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Showing posts from May, 2017
DI Intensive Week 4 Having missed last weeks session I told myself I must try at least one thing that I can see from the DI intensive agenda. Through this I came across a Thinglink. A Thinglink is an interactive image where you can tag work or websites to the image you select. I have trialled this in my class with my reading groups and had a go at getting this work in a more visible place for my students. This also allowed me to show them working along with the work they were doing within one picture rather than a whole doc or presentation. This makes it much more convenient to use. The applications for this are wide and of similar use to a padlet, yet more visual and I think a great way to engage students and parents with the work done in class. THINGLINK EXAMPLE
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Linking back to my previous post about PB4L procedures,  I was really impressed by how some schools were really reaching out in different ways to get student voice across. I am deeply passionate about letting my students have a say in how our class is run and the culture we create in order to learn. One big thing I took home from the meeting was the use of Flipgrids. This programme is not cheap for schools on a budget and although it has more potential than my version, I wanted to see if I could do something similar with a free resource. Using Padlet I have managed to get my kids to link in videos of themselves talking about their bully free tips and tricks. I found all students were really engaged in this task and I can now use this as a rewindable learning opportunity. Taking this further under the Learn, Create, Share, Model I could have my students create their videos using stop motion, or  animation tools. This would work especially well if I wanted my students to have the opp
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PB4L Cluster meeting for Auckland Central. Today we have been reviewing how we deal with minor incidents at school. Some great feedback from all people involved. Have a look at the Padlet below to see what other schools are doing PB4L wise in their schools.  I will be looking at Flipgrid and Banqer as tools for my class to have a reward system that directly reflects their wants and needs. I also like the use of videos as shown by Panama Road school, which is a great form of rewindable learning. These videos really reinforce students behaviour and because they are 100% made by students it creates better buy in.
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DI Intensive Week 3 Three weeks in to this course and I have been practicing in school to use forms and my google sheets to increase my productivity along with student engagement. My kids have loved using forms to produce data to back up their persuasive writing, and they have also enjoyed looking at how to create pick a path stories. For me I have used google forms and sheets to keep running records on the students basic facts knowledge. This has been great. Today in the Intensive we have been looking at Google Hangouts, our Gmail, and Google Keep. The focus is on being productive and using the technology we have to our advantage. I really love Google Keep as it allows you to take a picture of a book or a slide and then download the words from that into a doc. You can see that in the picture below their is a picture of some writing, I have then taken the actual text from it and it has pasted that below the image. This can be then cut or pasted into a document if needed. A very h
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Today we have been looking at google forms and google sheets in the Manaiakalani Intensive session. I have been able to develop my understanding in how to use forms and then take the data you collect and place it into google sheets. This is so handy for keeping your running records up to date without adding too much to your workload. I have also looked at how to insert data from a Google sheet into a map. Although it did not work for me, I will have a play and see if I can get this posted. I have also created a fun Pick a Path story for kids in Google forms. This will be a great writing tool for my boys who like to work collaboratively and share their ideas. Another big thing for me has been looking at how to use Flubaroo as a tool in Google Sheets. This allows you to easily mark tests that you can set through google forms. No longer do we need to sit and mark each students basic facts test one at a time! https://docs.google.com/a/wesleyintermediate.school.nz/forms/d/1dKZW20XwZcaZ
Here is my list from Friday about the add ons and extensions which can help benefit students and teachers. I have added a brief description along with a short tutorial. I hope you find this useful. This doc was designed for the teachers at Wesley Intermediate, but if you would like to use this doc feel free ask for a share, and I will give you access.
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Day 1 PLD Manaiakalani Today has been a very intriguing day. As a professional my basic tool belt has been heftily filled, with a great amount of tools in which I can use, to not only increase my productivity, but to hopefully increase engagement within my school for staff and students. Learn: Digital content introduction Extending the power of Docs and Drive with extensions and add-ons http://www.blindtextgenerator.com/lorem-ipsum Talk & Comment - Instead of typing out a comment, voice audio. Docutube - Insert Youtube clips into documents rather than the link Lucidcharts - insert charts and diagrams into google docs Extensity - for managing extensions Grammarly - For checking plagiarism https://bitly.com/ - to shorten URLs Easy Accents - Quick and simple way to add macrons Select and Speak - Voice to Text Engine (works with Google Docs) Above is listed all the tools which I have developed my knowledge in. These are all free and very easy to us