SchoolNet SA - IT's a Great Idea

Why not install and use Tweetdeck for Twitter group chats?

2012-03-11T10:26:00.009-07:00

Last Monday night from 8:30pm – 9:30pm one of our social media in education activitists in South Africa, Arthur Preston, Head at Elkanah House Primary School in Cape Town, introduced a Twitter chat for South African teachers on the #edchatsa hashtag. It was a wonderfully stimulating chat with many teachers from around the country participating. Teachers only got to know about it via Twitter and had a great chat about the topic, “If there was one piece of technology that could change South African education what would it be?” You can log in to Arthur Prestons's blog http://headthoughts.co.za/edchatsa/ to vote for the topic for this coming Monday night. Here is the list of topics:

To be able to participate properly in this type of Twitter chat one needs to use an application like Tweetdeck where you can see a number of columns of Twitter at the same time. So this post is about Tweetdeck. It is a fantastic application to use. Here is a view of my Tweetdeck interface. This illustrates the columns.

Getting started

Search for Tweetdeck on the Internet and download the free application to your desktop (http://www.tweetdeck.com/). It will ask you to set up a Tweetdeck account. One can use the same username and password as one’s Twitter account to simplify matters. Once installed, Tweetdeck looks like you see above arranged in columns. You can now add as many columns as you like.

The columns

The columns work like this.
a) On the very left is your Home section where you receive the tweets of all the people you are following. This is the same as your timeline in Twitter.

b) Next to that you will get your Mentions column where you are notified if anyone retweets one of your tweets or sends you a message.

c) Next is your Inbox which shows the tweets or direct messages you have just sent to others. In fact this default column (Inbox) could be called the Direct Messages column since it records the direct messages that you send or receive. These do not show up in your All Friends/Home column because they are to or from you personally.

d) After that you can add your favourite # columns. I have #edchatsa, #edtechconf, #SAipaded, #ict4champions and #sateachers. That reminds me to mention that your Tweetdeck interface shows five columns but at the top is a little icon – it's a horizontal scrollbar - where you move across to the next lot of columns. I guess you can have as many columns as you like, with five displaying at a time.

To add a column click on the Add column button and write in your choice of # hashtag.

You can move the columns around

To move a column just check on the little wheel on the top right of each column and a box comes up giving you the arrows to move the column left or right.

For the purposes of the #edchatsa on a Monday night I have moved my #edchatsa column right next to my Mentions columns so that I can write easily and receive any @fibeal messages.

How to create and send a message

To create a message click on the little blue pen icon on the top of the interface.

This will open the box to write and send your messages. When the writing box opens write your message making sure it doesn’t exceed 140 characters, and press Tweet.

How to send a direct message to someone

Hover your mouse over the avatar of the person and the word More will appear on the top right. click on More and it will take you to another icon with a little dropdown arrow. Click on that and a box will open that says “Send a direct message”.

How to reply or retweet

Hover your mouse over the avatar of the person and a bar comes up containing an arrow, a group of arrows a star and the word more. The single arrow is for Reply and the group of arrows is for Retweet.

So, why not give Tweetdeck a try?

Why not become a ‘curator’ with Scoop.it and create your own online magazine?

2012-03-02T10:51:00.001-08:00

You have probably heard the word ‘curator’ being bandied around? ‘Curating’ is one of the latest buzzwords and that is what Scoop.it does. (I haven’t yet investigated Paper.li but it could be similar). So, what happens is you join Scoop.it (http://www.scoopit.com) and choose a topic you would like information about.

Scoop.it then crawls the Internet searching for articles based on the keywords you have given to your search topic. You then curate by choosing which articles you would like to use in your magazine, and Scoop.it forms it into an attractive easy-to-read online magazine.

What I LOVE about Scoop.it is that you can also follow topics that interest you. I follow 34 topics that interest me and Scoop.it keeps me informed in much the same way – a magazine type format for me to page through at leisure. Marvelous! When reading a Scoop.it all you do is click on a block and it takes you to the original artecle.

So for example… this is how Scoop.it keeps me informed about the latest on my topics of choice.

In case you would like to know all the steps on how to work with Scoop.it please view my Slideshare.

Come 'Scoop' with me - Fiona Beal

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Please visit e-classroom.co.za - a wonderful South African resource site for R-3 teachers

2012-02-27T01:26:00.003-08:00

Do take a look at our wonderful ‘proudly South-African” site, http://e-classroom.co.za, that provides a delightful array of FREE beautifully created worksheets for our South African teachers. This site, e-Classroom, has reached over 500 000 hits and is the number one “e-classroom” website on Google!

e-Classroom is a portal which provides free support resource material for educators and parents and is aimed at learners in Grades R-3. Their content is very much in line with 21st century learning, and the worksheets are creative and promote motor skills. These cover the subject matters of Maths, English, Science, Health and Nutrition, Life Skills, Art and Craft. This is all open source and provided to users via their website at no cost.

Do take a look around. You’ll see the Foundation Phase CAPS documents have been posted there, and the worksheets are out of this world! These worksheets could save teachers a LOAD of time…something every teacher needs! I am sure the learners will love using them as not only are they beautifully presented, but they are fun to work with.

One of the new sections that I absolutely LOVE is called ‘Learn to draw’. The learners can practise drawing all sorts of animals using these methods. This is found within the ‘Latest Content’ section where you can browse and see what is on offer that might interest you.

Save our elephants petition

I noticed this petition form called ‘Save our elephants’ petition on the website on behalf of the IFAW Animal Action Team, encouraging world leaders to uphold and enforce the ban on ivory trade. That’s a good cause to make known to our learners and be involved in right now.

The site owners say “This initiative is open to all primary schools nationally in South Africa and we welcome constructive feedback participation from educators and parents.” I am sure they would welcome your comments. Let them know what you think.

Make an Internet Start Page for your class using Protopage

2012-02-27T01:15:00.018-08:00

Wondering what an Internet Start Page is? A Start Page is for your classroom Internet use. When students log on to the Internet this page will come up and on it will be links to everything you might want them to use - targetted links, a clock, possibly even a dictionary, notes etc. Let me start off by showing you a sample from the site we will use. This is how it looks before you have modified the page to your liking.

I don't know if you are like I have been when it comes to technology integration? I have all my websites saved in my Diigo bookmarks, and otherwise on files saved on my computer. It was often a mission to pass this on to my students. Recently I read a post by the ever-inspiring Jacqui Murray suggesting an Internet Start Page in passing on her post. This idea really 'jumped out' of the page and I started to explore.

The first thing to do is to open Protopage (http;//www.protopage.com) to reister and name your page. You then give your page a title, and you start deleting all the 'widgets' that are there as placeholders. You'll end up like this.

You can change the background but I haven't explored that aspect yet. From then on you start adding your own widgets by clicking on 'Add widget'. There are a huge amount to choose from, but I found myself choosing mainly 'bookmarks' and one or two others.

You can add as many widgets as you like and make them the size you want as well. You can place them wherever you like on the page. You name them and start adding bookmarks etc. It is such fun! I started to make one to collect Reading and Writing sites for Grade 1 - 6.

Jacqui Murray gives the link to her K-8 page, and it is a source of inspiration to me. Take a look at hers yourself: http://www.protopage.com/smaatech#Untitled/First_grade. If you decide to create an Internet Start Page please share your link with me!

Experimenting with the Slideshare playlist

2012-02-24T15:46:00.007-08:00

I just love all the different features of Slideshare. Last week I explored adding YouTube videos to Slideshare. Today was my day with experimenting with the Slideshare playlist widget. I got the idea from http://web2teachingtools.wikispaces.com/SlideShare. First of all I created my three PowerPoints about creating online forms. I uploaded those to Slideshare:

1) Google forms – so easy to create

This form is definitely my favourite. I can’t believe that Google can give us so many superb programmes FREE. What I especially like about Google forms is that they automatically create their own collection site for you to review the results.

Google forms - so easy to use

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2) Create an Email Me form

Email Me Form

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3) Have you tried Survey Monkey for creating surveys?

Use Survey Monkey to create surveys

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The next step was to upload these to Slideshare. Once that was done I had to make each one a ‘favourite’ by clicking on the presentation to view it and then clicking on ‘Favourites’.Now it was time to experiment with the playlist widget. http://www.slideshare.net/widgets/playlist. This took me to a page where I could arrange it all.

And here is the final result

| Get your SlideShare Playlist

PS The only problem is that if I try to make this playlist Slideshare less wide so that it fits in to the blog using Firefox or Internet Explorer as a browser, it doesn't work!

This idea of a playlist originated from looking at Judi Barrett's playlist where she created a whole series of lessons this way: http://web2teachingtools.wikispaces.com/SlideShare

All Things Google - a collection of tutorial videos embedded on a Slideshare

2012-02-19T05:04:00.002-08:00

I absolutely LOVE this feature of Slideshare where you can embed YouTube videos within Slideshare instead of having a string of them on your blog page. Well, today I got rather ambitious and thought I would gather a collection of the Google tutorials I have been learning from recently...12 videos... to see if adding a large amount of videos would work. It seems that it does work. Well, it was a lengthy affair because I first got all the urls incorrect. You have to use the url that shows under the video after clicking on 'Share'. Two of the videos would just not take! So, instead of redoing the whole thing and replacing my Slideshare, I thought that I would post it for now...and return to the problem on another occasion.
All things Google - a collection of tutorials

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Application for teaching

1. You could have your lesson planned and outlined on Slideshare and as you go through it your video clips and even your Screencasts if it was a technology linked lesson could be right there. If this was placed on your classroom blog the students could access it that evening to review.
2. Slideshare has another feature which I am going to try next where you can use a widget and include a whole lot of lessons you have created using videos and Slideshare presentations; and can link them in a playlist down the side. Here is an image of this done by Judi Barrett (after which I will give the link to the real thing).

You can see what I mean by viewing the real thing at: http://web2teachingtools.wikispaces.com/SlideShare

Classroom Innovation - is your classroom like this?

2012-02-19T02:38:00.001-08:00

The prestigious Google Academy for 2012 is coming up in London in April and applications had to be in last week. Applicants were given a choice of two topics for creating a video to accompany their online application form, 'Classroom Innovation' and 'Learning and Motivation'. I came across Martin Burnett's video on Classroom Innovation today - just love it. Don't we all want classrooms like this? By the way, Martin Burnett was the winner of the Best Educational Wiki for 2011 http://ictmagic.wikispaces.com/. It is REALLY worth taking a look at his wiki.

3000 visitors to our SchoolNet blog. Yay!

2012-02-19T02:19:00.008-08:00

3000 visitors to our SchoolNet blog. Yay!

doctor reviews

Webinar of past winners shows the creative ideas teachers come up with to enter Microsoft’s Partners in Learning Forum

2012-02-13T04:41:00.001-08:00

At the moment we are having a series of nine webinars featuring past finalists and winners in Microst’s Partners in Learning Forum (formerly called the Innovative Teacher competition) I have thoroughly enjoyed hosting and listening to these twice a week as it shows me that we have some very creative teachers in our midst. I have also had the tasks of converting these webinars to YouTube videos and podcasts which makes for easier viewing

Today I am going to feature the webinar presented by Helen Robertson, Wessel Theron, Ryan Galving and Sarietjie Musgrave . After the little write ups about the projects I will add the vdieos and podcasts. If you are a South African teacher please considering entering this great competition. Some of these presenters travelled up to Joburg for the South African Finals, then went off to Jordan for the African and Middle east finals. Some even got to the World Finals in Washington DC. What a year of travel in 2011!

