Earth Day

Earth Day is in April, this is an early post to help you prepare your students to be ecologically minded citizens. Your students might enjoy the Planet Green Game. As you travel around town you are faced with challenges to reduced energy use at your home and at school. Planet Green Game is a well-done interactive game that introduces students to concepts of reducing our energy consumption by making simple changes in our daily lives

Time to Blog again!

It has been quite a while since I posted to this blog. In the fall I enrolled in a course at BrandonU - ICT for Teachers - and was required to use WordPress to create a blog for the course. When the course ended I didn't continue with either blog. Time has passed and I am ready to settle back into several posts per week. If you would like to read posts from the course blog.
I am enjoying the opportunity to work as the Southwest Horizon Technology Mentor. I will be posting about our eLearning campus, Literacy with ICT, PD sessions and interesting links for teachers.
I am busy preparing for three sessions to be presented at BYTE 2008 in Minnedosa. I am presenting "Creating a Learning Environment with Moodle and Bridgit" and 2 sessions called "Digital Tools for Teachers". I will be using a wiki to post materials and links.

A Conference with Something for Everyone

The K12 Online Conference begins tomorrow. Beginning keynote is being delivered by David Warlick and will be released at midnight (my time) October 8. The K12 conference is delivered as downloadable digital video over the internet. There are 40 sessions available to anyone wanting to "Play with Boundaries" The conference has four strands, Classroom 2.0, New Tools, Professional Learning Networks, Obstacles to Opportunity.

ICT Course

I am taking an ICT course for Teachers from Brandon University, with Prof. Glen Gatin. We will be working on Web Tools. I am hoping to practise the skills that I am teaching to staff in SHSD. We started by creating a new blog, we are using WordPress, which is new to me. My blog can be found here.

We also tested Google Docs - fairly easy to use, offers great collaboration opportunity

I am excited about the Manitoba edubloggercon that is scheduled for SAG in November.

Using PowerPoint for Animation

I am teaching a 2D Animation class over the IITV system which connects the school in our division. I am using Moodle and depending heavily on Bridgit and Skype. This allows the students to work at the computers in lab. My class includes students from two schools, 13 students. My course delivery is a work in progress that will be described on this blog.
We are starting a new topic in 2D involving animation and Powerpoint. We will be looking at many types of simple animation, so each topic is about 3 classes. There are four animation examples in this video from TILT.

Start It Up!

It is time to begin again! School, this blog, schedules!
The first few weeks of school have been exciting and challenging. I think that our online campus is off to a good start.I am teaching an IITV course to students in two schools - 2D Animation. We are using Moodle as our course management system. In school tech mentoring is going to involve inservicing in ePearl, and helping teachers infuse their program with technology.
You will notice that I changed my blog template and added a picture to the header. This is indeed my view to the southwest horizon. Southwest Horizon is also the name of my school division. :-)
I am going to follow the advice that I give my teachers, blogs are for opinions, advice, comments and Wikis should contain facts.
So I will try to share ideas that I hope you will find interesting.

First Things First: Technology Successes in the Primary Grades

Learning Word –she teaches them the tools of Word that they need to use
Inserting Clip Art

Writers Workshop –highlighter – edit other students work, they can show that they have made changes

Spelling Word Art

Templates – could be used in centers – more guided – save as document template, they will then have to save and make their changes, put it on the desktop

Internet

What to include in your web quest
Introduction
Tasks
Resources
Process
Evaluation
Conclusion
Use links to appropriate sites, your choice

Find ISTE upload and look up this presentation for PowerPoint

http://Webtech.cherokee.k12.ga.us/bascomb-es/anywalker/

Reading log – active database – printed in Access – student is to read a book every night and record it into the database.

Classroom Connections

PowerPoint

My Grade 2 Reflections – Teacher, Friends, Favorite Subject, Favorite Event
Templates
PowerPoint Slides
Interactive Games
Math Facts & Sight Word Practice
Jeopardy Games
Group Project Presentations
Transitioning – cloze sentences, answers come in later

Microsoft Publisher
Invitations to Parties
Picture Story Prompts – give them a picture, they write a story
Mother’s Day Cards

Storybook Weaver
Write your own stories and illustrations
Landforms
Space

Inspiration
Webs for Stories
Web for books – students can fill in the characters, setting

Kid Pix
Pictures to go with stories
Diagrams
Compound Words

Type to Learn

KidWorks
Write the stories and Kidworks will read it back to you.

Video Streaming
Download video and have the students respond to the video, make template that they will have to fill out.

MovieMaker
Take lots of pictures and put on website
Does technology increase student writing scores and attitudes?
PowerPoint presentation is on the ISTE website – type in Any Walker