Today we had a very interesting and busy day. We
started with Dorothy talking to us about share. She took us way back to April
2005 when YouTube (where you are able to broadcast yourself), Twitter (empowered
the rich famous celebrities), Bebo, and Facebook, (where friends share their
lives) was born and brought about a new form of sharing. This brought about a
new form of sharing and is what our children use to make themselves
known.
At our school children use Blogger to share their learning. A blog is
set it up where every child's blog is owned by Board of Trustees.Teachers can see
what children share because all their work is visible through the teacher
dashboard.
The Blogger app is used by both students and teachers. Blogger is
a tool for supporting the Cyber Smart curriculum. It has specific guidelines that
teaches children how to behave appropriately when sharing with to an audience.Children
learn how to be positive, thoughtful and helpful commentators.
I have a class blog and the children in my class have their own individual blogs. They love looking at photo's of themselves, their friends and their
learning. It is powerful learning tool that shows a snapshot of their learning
journey. Children like looking back at their older posts, for example, when they
started school or the time they did something special. It shows progress of learning
over a period of time and for many children it is something that they can be
proud of. Family/whanau and friends can visit their work (anytime, anywhere and anyplace).
Dorothy talked about the Summer Learning Journey. Researchers at
Wool Fisher looked at data and found that children who blogged two times a
week (maintained their learning) and
children that blogged three times a week (results were high). As teachers we need
to encourage and set tasks to keep the children engaged in their learning so
that we can maintain/accelerate learning and raise achievement.
The second half of the day day focussed on Multi Modal learning.
We had an opportunity to visit some sites. The key idea is hooking
the learners both behaviourially and cognitively, making children excited about
their learning and engaged with the curriculum in many ways: watching a video
clip, using hyper studio to draw, create animations, dance and drama.Teachers
can be creative as well by hooking the learners for example: Immersion
assembly.
Our task for the day was to create a site and the theme we used
was "Garden with Science." The teachers worked in age level groups to
collaborate, share ideas and resources. Susan and I worked collaboratively on
this site. I found this task really easy as I have been using sites for more
than 3 years. As a school we started with Classic Sites and now with the
New Sites. I prefer the New Site because it is much easier and also looks nice on an iPad. I found that managing my folders and labelling my work helped
me access what I needed easily. Our school has a shared folder of projects that teacher
have created. We can download the activities or add to it (repurpose) and
re-share it again. We keep adding to the shared folder and now have a wide
range of activities for all year levels. This makes workload easier
and allows for children to have a wide range of learning opportunities.
The children in my class access their learning through their class site.
I use visual images and symbols to hook and engage my learners. They can independently
go to the class site and download their tasks for the day.