Helen Robertson who was teaching at Cornwall Hill College in Pretoria at the time

Helen’s project was called Functions for Technologically Functioning Teens. In the webinar she renamed it ‘It all started with a cell phone’. Getting learners to plot and analyse functions is a tricky part of the grade 10 Mathematics curriculum. To address this, learners used a cell phone app to plot the functions whilst they focused on the more important skill of analysing the effects of changing the variables. Support structures, including contacting their teacher using Whatsapp and asking questions of the “Functions for Technologically Functioning Teens” Facebook group, encouraged independent learning.

^{Wessel Theron from Bishops Diocesan College in Cape Town}

Wessel called his project ‘School of Rock’. To create interest and excitement in additional language lessons, this project involved learners searching for their own Afrikaans song and then creating a music video for it that is shared on YouTube. Grade 8s had to work in pairs to match images to the lyrics of the song. They also had the option of translating a song and singing it themselves. This was a perfect opportunity to be creative using ICTs, improve Afrikaans comprehension and vocabulary, and be entertained while learning.

Ryan Galvin from St Nicholas in Pietermaritzburg

Ryan called his project R and J in R and B which is short for Romeo and Juliet in Rhythm and Blues. In an attempt to persuade his grade ten class that the story of Romeo and Juliet is relevant to any time, this teacher offered learners the opportunity to re-tell the story and revise the play. Learners made use of MP3s on their cellphones, iPods, YouTube, Twitter, digital cameras and videos. The final task was creating a MovieMaker slideshow, using the music, tweets and photos they had gathered.

^{Sarietjie Musgrave who was teaching at Eunice High School in Bloemfontein at the time.}

She did a hugely successful project called ‘Spread the sunshine’ and did South Africa proud by achieving a second place in the world finals with this project! Her students each found students with disabilities in the community to link with and created ICT programmes to help them.

Here are their YouTube presentations neatly tucked into this Slideshare presentation. Their podcasts will appear below.

Past PIL winners in South Africa Part 3 - webinars

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Helen Robertson - It all started with a cell phone (mp3)

Wessel Theron - School of Rock (mp3)

Ryan Galvin - R&J in R&B (mp3)

Sarietjie Musgrave - Spread the Sunshine (mp3)

Join our webinar session of past winners at 5pm today!

2012-02-09T05:02:00.001-08:00

This afternoon we have another webinar of three past finalists or winners in the South African Partners in Learning forum. Please log in as a guest and join us if you can: http://meet78641452.adobeconnect.com/previouswinners4/

Ngaka Ralekoala from Bloemfontein
We have Ngaka Ralekoala who worked in a team of four in a project about vulnerable children. In this project learners from participating schools received training in ethics and research methodology and then conducted research in their local community to determine the needs of vulnerable children. Through this project, learners have been given the opportunity to collaborate with other schools, the University of the Free State as well as experts in the field of Social Action research from the De Montford University in the United Kingdom via the Internet.

Charli Wiggil from Eden College in Durban

We also have Charli Wiggil from Durban who did a project around the world cup in South Africa called ‘Tweenzites’. In this grade 10 Life Orientation project involved learners identifying a contemporary problem in their community and exploring it using various technological tools (Intel Thinking with Technology, GPRS, cell phones, Microsoft Office Applications etc). Learners were then challenged to devise strategies to address the problem that they identified and these were presented to local community and government leaders, community members, educators and learners from other schools. It is hoped that the municipality might implement some of the suggestions through their Department Planning Programme. One of the groups developed a DVD to be used in Life Skills by other schools.

Glen Williams from Sunridge Primary in Port Elizabeth

The third teacher is Glen Williams who did a project which he calls ‘Silent Morals’ around a particular IT programme called Scratch.Glen says " Well , my grade 6 learners had to USE what they learnt in basic programming, EXPLORE, and CREATE an ANIMATED SILENT MOVIE which DEPICTS a MORAL VALUE or LESSON.You will see that I start AND end this presentation with the word FUN, because I believe that education must be ENGAGING in a FUN way. Projects allow learners the FREEDOM to EXPERIMENT with what they already learnt in a STRUCTURED way AND forces them to EXPLORE things which they haven’t learnt yet, without RELYING on a teacher."

This all makes for some interesting listening this evening. If you can’t make it the recording will be placed on the wiki tomorrow. (http://partnersinlearningforum-sa.wikispaces.com/View+webinar+recordings) But please join us if you can this evening at 5pm:
http://meet78641452.adobeconnect.com/previouswinners4/

Well, five 'o clock has now been and gone and the webinar is over. Here is a Slideshare with embedded YouTube videos showing the webinars of these three finalists. Take a watch and a listen if you have the time.

Part 4 - Past PIL winners' webinars in South Africa

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Otherwise, listen to their podcasts instead

Ngaka Ralekoala - Children who care (mp3)

Charli Wiggil - Tweenzite (mp3)

Glen Williams - Silent Morals (mp3)

What are YOU doing about the Partners in Learning Forum this year?

2012-02-08T14:33:00.000-08:00

Can you feel the excitement in the air? it's time to be preparing for Microsoft's Partners in Learning Forum. This is an exciting competition that used to be called the Innovative Teacher competition. There are some superb prizes available, and it is really worth giving it your best shot. The competition involves taking something you are doing in class and adding technology to it.

If you are successful you could be in for a year that involves travel and adventure! If you haven't started a project yet and you are still floundering for ideas, well, I have prepared a Slideshare to help you. Just remember that entries have to be uploaded by 12 March 2102. For more information please look at the wiki we have created to guide you through the days until closing date - http://partnersinlearningforum-sa.wikispaces. You can still sign up so that we can take a special interest in you.

Here is the Slideshare:

Get started on a project for the Partners in Learning Forum

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So, what are YOU doing about the Partners in Learning Forum this year?

SchoolNet's webinar and podcast programme now in full force

2012-02-06T16:19:00.001-08:00

This is the time of the year where SchoolNet and Microsoft combine to prepare interested South African teachers for the upcoming Partners in Learning Forum. This competition used to be known as the Innovative Teacher's Forum. There are amazing prizes up for grabs for successful teachers, the most valued being a week long trip to participate in the Pan African and Middle East Finals in Morroco, and/or a week long trip to participate in the World Finals in Greece, for successful teachers. This year SchoolNet is running an online support course from a wiki (http://partnersinlearningforum-sa) to prepare teachers. We are also running, alongside this, a webinar and podcast programme of past winners sharing their successes.

Past finalists and winners group 1

These three past finalists and winners shared their projects in the same webinar

Lyneth Crighton from Brescia House in Johannesburg
Lyneth Crighton is from Brescia College in Johannesburg. She ran a workshop in which Grade 10 learners explored the novel “Cry the beloved Country” using Web 2.0 collaborative tools. The girls collaborated on a wiki, participated in an online discussion forum, created a pod-cast and developed a word cloud. Colleagues across learning areas got involved in the workshop to show that the themes in the novel were applicable to a range of learning areas.Lyneth was a winner in the South African Finals, and they went on to represent South Africa at the Middle East and Africa Finals in Jordan. She won again and were able to participate in the World Finals in Washington DC.

Louise Clark from St Cyprians in Cape Town
Louise Clarke and Kim Jackson are both Grade 4 teachers at St Cyprian's School in Cape Town. Their combined project for Grade four learners involved reading the first chapter of book called ‘The Phantom Tollbooth’ and predicting what adventures the main character would have in “The Lands Beyond”. Learners produced artwork and scripts describing what they thought would take place and they then narrated their predictions using Windows Movie Maker. This project only used free software – and its true success was in the way it promoted collaboration and creativity amongst young learners. Louse and Kim were winners in the South African Finals, and they went on to represent South Africa at the Middle East and Africa Finals in Jordan. They won again and were able to participate in the World Finals in Washington DC.

Add caption

Natalie Meerholtz from Holy Rosary in Johannesburg
Natalie Meerholz is from Holy Rosary School in Johannesburg. Natalie and her Grade 6 learners aimed to encourage the school and surrounding community to address the issue of e-waste. Activities included creating e-posters and e-advertisements; reusing e-waste in the form of sculptures; and holding an e-waste launch. An e-waste bin has been set up to encourage responsible e-waste disposal and recycling. Natalie was a winner in the South African Finals, and she went on to represent South Africa at the Middle East and Africa Finals in Jordan. She achieved a winning place and was able to participate in the World Finals in Washington DC.

Watch and listen to their presentations

Here is a Slideshare containing the webinar presentations of the first three past finalists who shared their stories recently. These webinars were converted into YouTube videos. Slideshare now has an amazing feature where you can insert a YouTube video after a slide! Take a look!

Past winners 1

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Listen to their podcasts

Natalie Merholtz (mp3)

Louise Clarke (mp3)

Lyneth Crighton (mp3)
South African teachers - we encourage you to participate - this year could be the adventure of your life!

Quick file-sharing is so easy with Skype

2012-02-01T04:18:00.000-08:00

Have you ever been in a situation when you are at a friend's house, you both have your laptops and you both want to share large documents that are too big for email with one another QUICKLY. Your dropbox is full and you don't have a flashdrive with you! So what do you do? One of the quickest solutions is to try file-sharing with Skype. I discovered this recently when I was in just that predicament. File-sharing with Skype is so quick and easy that I am DEFINITELY going to make a lot more use of it.

Here are the steps.

File sharing with Skype

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How to send emails using Microsoft Word and Mail Merge

2012-01-30T12:42:00.000-08:00

There are times when I need to send out the same emails to a whole lot of people, and after trying one method after another I decided it was time to teach myself Mail Merge. I took screenshots of my journey which I will now share with you in case you want to do something similar. What a timesaver it has proved to be! Now why didn't I think of this a whole lot earlier!

Create emails using mail merge

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Create a blogging culture in your English classroom

2012-01-23T01:59:00.000-08:00

Recently I created a Slideshare called ‘Your blog can be a fantastic teaching tool’ and I wrote from the standpoint of the teacher using a blog to teach. I posted this in an earlier blog post. Here it is just as a reminder.

A blog can be a fantastic teaching tool

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Today’s post examines how a blog can be very beneficial to the students in a classroom, and in this case, an English classroom.

Create a blog for yourself and for your students

One of the best ways to start transforming your classroom is to first create your own blog and then let the students create theirs. Link their blogs to yours by using a blog roll. Look at the example from Mrs Albanese's class. Here is the perfect example of the students blogs listed down the side. This is very important because often you want the students to comment on each other’s postings and this way is easy because they simply visit your blog and easily find the rest of the students' blogs.
http://mrsalbanese.edublogs.org

Which blogging platform?

Naturally you want to use platform that is safe, economical, spacious and attractive.There are many options but I will just mention four.

Edublogs
Now that Edublogs no longer has advertising on it it is a much better proposition to use. Edublogs provides a very small amount of storage space, so I pay for extra space yearly. You can then create student blogs yourself using something called the gmail hack, so that you have access to passwords. (The Edublogger is a great site with plenty of tips and tricks on how to do things like that) The only problem is that Edublogs doesn’t allow much space on their free blogs for the learners. But it would probably do for a year of work.
http://bellbulldogreaders.edublogs.org/

Blogger
I particularly love using Blogger for myself because it gives loads of free space and has a nice feel and touch. The templates are also very attractive. However, it is often felt to be unsuitable for students because of “the next blog” icon at the top.
http://mediaspecialistsguide.blogspot.com/

Posterous
Some people rave about using Posterous blogs for collaborative projects. The reason for this is that you can send an email from anywhere to your posterous blog. It then becomes a draft ready for you to edit and publish. To get details for this look at: http://www.howtogeek.com/howto/28413/blog-from-anywhere-instantly-with-posterous/ (I have since discovered that you can also post to your blog using Blogger.) Here is an example of a posterous blog used for a global collaborative project.
http://kstadler.posterous.com/

Kidblogs
There has been a lot of talk about Kidblogs being a safe and simple platform. The Kidblog ‘About page’ says “Kidblog allows teachers to monitor and control all publishing activity within the classroom blogging community.” I haven’t personally used Kidblog, but it is supposedly really easy for creating a class blog and blogs for your students. Here is a post that tells more about the pros and cons of using Kidblog: http://blogallaboutit.edublogs.org/2010/04/23/kidblog-an-easier-alternative-to-blogging-with-elementary-students/

Here is an example of a kidlog
http://kidblog.org/MrsKolbertsClass2011

Well, whatever platform you use, just do it!

