Podcastibg

Kia ora all from a not so hot Christchurh.
I attended a workshop on Podcasting yesterday and found it very useful.
Some benefits of Podcasting:

• Digital Literacy
• Key competencies: relating to others, thinking, participating and contributing.
• Authentic audience
• Oral, written, reading.
• Communication skills
• Critical thinking
• Decision making
• Metacognitive strategies.

Try www.podomatic.com for a hosting site for your podcasts.

Check out some podcasts at www.podcast.net and www.podcastdirectory.com/

ALICE - Interactive Animation/Gaming Software

Alice – is a programming environment that allows students to create animations and simple games. Students control the behaviors of 3D objects and characters in a virtual world. This software is free, user-friendly and suitable for students from 8 +. Download from: http://www.alice.org/This software is great for retelling legends, stories and interactive animations.
Check it out!

WikiSpaces Free Offer for classrooms

Wikispaces is offering their Plus Plan wikis to classoom teachers for free without ads. They have given away over 10,000 educational wikis and now they're taking the next step - They want to give away 100,000 free K-12 Plus wikis. That includes all the features and benefits that normally cost $50/year - for free. No fine print, no usage limits, no advertising, no catches. They have some tickers you can use to track their progress toward 100,000 and spread the word on your blogs and websites. They hope you'll consider helping and of course that you'll take advantage of their offer in your own schools. Information on the program is here: http://www.wikispaces.com/t/x/teachers100K

Try Something Different - Podcasts

Want to give something different a try in your classroom.
What about Podcasting?
Is it relevant to learning in the classroom?

K12 Handheld's podcasting page. It's a great webpage full of clear instructions and web links that will lead you through the podcasting process, as well as providing advice about hardware, recording and editing software, and some podcasting sites.

Blogmeister!!!

This FREE blogging tool is designed explicitly for teachers and students. The teacher can evaluate, comment on, and finally publish students' blog articles in a controlled environment.Check out this for a very cool junior classroom blog created using blogmiester:http://classblogmeister.com/blog.php?blogger_id=1337
Kathy Cassidy is encouraging her year 1 & 2 children to use blogs to enhance her childrens writing. It looks if they love it!

To get started with a classroom blog visit classblogmiester http://classblogmeister.com/ and drop David an email asking for a login.
Ivan
Thanks for this idea by Rochelle Jensen (Rocky)

Te Rangitawaea Festival - Nati Awards

What a fantastic event again this year!!
Congratulations to all of those Ngati Porou East Coast schools who participated, especially Tolaga Bay Area School and Tikitiki School who won the Senior and Junior supreme awards.
Many commented on how well our tamariki are using ICT tools to enhance their learning. They are definately digital natives who have embraced e-learning.
Ka mau te wehi koutou.

WEBoogle

Here is a cool word game to get your students playing online.
It's an interactive game on the old wordbank building idea that was always on a worksheet type format.

Check it out!!! WEBoggle

e-eyes on Tairawhiti

Kia ora koutou

Posts on this blog have not been that regular lately as term 3 is proving to be a very busy month.
Hopefully the following will keep you up to date with what has been happening in our rohe.

• Te Rangitawaea Festival is happening on the East Coast again next Wednesday 13th September. Come and visit during the day at Ngata College to view Ngati Porou schools participating in the annual ICT expo. Powhiri is at 8.30am. During the morning schools will also enter an ICT team challenge that lasts for 3 hours followed by each team presenting their mistery ICT challenge. At 6.00pm it's all LIGHTS - ACTION as we move to Uepohatu Marae for the nights glamour event, the "Nati Awards". Come and see ICT in education with the COAST flavour.
• After School Workshops are still running in Gisborne and Wairoa. If their is a particular topic that you would like included in the last workshop coming up in Gisborne and Wairoa please drop me a line. One suggestion for the Gisborne workshop is to learn some basic skills of PhotoShop, anyone keen?
• Computers in Homes - Gisborne is about to start amongst our 17 primary schools in the Gisborne city area. Riverdale and Waikirikiri will be the first to roll out a cluster of 25 computers each to their school whanau. I have set up a blog to keep Computers in Homes information flowing. http://www.cihgisborne.blogspot.com/