Wordle-ing with the Olympics

Sometimes I delay writing in this blog because I want to spend time thinking and reflecting before I write. But the upshot of that I that I don't write as often as I should. So in the interests of getting something posted that might be of use to someone else, here is a little activity that I did with Grade 3/4 students using Wordle. They loved it and the teachers thought it was pretty cool too.
This is how we did it.

To start off our activity we are going to brainstorm all the words we can think of that remind us of the Olympics. I am going to write them into a word document and show in on the Interactive whiteboard as the students are brainstorming. Once we have lots of words we are going to save the document into a shared folder on the server so that everyone in the class can open it up and save it as their own.

Once everyone has the document in front of them they are each going to copy and duplicate words that are related to the country they are studying and add them to their Olympics brainstorm list

Then we are going to do something really cool with it. Everyone is going to use Wordle to create their own word clouds that shows the way they have changed words to reflect their country. The more times they duplicate their countries words, the more their words will increase in size.

Then we are going to use Ifranview to grab a screen print of it, resize it and then upload it to this blog.

We hope you enjoy the wordles.

To see more check out our burnersblog and our Grade 3/4 wiki.

An Olympic day in a Sentence

Well after another exciting day of Phelps breaking all sorts of records, the Aussie girls winning the 4x 100 medley gold relay and Romania's 38 year old Constantina Tomescu winning the womens marathon, here are the Love it or hate Olympics Day in a Sentences for this week


Janet and her Grade 6 students from Ballarat said
"Ozzies love your magnificent participation in competitive games, actively modelling excellent sportsmanship."

Daniel Drury said
It was nice to view the men’s cycling on Sunday. Great scenery with reasonable visibility. All the competitors did a fantastic job in that environment.

From Blogger in the middle earth,
Today I have a headache,
my eyeballs hurt a bit,
for all the things I did at the TV where I sit -
so if you wish to speak with me
the only thing I bid
is drop your voice a wee,
and keep it simple stupid.

Kathryn Greenhill wrote
Is money being spent on circuses when worldwide people need bread, so ignored it.

From Lucy
It's the athletes with the golden hearts, not necessarily the gold medals that I love most about the Olympics.

Matthew said
As I return to work Monday at two new schools I'm hoping for at least a bronze in filing, desk setting up, and meeting people.

From dkzody
I am cheering for Michael Phelp's mom. No one ever gives credit to the parents of these amazing athletes, and you know they have made major sacrifices for their kid to get to this point.

Hayley wrote
Hi Mrs Baird, my name is Hayley and I am 7 years old and this is my sentence: The Olympics are important to me because I know that athletes are kind and caring and show great sportsmanship and they are qualities that I want to have too!!!

Amy Pyle shared a sentence and a picture

Hiking bluff and river trails, admiring the scenery and enjoying the beautiful weather was capped each night watching the Olympics back at the lodge.






Bonnie K said
I am glued to my TV screen as Michael Phelps swims for gold after gold, making it look second nature. I can imagine what he and the young athletes have given up for this chance; what passion and dedication! In my reality, this week has been filled with stimulating work with teachers and computers and finished with a great new Woody Allen movie, Vicky Christina Barcelona. Thumbs up!

Murcha wrote
My sons have finally arrived in Beijing for the Olympic games, after a trans-Siberian train ride from Russia, where on route they were in Mongolia when Mongolia won their first ever gold medal and they witnessed the celebrations, the sheer sense of pride and bonding of a country and its citizens, that the Olympic games can bring.

And finally my sentence for the week
Why does it take the Olympics for us to knock down walls between countries, cheer for our own athletes and barrack for the underdog?

Olympics: Love it or Hate it, we can't ignore it-aka A Day in a Sentence

The Olympics is probably on the mind of most of us at the moment.
We might be teachers using this opportunity for our students to do a little bit of real maths, or google geography, or civics and citizenship or just a bit of fun keeping track of how our country is going. Perhaps on the other hand you are trying to avoid it all by spending more time outside in the beautiful weather if you live in the northern hemisphere or staying by the heater and reading a good book to avoid the freezing cold weather if you live in the southern hemisphere.

