

Edmodo has the look and feel of a social networking website and as such, is an excellent safe tool for engaging students and teaching them about Cybersafety and ethical/legal issues surrounding the access and use of information technologies.

Edmodo is used effectively in the year 7 classroom to

Discuss hot topics, enabling students to practice persuasive writing in a post/reply style format and also to apply ethical principles of etiquette and respect.
Submit journal entries and assignments for teacher comment or marking. Students upload Microsoft Word documents, the teacher adds comments and then the student accesses or downloads the marked document.
Communicate events via a calendar.
Collaborate by uploading documents and website links to a shared library. This is an excellent way to group resources for a particular Unit of Inquiry, ICT skills session or other research activity.
Communicate homework requirements.
Communicate with students who went on the recent exchange trip to our sister school in Fiji.
Do all of the above activities from outside of the school, from any computer with internet access.

Here is an example of a class discussion about war.

Web Searching

Posted on October 26, 2011 by Mrs Whittaker

Last term, I discussed with our year 7’s how we can use the internet as a valuable research tool and how we can best use internet search engines to get exactly the information that we are looking for. Often people simply enter a search term which then returns millions of results. With careful use of the search engine, the number of results can be narrowed down and more relevant information can be obtained.

We started the session by brainstorming the names of a few popular search engines and the students came up with Google, Bing, Ask and Yahoo. For the rest of the session we focussed on Google and some tips and tricks that I’ve picked up over time.

Phrase Searches

Say you want to search for the phrase “Hahndorf Football Club”. Have you ever noticed that if you type this in, without the double quotes, then the results will include any site with the word “Hahndorf” or “Football” or “Club”. Although the first few entries might be exactly what you are looking for, later entries may include “Hahndorf Soccer Club”, “Hills Football League” etc. These later entries included the 3 words that you were looking for, but not together as one phrase.

To search for an exact phrase put double quotes around the phrase, as follows :

Excluding Words

Say you want to search for all clubs in Hahndorf, but not football or soccer clubs. To do this you will need to exclude the words “football” and “soccer” from the search by typing in a minus sign before them, as follows :

When we tried this out we found results for Hahndorf Rifle Club, Hahndorf Golf Club, Hahndorf Tennis Club but no mention of football or soccer.

Synonym Search

The tilde (~) operator takes the word immediately following it and searches both for that specific word and for the word’s synonyms. It also searches for the term with alternative endings. For example, take the following search :

This return results matching “horse”, “stallion”, “pony” and “equestrian”, to name but a few.

Advanced Search

If you press the Advanced Search link underneath the blue search button many additional search options will appear, as follows :

Some of these options have already been covered. A useful option here is the last one – “Search within a site or domain“. Here you can enter a full domain name, such as “stmichaels.sa.edu.au” or part of a domain name, such as “sa.edu.au”. This restricts the search results to a particular web site (ie St Michael’s) or type of web site (ie educational).

I’m Feeling Lucky

Google’s homepage includes a button labelled “I’m Feeling Lucky”. When a user types in a search and clicks on the button the user will be taken directly to the first search result, bypassing the results page. The thought is that if a user is “feeling lucky”, the search engine will return the perfect match the first time without having to page through the search results.

Viewing Search Results

Once a query has return results, these results can be refined (narrowed down) by using the options that appear in the left hand column. These options let you choose a type of result, such as Images, Video, News, Books, Places etc. Each type of result then has further options. For example, when viewing images their are options for the size, colour and type. When viewing videos there are options for the duration, size, quality and source. Have a play around with some of these options – they are very clever !!

Timeline

One of the options you can use when viewing search results is the Timeline. This presents a timeline representing the year that the search results relate to. You can narrow down the results by selecting a particular year or years.

Judging Search Results

Before you click on a search result link you might like to do the following to determine if it is a valid information source.

Read the snippet
Look at the URL – is it from a place that you’ve heard of or visited before?
Is it someone’s personal page?
What kind of domain is it? (.edu is more believable than many others)
Is it an Australian site or from another country?
Can you find a date on the page?

Image Editing using pixlr

Posted on August 10, 2011 by Mrs Whittaker

In this week’s ICT session with the year 6/7s we had a look at image editing. This is in preparation for their PYP exhibition work, where their unit of enquiry is about how we express ourselves through advertising.

Here is an extract from the ICT session :

What is Image Editing?

