June 2, 2009
Wordle
This week, the students were asked to create a list of words related to animation and how they were feeling about the CLAYMATION project.
We will use their WORDLEs to evaluate their attitudes towards the project. The WORDLE will also give us an indication as to their knowledge of some of the terminology.
May 11, 2009
Big changes are afoot at MWPS! After many years of doing a Year 6 Production, we are changing to a Film Festival format where the Year 6 students will be making their own Claymation movies. This will culminate in our very own ‘Woscars’ night.
‘Unfair’, came some cries.
Horrified, disappointed, nerve-wracking, nervous but excited, inspired, fun and pressure ……..
These were the reactions from many of our students at the start. Over the next couple of months, they will be publishing their thoughts about Claymation. Already, after two sessions on our new Macs, (plus promises of some live performances!), attitudes are becoming more positive.
Stay tuned!!
April 16, 2009
Increasingly, students, parents, teachers and the wider community have become aware of the issues surrounding Cyberbullying and Cybersafety.
As a parent and a teacher, I have been active in protecting the children I have contact with from the dangers in an online world. How did I do this? By worrying endlessly and restricting access.
What a ‘head in the sand’ attitude!
After a quick ‘hands up’ survey, I established that in each of the Year 3 and 4 classes, an average of three students had mobile phones. Again, in each of those classes, around half used MSN Messenger and 3 to 4 students used Skype regularly.
What was I protecting them from? They were already engaged in online activities!
Were they safe? Did they know that not everyone online is who they say they are? Did they know not to give out personal information? Were they treating others kindly and speaking appropriately?
I had read a little about SuperClubsPLUS and liked the sound of it, so I registered our Year 3 and 4 students with the intention that it would be the ICT focus for Term 1, 2009.
SuperClubsPLUS Australia (http://www.superclubsplus.com.au) is a social networking site, similar to Facebook and My Space, however it is for primary school age children and it is extremely safe. It is a ground breaking initiative, providing engaging and stimulating learning experiences centred on ICT, literacy and citizenship.
Students are kept safe whilst on the site as only those who have been registered by their school and have written permission from their parents will have access. This ensures that the community is only made up of the children it was designed for. Extensively trained mediators, all of whom are teachers or Principals with current Police checks and VIT registration, actively mediate all children’s activities. At least one mediator is on duty from 8am to 8pm, monitoring all interaction and protecting the students in real time. Students may access the site out of these hours but will be unable to communicate with others.
Once registered, students will receive a user name and password which is uniquely theirs. They have their own personal online space where they can complete activities to earn their Cybersafety badge, design and build their own home pages, participate in clubs, join discussion forums and achieve their ICT ‘Star Awards’. They are expected to reach a certain level of awareness of cybersafety issues before they can participate in other parts of the site.
A wonderful thing happened on the way …….
An hour is never long enough in the lab! Only a day after introducing the students to SuperClubs, I found I was receiving many emails from the students. Other emails quickly followed from the same students saying, ‘Don’t worry, I worked it out.’
They couldn’t wait for the next lab session so they used their initiative and actually READ the instructions! By clicking on the ‘HOW TO’ link, the students are able to learn everything they need to know about building their home pages, inserting widgets, how to send emails and more. They discovered this before I did.
The students learn by ‘hands-on’ experience. If they forget about the Cybersafety and Cyberbullying issues, they quickly find themselves on the receiving end of an email from the Mediator. Any inappropriate email (no girlfriend/boyfriend stuff either!) is immediately blocked. Serious misdemeanors are dealt with by deregistering the student and cancelling their user name and password. Teachers are always notified via Department email if students have acted inappropriately.
VELS and SuperClubsPlus Australia
Many aspects of VELS are covered. Students’ achievements and progress are monitored and rewarded with the STAR Awards challenges. They learn a huge range of ICT skills, Literacy, Cybersafety, social skills and global citizenship - ticks many of the Progression Points boxes!!
Personal and Social Learning Domains
The students have the opportunity to join learning projects and events such as: discussions on global and local issues (the Victorian Bushfires were a big focus); writing clubs with popular authors; a Hot Seat with Jason Kimberley (adventurer, writer, photographer and environmentalist; an interview with Blake and Fletcher O’Leary from Neighbours or the Weather Watch Project. There is a club for every student as they pursue their own interests and work at their own pace and level.
Out of the mouths of babes ……
“Thank you for getting us on to Super Clubs, it is so cool so thank you I love it.” TG, Year 3
“I LOVE Superclubs. Mum and dad want to have a go.” GK, Year 5.”