Can a blog really benefit an English class?

A blog can benefit any class...any subject. But today I am going to focus on English. I was quite inspired by a post I read recently on an English Teacher's blog (http://shelleywright.wordpress.com/2011/12/13/life-in-an-inquiry-driven-technology-embedded-connected-classroom-english/) - and this caused me to think about writing this post.

Well, I am sure you have plenty of ideas of what you can do with a blog in an English class. I will add ideas to these further along in this post. It is certainly a fantastic way to get your students writing. To start off take a look at Mr Miller’s blog and see how he uses his blog for his English lessons. I like the way he also has a wiki to support the blog. In my thinking the two go together…
http://millersenglish10.blogspot.com

Notice how the teachers in these blogs give regular detailed instructions to their students.
http://student.sheboyganfalls.k12.wi.us/kajohnson/ (her Grade 9 class)
http://msjohnson12.anewecology.com/ (Her Grade 12 class)
http://hoodsenglish.blogspot.com/

This teacher directs her students to using web tools.
http://thelamppost.ca/

What activities can you do on a blog in an English class?

As you know English has four main strands – reading, writing, language and listening and speaking. These can be beautifully incorporated into blogging.

1. Let your learners answer questions and respond to prompts online. You could set a question on your blog and the learners can answer the question in your comment box. Notice how The Hawks Talk does this. http://stgeorgesenglish.com They can then extend the conversation by answering your next question or prompt and then post comments on each others blogs.

2. For literature lessons, invite an author to post on your blog and let the learners comment on this post. This is a great way to have book discussions online. You could even try and organise a Skype interview with the author and let the slearners summarise this afterwards. There must be plenty of examples of Skype chats with authors, but here is a post about one with Scientist.
http://techblog.stcyprians.net/index/skype-chats-with-scientists-by-ms-n-wallace

3. The learners identify and discuss the major points of a book, article, speech etc.

4. The learners write good book summaries and assess others summaries using a rubric.
http://lhsblog.edublogs.org/

5. Let the learners post reviews of movies, books, concerts, games etc regularly.

6. Use a blog to archive daily class notes. You (or someone in the class) could post summaries on to your class blog. This will be helpful to students who may be absent.

7. For listening and speaking activities learners could use a MP3 player, read into it and then post it on the blog. They could concentrate on voice modulation, inflection, and tempo. The learners could then listen to each others’ speaking activities. You can virtually put anything on a blog. There’s a programme called embedit.in which gives anything the necessary HTML code which is necessary if you wish to include it on a blog or wiki

8. The learners could make presentations on different things and then embed their presentations on webpages. My Slideshare above mentions how useful Box.net is for this.

9. They could learn about language conventions and then practise using the example on your blog. You could post weekly exercises for them to do. The following is an old blog but it gives some ideas like this.

http://hargraves12.wordpress.com
You could take this further and ask them to make podcasts and even slideshows of difficult conventions.

10. As they read a novel prescribe blog prompts for them to respond to.

11. They could paraphrase sections that you post on the blog.

12. You could teach the learners the structure of workplace documents and let them analyse them in terms of heading, font, pictures and readability etc. They could make suggestions on how to improve them.

13. When starting a new theme create a “KWL chart” on your blog. Have students blog about what they know, what they want to know, and eventually what they have learned. Students will be able to see other posts and scaffold their learning off the responses of others. As the educator, you can quickly assess, focus, and possibly redirect your unit to meet the specific needs of your students.http://teachinghistory.org/system/files/KWL+Chart+with+Knowledge+Questions.pdf

14. You could link documents to a folder in Box.net (also a free programme). Notice how Mrs Lesniak does this. http://lesniakenglish.blogspot.com/

15. On your blog you could communicate with parents about classroom news, policies and events. You could publish commendable student work, writing, photos, video etc.
http://bgenglish.blogspot.com/

16. You could use your blog as a place to reflect as well.
http://jimburke.typepad.com/
http://mtnbrookseniors.blogspot.com/

17. Your blog could be a blog of ideas for English teaching.
http://catlintucker.com/

18. The learners can write journal entries, essays and poems in their blogs. They could also write book reviews
http://josephr4.edublogs.org/2010/07/19/my-report

Further down in the same blog – he relates his book review.

Here are another two posts that give a lot of ideas about book reviews.

http://mrschureads.blogspot.com/ http://theapple.monster.com/benefits/articles/8529-10-technology-enhanced-alternatives-to-book-reports

19. Illustrate to the students how they can use technology on their blogs. You can do this by using screencasts on your blog or just be blog posts.
http://shelleywright.wordpress.com/

20. Post homework in your blog. http://student.sheboyganfalls.k12.wi.us/aeharter/

21. I love the way this teacher posts lesson ideas in his English blog
http://tefltecher.wordpress.com/

22. One teacher I know of got her class to write a novel on a blog. This was eventually published.
http://5bwrites.blogspot.com/

23. They could create book trailers for their blogs.
http://www.booktrailersforreaders.com/Home+Student+Book+Trailers

Literature blogs
http://www.thebookchook.com/
http://www.zencollegelife.com/50-best-childrens-literature-blogs/
http://www.webenglishteacher.com/litcircles.html
http://teachwithpicturebooks.blogspot.com/
http://msdegenhardt.com/ (I like this teacher’s collage of books in her header)

24. Don’t forget about using a fake facebook page (template in Google Docs) which could be then embeeded into the blog. This teacher created a fantastic template last year in Google docs that he is willing to share.
http://www.teachthecloud.com/2011/02/historical-facebook-tutorial.html

Other useful links

http://supportblogging.com/Links+to+School+Bloggers
http://student.sheboyganfalls.k12.wi.us/dehogue/
http://englishwithlaura2.blogspot.com/
http://englishwithlaura4.blogspot.com/
http://englishteachinglab.blogspot.com/
http://www.huffenglish.com/

A great source of ideas for English teachers

And to end off this post here is a fantastic Ning for English teachers which will undoubtedly have plenty of resources and ideas.
http://englishcompanion.ning.com/

A recap. of our South African teachers' involvement in the Microsoft Partners in Learning Forum in 2011

2012-01-18T10:02:00.000-08:00

Since the Partners in Learning Forum (formerly known as the Innovative Teachers’ Forum) has opened its 2012 competition and we at SchoolNet are encouraging all teachers to participate in our free online support group http://partnersinlearningforum-sa.wikispaces.com/Sign+up+for+this+course (so that we can support you with your entry), I thought I would write and tell you something about our participants last year.

Face-to-face Courses in 2011 and 2012

SchoolNet hosted a number of free face-to-face courses for this competition around the country in 2011 so that teachers could find out more about the requirements of the competition. We are doing the same this year and if you want to be included in one and you have heard nothing about them to date please contact almah@schoolnet.org.za to find out more.

New this year – an Innovative Online Support Course!

This year we are also including a free online support course with daily posts which you can follow at at your own pace. It will include two (optional) webinars a week where you can find out about past finalists and winners and hear what they did. If you miss the webinars they will be recorded and you will get access to the link to listen at leisure. "Where will this link be posted?" I can hear you asking. Well, the course will be run from a wiki and if you sign up we will take an extra special interest in you all the way to the final date for entries! The place to sign up is:
http://partnersinlearningforum-sa.wikispaces.com/Sign+up+for+this+course

Last year’s entrants

So let me tell you about last year’s entrants. Quite a number uploaded their PowerPoint entries (don’t worry, we’ll guide you through all this) by the required date and 22 were chosen because they offered something that was considered innovative for their schools. Those 22 people were elated when they heard of their success especially as they were to be whisked off to Johannesburg to the South African Finals to present their projects to the judges. They stayed in excellent five star accommodation, and for once in their lives teachers were treated like royalty! They also experienced some really innovative workshops and were sponsored to attend the ICT in the Classroom Conference which SchoolNet hosted last year. The winners received their accolades on the last night of the Conference amidst the cheering of the large crowd of educators from around the country.

They had a ball! Did you think that innovative teacher finalists could be so crazy? Look at this!

In the next video (created by Lisa Gair who was a finalist), you can see them riding trolleys down the ramp at the Oliver Thambo Airport in Johannesburg on the way home, excited and happy after an AMAZING week!

The South African winners

The winners were:

§ Louise Clarke and Kim Jackson of St Cyprians College in Cape Town for their class project “Tollbooth Movie Maker”;
§ Natalie Meerholz of Holy Rosary School in Edenvale for her class project “E-Waste Away”;
§ Lyneth Crighton of Brescia House in Bryanston for her class project “DigiGirlz puzzle IT out”;
§ Wessel Theron of Bishops Diocesan College in Cape Town for his class project “School of Rock”;
§ Ryan Galvin of St Nicholas Diocesan School in Pietermaritzburg for his class project “R and J in R and B”.

Unfortunately we don’t have a photo of the five winners all together, but here is Louise Clarke the overall winner (along with Kim her Grade 4 colleague who was in England at the time) receiving her award and prize.

The Jordan finals

The next round of the competition for the five winners was to attend the Middle East and Africa Finals in Jordan in September 2011. I have written a blog post about this if you would like to find out more. Once again it was loads of fun and Microsoft provided the most stunning accommodation. http://schoolnetsa.blogspot.com/2011/09/snippets-from-partners-in-learning.html

The South African and Lesotho winners at this event were:

§Louise Clarke and Kim Jackson from St Cyprians College in Cape Town won the 'Collaboration' category for their Grade 4 class project 'Tollbooth Movie Maker'.
§Lyneth Crighton from Brescia House in Bryanston won the 'Cutting Edge' award for her class project 'DigiGirlz puzzle IT out'.
§Natalie Meerholz of Holy Rosary School in Edenvale came 3rd in the ‘Beyond the Classroom’ award for her class project 'E-Waste Away'.
§Malatela Monaheng from Lesotho came 2nd in the 'Challenging Contexts' category. §Wessel Theron from Bishops and Thejani Malakane from Lesotho were part of the group that won the 'group project' award in Jordan, which meant the whole group could compete in Washington.

Malatela Monaheng and Wessel Theron (Thejane is seen below)

The World Finals in Washington in November

The winners from this event went on to the World Finals in Washington in November. Here they are in Washington:


Some of the group with the Whitehouse in the background

Natalie at her project stand

Kim and Louise at their project stand

Wessel and Thejane with their winning group from Jordan

Lyneth at her project stand

Lyneth Crighton was also interveiwed by the Global Forum team and found herself being featured on YouTube

This is what Natalie Meerholtz said about the event in Facebook, “Awesome closing gala dinner in Washington DC. No SA awards. The Yanks cleaned up on innovative gaming projects! There should have been a category for most spirited country - no doubt South Africa!”

The final Gala dinner when the Awards were announced

What this means for you!

Please consider entering a project this year. You just never know what can happen!
Projects have to be uploaded by March 15th and the Awards will be handed out at the Basic Education conference in Durban in April. The winners will go on the Middle East and Africa forum in Morocco, and the winners from that occasion will participate in the Global Forum in Athens, Greece. All expenses are paid by Microsoft each step of the way.

