My Blog: Educreations

4 events

Here are 4 events that inspired me to record my learning journey as a blog:
1. In November 2005 I attended Professional Development courses run by Jacqui Sharp – "Digital Cameras for real Beginners and 101 Ways to use your Digital Camera."

2. I was next inspired by Dorothy Burt who spoke about classroom blogging at a Teachers Conference in Palmerston North in January 2010.

3. My wonderful techie and future focussed husband, Julien, continues to inspire and challenge me to try out new "technology." Hence my iPhone is now my favourite device that I am addicted to and would be lost without. Together with my iPad it has made it so easy for me to keep in touch with current changes in technology.

4. The last event that catapulted me in the deep end and showed me what could be happening in my school, was attending the ISTE conference in San Diego in July 2012. This conference opened my eyes, inspired and motivated me to share my learning. This blog, hopefully, will have ideas to inspire you to get e-learning happening in your classroom.

Thursday, January 16, 2014

Educreations

Our new FREE web tool – a special iPad app or use a laptop – http://www.educreations.com/

It is an interactive whiteboard that creates video lessons or explanations in a slideshow format. From a teacher’s point of view it has unlimited possibilities for children to become confident talking about their learning and sharing it in an exciting, motivating, e-learning way.

The features of Educreations:

Write text or draw lines or pictures with a pen using different colours
Write text with a keyboard
Take photos or import photos from a folder or your camera roll
Import pictures from the web
Add more pages to your slideshow
Add audio or talk along with your slides
Save and share your slideshow – email, Twitter, embed it into a blog or wiki page
You will need to sign up with an email account to share it

Ways we could use Educreations

share research about a zoo animal
explain how to solve a maths problem
share a book that has been read
explain how to make something

It's best to plan the slideshow - load up each page with photos, text, practise what to say or write it down, then add voice for each page

The 2 weaknesses I can see are:

Having to record all slides in one session – you can’t go back and edit once saved

If you make a mistake with your voice recording you have to start all over again

Only disadvantage is that you can't save the talk for each page - you have to delete the whole voice recording if you make a mistake

Maths -
Talking through / explaining maths learning - eg showing doubles, mult problems, evidence from weighing activities - photos, diagrams, add voice
Literacy Ideas -

Book review - captions, photos, story with pictures/ photos, photos with captions + voice
http://www.educreations.com/lesson/view/maori-places/9197099/
http://www.educreations.com/lesson/view/zoo-animal-tagxedos-by-zach-thomas-and-kartik/8950885/
http://www.educreations.com/lesson/view/ipads-please/9073114/

Thursday, January 9, 2014

The End of 2013 - Reflections

A VERY busy year! Heaps of new learning courtesy of the Learning and Assessment Team working in our school.

so lots of trialing new ideas and modifying old ones - observations, student conferencing, videoing lessons, giving feedback to staff, children self and peer assessing, target and focus learners, writing and reading progressions, LLP and NZ Curric and National Standards resources, inquiry planning cycle, clarity of learning intentions, co-constructing success criteria, next steps.....
being given 4 new iPads to use making 5 in total plus 6 PCs and laptops meant Space 10 was a trial digital learning class - no pressure to maximize the use of all this hardware! Watch the Educreation slideshow the class made to request more iPads - very persuasive and it worked!

trying to keep my own e-learning PD going as well as encouraging staff by keeping the gentle reminders going regarding the e-learning that should be happening in classes
working on an e-learning strategic plan for the school with David Kinane and Clare

Keeping this blog updated has suffered from my time being taken up with these other commitments. So to make up for lost time the following posts are reflections on what I trialed in 2013 and my next steps for including and modifying for the new class of eager learners in 2014!