It amuses me to think that technology that is already obsolete is still being used today in icon form – case and point being the save icon:

The kids I teach have never seen a floppy disk, yet that is the icon they need to click on to save a document. If we had to create an icon for ’save’ today, what would it look like? A cloud? A microchip? A thumb-drive?

This in turn prompted me to think about what icons are more familiar to our students.

Embed and Link are the icons of today’s generation.

And do you know what? That’s just how I think it should be.

I want kids to be creating, sharing and linking. It’s what learning is all about!

Credits:
Everaldo Coelho
cfccreativemedia
GNOME Icon Artists

What is great about using Google Earth is that it gives the students practice with logging onto the computers, keyboard familiarisation and mouse-control skills in a thoroughly engaging context.

I  did an initial lesson with Ms Louise’s class, showing how to navigate and input places into the search bar, and we also checked out some places using Street View. The students really enjoyed experimenting with zooming, going to locations they had been on holiday, and finding our school.

Ms Louise’s brilliant idea (which tied in with their unit on Journeys) was to create task cards for a number of famous places around the world, which the students would have to ‘travel’ to in order to get a stamp in their passport.

Using Jing, she created the task cards (see below), which were an enormous success, as they helped scaffold the learning for the students. The text they had to type was on each task card, and a picture of the place they had to find was also included. When their screen showed what we could see on the task card, then they got a stamp in their passport.

Some were harder than others, requiring a bit of searching, zooming and clicking-and-dragging to find the locations. This just helped us reinforce the skills we were hoping to cover in this unit.

It also gave us an opportunity to talk about commas and spaces, as both were needed when typing in locations. The students quickly learned that after each comma, you need a space.

I know the K2 teachers were impressed with how much the students could accomplish in a few short lessons. The levels of enthusiasm have been great, and some poor teachers have been hounded by students wanting to complete their passport.

We have had neat feedback from a number of K2 parents saying how their children are making them use Google Earth at home, so it’s lovely to hear of the home-school connections that this type of lesson is creating. It reinforces to me how fabulous it is to use an open-source, cross-platform tool such as Google Earth to make links between home and school.

With Ms Louise’s permission, I have included the Google Earth Task Cards & Passport below. I hope you take the time to try it out!

Google Earth Task Cards

Google Earth Passport

**If you are using the same computers with different children, then I would encourage you to get them to click on Edit then Clear Search History at the beginning of each session, so that the place names don’t start appearing automatically!**

Miss Spell
Free
Check to see whether the word lists are spelled correctly or not.

Super Hangman LE & Global High Scores
Free
Fairly standard Hangman app, with good graphics

Story Kit
Free
Create an electronic story book by writing text, and either drawing on the screen or using your own photos. Record sound effects too!

Spell It Lite
Free
Basic spelling app where you can select different levels. You can hear audio, get hints etc

Stanza
Free
This app gives you the ability to read e-books, including over 50,000 free titles.

iSign Lite
Free
A Sign Language app that teaches basic signs using animations. We will be using this when our Grade 1 students investigate communication.

KT-Dict CE
Free
Chinese-English dictionary. See here for more details on how we use it at school.

Finger Lite
Free
Turn your iPod Touch into a wireless Chinese writing tablet.

Spanish Tutor
Free
Puzzles, writing, flashcards – this free Spanish app has it all.

Number Line
Free
Excellent little app for ordering decimals, percentages and fractions. Would suit middle to upper primary.

Basic Math
Free
Choose from the 4 operations (addition, subtraction, multiplication & division) and complete multiple choice questions on them.

iChoose
Free
App which allows you to select from coin toss, yes/no, dice roll, card choice, rock/paper/scissors and many other options. Great for probability and statistics.

Match Lite
Free
Match the tiles on the screen, e.g. 9 and 7 + 2. Great for reinforcing basic skills. It also times you completing each board.