Don’t know where to start? Sign up for our free online support course so that we can take you through the steps and encourage you during the next 8 weeks. http://partnersinlearningforum-sa.wikispaces.com/Sign+up+for+this+course

Look at this interactive heart!

2012-01-15T03:28:00.000-08:00

The internet is full of amazing animations and infographics that can really aid our visual learners. I love this explanation of how the heart works which is found at http://www.explania.com/en/channels/health/detail/the-human-heart

Explore the embedded infographic below

This interactive infographic explains the anatomy and function of the human heart. Follow the instructions on the inforgraphic and use it to see how the blood flows through the different chambers and valves. Visualize the blood flow inside the heart using using the scroll bar provided on the infographic.

The Human Heart - Explania

Classroom application

This could be a very useful supplement resource for a Life Sciences teacher. More examples of animations and videos can be found at:

The Medical animation library: http://www.pennmedicine.org/health_info/animationplayer/
Interactive Biology: http://www.interactive-biology.com/
Interactive Biology on YouTube: http://www.youtube.com/user/InteractiveBiology

Microsoft announces the Partners in Learning South African Forum 2012

2012-01-13T10:19:00.000-08:00

Calling all South African teachers who are using technology in engaging ways. Entries are now open for the Microsoft Partners in Learning South African Forum 2012.

Share your innovative lesson or project that uses ICT and you could win a trip to Morocco to attend the Middle East Africa Forum and from there, possibly the Global Forum in Athens, Greece.

What do teachers need to do to enter the Microsoft Partners in Learning Forum?

Teachers need to have run a project or lesson that uses ICT in a creative and engaging way. Teachers then need to complete the PowerPoint entry template describing their project or lesson. This entry then needs to be uploaded to the Partners in Learning Network by Monday 12 March: http://africa.partnersinlearningnetwork.com/communities/f3a5865473b842f7b690ed9f47217405/Pages/default.aspx . To download the entry template please visit http://www.schoolnet.org.za/itf

Face to face workshops

To find out about face to face Microsoft Innovation Workshops that will be taking place in February 2012 call Almah at SchoolNet on 011 403 5777 or email almah@schoolnet.org.za.

Sign up for the online course

To find out about the Online Innovation Course which will be run by Fiona Beal from 16 January 2012 email fiona@schoolnet.org.za or sign up on the wiki http://partnersinlearningforum-sa.wikispaces.com/Sign+up+for+this+course

Summary of important links

To sign up for the online course go to:
http://partnersinlearningforum-sa.wikispaces.com/Sign+up+for+this+course

Visit the "South African Microsoft Partners in Learning Forum" on the Partners in Learning Network at http://africa.partnersinlearningnetwork.com/communities/f3a5865473b842f7b690ed9f47217405/Pages/default.aspx
For further information visit http://www.schoolnet.org.za/itf/

Read more about the forum

Read more about the Partners in Learning Forum, last years's winners, and the fantastic prizes on offer in this Youblisher.com flipbook below (just click on the writing to enlarge the pages):

12 more places to find reading material for Foundation Phase learners

2012-01-12T23:47:00.000-08:00

The Internet is a goldmine for reading materials. Earlier this week I wrote a post highlighting 12 websites that provide great reading material for young learners. (http://schoolnetsa.blogspot.com/2012/01/bring-technology-into-your-foundation.html). These sites could be very useful to link to with the new CAPS curriculum being implemented in South Africa for Grades 1 – 3 this year since there is a big emphasis on reading.

In this post I list ANOTHER 12 sites that can be used to encourage reading in our young learners.

1. Pinky Dinky Doo podcasts

http://www.pinkydinkydoo.com/podcasts.html
This site is presented by Sesameworkshop. It consists of downloadable podcasts.

2. Nursery rhymes
http://ngfl.northumberland.gov.uk/Foundation/nurseryrhymes/rhymes_set1.swf

3. Free kids books
http://freekidsbooks.org/

Here you will find loads and loads of PDFs to download.

4. Storytime for Me
http://storytimeforme.com/series

This site has plenty of free online stories anda large selection of talking kids stories. The only problem is that the site is overloaded with adverts, so watch where you click.

5. Mighty Books
http://www.mightybook.com/

This site provides plenty of animated storybooks and songs.

6. Steve Barracks Best Children’s Books
http://www.best-childrens-books.com/free-childrens-books.html

There is plenty of reading material available at this site.
.

7. Little Squirts Books for free
http://www.kidsbooksfree.com/

These are books written and illustrated by Mark Griffin

8. Storynory books
http://storynory.com/

These are free audio stories for kids.

9. The International Children’s Digital Library
http://en.childrenslibrary.org/

The ICDL Foundation's goal is to build a collection of books that represents outstanding historical and contemporary books from throughout the world.

10. Kids’ English Books.com
http://www.kidsenglishbooks.com/

This is a collection of free printable books with matching audio.

11. Light up your brain
http://lightupyourbrain.com/stories/

This is a selection of free audio stories for children.

12. We Read for Kids
http://www.weread.org/kids/index.php

Many of the links above are mentioned on this site. It is an incredible site that not only gives links to a number of places where you can find free children's books, but also also provides a multitude of good reading tips for teaching reading to children…plus all sorts of information about reading.

Application for the classroom

This last site in particular is worth dipping into. It gives some great tips for reading sessions and also had a page of reading games that one can play to stimulate an interest in words.

2012-01-12T22:47:00.000-08:00

We have just reached our 2000 mark. Yay!

ISTE-NASA Education Project Application Deadline, January 15

2012-01-12T07:24:00.000-08:00

ISTE and NASA are collaborating to provide a great project for Middle and High School teachers who are enthusiastic about SPACE. The selected teachers will work together in groups to produce educational materials for teachers and students about the Earth’s magnetosphere. The final projects stand a chance to be featured at the ISTE 2012 annual conference and exposition, and may also be selected for publication on the NASA website.

Are you a Middle or High School teacher that fits these requirements? Here is a great project opportunity for you. Hurry! Hurry! Hurry! Here is more information:

Get ready for World Maths Day!

2012-01-10T13:06:00.000-08:00

This is a guest post written by Lisa G who is an ITC teacher in Cape Town. Lisa was a Microsoft Innovative finalist in South Africa in 2011 and she keeps an interesting ITC blog http://icteducator.blogspot.com/. I saw this post on her blog this week and asked her if I could use it as a guest post. Last year I wanted to participate in World Maths Day but didn’t get registered in time. So, don’t be like me…prepare well in advance. You’ll need to start now!

World Maths Day is coming up on 7 March 2012. Have you considered participating?

As a school we have taken part and it was a great experience for everyone. Its really simple. All you need to do is get permission from parents, register the children, and then follow the instructions that are very clearly laid out on their website.

It looks from the Pre-registration that one now signs up for World Spelling/Maths/Science Day. Even better!

I registered the children who wanted to take part, and then each day from the time that "practice" begins, they can come in and get used to how the whole event works. I do this so that it is not a surprise when they get to the timed event - they are confident and ready for action! What I also enjoy about this, is that they can log on at home and continue to practice or compete after school in their own time.

The best was listening to their excited shrieks of "I'm playing against Japan!" or "I am playing against India!" or "I am playing against someone in Australia!" Suddenly the world was bigger than our ICT Lab and we embraced every moment of it! We got a report back on how each child did and how we achieved as a school.

I am really looking forward to registering our learners for these events again this year. Why don't you?

Wishing all a wonderfully educational 2012!

Bring technology into your Foundation Phase Reading lessons

2012-01-09T14:08:00.000-08:00

Here in South Africa the 2012 year has started and the Foundation Phase (Grades R-3) has started implementing the new CAPS curriculum. I thought this would be a great opportunity to draw your attention to 12 websites that have great reading material for your young learners.

1. Storyline Online
http://www.storylineonline.net/

This site is presented by the Screen Actors Guild Foundation. This is an online video programme with their members reading stories aloud. Each story has some activity suggestions plus a further Activity Guide download with some superb activities and ideas on it.

2. The Tale of Peter Rabbit
http://www.rif.org/assets/interactive/peter_rabbit.html

This is Beatrix Potter’s famous tale beautifully retold using the original drawings and showing the words so that the learners can read along.

3. Speakaboos
http://www.speakaboos.com/stories

4. Riffs Reading Planet
http://www.rif.org/kids/readingplanet/bookzone/read_aloud_stories.htm

5. Topmarks
http://topmarks.co.uk/EducationalGames.aspx?cat=37

6. Meegenius e-books for kids
http://www.meegenius.com/store/books/free/

7. AOL Kids
http://kids.aol.com/KOL/2/koljrstories/archive/animal-stories

8. PBS Kids
http://pbskids.org/lions/stories/

9. Read to me
http://www.readtomelv.com/current-books/

10. National Geographic Young Explorer
http://www.nationalgeographic.com/ngyoungexplorer/moreissues.html

11. Starfall
http://www.starfall.com/

12. Short stories
http://www.eastoftheweb.com/short-stories/childrenindex.html

Classroom application
Perhaps you don’t have the facilities to make use of these in your classroom – but have you ever considered creating a classroom blog? You could then list these websites on the blog so that parents can make use of them at home.

A fantastic way of integrating technology into your Social Sciences curriculum

2012-01-05T23:04:00.000-08:00

Recently I have taken interest in integration the curriculum with Social Sciences so I started doing a websearch. Its amazing what treasures you come across when you do that. After looking through and bookmarking an enormous amount of sites including the Edublogs 2011 winner sites, I came across a social studies Ning site that had won one of the Edublogs awards.

http://sschat.ning.com/

After looking around the Ning I came across a family, the van Soyes, who will be taking a 400-day around-the-world journey to raise geo-literacy in K-12 students. They will be publishing emails, photos and video from 50 counties and 6 continents. Wow, they already have an enormous collection of amazing stuff from just preparing for their travels and they have documented it so well. I thought I would record some of it here as it gives great ideas for the classroom.

Embed PDFs into blogs or wikis

Here is a sample from where they plan to be in February. They have created their documents colourfully in a word processor it seems, and have then converted them to PDFs. They then embedded them into their website.

http://www.trekkingtheplanet.net/docs/W02_Hawaii_Education_Module.pdf

Actually it looks as though they have been very busy with their planning as they have already done all their research and documented it ready for when they actually get there.

Classroom idea
This gives me the idea of getting the learners to study a country using a programme like Microsoft Word to record the details details. They then turn it into a PDF and place it on a blog or wiki.

Make use of podcasts

The van Soyes have a beautiful website for recording their travels with podcasts, webcasts etc. This will be a good website to keep in mind. They would also like to visit schools along the way. I have just checked and they won’t be visiting South Africa unfortunately or we could have arranged for them to visit a school or two!

http://www.trekkingtheplanet.net/

Classroom idea
This gives me the idea that using audio podcasts and getting the learners to make short videos about various aspects of a trip can add great interest to classroom work.

Make use of webcasts

I see on their website that they made a webcast giving background to their intended journey. You can view it here:

http://www.spreecast.com/events/trekkingplanet

Classroom idea
This gives me the idea of using a programme such as Spreecast for webcasts, (http://www.spreecast.com) I have just taken a look at it, and it is a social video platform that allows people to broadcast together. It says:
Up to 4 people on camera at once.
*Unlimited number of people can view (can also be private).
*Recorded live and immediately available for playback.
*Viewers: Chat, ask questions, join in on camera!
*Creators: You control who goes on camera and when.

Well, this is a project I for one will take a great interest in next year. Why not join me?

How to fit a wide YouTube video into a blog post

2012-01-05T02:55:00.000-08:00

I have found that sometimes a YouTube video spreads over to the side bar in a blog, so if you occasionally have that problem and don't know what to do about it, please read on. I am going to explain how to change the width of the video so that it fits in to the body of the blog.

