On Wednesday October 28, 2009, our classroom has been invited to do a LIVE presentation for the University of Victoria in British Columbia. This presentation is being hosted by the Ministry of Education (e-Learning Programs Unit) of BC and will last about 20 minutes.
You can watch the presentation by going to this website (Elluminate): http://tinyurl.com/y9bnwc8 at 12 pm Oct 28.
Our presentation will be student centered. Students ( 11 year olds )will talk about their own learning and growth and they will demonstrate some of the following tools and activities –
As many of you are already aware, my class has explored the use of Skype (Video Conferencing) as a method of expanding our classroom walls and having the children learn about the geography, culture and climate of other countries, continents and time zones (we have traveled over 50,000 km’s). Each student has been provided with the opportunity to use a blog to post their own work as well as comment and collaborate on the work of others. Quite honestly, I am taken by complete surprise everyday at how willing these students are to show leadership and help one another through these tools – much different than when we were kids, tucking our completed work into a desk or bringing it home, only to be seen by family and close friends. Recently, students have explored the use of Diigo, which is a bookmarking tool, allowing students to make notes, highlight and save websites to their account and of course, allowing students to share information with each other for group projects. Some students have explored the use of Digital Story Telling tools within their literacy subjects. As part of our Reading Unit (main idea’s and inferring) , they have read and recorded current news and publishing their own newscasts in video form through use of iWeb and Movie Maker. All students are now using an on-line word processing program through Google Docs. This allows them to write and then share their work with their teacher and parent. I encourage you to have your child help you sign up for a Google Doc account so they can share their work with you regularly. Students have recently been given an account for ‘Bitstrips’ which is an on-line graphic (comic) making program. This program was purchased for ALL Ontario students. We are also exploring the use of Wiki’s in the classroom. This is a joint website, allowing student to post, collaborate and edit work on one website. The purpose of this is for children to learn the benefit of learning from one another.