Math Quizzer
Free
Choose from addition, subtraction, multiplication & division (or a combination of these) and then complete the questions. Multi-choice answers are provided below.

Brain Blaze Divide
Free
This is ok… You go through the sets of division problems, unlocking a new set each time you correctly answer each set. Only thing is, it allows you to work with one set at a time (e.g. division by 1, division by 2 etc), rather than mix them up. Still, it’s a good starting place.

Tanzen Lite
Free
A neat little app that allows you to complete tangram puzzles (set to very zen-like music). A well thought through application.

Tape Measure
Free
Basic ruler in inches or centimetres.

Units
Free
Excellent little app which will quickly show you any unit (area, temperature, length and weight, to name a few) in most other units, e.g. for Length it shows you Miles, Nautical Miles, Yard, Foot, Inch, Kilometre & Metre. The perfect app to illustrate why we should think about whether we need to spend time teaching our kids this stuff when it does it for us so quickly…

Geared
$0.99
App which our Grade 5’s will be using to reinforce understanding of simple machines. This game gets progressively harder as you solve more challenging problems.

World Wiki
Free
As it implies, gives you access to demographic info on most countries in the world.

Google Earth
Free
Excellent iPod Touch version of the desktop programme created by Google. Absolutely awesome.

History: Maps of the world
Free
View historical maps of the world.

iEphemeris Lite
Free
Astronomical app showing moon phases, the surface of the moon, the distance between the earth and the moon… You get the idea!

Weather Bug
Free
Live local weather forecasts, 7 day forecasts, maps and (in certain areas) video footage of weather conditions.

Flower Garden Lite
Free
Neat little app where you plant, water and grow flowers and send bouquets via email.

Epicurious
Free
Great app for recipes, complete with photos, clear instructions and the ability to create shopping lists.

iFirst Aid
Free
Great basic first aid information for all. Once you have registered, you can access info on CPR, bleeding, burns, choking & poisons. I was pleased to see for the CPR section, you can choose between Adult, Child 1-8 years and Baby. There are visuals which aid instructions.

Step Trak Lite
Free
Neat app which acts as a pedometer. Simple to use, really effective. You can upload your results to MapMyWalk.

Mini Piano
Free
A one octave piano keyboard. Works beautifully.

Pocket Shaker
Free
Select a percussion instrument from an extensive list, then play it!

Kalimba Free
Free
A realistic looking kalimba, in the key of C or G.

Drum Kit Lite
Free
Decent drum kit with some good audio output! Our music teacher plans to use it with the class to play rhythms en masse!

Touch Chords
Free
Takes you through some easy, medium and advanced chords, and also ‘Little Hands’ chords (where you don’t play all the strings). Nice introduction.

Art
$0.99
Great list of historical artists, their lives, their art, and so much more. If $0.99 seems a little much, why not try the lite version, which is free.

Doodle Kids
Free
Neat little app created by a 9 year old Singaporean boy. We’ve used it for fine motor skills, creativity etc. You can take screen shots of your creations and email them later.

Make a Face
Free
This app lets you make crazy faces using various noses, mouths, face shapes etc.

Comic Touch Lite
Free
Add captions and speech bubbles to photos. A bit like Comic Life on a Mac.

Whiteboard Collaborative Drawing
Free
Neat little app that allows you to connect more two iPod Touches together. Great for communication!

abc Pocket Phonics
$0.99
I think this is a great little app for the early years. You learn to form letters, hear the sounds of each letter, then blend sounds to make words at the end. The Lite version has the first sounds only, but the full version has sound blends as well. Give it a go! See here for more details on how we used with with K2.

Early Reader
$0.99
Another great little app for beginning readers. It covers the basic sight words, phonics, etc and is easy to use. You can turn the voice on or off.

Word Magic
$0.99
This app has missing letters which the kids need to select from a list to complete the word. There are a range of settings you can customize, including lowercase or uppercase letters, the missing letters at the beginning, middle or end of the word, and the length of the word (to name but a few).

