7th Grade Programming Project.

Hi Everyone,

Our 7th grade students are  developing learning games with Scratch and are on the lookout for some teacher input during the design process. Please consider taking a moment to fill in our survey, if you teach 1st-2nd grade students. http://ow.ly/ISl8J.

Thank You!

:-)

Creating French Dialogues with iPads and Google Drive

Last week we did a bit of work with the French department, on a small cross curricular initiative. The 6th grade students have been working on writing up dialogues in French lessons and the teacher was looking for a simple way to record these using video.  Our 6s have used the iPads a great deal this year for both audio and video work, so I suggested them as our tool of choice.  It just made sense, the kids are familiar with them and the apps are very user friendly.

Next we looked at all the options and decided that due to time restraints and the required outcome, a fully edited video was not needed this time around. Next, we needed to address the potential issues of trying to share media work on iPads with teachers, over wifi connections. This can be a huge problem. DropBox blocked and emailing the videos would not only be difficult, due to their size, but also be a breach of our school email protocol.  In the end we decided to work with Google Drive and I am so glad we did!

This made a lot of sense. We are a Google Apps school and the kids use their Google Apps accounts for a good portion of the work they do, across subjects and grades.  The initial plan was to record the videos with the camera app and then upload to drive. Later that day I began playing around with the upload option in Drive when I struck gold! I was thrilled to find that one of the options was to record a video through the Drive App!

This is so easy to do! All you do is navigate to the folder you want the video to be uploaded to, click the plus symbol. Next, select Use Camera from the menu and point and record.

When you have finished recording, you will be asked whether or not you want to use the video. If you select the Use Video option, it will save in your Google Drive account within the folder you specified in the beginning. The other options are to preview your videos before you select Use Video and  retake them if needed. Finally, be prepared to wait a few minutes to process videos before they are viewable. This was fine for us, as our students used the wait time to share their videos with their French teacher.

Now none of this is particularly new. The option has been around for a while. It is new to me however.  I am thrilled with how easily staff and students can create videos, and share them right in their Google Drive Apps. 

If you would like more information about video creation within Google Drive for the iPad, Bill Campbell has produced a good video on the process.

Below I have included a short Animoto video featuring some of our students as they work through the activity. As you can see in the video, the iPads, or any mobile device for that matter, are fantastic for audio/video work. These devices enable kids to plug in, move around and work in more unconventional learning spaces, outside of the tradition classroom walls.

Internet Safety Week 2015

Our ABC Internet Safety Week , also known as Safer Internet Week, starts on Monday.

During the week students will learn more about safe online practices through daily mini lessons, assemblies and focus activities in lessons.

We have been  talking to students and parents about online safety, providing strategies and holding practical workshops for the past 7 years and although progress was slow initially, most of our community is aware of the issues and can apply certain strategies in their daily lives to help ensure that they remain safe online and make social networks work for them.

If you are on the lookout for good resources to use with your students,  have a look through the Mini Lesson resources we have compiled.

Here are three short videos done by the younger students in their after school club.  They contain very brief messages, which offer advice for staying safe online.

These videos were fun and easy to produce using the school iPads.

Who needs a selfie stick when you have a drone?

Just kidding, although the drone does take good selfies! On a more serious notes, I would introduce our new addition to the ICT team and curriculum and mention some of the reasons for acquiring it.

The LRC and ICT departments recently co-purchased a drone. We opted for the phantom2
DJI, and it has more than met our expectations. The Phantom is destined for big things in ICT lessons. Some of our initial plans include using it as part of our Minecraft project and the work we do in SketchUp,  working with angles in video production, discussions around cyber security and privacy and we may even feature the drone as an actor at different events and in different videos.

There will be plenty more to come as the year rolls on.  None of this, however, can take place until we learn to fly it properly and for this we have taken on the roll of students. Our trainer, and assessor throughout the process is a student. He is an expert on working with drones and has been taking us through training sessions over the last two weeks.