Perhaps you are a sports junkie and you are struggling to stay awake each day if watching it overnight (again it will depend where you live) or perhaps during the day you are finding all sorts of reasons to wander past the tv or stream it live on your computer or iphone. Either way the Olympics have given me a theme for our Day in a Sentence for this week.
Let's call it Olympics, Love it or Hate it, we can't ignore it.

It is my privilege to host Kevin's ( of Kevin's Meandering Mind fame ) A Day in a Sentence for this week. Kevin is on holidays on a beach somewhere I think. And so a few readers of his blog have been volunteering over the past few weeks to keep the Day in a Sentence process going via our own blogs.
Check here for the archives of all Kevin's Day in a Sentence.

So my challenge to you is to come up with a sentence that encompasses your Olympics 2008 experience. Love it or hate it, it's a bit hard to ignore so why not embrace it.

Write it in the comments section of this post or send it to me at annieb3525 (at) gmail.com. On Sunday I will collate them and post them all for you to see. Feel free to send any images that demonstrate your thoughts and ideas to my email and I will add them as well.

I can't wait to read your thoughts.

Working with Nings

This semester I have decided to try something completely different with Year 9/10 IT elective class. I want my students to consider how their world is influenced and is changing due to the internet and in particular Web 2.

Using curriculum framing questions as our guide, I have posed the questions

How is our world changing? as our essential question.
Then as our unit questions I have asked
How does the internet influence our lives?
Why do so many people now share their lives on the internet?
How do people share on the internet?
How can we ensure that our online safety and reputation is not compromised or damaged?
and as our content questions I have asked the students to answer
What does the term Web2.0 refer to?
What are data mashups?
What are blogs, wikis, social bookmarking, social networks, video sharing sites?
What is an online profile?
What is cybersafety and cyberbullying?

While they are exploring these answers they will be using web2 tools such as a wiki to share their resources, their own blog to reflect on their own and each other's learning, a ning to communication and collaborate with each other and many other online tools to demonstrate their learning.
It's only early days and this is a journey that we will all be undertaking together.

I have already enlisted a class from a neighbouring school who will be joining us this week and we would love others to join us. So if you have a class of 14, 15, 16 year olds who are interested in joining us on a journey of discovery please email me or comment to this post and I will send you an invite to our ning and our wiki. As teachers we can also collaborate in the projects and activities that we will have students undertake.

Wiki http://web2teen.wikispaces.com/

Ning http://web2teen.ning.com/ Because this is a ning for Year 9/10 students at this stage I have made the settings private so you will need to email or ask via the comments on this post to ask for an invitation.

The Whiteboard Challenge

Twitter once again has come to the fore (well it's not really Twitter it's the people who use it) with a connection to a great idea created by 6 very innovative teachers. In this Whiteboard challenge they call themselves the Task Masters. A great name. Meet Jess , Danny, Ben, Lauren, Chris and Tom. Check them all out here.
What they have come up with is a challenge for those who have interactive whiteboards in their classroom. Each week you take up a challenge created by one of the task masters and then write about it in a blog post on the wiki. Check out Danny's challenge number 2 which is whiteboard cloning. They are encouraging you to write, video, podcast, draw, show your learning in pretty much any way you can.
It doesn't matter which whiteboard you have in your school or classroom. It's about the teaching and learning that can be achieved with it.
So why not sign up. Make a commitment to spend a few minutes a week for the next few weeks, have some fun and learn lots more.
I am.