Ladybug Tree
$0.99
This is a good app for developing touch-pad skills. You catch ladybugs (the Kiwi in me wants to say ‘Ladybirds’, but I’ll let it go!) and put them in a jar, and see how many you can catch in the time given.

iWrite Words
Free
Trace the letters on screen. It’s ok, but not the writing format we usually teach. Good for fun though.

Tozzle Lite
Free
Great little puzzle for developing touch-pad skills. Tap and drag the pictures into the correct places. My 2 year old loves this one.

Classic Nursery Rhymes Lite
Free
This version only has Humpty Dumpty on it, however it is nice the way you can listen to the nursery rhyme and then put Humpty Dumpty back together again.

Skype
Free
Fabulous communication tool you will all know and love, I’m sure.

TED
Free
Link straight to the amazing TED website where you can access all of the fabulous videos for Technology, Entertainment & Design.

Myst
$4.99
This computer game has been reconfigured for the iPod Touch. I hope to use it later in the year as a stimulus for creative writing. The visuals are really great, and it is a critical thinking sort of game (which I like).  There is also Myst Free for you to check out first, if you’re put off by the price tag.

Chess Free
Free
App that allows you to play chess. Simple and to the point.

Learn Chess
Free
Nice and simple way to learn to play chess. Good mix of visuals and instructional text.

Phew! That’s it for now! I am always on the look out for new apps, so if you have some great ones to share, why not leave a comment?

Photo Credit: Peteris B

Cross posted at uTech Tips

Of course in this busy life we all lead, finding time to write thank you letters is a tricky business. Cue technology!

First up we hopped onto Facebook and created video messages of thanks. If you have a webcam it should be remarkably straightforward. Just go to ‘compose message’, click on the video button and record!

The quality isn’t brilliant, but the ease of use definitely makes up for that (image below)

For those not on Facebook, we used the Voice Memos app on the iPhone to record a very simple message of thanks.

Clicking on the red circle starts and stops recording, and then you can email the mp4 file wherever you want.

Check out a sample thank you below!

I promise you, this took hardly any time at all, and I know the people who received their digital thank yous absolutely loved them!

Wendy works with multiple grade levels, but for these lessons she wanted the Grade 3-5’s to learn some new vocabulary – what she describes as ’simple Chinese characters’, that will help them understand more difficult characters later on. Wendy explained to me about the importance of learning the root of the character – also known as the radical. As this website explains, “The radical usually, but not invariably, gives a name or clue as to the meaning of the character.”

Wendy gave me the following example:

In the same way that we have bi = 2 and tri= 3 in English, Chinese has root words (or radicals) as well, e.g. 木 = tree,　林 = wood, and　森  =  forest. They all have the root word of ‘tree‘.

Learning the order in which the characters are written helps students understand the meaning of characters they are not familiar with – they will know what the character is about, as this example shows:

妈　姐　奶　姨 = Mum, Sister, Grandma, and Aunt, all have the same radical of female 女.

One way Wendy might have previously taught this sort of lesson is to give each child the Chinese characters together with their meanings. She would then show them how to write the character, and try to emphasize the importance of writing each character in a particular order. The trouble was, she tells me, the kids would never remember about writing the character in the right order, meaning they were missing the opportunity to understand more complex characters as the radicals weren’t clear to them.

This is where the iPod Touches came in. She used this free Chinese/English Dictionary app: It is a basic dictionary app which allows you to write the characters, and then provides the pinyin, together with the definition in English.

Wendy gave the list of characters, this time without the definitions. She gave a check sheet showing the stroke order for half of the words, but the rest, students would have to figure out themselves.

Students had to try and use what they knew about the order of the characters (the basic principal when writing Chinese characters is left to right, top to bottom), to try and find the definitions of the characters. Check out the video below to see the students in action:

Using the iPod Touches was particularly motivating for the students – they were absolutely determined to find out the meanings, they were eager to write the characters correctly so the dictionary would be able to find the definitions, and they were great at helping each other and making suggestions for ways of writing the characters.