We have captured a bit if video from the flights which I have included below. This was our first time flying and it wasn't without mishap. We did however get a good feel for using the drone and went on to further our expertise in a later session.

Update! Here is the link to an additional blog post on this drone written by our Primary ICT Coordinator. 

Conundrum: my Teacher Concience is Getting to Me....

The LRC is a very busy place and as is the case in busy places, it is often the little jobs that get pushed by the wayside. Sometimes those little jobs are very important however and should take centre stage.

I am very pleased with much that I have done this school year, but there exists in the back of my head a nagging, niggling little voice that has become very persistent and relentlessness in chiding me about my blog. This becomes especially acute when updating our LRC Facebook Page, LRC Blog and Twitter streams, which are ususally quick and easy to deal with. I do these tasks while ignoring my professional blog.

I need a plan, half of the school year is already water under the bridge and I have only posted a few measly times to a blog I created specifically for reflection and collection! Really, who am I to tell my students they need to reflect on and curate their work, ideas and interests? Excuses  abound and they are all relevant within their contexts.

Honestly, so many things have happened this school year. It has been one of the busiest yet what with staff turn over and new projects and fantastic new gadgets to work with. To be fair, I haven't been totally remiss when it comes to curating and reflecting. It has simply been going on behind the scenes informally, instead of it going where it should, this blog!

During this time I have been dutifully collecting pictures and videos of all of our activities and projects, which I fully intended to share with the world. I just never seem to have the time to do so.

So here it is,  that pivotal moment. In fact the moment of truth has arrived.  I am making a pledge (publicly) to myself, not to deal with the overwhelming collection of ideas and activities I planned on sharing, but to slow down, choose just one and share it well.

This will be one of what I am sure will be many New Years resolutions I suppose, and will likely share a shelf (for a short time) with others. That shelf already contains things like cleaning the equipment closets and drawers, updating the iPads and once and for all figuring out what the overabundance of keys in that certain drawer are actually for!!!  January may be soon enough, who knows it could even happen before. 

The message I want to get out to all the busy teachers everywhere is, don't despair if you find yourselves in a similar situation. Life is a matter of balance and we all know when an imbalance exists. I think recognising it, no matter how long it takes and remedying that imbalance if and when possible is a feat worth performing.

Just remember to be kind and patient to yourselves and tell your consciences, so guilty of all those incomplete tasks, to back off, reassess and get on with things even if it means dumping a few by the wayside while following a different plan of action.

Happy end of 2014.
All my best for a prosperous, productive and positive 2015.
(Don't you just love alliteration!!!)

Club Recilectura Visits a Local Library

Yesterday afternoon, the Club Recilectura visited the Santa Tecla Children's Library. The club meats every week to work on book and recycling related arts and crafts. One of their goals this school year is to take their work to different libraries and work with the students there, reading to them and creating craft projects.

Yesterday a small group visited a local library in Santa Tecla, where they read to the children and did a few arts and crafts activities with them. Here are a few pictures from the activity that our school librarian has made into a small collage. 

You can view pictures from this activity and other LRC activites on Flickr.

The 2014-15 Library 2.0 Conference

The Library 2.0 Conference is one of the best, online  conferences in the world.  This conference which begins next week, does a great job of bringing together educational experts from around the world. The conference offers many exciting learning opportunities for professional development. Don't be fooled by the name. It is not just about Libraries.

This is the second year that the LRC will be presenting at the conference. This time around, Yensi Vides, Jennifer Garcia and Hilda Gomez will be presenting a session on using ebooks, collections and creating ebooks. The session will be held in Spanish. Please do consider attending if you are interested in this topic.

• The session is scheduled for Wednesday October 8th from 4-5. 
• SESSION LINK - https://sas.elluminate.com/d.jnlp?sid=2008350&password=LIB2014P...

You can browse through this session as well as all the others , most of them in English on the Library 2.0 website.