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A green dragon's bumpy adventure through ICT in the classroom! toc

=14/07/08=

This Tuesday I shared at the Cluster Share at Takapuna Primary School. I did a presentation on how wikis can be used in the classroom. It's ironic that I had all these good ideas of how a wiki can be used, and yet I'm not really employing them myself. Time to change that! I showed the kids the Totara Team wiki today and told them that they would be using it to help with their research on their athlete. I also said that the wiki would be replacing the math and literacy learning centres I had set up in PowerPoint, which they already know how to use. Hopefully, it won't be much of a step for them to be using the wiki instead of these PowerPoint presentations. This just means I have to get cracking and move all that stuff I'd put onto the presentations onto the wiki instead. It's all DONE, per se, but there's a fair amount of work involved in getting it moved over.

The children also posted to the blog again today for the first time in ages. I intended to get four groups of three through, but only managed to get two through (due to getting back to the classroom late after assembly AND then later the Internet playing up and not posting the entries - 404 errors all around!).

=29/07/08=

I went to the Lead Teacher meeting at Sunnybrae last Friday and we had a good talk about things. This is just a quick note of things I want to remember from there, and things I found as a result of that conference that I perhaps want to share.

There will always be a barrier, or at least for a while, between those students who have access to computers and Internet at home and those that don't. All we can do as teachers in ensure their use of ICT in the classroom is as encompassing and indiscriminate as possible. One laptop per student - is this possible? How far into the future? Less is always contentious (would you share your laptop?).

I want, just for my own information, to do a survey of the kids in my classroom, and include these questions...

Do you have a computer at home? If so, is it connected to the Internet? How often do you use it? What do you use it for? (Include some multiple choices as well as a field for any other uses.)

ICT is ethnically neutral, like math. It is the same everywhere. The Internet is worldwide.

Things we can use in the classroom and in our personal lives: (Bold = those I use personally, italics = those I use in the classroom, normal = those I don't use... yet) //**Blog**// //Bubbleshare// //Voicethread// KnowledgeNet //Tutpup// Slideshare
 * Flickr**
 * Googledocs**
 * Podcast**
 * Skype**
 * Messengers**
 * Email**
 * YouTube** / TeacherTube

Jo and I will be sharing at the next clustershare. These are some basic ideas we have already of what we would like to share about:

__Wikispaces in Senior and Middle School classrooms__
 * children's access
 * uploading documents
 * use as a learning centre
 * replacing the blog?
 * sharing of work / publishing
 * access to work at home
 * adding in all the whizzy bangy features (voicethread, bubbleshare etc)
 * effective pedagogy
 * links to NZC (principles, values etc)
 * informing parents (as a communication tool in itself once parents know, homework, notices)

I was looking at the reflection form that we need to fill out, and thinking that it could be a good basis to use for some reflections on here. The questions just make good guiding questions.



Also using a PMI for things I've done in the classroom with regards to ICT. Like a PMI on what I'm currently doing for reading, or math, or literacy in the classroom.

I know a HUGE Minus right now - I'm down to one computer! Waaah! That makes it so difficult. But I have ordered more computers for the school, so hopefully I'll be up to three working computers again in a couple of weeks.

Oh, and I'm going to make a new page on this for YouTube videos that I think are just awesome. I already have two that I want to put on the page.

=22/07/08=

Back from the holidays, and I haven't had much time to get into integrating ICT yet. It's only been two days. Also, one of my computers has died, so I'm down to two classroom computers. That's still two better than some people in the school are! I'm going to start up writing straight to the blog during writing time again tomorrow, and during math I want to sign up the rest of the class to [|tutpup.com], a math games site where they can play against people overseas in real time. I've made myself a login and made our class code, so tomorrow I'll cycle them through and create their logins.

I have updated our class wiki with what our topic is this term, and even put up the brainstorm we did together as part of the diagnostic assessment (What do we already know about the Olympics?).

=01/07/08=

I started this wikispace as a sort of journal. I considered using a journal, then figured that I could upload and store more than just words on my wiki, so am using this. I'll be reflecting on my ICT practices in the classroom here. Just to get up to speed - at the start of the year I met with Lynne to go over what my goal would be. It included blogs. This is my action plan.



So, full of enthusiasm, I went off and made a [|blogspot blog] for my class. After seeing a presentation of how someone used a writing blog with their class, I also made a [|writing blog] using the same login. I encountered the first problem when I wanted my children to use the blogs in the classrooms. While they could certainly view them, they couldn't log in and post to them. After some experimentation I found that the teacher login allowed them to do that. So for a few days, while I searched for another way around this, I logged into the computers and the kids blogged. I discovered that this wasn't really allowed, so I stopped that and the kids would type their stories out into a word document and I would transfer it to the blog. This was a slow, cumbersome process and more work than was absolutely necessary.

So last night I looked around for an alternative to blogspot. I was looking for a blog that didn't use https at any point, since that was what was blocked. I came up with several alternatives. I signed my class up for the lot, then got to testing them on the student login in the classroom computers. The alternatives that worked were blog.com ([|our test blog]), thoughts.com ([|our test blog]), and edublogs.org ([|our blog]). I tried wordpress.com but they use https to log in. Grrr. I ended up going with edublogs.org.

In order to sign into our blog (specifically just ours), we visit [|THIS LINK]. The kids have their own username and password for this blog, and can post there from home, too. Hoorah! I tried it out during reading / writing time today, after having taught the whole class how to log in and make a new post, and the three who went on the computers managed without any problems. So awesome! I can start using this during writing time now.

I also migrated all the entries that had gone onto our main blog (where we wrote about things that were going on in the classroom) to our class wiki. I made a login for the students to wikispaces, signed them up to our wiki, and made that page accessible to them. I'm still looking for the setting that means I have to approve any changes. I don't want them to just be able to delete whatever is on that page and save.