1. Open up the YouTube video that you wish to embed, and click on 'Share' and then 'Embed'

2. Copy the embed code but when you have put it into your blog post (in the HTML part), change the width of '560' to '420'. Don't change anything else.

3. You'll see that it now fits in perfectly. Save and publish your post.

Here is the link if you want to print or download this information:
http://www.box.com/s/sefbs6gvzofu7mexiaq5

Free e-book on mobile learning - looks useful!

2012-01-04T10:26:00.000-08:00

This free e-book on Mobile Learning, written by Jackie Gerstein (@jackiegerstein, https://usergeneratededucation.wordpress.com/), was brought to my attention by a post on the Free Technology for Teachers blog. It could be a great read for South African teachers where students frequently have cell phones that could be tapped into because other technology resources are non-existent. Take a read to see if it could benefit you. You’ll find eighty pages of useful information. You can also download your own copy of this free book by clicking here:

Open publication - Free publishing - More engagement

Take a look at the Edublogs Awards winners 2011

2012-01-04T04:13:00.000-08:00

I always look forward in anticipation to the Edublogs Awards every year to see their choice of best blogs, wikis, podcasts, webinar series, social networks, Web tools, individual tweeters and group twitter hashtags. Initially potential winners from the categories are nominated, and then everyone votes. This is a big affair!

Took a look at the winners from around the world. It is a great way of keeping in touch with what is happening on the social networking scene. (By the way, with reference to blogs, for your blog to be nominated for the Edublogs Awards it can be part of any platform and not necessarily an Edublogs' blog).

I am embedding the winners document below so that you can see the categories, but please visit the actual Google Doc mentioned under a), or visit the Edublogs Awards site mentioned under b) so that you can actually visit the various links. They are fantastic!

a) Their embedded Google Doc:

https://docs.google.com/spreadsheet/pub?hl=en_US&hl=en_US&key=0AlhMhHCqHvgvdERrVTVpZ1NhNmF2b2xvUm1UTFM1Z2c&single=true&gid=0&output=html

b) Their Edublogs Award website:

http://edublogawards.com/

YouTube for Schools is introduced

2012-01-03T14:32:00.000-08:00

First there was YouTube, then came YouTube for Educators, and now we have YouTube for Schools. Things are definitely getting better for education. I think many parents will be happier knowing there is a YouTube that is just for schools. For one thing YouTube for Schools lets you browse YouTube without any related videos on show, or any comments to wade through. This gives an uncluttered feel. If you have access to a data projector or an interactive whiteboard in your classroom, an occasional YouTube clip can really bring home a concept to your students.

Here is some information about YouTube for Schools.

Classroom application for YouTube for Schools

Introduce your lesson with a video clip related to your lesson that will engage the students' attention.

When your students make their own videos as part of a project, these can safely be uploaded to your YouTube for Schools channel.

Videos will appeal to the learning style of the visual learners.

Record instructions and directions using a screencasting programme (such as Screencast-o-matic) and upload this to your YouTube for Schools channel so that you don't have to repeat yourself continually.

The students can continue learning at home by exploring videos that you recommend on your topic.

You might be able to access videos from other teachers. Equally, you may be able to share your lessons with students around the world.

There is so much one can do with access to YouTube for Schools in the classroom. Why not read more in this excellent post: http://edudemic.com/2011/12/youtube-for-schools/

A day once only imagined has arrived - a virtual International TeachMeet!

2011-12-21T02:16:00.000-08:00

Submitted by Fiona Beal
If you had told me several years back that the time would come when teachers around the world could share ideas in a group verbally, visually and virtually right from the comfort of their own homes, I would probably have laughed (to myself). But the day HAS come! I experienced it myself on Saturday 17^th December. Bart Verswijvel from Belgium, one of the organisers of this International TeachMeet said, prior to the occasion, “On Saturday I will have more than 25 visitors coming to my house (virtually). The visitors come from 15 different countries and they are from the 5 continents of the world. They are all teachers and they have a great story to tell. Doesn’t this sound amazing?” As it turned out there were actually 60 attendees, including 22 presenters from 15 countries and 5 continents.

Previous posts about TeachMeets

Face to face TeachMeets are already happening in South Africa and I have written about them before on this blog, on several occasions, in the following order:
http://schoolnetsa.blogspot.com/2011/08/why-not-hold-teachmeet-in-your-area.html
http://schoolnetsa.blogspot.com/2011/08/more-teachmeet-ideas-from-partners-in.html
http://schoolnetsa.blogspot.com/2011/11/microsoft-introduces-teachmeets-into.html
http://schoolnetsa.blogspot.com/2011/11/elkanah-house-runs-with-teachmeet-idea.html
http://schoolnetsa.blogspot.com/2011/11/report-back-on-elkanah-house-teachmeet.html

I also created a TeachMeet – South Africa wiki (http://teachmeet-southafrica.wikispaces.com/) earlier this year for anyone in South Africa to use if they organise a TeachMeet. This is a way of possibly keeping a record of our Teachmeets in South Africa,

Organisers and Presenters of the virtual International TeachMeet

However, this is the first virtual International Teachmeet that I know of. It was organised by two of my Partners in Learning Institute (Seattle, July) colleagues, namely Arjana (@abfromz) from Croatia and Bart (@BartVerswijvel) from Belgium. Microsoft's Partners in Learning, Croatia, have kindly sponsored the use of Microsoft Live meeting to host this and further International TeachMeets.

The organisers and presenters at the first virtual TeachMeet

You can find the presenters' details here http://teachmeetinternational.wikispaces.com/Presenters

What happens at a TeachMeet?

At a TeachMeet the participants give a micro presentation lasting, in this case, 3 minutes of something they have done that combines the curriculum with technology and that really works well.

A summary of the presentations

Here is a summary of the presentations, compiled by Sonja from Croatia (@sonjalr):

TeachMeet International

View more presentations from TeachMeet_International

A video about the occasion

Bart from Belgium made a video from the afternoon’s proceedings

Blogposts about the this international event

Some of the presenters and attendees have already written blogposts about the event:
Vicky Loras (Switzerland): Professional Development At Its Very Best
Jeannette James (Australia): Live Meeting #teachmeet webinar
Arjana Blazic (Croatia): Good vibrations
Bart Verswijvel (Belgium): Wonderful world
Elinda Gjondeda (Greece): Reflections from #TeachMeet International
Chiew Pang (Spain): Two for the price of none

In fact to get the summary and feel of the event you can look at the TeachMeet wiki that Arjana from Croatia created especially for the event. http://teachmeetinternational.wikispaces.com/

Some of the Slideshare presentations

Some of the presenters have made Slideshare or Authorstream presentations about their offering. There will be more I am sure.

1) Chew Piang from Spain

Wordle: Your imagination's the limit!

View more presentations from Chiew Pang

2) John Putt, a Head teacher from Wales

John putttm int171211

View more presentations from wjputt

3) Fiona Beal from South Africa

A blog can be a fantastic teaching tool

View more presentations from fionabeal

I'm sure there will be more, soon. Ah, here are three more:

4) Anna Loseva from Russia
ELT workplaces with posterous blogs

#ELTworkplaces

View more presentations from Ann Loseva

5) Yitzha Sarwona from Jakarta in Indonesia
Applying Dogma teaching in a Montessori kindergarten classroom

Teachmeetinternational icha

View more presentations from Yitzha Sarwono

6) Bookmark your dreams with Vladimira Michalkova from Slovakia

Bookmark Your Dreams

View more presentations from Vladimira Michalkova

Further International TeachMeets?

Next one? Of course there will be more, possibly in February 2012. The next event to follow in this line is the first International Student TeachMeet that Bart is setting up for 7 February 2012. Details can be found here: http://studentsmeet.org/

To conclude, I personally think that the benefits of using technology in education will be widely spread through the the TeachMeet concept. I love Teachmeets!

A lovely South African site with free downloadable worksheets in several subjects

2011-12-12T13:18:00.000-08:00

Isn’t it great when right here, in South Africa, you come across a site with lovely, free, downloadable worksheets in : Mathematics, English, Science, Environment, Health, Nutrition, Hygiene, Arts, Crafts and Colouring.

This site is called the e-learning classroom and it can be located at:
http://e-classroom.co.za/

When you explore the site you find so many excellent worksheets and other classroom aids.

Take a look. I don’t think you’ll be disappointed!

Adding videos to blog or wiki posts

2011-12-12T13:04:00.000-08:00

I have recently been exploring several different ways of putting video on to a blog or wiki; and when a friend asked me for some ideas on how to do this I thought it would be a good opportunity for me to summarise what I have tried up to now and what I plan to try in the future and use it as a blog post! So here goes...

1. SHORT VIDEOS

This is something I learned through someone else – isn’t it amazing how we learn from one another all the time! In Blogger and Edublogs you can easily add video if it is not too big in size. The problem comes in how your video camera saves files. The files (I think) need to be .wmv to be uploaded. This is where YouTube Downloader comes in handy.

Use YouTube Downloader to convert files

This is a free downloadable programme that can convert movies to different formats. You need to select the second option 'Convert video (previously downloaded) from file'. It works with any video. However Edublogs and Blogger show these videos differently as I will show you now.

Showing videos in Edublogs and Blogger

a) Edublogs: Last year the Grade 3s used Photostory 3 (with narration) to make videos about Fish Hoek. This is how Edublogs shows the video: Fish Hoek (Edublogs says about their video approach, "It doesn’t embed your file in an actual video or audio player in your post; it only inserts a link to the file. When readers click on the link it opens another page where the audio file is played or it downloads the video onto their computer").

b) Blogger: This is how Blogger shows the same video. It actually embeds the video.

http://grade4fishhoekprimary.blogspot.com/2011/05/learning-about-fish-hoek.html I

I have to say that I really prefer the Blogger approach with ordinary video clips. Unfortunately Wikispaces only allows embedded video which is what I will discuss next.

Short embedded videos using One True Media

The video application I have tried to date is One True Media. A teacher from the USA visited us and the class spontaneously broke into song so I captured it on my camera and put it into OneTrueMedia

Photo and video editing at www.OneTrueMedia.com

We linked with Miss Ale in Argentina for a collaborative-writing project and she made this video using OneTrueMedia:

Make an on-line slide show at www.OneTrueMedia.com

Another teacher I linked with in Canada, Mr Millward, did his class graduation using OneTrueMedia. As you can see the programme is very creative.
http://millwardb.edublogs.org/2010/06/23/graduation/

Short videos using Animoto

With Animoto you are only allowed short videos of 30 seconds free but there is an Animoto Educators account which I have applied for and received. This entitles me to myself and 50 of my students having the Plus account in which we can upload full length videos (maximum 200MB). Last year one of the Grade 5 classes participated in the ‘Monster project’ and many of the teachers around the world used Animoto to show everyone where they were at. Here is a sample from a Grade 2 class (Miss Hariju) in the USA:

2. SCHOOL TUBE VIDEOS

I must say that I love School Tube and it is my first choice since it is all about school! I learned about it from another of my PLN friends from America, Bob Greenwood, with whom I was involved in a project. He teaches Grade 2 and he has his own channel on School Tube. He makes so many amazing videos. Take a look: http://www1.schooltube.com/Organization/OrganizationHome.aspx?oid=129695

So that is what I did. I applied to become a moderator on School Tube and I was given a school channel. Any movie uploaded there gives me an embedding code and I put the code in my blogs and in my wikis. Our 2011 Adobe Youth Voices project is uploaded there.

http://got.im/0JTE

3. YOU TUBE VIDEOS

I also like using YouTube and I have a channel there as well for all my school videos. Once you have posted a video it gives you a code which you can embed into any blog or wiki. This makes it very easy. Often with school videos I make them private so that they can only be seen by whoever has the YouTube address link. When we were on a video swap project with Denmark (Grade 6) we used YouTube’s private code for this. I sometimes think that parents will be happier with the use of School Tube because it is mainly for teachers. I believe there is now a YouTube ‘Teacher Tube’ channel which is an even better option.