Image editing is the process of altering images, whether they be digital photographs, traditional analog photographs, or illustrations. Image editing software is used in this process. Some of the most used and best-known image editing programs include Adobe Photoshop, GIMP and Corel Paintshop as well as some on-line photo editors which include pixlr, Picnik and FotoFlexer.

Image Editing in Advertising

Can you think of some reasons why advertisers may want to edit photos?

Click here for some hints from Wikipedia.
Click here and here to see some examples from graphic design & advertising websites.
Click here to see some magazine photographs that have been edited and are flawed.

Editing your own image

As an exercise, try editing a photo of yourself using the on-line photo editor pixlr. You will find your 2011 student photo in T:\ICT Resources\Yr 7 – Exhibition\Images.

Try experimenting with some of the following tools.

Crop
Lasso
Magic Wand
Clone Stamp
Smudge
Red Eye Reduction
Spot Heal
Bloat
Pinch
Colour picker
Paint Bucket

Also try experimenting with the Adjustment and Filter menus to apply some special effects to your image. Here are some of the special effects that you can get with these tools.

: Original Photo

: Sepia

: Glamour Glow

: Art Poster

: Posterize

: Night Vision

: Heat Map

: Kaleidoscope

School blogs & wikis

Posted on August 10, 2011 by Mrs Whittaker

Well, we’re over half way through 2011 and we’ve managed to get quite a few blogs and wikis up and running in our school this year. These blogs and wikis fall into several categories, as follows.

1. Teacher Blogs/Wikis

These blogs/wikis are written and maintained by the class teacher, usually for the junior primary classes. The teacher uses the blog/wiki to write about the learning activities in their class and usually accompany this with photos and occasionally video. They upload documents and newsletters to their blog and insert links to websites that may be useful for the students and parents to access at home. The teachers in these classes are finding that the blog/wiki is a great way of communicating with parents and keeping them in touch with the daily/weekly activities in the class.

Mrs Thelning’s Year 1 Blog

Miss Kreymborg’s Year 1 Blog

Mrs Norman’s Reception Class Wiki

2. Class Blogs

These blogs are written by both the teacher and the students. A classroom blog may contain posts about excursions, sport, units of inquiry and other classroom activities.

Mrs Fudali & Mrs Hall’s “Year 5 Bloggers” Blog

Besides sharing information beyond the classroom, using blogs is a great way for students to improve their ICT skills and get experience using an emerging technology. Students also improve their literacy skills while blogging, and it a fantastic opportunity for students to learn about appropriate online behaviours.

3. Student Group Blog

A group of keen year 7 writers have created a blog called “Over the Picket Fence”. In this blog the students write posts containing stories, poetry, book reviews, recipies, random facts, sport, interviews, excursions, random facts, optical illusions, comics, photos and other entertaining reading. It is a great place for the students to practice their writing skills and learn about the world of blogging. They are encouraged to comment on each other’s posts and are taught the correct etiquette for writing comments.

Year 7 Writers Group Blog

The staff & students involved in this blog have made a promotional video. It runs for about 12 minutes and is too large to upload here, but you can click on the following link to see the Over the Picket Fence promo intro. If you’d like to see the whole video, please contact me.

4. Year 7 PYP Exhibition Blog

An area that is critical to success in the PYP exhibition is communication. To assist in effective communication, an exhibition blog/wiki has been established for use by teachers, students and parents. This blog/wiki has been set up as a great tool for:

Sharing ideas.
Recording progress.
Communicating amoung students, staff and parents.
Displaying information, photos and other media related to the chosen lines of enquiry.
Linking to useful websites.

Students will be able to add posts, comments and contribute to group wiki pages. As the site grows, it will contain heaps of valuable information about the learning & preparatory activities associated with the exhibition.

Year 7 PYP Exhibition Blog

5. Staff Blog

The staff blog has been recently set up as a communication and collaboration tool for staff. It is used to record morning notices, weekly e-bulletins, staff movements and other general information. It also contains links to useful websites, shared resources, staff information and photos. It has proved beneficialby being able to access this information from outside of the school and for recording all of this type of information in the one, easy to get to, place.

Staff Blog

6. Student blogs & wikis

Although we haven’t implemented any yet, student blogs and wikis are a great way for individual students to keep a journal of their learning activities or present information about a particular topic or line of inquiry.