“I was really nervous about my first email. The most exciting bit about it is you get to do a lot of activities – you can choose anything you are interested in. You can communicate with other people from England and Germany.
I have all my stars now – what I did was to read everything over and over to get the idea and have a go. Sometimes you fail and sometimes you don’t. The best thing that I have learnt is how to be safe. I am trying to learn how to join the tech team. This is the best site I’ve ever been on!!” Nathan Year 3
And, it’s not just the kids who love SuperClubs!!!!
“It is so easy - this week for my computer literacy group - they have to send me an email to tell me three things they have loved doing so far this year in class. Took me about 5 seconds to think of the activity, takes no time for me to show them anything because they all know what they are doing, and is so easy for me to assess!!!!!!
I love it as much as they do!!!
Thanks for hooking us up with it!!! I was trying to stay a step ahead of the kids - not possible - some of them are so far ahead of me I will never catch them!!!! Which is a good thing as they are obviously so happy with what they are doing and being asked to do.” LR (teacher of Year 3/4)
Like our experiences with Digital Storytelling, SuperClubsPLUS is having a huge impact on our teaching and learning. Our students are highly engaged in authentic literacy activities and the pace of learning new technology skills has been very rapid.
March 29, 2009
March 23, 2009
'Black Saturday'
The Year 6 students are studying Natural Disasters and they will make a Trading Card associated with this topic. The link is: http://bighugelabs.com/flickr/deck.php
November 27, 2008
This year the Programming Awards were open to primary and secondary students and were designed to foster good programming skills and to promote a programming culture in Victorian schools.
Our students used GameMaker and designed some outstanding games revolving around the theme of careers in ICT. Once again, the students from Mt Waverley Primary School achieved some excellent results.
Sarah and Linda won the Primary Girls’ Division, Andrew won the Primary Boys and Liam came second in the same division. Congratulations to all participants on the very high standard and many thanks to Will (from Year 6) who unselfishly helped!
September 18, 2008
One of the hints Craig Smith, our visiting illustrator, gave the children was that if you wanted to become good at drawing, you should spend some time copying other artists.
During a Year 2 library session while the rest of the class were taking his advice and copying one of Craig’s illustrations, two boys decided they would write a story and get Craig Smith to illustrate it. Why waste a perfectly good opportunity to commission a highly regarded illustrator for their work? By lunchtime they were ready with their draft, complete with very large spaces intended for Craig’s pictures. One of the boys presented it to Craig, as he ate lunch in the staff room, as an irresistible opportunity!
During his next presentation to the boy’s class, Craig used the opportunity to demonstrate how he goes about making decisions about his work. He created the front cover illustration for the boys’ book ‘The Boys’ Big Day Out’. All students were involved in the process and made many suggestions to improve and embellish the work. The finished picture, on a large piece of butcher’s paper, was generally approved and Craig started packing up for the day.
But ….. the boys were not quite ready to let him go – they wanted the huge picture photocopied so that they could put in on their book. When this proved impractical, the boys prevailed upon our esteemed visitor to repeat his creation on the actual front cover of their book. Craig kindly complied again and the boys marched off to After Care deeply satisfied and very excited about their first foray into publishing.
September 10, 2008
Using Mosaic Maker (Big Huge Labs)
One of the Year 6 teachers has introduced me to Mosaic Maker (http://bighugelabs.com/flickr/mosaic.php). You can make a mosaic from a photoset, tags, or individual digital photographs or images. I have used some of my old family history images to ‘play’. (I love my job!!)
August 9, 2008
I have just discovered Wordle and have been having some fun with it.
Wordle (http://wordle.net/) is an online tool for generating “word clouds” from text that you provide. You can tweak the ‘clouds’ with different fonts, layouts, and colour schemes. It encourages creativity, experimentation with language and reflection.
We will be putting together a scaffold and trying it out with our students. They will then add these to their blogs.
July 22, 2008
The safety of the students is of paramount importance when blogging.
One of the topics of conversations with the students was to do with avatars. (An avatar is a graphical representation of a person on the Internet. This helps to protect the real identity of the user). After investigating many web sites where avatars could be put together, I came across an Open-Source program called Inkscape.
The students imported a head and shoulders photo of themselves into Inkscape and then traced over the top, adding details. Colour was added, the photo deleted and voila! The results are astounding! Each of the students will add their image to their blog.
I have loved learning how to use this program - the time has just disappeared. (See the results above - much easier than airbrushing the wrinkles!!)