4. FOR THE FUTURE

I would like to try out video sites recommended in blogposts:
a) Vimeo

b) Explore more with Animoto
http://edupln.ning.com/profiles/blogs/animoto-in-the-classroom

c) Other recommended sites
(http://larryferlazzo.edublogs.org/2010/03/30/not-the-best-but-a-list-of-online-video-editors/)

My BIG question at the moment is - how do you compress large .avi files of say 1.8GB in order to upload them easily? (Later...okay, I have just found the answer to this. You put the whole .avi file into Windows Movie Maker and it reduces it amazingly with little loss of quality. It really works...yay!)

5. A GREAT PUBLICATION ON MAKING VIDEOS FROM RICHARD BYRNE

I love Richard Byrne’s site called Free Technology for Teachers. One of the books he so freely shared is about making videos on the web. He allows others to embed his documents so I am going to embed the video book here.

Open publication - Free publishing - More education

Get involved in blogging projects

2011-12-11T21:22:00.000-08:00

Even if you have only one computer in your classroom, you can make a start in integrating technology into your curriculum by getting your class involved in a blogging programme. Why not consider it?

Get involved in blogging projects

View more presentations from fionabeal

Looking for a project to get involved in in 2012?

2011-12-11T13:35:00.000-08:00

IEARN has some interesting new projects for you to consider. If I can urge you to do one thing in 2012 it is to get your class involved in global projects. It is really worth it and will be really exciting for your learners.

1. Learning Circles
http://www.iearn.org/circles/

2. Special Places project
http://media.iearn.org/projects/specialplaces

3. Future Citizens project http://media.iearn.org/projects/futurecitizen

4. Special Moon Observationhttp://media.iearn.org/projects/moon

4. Resources, Contests, websites and announcements http://us.iearn.org/projects/curriculum-integration-toolkit

5. Global conference recordings available http://us.iearn.org/events/detail/2011-global-education-conferenace

12 places to find global projects for your class to get involved in

2011-12-01T09:22:00.000-08:00

Our world is definitely becoming a global village! It is so much easier to connect with classes around the world in our technological age than ever before. It is really worth finding a global project to involve your class in. If you are looking for ways to connect with others here are a few ideas of places to start.

1. Global collaborative projects
http://www.21stcenturyschools.com/Global_Collaborative_Projects.htm#Start Your Own Collaborative Project

2. Kidlink
http://www.kidlink.org/kidspace/start.php

3. iEARN
http://www.iearn.org/iearn-project-book
http://schoolnetsa.blogspot.com/2011/10/latest-20112012-iearn-project-book-has.html

4. Internet projects registry
http://www.globalschoolnet.org/gsh/pr/search.cfm

5. Projects by Jen
http://www.projectsbyjen.com/

6. Global Schoolnet
http://www.globalschoolnet.org/

7. Global virtual classroom
http://www.virtualclassroom.org/clubhouse.html

8. The global education collaborative
http://globaleducation.ning.com/notes/Global_Project_Database

9. Going global
http://www.scribd.com/doc/13429981/WEMTA-Going-Global-Lucy-Gray

10. Taking it Global
http://www.tigweb.org/about/

11. The Educators PLN
http://edupln.ning.com/

12. Global Learning
https://sites.google.com/a/sanandres.esc.edu.ar/global-projects/

How to add a YouTube video to your blog

2011-11-29T15:56:00.000-08:00

I was very pleased to find out today, through one of my social networking links, that Blogger has its own YouTube Help Channel. It's called BloggerHelp and you can find it here. When I took a look I saw they had one on one of this week's topics - How to add a YouTube video to your blog. So I thought I would add it here. For those of you that are still unsure on how to do this here are some screen shots.

1. Find the video you want to download

2. Click on Share to first get the Internet address and embed button

3. Click on embed to get the HTML code

4. Paste the code into the HTML part of your blog

5. Your video will now appear miraculously on the Compose side of your blog

If you are reading this post, why not give it a go right now!

Report back on the Elkanah House TeachMeet and IpadMeet

2011-11-29T15:38:00.000-08:00

Submitted by Fiona Beal

Saturday 26 November 2011

This morning I woke up feeling excited. It was TeachMeet day at Elkanah house! Two 'meets' to look forward to at the same venue - one to do with general technology (TeachMeet) and one to do with using Ipads in the classroom (Ipadmeet). I have written about TeachMeets before on this blog. http://schoolnetsa.blogspot.com/2011/08/why-not-hold-teachmeet-in-your-area.html. They are a very exciting form of professional development. I have been to two in South Africa, and both times I have come away with new technology friends, new ideas and new enthusiasm. I normally go home and start trying out everything I learned about!

Highlights from the Teachmeet

Unfortunately there weren't too many 'Keen Beans' that were willing to share something today. Only five of us! But there were quite a number of 'Enthusiastic Lurkers' who will hopefully think about giving a presentation at the next Teachmeet in February. I was thrilled to see that there were four principals at the 'meets'. Lucky schools! If the Head shows an interest there is no telling what can be achieved. There was a Twitter stream going on in the background. You can view it at #elkteachmeet.

1. Use Diigo for bookmarking
Linda Foulkes showed us all the uses of bookmarking using Diigo. I am an avid user of Diigo but there was a lot I didn't know. I must explore more!

Maryne from Elkanah House and Alan from Digicape

2. Use a free video programme called VLC
Jonathon Manley showed us a programme called VLC and highlighted VLC's extra features where you can take snapshots of DVDs played. You can also add Audacity and create your own soundclips. I don't know this programme at all but am certainly going to try it. VLC can be found at http://www.videolan.org/vlc/

3. Combine creative writing with stop animation movies
Micahel Botha, a Grade 7 teacher showed how her class recreated a Greek myth by using digital cameras and stop animation. They used digital cameras and then MovieMaker to pull it all together. They included voice over and music. Each movie was unique. I can imagine that this makes writing come alive for even the most relectant writer.

Di and Esther from Someset College

4. How to use your blog as a teaching tool
This was my presentation. I am currently presenting an online blogging course for teachers around South Africa using a blog as a teaching tool. I have found that the following five programmes come in very handy - Box.net, Embedit.in, Vocaroo.com, Slideshare and Screencast-o-matic. You can view my presentation here since I also presented it from a blog!

5. Use Scoopit.com to find information on your topic
Karen Stadler gave this presentation. You join Scoopit http://www.scoop.it/ and tell it what topic you want it to investigate. It finds relevant website links and brings them to you. You choose what you want, and hey presto you have a lovely magazine to share with others. I loved this idea. So Scoopit...here I come! Incidentally at the Teachmeet two people belonged to Scoopit and you might want to take a look at their magazines. Karen - http://www.scoop.it/t/just-ipadding-along, and Arthur
http://www.scoop.it/t/edtechconf

Arthur and Karen from Elkanah House in foreground

Highlights from the Ipadmeet

After a break and lots of chatting, eating and interacting it was time for the IpadMeet. Some new teachers arrived. Linda Foulkes write a blogpost previous to this giving ideas on what we should do at this first Ipadmeet. You can read about it here.

1. A marvellous app called Book Creator
Alan Goldberg (Head of Education Development, Digicape) was at the IpadMeet. He did a workshop at Elkanah House last Saturday where he demonstrated a wonderful app called Book Creator. Karen Stadler started off showing the book she created at that workshop. Then Alan showed his book called 'Ethan and Alan in Italy'. It was a recap of a holiday with his teen son. He showed us how you can embed videos, add hyperlinks and other media into your book and make it come alive. Links at the bottom of the page allow you to email links to your students and colleagues. Any epub reader will open the book. As a keen writer myself I was completely taken with this app. and its potential.

Carolynn from Springfield College

2. Read tweets on the Ipad using Flipboard
Karen Stadler showed us this application. This is a great way to read tweets on the Ipad. It gives you your tweets like a newspaper.

Two thoughts struck me at the Ipadmeet.
*Tablets are definitely the way forward.
*I didn't realise the potential in this little device that I am so privileged to own.

Nicki from Bishops College

It really was worth giving up a Saturday to attend these meets at Elkanah House. The next dual session is to take place on 25 February 2012.

A blog can be a fantastic teaching tool in a technology integrated classroom

2011-11-25T16:27:00.000-08:00

There are five Web2.0 applications that I think make a blog a really worthwhile teaching tool in a technology integrated classroom. They are:
1) Box.net where you can store documents that you have created and link to them.
2) Embedit.in which allows you to embed anything on your blog.
3) Slideshare which maakes an e-book from a PowerPoint or PDF. This is so useful for instructions.
4) Screencast-o-matic where you can explain and show at the same time.
5) Vocaroo.com where you can give verbal instructions to the class.

Best of all - they are all free!

This slideshare shows you how to use each one of these applications.

Your blog as a teaching tool

View more presentations from fionabeal.

Your blog can be a fantastic teaching tool in a technology integrated classroom

2011-11-25T15:20:00.000-08:00

Recently I have been running a free online blogging course for teachers around South Africa, and I decided to do all the teaching from a blog to model blogging. I suddenly realised what a fantastic teaching tool a blog can be in a technology integrated classroom. I’d like to share a few of the Web 2.0 applications that can really aid a teacher in a classroom.

1. Use Box.net to link to documents you have created http://box.net

For example

1.1 Join Box.net and upload your document. You get 5GB of free space.

1.2 Once your document is uploaded and appears in your list, click on Share. A web address link will appear for you to copy.

1.3 Copy this web address to the spot where you want it in your blog and click on the word link at the top of your blog post to make it an active link.

The result:

"How to add pages to your blog
Take a look at the Tipsheet for a step-by-step guide for adding pages to your blog.
http://www.box.com/s/0n7mlllvp442syfhqnr1"

2. Use Embedit.in to link to documents you have created

Embedit.in is a fantastic application that allows you to embed all sorts of different documents on your blog by creating an embed code.

For example

2.1 Go to http://embedit.in

2.2 Go to My embeds and sign in using one of your accounts – I use my Google account

2.3 Go to Select Files and find the file you want on your computer.

2.4 Copy the embed code into the HTML part of your blog post.

This is the result

Read these instructions:

3. Use Slideshare.com for more detailed instructions

Slideshare is a fantastic way to present a book-like instruction to a class. You create each page in PowerPoint.

For example

3.1 Go to Slideshare.com, join and click on Upload to find the Powerpoint or PDF you want to use.

3.2 When you document appears click on embed to get the code.

3.3 This is what the code looks like

Result on the blog

Adding bells and whistles to your blog

View more presentations from fionabeal

4. Use Screencasts to explain something more complicated

4.1 Join Screencast-o-matic.com and log in. Start recording by following the instructions.

4.2 This is what it looks like when you are finished. You can embed it, upload it to YouTube, or download it as a movie file.

5. Use verbal instructions on your blog using Vocaroo.com

Vocaroo.com is so easy to use. You can download the result as a .wav file, or you can simply embed it in your blog.

5.1 Join Vocaroo.com, click to record, record and start speaking when prompted.

5.2 You will be asked to allow your microphone to be used.

*Paste the embed code into your blog

Here is the result

These are just a few of the ways you can make your blog a great teaching tool. Perhaps you have tried out others that you would like to share?

How to add photos, slideshows and videos to a blog

2011-11-24T15:38:00.001-08:00

How to add photos, videos and slideshows to a Blogger blog

View more presentations from fionabeal.

