Category: Professional Learning

Del.icio.us Staff Meeting

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Tonight I delivered a staff meeting that introduced the social bookmarking tool del.icio.us. It was really well received by all and I began by explaining that the need for such a tool had been highlighted in responses to subject audits which coordinators had carried our for the SEF (Self Evaluation) and wider school improvement planning.

Del.ici.ous was an obvious solution to the need to have a more structured approach to online resources. I also believe that we will benefit from other school’s similar commitment to the use of social bookmarking. So not only do we get a better system for our own online resources that we know and love, but get to see other school’s take on it too.

So far I have got a handful of schools that have begun using del.icio.us as a whole school resource, and I would really appreciate anymore that you know of so that we can benefit from a greater network of resources.

We are priestsic on del.icio.us 🙂

For the session I produced some simple cards that I laminated and trimmed down so that staff can stick them up close to their school computer. One explained the login details and the other was a simple summary of how you can easily add a new bookmark.

The resources are on a computer at school in MS Word format but I will publish them tomorrow so that you can use them in your own staff meetings etc.

I must just thank David Muir for his excellent Simply del.icio.us guide that I directed my staff towards at the end of the session.

Early Years Classroom Blogs

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I am putting together a list of early years classroom blogs – please help to contribute any you know, doesn’t have to be in the UK just of ages 4-7 :

  • Room One’s Blog – Class blog by year 2/3 students at Mapua School in New Zealand.
  • Interactive Chatting Teddies a collaborative blogging project in Argyll Scotland involving children in P1-3 (ages 4-8 ) and their teddy bears

INSET on Blogging

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Last week I completed my penultimate workshop for this term on classroom blogging. I changed the day to later in the week and had a great turn out, I always like to think of it in terms of the year groups I am reaching with this training and I managed Foundation stage right through to Year 6 so every year group was represented.

I just wanted to raise their awareness of what edublogging is all about – have a look at my class blog as one example and give them some next steps. The response was great and very, very positive – I hope that this continues and is not dampened by Christmas too much. I am still aiming to get more class blogs up and running at school. I am just pleased with the great response!

I now need a list of early years blogs to help exemplifiy to some colleagues- so if anyone has a handy list somewhere, that would be helpful!

Flickr up next – later this week.

ArtRage 2 INSET today

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After school today I delivered some training that introduced ArtRage 2 a paint application from Ambient Design, a New Zealand based software company. The intuitive nature of the software made it a real hit with my colleagues.

Most importantly as a teacher you can clearly demonstrate mixing of colour with paints. The virtual paint behaves just as paint does (but without the mess) I did make a point of explaining that there is obviously a place for using the real thing when demonstrating to a small group or to younger children. I used a large clean paint brush on the SMARTBoard instead of my finger during the training which is a nice little touch.

Well worth a look. ArtRage2