So where was the learning? I asked Mary van der Heijden, our Vice Principal of Curriculum (who observed one of the lessons), and this is her response:

Every child had hands on experience of drawing the root of the characters. Not just once, but repeatedly. This was because if the characters weren’t  written  fairly well the dictionary couldn’t read it. Therefore the children had plenty of practice in trying to form the  characters correctly.

What empowered children more was that they could keep trying and different characters kept coming up in the dictionary and even at the lower level they look  for patterns and shapes to try and match the correct character with their own attempt.

The language between the children was constantly reinforcing the correct way of writing. For instance they would say, ‘no not like that, top to bottom’, or ‘that’s not straight’.

This application was also very good for hand eye co-ordination and this skill can be transferred to other areas of learning.

In addition, the problem solving skills developed  were very clear. Use of trial and error, looking for patterns to make links with, using prior knowledge were all important strategies.

Collaborating with a partner to assess where each child might be going wrong was very beneficial to improving their attempts and then sharing their findings.

Persisting even when the tool they were using didn’t seem to be able to understand their writing was also a good development.

Knowing how a dictionary works, whether for Chinese or any language was key in the activity and children progressed in their understanding of using it.

Finally the most important aspect was that the children were engaged and motivated. What might have been a tedious dictionary lesson, turned into a very powerful learning situation which would aid children’s memory of characters and vocabulary suitable for various levels of ability.

I hope this approach proves useful to people, and that it sparks some other great ideas. We would be very interested in hearing other ways iPod Touches are being used in Language lessons, so please let us know what is going on in your classroom/school.

I have graciously been given 5 mins at the beginning of every staff meeting to talk through a tech tip for teachers. I will be sharing a range of things, from IWB ideas, to simple things such as tabbed browsing. It’s nice to have a regular slot to push some technology info that will hopefully be useful and relevant for all teachers.

On Wednesday mornings from 7:15am, Katie (our Teacher Librarian), Haidee (Grade 3 teacher and in-campus Studywiz expert) and I have made ourselves available to all staff requiring tech help, support and/or ideas.

So far it’s been running for two weeks, and I am thrilled at the turnout we’ve had.

Week one we had some looking at IWB techniques (like these ones from @pennyryder), some looking at the new library catalogue and ways of navigating it, another group was getting support with StudyWiz, one teacher wanted advice on how to set up a Google site and another was about to launch her first blog.

Week two saw more diversity: our Chinese Language team were all here for tips on using the IWBs, another teacher was learning how to merge cells in a table and add colours, the wireless keyboard/mouse was being demonstrated, and our Principal came in wanting to know more about Twitter.

We have had positive feedback from many people about the Wired Wednesday format. They like the flexibility of being able to pop in with problems related to them, they appreciate not having to be locked in to attending every week, and they feel they have someone to go to get help.

I know how they feel. Recently, when I was learning how to use Prezi, I thought a lot about how much easier it would be if I was sitting next to someone who knew how to use it already. Thankfully, @RobinThailand was only a tweet away, but even so, having someone physically there would have made all the difference. I believe having access to someone to work alongside is so important in learning, particularly with technology. It ties in nicely with Vygotsky’s Zone of Proximal Development.

I love the public face technology is being given in our school. It is clear technology is valued, as our admin team has been so accommodating, not only in these two ways, but by leading by example. Let me explain…

Last year, I was talking up 2 new books in the library, Presentation Zen and Slideology, while also giving some feedback about 2 presentations I attended at EARCOS 09. In my presentation to staff, I modeled a couple of slides from different workshops I attended. I won’t share the slides I considered dire, but I’m happy to sing the praises of Kim Cofino, whose gorgeous slides made her presentation sing. [Her presentation Connecting Across Continents can be found here.]