Elkanah House runs with the TeachMeet idea in the Western Cape

2011-11-24T13:29:00.000-08:00

This is a guest post by Linda Foulkes ot Elkanah House in Table View. Linda is responsible for the training and testing of Grade 8 to 10 students on the Microsoft Office Specialist Certification. She is a Microsoft Office Expert and ICDL Advanced Trainer. In addition to her role as Staff Trainer and High School ICT Integration support (ICT Department), she also belongs to the Academic Department as Grade 8 Tutor Teacher. Linda absolutely loves spending her time researching social media and relevant technologies with connections on Twitter (@folklind) and Facebook, as well as her blog at http://folklind.wordpress.com, and enjoys imparting this knowledge as professional development, enhancing teaching experience for teachers/students or simply just to boost efficiency in the workplace. Apart from that Linda is the Person who is running with the TeachMeet idea at Elkanah House.

Second TeachMeet this Saturday 26 November 2011

This Saturday Elkanah House will be running its second TeachMeet and introducing its first IpadMeet.

Read about the proposed IPADMeet here:
http://karenstadler.wordpress.com/2011/11/04/ipadmeet-elkanah-join-the-conversation/

Report back on first TeachMeet on 29 October

Elkanah House held its very first TeachMeet on Saturday, 29^th October. The meet was held in the Library Resource Centre from 12h00 till 14h00 at our High School.

You might be thinking “What is a TeachMeet?” TeachMeets are a very popular form of professional development for teachers. Teachers’ sign up to either participate as a Keen Bean by presenting a successful lesson, resource, or idea [the list is endless] that they have experienced using ICT in the classroom or as an Enthusiastic Lurker (for those who wish to “check out” the situation and participate in discussions or simply learn from others).

Presenters are encouraged to prepare a 3 minute presentation or idea to share at the TeachMeet. These are collected via a Dropbox shared folder the week before the meet. All the resources are shared with attendees after the TeachMeet. The organisers of the TeachMeet will keep to the time limits!
Twenty two teachers from different schools, within the Cape Town area, attended the TeachMeet @ Elkanah. The meet opened with attendees spending some time mingling at the SchoolYard Market Tea Venue. This was a great way to relax and get to know each other before moving to the Library Resource Centre. Everyone then moved to the TeachMeet venue where the meet was officially opened by Linda Foulkes (@folklind). Karen Stadler (@ICT_Integrator) very professionally handled the Twitter backchannel for the meet. Our twitter hashtag is #elkteachmeet.

Visit the following link for more information or to sign up for the next TeachMeet [February 2012]
http://teachmeet-southafrica.wikispaces.com or email teachmeet@elkanah.co.za
Third Term and Four Term 2011 volumes of the Business of Teaching (South African Education Quarterly Magazine) was donated to all participants of TeachMeet by the editor, Gareth Davies. If you are not already following @teachingbiz on Twitter, don’t delay…do it today!

Presentations

Presenters shared the... Use of wiki’s in a girls’ junior school: Club activity; Screencasting using Screenr and Jing; Book Reports with SpeakingImage, Popplet and Prezi; Global Classroom Project; Using Flipsnack; Amelia the Pigeon with Google Earth, Paint Powerpoint, Word [Google Docs], and Myth Animations.
The day ended with very positive discussions around wifi, ipads, tools and more. It was suggested that we also host an IPADMeet. A very successful day!

An occasion that benefitted all

Since the meet on Saturday I have had contact from teachers who are accessing the resources from the Saturday TeachMeet and preparing to apply these to meet the needs in the classroom. Do our children know what special dedicated teachers we have out there? Visit the following blog post of Lisa Gair (@ICT_Educator) who is so inspired by the meet http://icteducator.blogspot.com/ and shares her resource on how to use Flipsnack to make beautiful flipping books.

Watch the links above and follow #elkteachmeet for the next TeachMeet @ Elkanah and as Fiona Beal (@fibeal) said….

Photos of the day

Microsoft introduces TeachMeets into South Africa

2011-11-24T04:42:00.000-08:00

Microsoft South Africa recently combined with SchoolNetSA to introduce the first TeachMeet into South Africa. It was great to be part of this historic occasion. These gatherings of teachers are fast becoming a very popular form of professional development in the USA and in many European countries, in the field of technology integration in education. In European countries they are called ‘Teachmeets’ while in the USA they are named ‘Ed Camps’.

Microsoft's advertisement of the TeachMeet

Teachers sharing with teachers

Essentially Teachmeets are 'teachers teaching teachers' in a prescribed amount of time, usually 3 minutes, using the provided laptop and a data projector. It’s really a great way to meet teachers from other schools, and there is usually a tea slot provided for interaction and sharing to take place. A Teachmeet definitely produces a sense of community and inspiration. One leaves with many new ideas, and feels a sense of making a contribution to education when presenting an idea. I have written two posts about Teachmeets in this blog in the past:
*http://schoolnetsa.blogspot.com/2011/08/why-not-hold-teachmeet-in-your-area.html
*http://schoolnetsa.blogspot.com/2011/08/more-teachmeet-ideas-from-partners-in.html

Our Teachmeet wiki

Angela Schaerer, the Academic Programmes Manager at Microsoft South Africa, was the instigator of the first Teachmeet in South Africa, and two of us from SchoolNet assisted her in putting together a remarkable and very enjoyable occasion.

Angela explaining how a TeachMeet works

To encourage a sense of community in this endeavour we created a TeachMeet wiki http://teachmeet-southafrica.wikispaces.com which we hope teachers around South Africa will make use of should they wish to hold a Teachmeet in their area. This wiki answers all the questions one might have about TeachMeets.

Our teachmeet-southafrica wiki home page

Programme on the day

The TeachMeet was held at the Microsoft Offices in Johannesburg on 13th October 2011. Angela planned a very stimulating programme in addition to the TeachMeet, and everyone left with a copy of the incredible Learning Suite DVD (one of my favourite DVDs).

Microsoft's learning Suite DVD

When Angela advertised the occasion she wrote, “Come and enjoy a TeachMeet…TeachLearn…TeachNetwork and TeachEat with us…” That is a pretty good sumary of what a TeachMeet is all about! Over 100 educators responded to the open invitation. Teachers could choose to respond as 'Keen Beans' and bring along a presentation to share or 'Enthusiastic Lurkers’ and come along to learn and just enjoy the gettogether.

Social media

Maggie Verster, our social networking champion in South Africa, managed the Twitter backchannel, and gave a humorous presentation urging teachers to join Twitter. Twitter is a marvelous platform for teachers to quickly and easily follow one another online to share useful resources.

Maggie Verster (centre) with Angela Schaerer (left) and Megan Rademeyer (right)

Teachmeet presentations

Altogether there were twelve presentations. We were each given three minutes to present and were timed with a stop watch.

Here are the presenters with links to their presentations and videos of them sharing their presentations:

1. Shireen Peters from Parkview Junior spoke on designing a 'Shopping and Money using Word' theme for Grade 2 using Microsoft Word.

Shireen Petersen

Shireen's Slideshare presentation can be found here.

Shireen's video can be viewed here.

Fiona Beal from Fish Hoek spoke on “Making a collaborative e-book” using the free applications iEtherpad.com, Slideboom.com, along with any illustrative programme and Microsoft PowerPoint.

Fiona Beal

Fiona's Slideshare presentation can be found here
Fiona's video can be viewed here

3.Daniel Maedi from GW e-Learning spoke on using a 'Spreadsheet Solution' - a drill and practice activity to assist the learners in Mathematics.

Daniel Maedi

Daniel's Slideshare presentation can be found here
Daniel's video can be viewed here

4. Jeneanne Hultzer fromBrescia House School spoke out about using 'Excel in Maths Literacy'.

Jeneanne Hultzer

Jeneanne's Slideshare presentation can be found here:
Jeneanne's video can be viewed here:

5. Helen Robertson from Cornwall Hill College spoke about using 'Boogie Board RIP, e-Reader and cellphone as m-Learning tools'.

Helen Robertson

Helen's Slideshare presentation can be found here.
Helen's video can be viewed here.

6. Natalie Meerholtz from Holy Rosary called her presentation 'Challenge your students to crack the code – QR codes'.

Natalie Meerholtz

Natalie's video can be viewed here.

7. Maggie Verster from Pretoria spoke about 'Organising your life in one click' using Diigo for bookmarking.

Maggie Verster

Maggie's Slideshare presentation can be found here:
Maggie's video can be viewed here.

8. Paul Wilton from the Oprah Winfrey Girls' Academy in Gauteng called his presentation 'Life Sciences Grade 12 on Moodle'. He generously offered to share his multitude of ‘Moodling Life Science' resources with others.

Paul Wilton

Paul's Slideshare presentation can be found here:
Paul's video can be seen here.

9. Aurelliah Rosenberg, Head of Educator Empowerment at ORT SA named her presentation ‘Camera, action, lights – teaching with movies.”

Aurelliah Rosenberg

Aurelliah's Slideshare can be found here.
Aurelliah's video can be viewed here.

10. Linda Bradfield from St John's Prep spoke on Collaboration versus Cooperation versus Coaching.

Linda Bradfield

Linda's Slideshare presentationcan be found here.
Linda's video can be viewed here.

11. Lyneth Crighton from Brescia College had some great ideas for 'Recording with cell phones' in schools.

Lyneth Crighton

Lyneth's Slideshare presentation can be found here.
Lyneth's video can be viewed here.

12. Charmaine Hart from Bryandale Primary School Grade 5 showed how she integrates the curriculum in her advertising unit in English First Language She called it 'Advertising in English'.

Charmaine Hart

Charmaine's Slideshare presentation can be found here.
Charmaine's video can be found here.

The audience was enthusiastic and they listened with rapt attention.

After the Teachmeet Megan Rademeyer from SchoolNet urged teachers to consider entering the Microsoft Innovative teacher competition next year, and to start planning their projects soon.

Megan Rademeyer

After that Fiona Beal spoke on Microsoft's free toolsMicrosoft's Free Tools

View more presentations from fionabeal

Others involved in organising the TeachMeet

Thabile from Microsoft was the contact person for the TeachMeet

The spirit of a TeachMeet is sharing and the beauty of a TeachMeet is that all the participants can access all the presentations. Microsoft has a great website which teachers around the word can join and use to create groups and upload information. This is known as the Partners in Learning Network. I would encourage all teachers to join. It’s free. Microsoft created a TeachMeet group on this Network so that everybody could access all the presentations of the day.

Partners in Learning Network

A report was written about the TeachMeet by ITWeb in October. They called it "Teachmeets - 'Speed dating' for teachers". Read it here.

Photos of the day

The videos in this blogpost are hosted in SchoolNetSA's YouTube channel and the Slideshare presentations are mainly hosted in SchoolNetSA's Slideshare channel

More Microsoft TeachMeets coming up in 2012

The good news is that Microsoft is planning more of these around the country in 2012. I would encourage all teachers to keep their ears open for an announcement of a TeachMeet near you. It is a great way to share and hear about the ways technology can enhance learning.

I love Technology Conferences!

2011-11-22T14:18:00.000-08:00

submitted by Fiona Beal
Recently we have had a virtual Global Education Conference taking place which was really great (http://globaleducation.ning.com/), but this led me to to think about other technology face-to-face conferences I have attended this year and how I have benefitted from them. To tell the truth I REALLY love face-to-face technology conferences. There is just nothing that compares with seeing friends and colleagues that you don’t normally get to see at these conferences, shaking their hands and catching up on life and technology matters. One can also ask a myriad of questions and find out so much when it is face-to-face.

There are two face-to-face technology conferences from this year that I haven’t written about yet, so I am going to write about those now. Both of them were held at schools. They used the excellent services of EdTechConf to help them plan their conferences.

