Since I’m home sick I’m catching up on blog reading.

This post from Wes made me stop and think about how many worksheets my students get in a week – and on reflection there are some weeks they get NONE!

The Thursday Folder and Worksheet Measured Learning

At the February 2009 Oklahoma Technology Association’s conference, keynote speaker Will Richardson told a story about the worksheets his own students bring home from their public school each week which resonated with me. Will said he’d contemplated keeping all the papers for an entire school year in a big stack, and then photographing them to document the school-communicated learning they’d experienced all year. I then thought about doing the same thing, since our two oldest children (who are in elementary school) bring home a “Thursday folder” each week filled with the worksheets they’ve completed.

subject says it all really – this is my twitter wordle!

interesting video to watch here

Today students in my class became news broadcasting teams. They worked in groups of 4 – 2 girls, 2 boys – and took the roles of news reporters (2), camera operator (1) and producer (1).

Each group had the same script to work from (our school daily notices). They organised themselves into roles with their groups. While the reporters practised their scripts I ran a mini workshop for the camera operators and producers.

We used the class Canon Powershot A470 mounted on a tripod. First I showed them how to attach the camera to the mounting bracket and then they all had to show me how to do it. Then I showed them how to attach the bracket to the tripod and then they all did that for me.

We talked about setting the camera up – I set the scene but talked them through it. We looked at framing and distance etc.

After morning tea I worked with each group to record the news. The reporters practised while I ran through the setup with the camera operator and producer then we silenced the class and they did their recording. I worked through each of the 5 groups which took nearly 90 minutes all up.

After lunch the camera operator and producers worked on their videos to add titles and end credits to the video using Windows Movie Maker.

Finally in the last 1/2 hour of school today we watched the videos and did some feedback.

Once I’ve got permission from parents I hope to be able to share some videos with others.

It was an exciting day!

are you using evernote? if not – may i recommend it to you ..

if you can’t figure out why you should use it after checking the website out take a look at some of the videos at the How I use my evernote project

and yes i have a video on that

A great post here by Jane on her blog …

i’ve embedded one of the youtube videos mentioned because i think it is very powerful.

I think this is a question that we should be asking ourselves – a couple of weeks ago I asked via twitter the following question “opinion please … can a tchr show/teach impact & innovation in ICT if it’s not an integral part of their life?”

Talking to a teacher who is taking a lead role in ICT at school this year about the definition of visitor vs resident she quickly said she was a visitor. (Logs in, does what she has to do and logs out.)

In the debates about computers, internet, ICT integration – how can a visitor understand the POV of a resident? Can they understand it?

I don’t know. I can’t approach it from the visitor perspective as I am a resident.

As are my two children (18 & 21). Computers, computing, internet, & other ICTs are all part of our lives – daily. My daughter is on Twitter (@spacegirlnz) and we talk to each other sometimes that way instead of texting (from our respective offices/desks in the house); my daughter decided she wanted to be able to do 2 things at once while studying for her uni exams – so she snagged our old PC monitor (which was attached to our storage computer!) and figured out how to attach it to her laptop and do the dual screen thing – now she can study and watch a movie, or study and chat with friends, or do some photoshop stuff and watch a movie … or whatever! We have 4 laptops and 1 PC between the 3 of us! Along with 2 smartphones (Nokia 6121s) and 1 other wireless device (iTouch) we’re all connected both online and offline. We’re residents. (Back in the day when we had an old 8088/80286/80386 both kids could execute typed dos commands to get to their games without adult help) (And this connectedness doesn’t mean we don’t do other stuff – we cycle together, sit around the house reading books together, go walking together, cook together – it’s just we’re also wired/wireless together as well)

So – visitor or resident?

A question I hear very often is “how can they be friends if they’ve never met in real life?” totally misses the point that the definition of “real life” has changed.

Are my online collegial relationships via Twitter less than those in person? I don’t think so. They’re different – we talk about different things – and sure there’s not a lot of classroom visiting happening – but there is a lot of talk – professional talk – and in fact I would say I’ve had more professional talk with some Twitter colleagues than I’ve had with colleagues here – because I have more in common with my online ones.

What about all the professional development that goes on via blogs? Is that less than “real life” professional development? As far as I’m concerned I learn more online than in “real life”. Where then is my “real life”?

I think my real life is everything that’s a part of me – online, offline where-ever!

Picnik – edit photos the easy way, online in your browser  Annotated

tags: photos, tools, web2.0

photos today … actually these are from yesterday

first photo is what i had in my classroom

second is what has been added

as it’s a software/system trial i will have to keep a log of problems as well as what we do on the computer – how much we are using it (so we can sell to BOT when the time comes to advocate for more than one computer in a classroom)