week 4

Amazing resources out there... I just have to find them!

Today we were introduced to full learning federation interactives website, which will hopefully provide many links to amazing websites to use in the classroom.

ABC resource - dust echoes website. http://www.abc.net.au/dustechoes/
Good idea to download study guides and videos. I always worry when I find a great website that when I want it next time it won't be available anymore.

Ancient stories, aborginal stories are on this website. Videos of the stories done by aborginal artists, each video also has a study guide which explains the story and his heritage, gives examples of work that can be done within the classroom, as well as worksheets.

I will definately be downloading these resources. They are done very well, amazing detail into the illustrations, stories and study guides. There really is some amazing resources on the internet, it is just making sure I find them and save them before they go. Greg has been very helpful with introducing government sites that have interactive learning section that have obviously had a lot of money spent on them and are definately worth using.

The storyboard activity-
We used Inspiration IE 8.0 again.

• get students to map out the main pictures and ideas in the story.
  
• We used the dush echoes stories in our workshop, however this can do done using any story or event. The children could even do this with their own stories, by taking photos or finding photos on google images to match their stories.
• Students write a sentence to each picture. They can design the storyboard to look however they want.
  
• What is important is the main ideas and themes, getting students to comprehen the story and select the main ideas and main parts to help retell the story. Giving students to freedom to design and create in their own way is also very a special thing that the students learn.
  

My storyboard of the Wagalak Sisters story:

How to make the video into a storyboard in inspiration:

• Get students to watch the video and decide on the main aspects of the story.
• Get students to pause the video on pictures that show this main aspect of the story
• students then use the printscreen function and edit their photo in paint.
  
• saving each picture as a jpeg and export it into inspiration.

This activty is well catered for different ability levels as some students will have very few pics, some will have lots. Some students will write simple short sentences, while others write more indeaapth sentences which give the reader more of an idea what the story is about.
The learning purpose of the activity is to try to get students to use the main aspects of the story.
This is while I like the use of ICT in the classroom, an activity such of this not done on the computers students disengage with quite quickly, however once the task is done on the computer students don't realise the learning purpose and get caught up in the whole production of a piece of work and really put effort into their work.

YouTube in the classroom:
We discussed using Youtube in the classroom. The biggest issue being that within most schools it is blocked. It is totally understandable that the site is blocked, you never know what kind of footage you are opening up when you watch a video. The site is probably also blocked due to amount of download that would be used by a classroom using the site which would definately slow down the schools connection to the internet.

I found a way around this during my first practium. I used a website called save you tube.
http://www.saveyoutube.com/
This site allowed me to copy and paste the url of the video I want to save and then turned it into a video I could save on my usb stick. This was extremely helpful just for the same fact I spoke about earlier, that if you find something that is a really good resource, you don't want to go back later to use it and its no longer there.
I found many pros to saving videos onto my computer or USB stick compared to watching them online.

• don't have to wait for them to download
• if youtube is blocked you can still watch them
• you have them to keep as a resource
• The speed of the video doesn't depend on the internet speed of the day.
  
• you can edit any section you may not want the children to watch.
  

However, we did talk about the ethical and copyright laws that perhaps this isn't the best idea. I always just thought that because the videos were on a website that main purpose was to share the files with everybody all over the world that saving the videos would be fine. I think as long as you use it on your own website or blog, as long as you reference where you got it from it should be fine.

I do like how Craig O'Neil on his blog 'Online Interactivity for Educators: A teachers tour of youtube' believes that you can't let such a popular technology go to waste by not using it. I suppose if you are totally against saving the files, you could ask the techs at the school to provide you with access at certain times, this would solely depend on each school and their internet polices. I find there is always a way around these issues, I know from one of my practiums when the teacher wanted a youtube clip, there are a few backdoors you can you at some schools. One the students actually told us about. I suppose then its your choice if you use that backdoor site, making children aware of these backdoors and that you are using them is another ethical delemma to think about. (www.galazypear.com if anybody was interested - the one major issue with galazy pear is you definately need to stop pop ups, as some adds come up that are probably not the most appropraite to have on a IWB with primary aged students!)

I also like Craig O'Neals idea of getting children to produce their own videos to upload onto youtube. There is no point ignoring youtube, it one of the most popular websites, we need to use and embrace this website. "I think that taking advantage of the excitement this kind of technology brings to our children is a worthwhile endeavor. Children love to produce, and teaching them the skills to make good productions takes advantage of their interest and provides them with a wealth of skills." (Craig O'Neal, http://www.edutopia.org/teachers-tour-you-tube)

M&Ms activity:

http://www.m-ms.com.au/about/products/milkchocolate.html The M&Ms website has the graph shown to the left. Which represents the different colours showed in each pack of M&M's. This could be used as an engaging way to start a lesson of graphing.
To get the children excited and interesting in learning about graphing and different types of graphs (eg. pictograph like the m&m graph shown, bar graph and pie charts) it is a great idea to make the data interesting and relevant to the children.

I remember doing a very similar exercise in maths in Year 7, with a bag of jelly babies. Clearly this lesson worked as years on I still remember this lesson. We were working on probabilty of getting a certain colour. Similar could be done with the m&m's.
M&M's did bring up an issue with a member of our classroom who wasn't keen on purchasing the product as the M&M company does not use free trade chocolate. This is understandable that people would have these points of views and it is something as teachers we will have to gauge with our familes, the class and the school we work within. Socioeconomic status is another issue, if family do not have the spare money to buy such products. If this was the case, as a teacher I think you would buy it either with your own money or take it from one of the school budgets. If chocolate/lollies are banded within the school, Greg gave another good example. Try using starts or confetti from the $2 shop.

With this specific task of graphing the colours of the M&M's in your packet, there is a resource Greg gave us from www.AtoZTeacherStuff.com Which is a M&M's Candy Colour Chart.

Excel --> making tables and charts:

My Graph done in the workshop:
I haven't included the steps of how to make a table or chart in my blog as I am able to produce these without instructions.

To make graphs look fancy and effectively make the graph look better and assist in showing your figures. Use of specific colours and pictures in the background:

• after making the graph/chart - go to format data point.
  
• from this box, you can change the fill, add a picture or a colour to each section.

Different graphs can be shown to the students at this stage, so they can see the difference between effective and ineffective graphs.
Extension work once graphs are complete, students can decorate their information, by using the Internet to add pictures of M&M's to their graph. Practising their searching, copy and paste skills.
More extension for the entire class could be to collaborate all the data they obtained from their own packets. Discuss total number of M&M's, averages of colours and then similar to the M&Ms website work out an average percentage of how your pack colours are distributed. This could then follow onto a probability lesson similar to the lesson I did in Year 7 with jelly babies.