Edtechconf Extended @ Elkanah

The first conference was held at Elkanah House in Table View, Cape Town in October. Honestly...what a school! They are leaders in technology integration, of that there is no doubt. That marvellous ICT Department of theirs, under the guidance of EdTechConf, produced a brilliant conference. Their goal was to attract teachers in the classroom who are just starting the journey of integrating technology with the curriculum. They also made a point of using local Cape Town teachers to share what they are doing with technology integration. Here is a photo of four of the six Elkanah House technology team members.

Maryne (left) Karen (third left) Juanita (2nd from right) Linda (3rd from right)

Keynote speakers

Kobus van Wyk (http://www.e4africa.co.za/), of Khanya fame in the Western Cape, set the tone as the opening keynote speaker. He talked about ICT being an add-in and not an add-on. There were three other keynote speakers:
* Arthur Preston (http://headthoughts.co.za/) who is a co-founder of EdTechConf and who has been appointed as the new Elkanah House principal in 2012, spoke on The Technophobe Family,
* Nicholas Hall, a social media candidate attorney, spoke about copyright law etc for educationists
*Tim Keller (http://timk.co.za/), a software developer of ‘Staffroom’ fame and a co-founder of EdTechConf spoke on 'The School of the Future' . All were outstanding presentations.

Tim Keller and Kobus van Wyk

Presentations and workshops

Maggie Verster, (http://maggiev.edublogs.org/) our own South African social networking expert, ran the Twitter backchannel. She used her bubbly enthusiasm to get as many of the delegates as possible using Twitter since Twitter is a really great educational resource tool. Maggie also created a Conference blog to upload some of the presentations http://elkedtechconf.blogspot.com/ and a Picasa site for all the photos http://bit.ly/sVXqjA . Here is Maggie’s presentation on Bookmarking using Diigo

Social bookmarking

View more presentations from Edtechconf @Elkanah

What I really liked about the conference was the three teacher-panel sessions. These were local teachers who shared what they are doing in the classroom. Each panel had about 3 or 4 teachers and they spoke for about 15 minutes followed by a time of questions from the floor. The conference delegates loved these panels. One of the panels involved the Microsoft Innovative Teacher finalists and winners who happened to live in Cape Town, and wow! did they bring energy and enthusiasm with them. You can just see what that competition does to teachers! (Read here.about the success of these Innovative teacher finalists when they represented South Africa in Jordan at the Partners in Learning Middle East and Africa Innovative Education Forum in Jordan in September). Here is a photo of Maggie with some of the Innovative Teacher finalists.

Maggie (left) Lisa (2nd left) Kim and Louise

I must mention that a highlight of the teacher's panels for me (and others) was Nicole Masureik's presentation. She spoke about her project with Grade 11s at Pinelands High School where she is conducting a cell phone trial with two Grade 11 classes - Maths and Life Sciences. This is an incredible project really worth following.

Cell phone trial in school ed techconf nim

View more presentations from Edtechconf @Elkanah

The workshop sessions, of which there were quite a choice, also gave teachers a chance to practise using different tools. I am going to add the presentations that have been made public in this space.

Simone's presentation:Technology in my Art Room
View more presentations from Edtechconf @Elkanah

34 ideas for a classroom blog

View more presentations from fionabeal

Microsoft's Free Tools

View more presentations from fionabeal

Teachmeets introduced

Elkanah House also announced their intention to start Teachmeets for local teachers (http://teachmeet-southafrica.wikispaces.com) by having a quick demonstration of a Teachmeet. Read about Teachmeets here. In face they are having their second Teachmeet this coming Saturday 26^th November. I'll be writing about their Teachmeets in another blogpost.

Conclusion

I think this conference generated a lot of energy and possibly larger numbers of teachers will attend future conferences when they hear about what they missed. But, as Karen Stadler, one of the ICT team at Elkanah House highlighted in her blogpost about the event:
"Key points that came out of this conference were:
* Buy-in from school management is vital (sadly very few principals attended our conference).
* Technology needs to be an integral part of teaching today as our students are born tech savvy (digital natives)
* It must be an add-in not an add-on
* Teachers should start small, choose one aspect/topic and use technology to enhance it
* Baby steps… Take that first step!"
http://karenstadler.wordpress.com/2011/10/02/what-a-conference/

Kim and Loise sharing about their winning project

Edtechconf Extended @ Cornwall Hill

This was the second technology conference I attended at a school in October. It was great! Once again it was wonderful to connect face-to-face with friends from around the country for a catch-up time.

Natalie (left) Linda (2nd left) Fiona (2nd right) and Debbie

The only problem is there is no record of it anywhere that I can find. I think a Conference blog is such a good idea at a conference as the experience lives on through it. The conference followed the same Edtechconf pattern as before. The three highlights for me were:
*a inspirational talk by Pepe Marais http://sharpeningmypencil.tumblr.com/ founder of 'One School at a time')
*Dr Adele Botha on the use of cell phones at school
* The teacher panel sharing their projects.

Well, to close my post let me say - let’s face it – technology is here to stay! We need to embrace it in education. There is no other route.

Adding bells and whistles to your blog

2011-11-17T15:27:00.000-08:00

Have you recently created a blog and you find it is look rather bare?
*Perhaps you would like to make it look more like a website?
*Would you like to change the background into something bright and appealing?
*Would you like to have a whole string of gadgets down the side?

We call the gadgets down the side 'Widgets' and they certainly do make our blogs more interesting and effective. Here is a slideshare of some of the things you can do to spruce up your blog.

Adding bells and whistles to your blog

View more presentations from fionabeal.

Online Global Education forum – Adobe Youth Voices project presenting today

2011-11-16T03:08:00.000-08:00

The online Global Education forum has started! (14th – 18th November). For more details about this event go to: http://globaleducation.ning.com/

SchoolNet SA is involved in iEARN’s Adobe Youth Voices Media-Making Programs and our SchoolNet Programs Manager, Omashani Naidoo, will be participating in their presentation this afternoon. It would be great if you could tune in! Here are the details

SESSION:

iEARN Adobe Youth Voices Youth Media-Making Programs from across the Globe - Almerinda Garibaldi (Brazil), Cornelia Platon (Romania), Omashani Naidoo (South Africa), Allan Kakinda (Uganda), and Lisa Jobson (USA), Program Managers for Adobe Youth Voice

TIME:

Wed, 16 November, 16:00 – 17:00

DESCRIPTION:

Almerinda Garibaldi (Brazil), Cornelia Platon (Romania), Omashani Naidoo (South Africa), Allan Kakinda (Uganda), and Lisa Jobson (USA), Program Managers for Adobe Youth Voices in iEARN.

SESSION TITLE:

iEARN Adobe Youth Voices Youth Media-Making Programs from across the Globe

CO-PRESENTERS:

Almerinda Garibaldi (Brazil), Cornelia Platon (Romania), Omashani Naidoo(South Africa), Allan Kakinda (Uganda), and Lisa Jobson (USA), Program Managers for Adobe Youth Voices in iEARN

STRAND:

2011 Teachers

TARGET AUDIENCE:

Teachers, Students, NGOs, anyone interested in starting or supporting a youth-media program

LANGUAGE:

English

PRESENTING FROM:

Brazil, Romania, South Africa, Uganda, and USA

SESSION LINK:

https://sas.elluminate.com/d.jnlp?sid=2008350
Password: GEC11Part263
SESSION DESCRIPTION:

This interactive session will showcase youth media-making projects from across the globe that were created as part of iEARN's partnership in the Adobe Youth Voices program, and will include tips and strategies on how to start and manage your own youth media program.

MORE INFORMATION

Adobe Youth Voices (http://youthvoices.adobe.com/ ) is Adobe's global philanthropic initiative that empowers youth worldwide to comment on their world using multimedia and digital tools to communicate and share their ideas, demonstrate their potential, and take action in their communities.
iEARN ( http://www.iearn.org) is one of five founding non-profit partners that helped to launch the Adobe Youth Voices program in 2006, and is currently administering Adobe Youth Voices programs in Argentina, Bahrain, Belarus, Botswana, Brazil, Canada, China, East Jerusalem, Egypt, Japan, Mexico, Oman, Pakistan, Poland, Romania, Russia, Slovenia, South Africa, Taiwan, Thailand, Turkey, Uganda, and the USA.

Check out a sample of the iEARN network's Adobe Youth Voices media projects on the iEARN Adobe Youth Voices YouTube Channel [ youtube.com/iearnayv ] and join us in this session on how educators across diverse settings have integrated youth-produced media and media-making into their teaching practices.

LINK TO FORUM DISCUSSION:

http://globaleducation.ning.com/forum/topics/iearn-adobe-youth-voices-youth-media-making-programs-from-aross

Have you ever considered using Wallwisher in the classroom?

2011-11-15T15:13:00.000-08:00

What is Wallwisher?

Wallwisher is an online notice board that is incredibly easy to use and also incredibly useful as a classroom tool! Better still – it is an online collaboration tool to share ideas, resources, and thoughts on a particular topic.What I really like about it is that you can embed videos, photos etc. Best of all, your students don’t need an account in order to write on your wall.

How do you get started?

1.First of all go to http://wallwisher.com and sign up on the top right corner.

2.Click on ‘Build a new wall’.

3. From there you:
    1) Choose a background
    2) Choose a title and a sub-title
    3) Add a picture or choose one of their options
    4) Decide how you will treat the stickies.
        (It is often best to choose to moderate each sticky.)

4. You even get to choose the name of your wall if you want to. This is then included in a web address for your wall.

Your wall is now ready for use.

Some of the ways in which I have used Wallwisher in the classroom

1. I have used it for a brainstorm of story starters. Here the class was asked to think of some story starters. Wallwisher has a 160 character limit for each comment/post that you leave on the wall.

2. It could be used for reflection purposes. Here the class reflects on the Soccer World Cup that was held in South Africa in 2010.

3. It can be used to gather a collection of facts about a topic. Here I used it with a Grade 3 class to recall facts about dinosaurs.

Ways in which others have used Wallwisher in the classroom

1. It could be used for Maths resources. Here is a geometry wall. (http://www.wallwisher.com/wall/Geometry9)

2. It could be used as a way of answering a test question as the student cannot see each others’ answers until you have moderated the stickies. (http://www.wallwisher.com/wall/isthistory)

3. It could be used as a grammar lesson or a writing lesson. Give the class a basic sentences and the students have to expand on the sentence.

4. Here it is used to brainstorm Web 2 tools suitable to use for English students
(http://www.wallwisher.com/wall/teachersweb20)

5. Ways of using wallwisher in a classroom presented on a wallwisher!
(http://www.wallwisher.com/wall/ineducation)

Further ideas

1. Gather information from a wide source of people.
2. Use Wallwisher for book reviews.
3. It can be used as a suggestion box for changes that need to be made about something.
4, It is a way of sharing resources with one another.

Posts written about Wallwisher

1. 105 ways to use wallwisher in the classroom: http://seanbanville.com/2010/06/26/wallwisher-105-classroom-ideas/
2. 32 ways to use wallwisher in the classroom from Tom Barrat - http://bit.ly/rM7a1x
3. Loads of wallwisher resources here: http://www.freeeslmaterials.com/wallwisher.html
4. Using Wallwisher together with Fotobabble
http://tefltecher.wordpress.com/2010/03/01/talking-photographs/

Embed Wallwisher in a blog

One of the great things about Wallwisher is that it can be embedded in a blog or wiki quite easiy. To add any type of object that uses HTML embed code into a post it is as simple as this:

Grab the HTML embed code
Click on the HTML tab of the blog or wiki
Paste the HTML embed code
Click on Publish

Video tutorial

Learn more in this video tutorial from Learnitin5
http://youtu.be/Gyhwj2BP8F8