Reflections on Blogging

Last night I participated in my regular Sunday night discussion , Oz/Nz teachers with around 35 teachers mostly from Australia and with a smattering of educators from around the world. I was a little late to the discussion last night and when I entered the meeting the discussion was centred around the role of the teacher, eLearning and the changes that are occurring due to the way we see the integration of technology. The discussion had arisen I think from a post that Lauren o'Grady had written where in part she questioned the role of the teacher in the classroom. In her post Lauren suggested that the term eLearning is or should become redundant.
What I took away from the conversation was that the fundamental thing we are on about is creating opportunities for powerful learning in the classroom and that the relationship between teacher and her students should be one of mutual respect.

I posted a comment to her blog .

I think that the most important thing/issue/idea that you raise in this post Lauren is that you begin with the most important outcome in mind and that is powerful learning. If we begin with the end in mind then the use or the embedding of technology into the learning falls into place. If we recognise how students learn best, if we ask them what and how they want to learn, if we encourage them to demonstrate their learning in different ways then the “problem” of using technology should go away. The change that is required is not so much using technology but it’s in the way we teach. It requires a real shift, a letting go of the power in the classroom and a change in the expectations of what students can and should achieve. This is not about making things easier for our kids. I believe it’s actually about raising the bar even higher. Perhaps the question is not whether we are raising the bar for our students but whether we are raising the bar for our teachers.

But what I really want to talk about is what I am listening at the moment which reinforces everything that we discussed last night. I am listening to a wonderful conversation between Sue and her students. Sue is an English teacher in Melbourne Australia. I haven't actually met Sue in real life and know her as sukojat which is her online moniker. Sukojat is very well known in the online education world and is doing some amazing things online. She has established the Oz/Nz meeting that I love to attend each Sunday night. From humble beginnings another meeting is now taking place via Elluminate on Tuesday nights so it's growing in leaps and bounds. Sue has also established a ning for the OZ/NZ educators group and a focal point for discussions and links to our regular group meetings.

But again I digress because this is what I really want to say.

Tonight Sue tweeted that she was posting her first podcast ever on her blog. It was a conversation with her students about their experiences with blogging in their English class.
Of course I couldn't help myself. I had to have a listen and I'm so glad I did.

What I heard between Sue and her students were echoes from last night's conversation with the Oz/Nz teachers group.

What I heard in Sue's podcast, was a real conversation between a teacher and her students where there was equal value given to both the teacher and her students opinions and experiences.
I heard students being able to say what they thought without fear or favour.
I heard a teacher sharing her thoughts about her own practice with her students.
I heard students reflecting on their own work and their feelings about that work
I heard a teacher asking for valid suggestions and opinions about where they should go next.
I heard students asking questions and reflecting about the process of blogging and why they would do it
I heard a teacher and students laughing, sounding relaxed and enjoying themselves
I heard a teacher skillfully probing and encouraging more thinking and reflection
I heard a teacher who clearly knew her students well and who knew a little about them beyond the classroom.

What I didn't hear was a teacher telling students what they have to think and do
What I didn't hear was students saying what they thought the teacher wanted them to say.
What I didn't hear was students who sounded bored and uninterested.

From this short podcast I could tell that Sue is clearly a highly skilled teacher who has created a professional and personal relationship with her students. I could tell from their conversation that there is some very powerful learning here.
Congratulations Sue. I would love to be in your classroom.

Do kids prefer to read online?

As I prepare to begin our new computer club with SuperClubs Plus tomorrow lunchtime, I came across a post by Will Richardson on his weblogged blog who pondered whether kids who read online are actually reading.  Arising from an article in the New York Times called  Literacy Debate: R U really Reading  it raises the question whether young people are reading effectively when interacting with text online. Will asks whether we should be teaching how to read online. My  feeling is a whole hearted Yes! It's about opening up the key to a different way of reading, a different way of comprehending, a different way of interacting with text and other digital media.
If nothing else it has made me think about what and how I read on the internet. Is it different to the way I read narrative or factual text for example? I think it is and it's started some thinking that I want to explore more.

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