Anyway, our admin team have since been leading the way, ensuring their presentations to students, staff and parents use fabulous visuals, limited text and are delivered with confidence. I can’t tell you what a difference it makes! Staff meetings become more interesting and engaging. Imagine that?!

Not only that, but other teachers are also making their presentations more visually interesting. I know of a teacher who created a fabulous presentation for parents when we had a meet-the-teacher type of evening last week. It went down a treat. [I have told a few people about Prezi too, so I'm sure we'll be seeing a few of those crop up soon enough!]

It feels like we’re at the start of something big.

Photo Credit: Saschaa

Full disclosure: I have never taught K2 before. In fact, I’ve never taught kids younger than Grade 2, so thankfully I had an expert to work alongside: Ms Louise is an experienced early years teacher (and fellow PYP workshop leader), so I was in very capable hands.

We worked with groups of 7 or 8 students at a time. The rest of the class was working with the teacher assistant on some shapes work, and another group had play.

We decided on 2 free apps to start with. First up, we introduced ABC PocketPhonics Lite

This app reinforced phonics skills and writing skills. Once various sounds were explored, students played the game, where the programme says a sound, and the kids have to select the letter that matches the sound. They end up making words (e.g. an, it, sit, cap).

What we liked about this app was that we could select lowercase letters (from a menu of uppercase, lowercase and cursive), US or UK English sounds, and even the style of print. Very customizable.

After about 10 minutes on this app, concentration levels were beginning to wane (especially as a menu of other apps was only a click away!). I had planned on doing some more structured letter practice using our next app, Doodle Kids, but Ms Louise wisely suggested we let them draw and play.

What’s neat about this app is that you can change the background with a 2-finger tap, draw with various shapes, and basically be creative. When we were with the second group, Ms Louise said, “Wouldn’t it be great if we could save some of the pictures?”

I remembered that with the Whiteboard Collaborative Drawing app, that simultaneously holding down the menu button and the sleep/wake button took a photo which got saved in the photos folder on the iPod Touch. I had a go, and sure enough, it worked!

From there, we were able to email it to Ms Louise (or anyone!).

** We had previously set up the iPod Touches with a generic gmail account I created for the school, and this function would need to be set up prior to use with the kids **

The kids were really excited about the prospect of emailing their pictures to their parents. One wee girl said to me, “This one’s for my Mum, because she’s going to Germany tomorrow.” How sweet!

Remember, this is day 4 of school for these little guys. Wouldn’t you be impressed with an email from your child’s teacher with a drawing they’d done for you? This one’s by Daniel.

I have been asked countless times since purchasing the iPod Touches for the school, “But what are the kids going to be learning on them?” Don’t get me wrong, I totally support this mode of thinking. If we can’t justify to teachers/parents/anyone what kids are learning on the iPod Touches, then they’re just another toy.

So I have been reflecting on what the kids learned during that mini-lesson, and here are some of the skills I saw (using the PYP Transdisciplinary Skills):

Clearly there is a lot of learning taking place.

I know this is just the beginning, but I hope to document the different ways we are using the iPod Touches at UWCSEA East so we can build a bank of knowledge and ideas to share. We are always looking at unique ways we can use them, so please feel free to share ideas with us.

New Job:
Flexible Timetable, k-5 tech integration & support at UWCSEA East.

New Toys:
14 Creative Vado HD Video cameras
12 iPod Touches
11 Digital Blue Microscopes
22 Acer Aspire One Netbooks
1 Visualizer

Getting Started:
I introduced some of our new toys during a whole staff meeting. I demonstrated (briefly) how to use the iTouch using the visualizer, and whipped through a couple of free Apps to show some possible uses in the classroom. These were the three I showed:

Art Lite

This great little app has 5 major artists, info on their lives, and a photo gallery of their work.

Notes

Wendy, our very creative teacher of Chinese, discovered an awesome way to use Notes. She added simplified Chinese as one of the keyboard languages, then wrote characters, which can then be emailed to parents

Whiteboard

The Whiteboard app is one of my most exciting finds. It allows two iPod Touches to connect and work together; two people can draw on the same whiteboard. It has great potential for peer-to-peer work (one person could write above a line drawn in the middle, the other below) e.g maths quizzes where students could compare answers, play games like naughts and crosses, and collaborative drawing to name but a few. Can you think of any more?

Next up were the Video Cameras. I showed the basics of how to record, replay etc, then showed a video our technician (Bernie) had taken earlier in the day of me using the iPod Touch. The teachers were blown away with the quality of the video.

Finally, we put teachers into groups of 4 (each having a leader who I knew either had an iPhone/iPod Touch themselves, or was familiar with them), and encouraged them to have a play. Each group was given an iPod Touch, a video camera and two netbooks.

The teachers had a great time investigating the new hardware, and the end result was a huge number of questions about where they can purchase some for themselves! That was encouraging! It was great to hear the discussion between people as they discovered and shared new things.

Today is the first day of school, and already the iTouches and Video Cameras are booked to be used with kids. Can you imagine what these kids will be telling their parents about their first day at UWCSEA East?! How engaging will their classes be?!

I will blog more about how they are being used in the classroom, and hope to have some examples to share with you soon.

Let the learning begin!

While waiting outside for my 3.5 year old to finish her ballet class, I overheard some parents talking about schools for their kids. Naturally, my ears pricked up.

One (Singaporean) parent said she had found the perfect school for her daughter. I was intrigued! Her criteria? The teachers had been teaching at the same school for over 20 years.

I know fabulous teachers (as I’m sure you do) who have been teaching for more than 20 years, and I do not mean to take anything away from them. I also know fabulous teachers who are only just beginning their careers, and I feel the Mum who judged a good school by the fact that the teachers had been there a long time was missing the boat.

Longevity does not necessarily equal a good teacher.

Longevity at an international school doesn’t equal a good teacher either! The cynic in me might think (upon hearing a teacher has been at the same school for 20 years), what’s the package like at THAT school?

Some kids may blossom under a certain teacher, and others may wilt.

Caring, passion and determination are my measures of a good teacher. They can just as easily be found in teachers new to the profession as they can on those with decades of experience.

The parents in question had their daughters in the ballet class for a trial lesson. It was interesting hearing their interpretations of how the lesson was going and what they thought of the teacher, based on their observations through the glass window.

In my opinion, you could not wish for a kinder, gentler teacher than my daughter’s ballet teacher. She makes classes fun (there is much pretending to be flamingos, tigers, fairies etc, which appeals to my daughter’s imagination). She never appears cross at anyone, and is one of those beautiful people who you can tell is a dancer just by the way she holds herself. My daughter adores her.

The parents of the girls who came for the trial lesson judged her unsmiling and boring. In the above photo (taken as the kids were entering the class), there are fewer than 10 children in the lesson, but the day they attended there were about 16-20 3-4 year olds. The teacher made sure everyone was participating, having fun, and enjoying their experience. I take my hats off to early years teachers on a daily basis. Just getting them standing still is one thing, let alone doing any ballet!

It’s a hard job being a teacher. It’s got to be even harder having over-involved parents staring in at you, watching you teach.

It makes me even more determined to make sure those good teachers out there know how good I think they are.

When I began teaching, I wanted to keep my good work to myself – I wanted that fun learning experience to be something I gave the kids in my classroom. In truth, I probably wanted recognition for my work (hey, I was only 22!).

Now, 10 years on, I believe the measure of a good teacher is how much they share. I know that imitation is the highest form of flattery. I don’t want to hold on to my best ideas/lessons/websites/activities/flipcharts etc etc – I want to share them so that more students and teachers can learn with them, build on them and improve them.

I am a great believer in collaboration, and know that the quality of work I produce with others, and the ideas and suggestions I gain from others, far exceeds the work I am capable of producing on my own.

Pass it on…