Many Hands

I think the best thing that’s going on this week is I have started the collaborative story writing activity. It’s a simple way to try commenting.

• Listen to a great podcast on Ants by the 1st Graders at Willowdale
• Make a class newspaper using the ReadWriteThink printing press
• Comment on a blog. Find some great examples at the One Room Schoolhouse blog.

You can also add to A Story by All of Us on this blog.

Remember send your hints, ask questions and suggest activities here.

Will Richardson was in town this week creating a lot of buzz for teachers and librarian around Web2.0. What does it all mean?

Basically you should start using some form of technology to help you with your teaching and you should get into the spirit of community. The way you do this is going to be different for everyone. The most important thing you can do is find someone to work with either from your school community, a fellow teacher blogger or a friend. Then try some of these activities and share them with someone.

• Email someone a link that you really like, tell them how you used the resource.
• Read a blog and comment on it. One Room Schoolhouse has some great examples of primary school blogs you could comment on.
• Email that blog to someone and get them to comment on it. Now your really having a conversation.
• Try creating a whole class Powerpoint by linking lots of little bits of information. Who knows next you’ll be using Wiki’s maybe even updating Wikipedia.

Now if you’re ready to start your own blog. Try edublogs and start by watching this five minute video.

As part of the comment challenge I’ve been trying to work out how to find blogs that mean something to me so that I can comment on them authentically with students. This mean understanding the people around you. As a result I’ve found a few examples of great Australian blogs created by primary school teachers. I still haven’t quite worked out how to comment on them in meaningful ways.

Australian

• Our Own Backyard
• Miss W and her Smartboard
• The MiniLegends
• 08AllStars
• 4B’s Blog

Our blog

• Wormbins – you can comment on our blog by click on the Speeches page and then going to Speeches and reading the information collected by the students and then asking questions or providing extra information. We’ll be doing this for another couple of weeks.

You can find more examples of blogging teachers and students at Support Blogging.

Just getting started? Anne Bartlett-Bragg has a good summary of what a blog is and how to get started. Click here to read it.

You could also add your blog to the community at Blogging Corner and tell us a little about what you are doing with your blog.

Are you a primary school blogger? Who are you? How can we help each other?

Most videos in youtube and other players are flash video.  This is incompatible with with Windows Media Player which is where you would normally play video if you own a PC.  To make matters worse the converting Flash video to WMV or something compatible with Windows Media Player doesn’t usually work.

Instead get the free Adobe Media Player then you’ll be able to convert the video to MP4 or something else compatible and play your video.

There are two steps:

Downloading the video

1. Go to Video Code Zone
2. Copy the URL of the video you want to share

Playing the video

1. Download Adobe Media Player
2. Open the video to view it

Any other tips feel free to post them in the comments.

For the teachers

• Links from Edna
• Blog post on rewarding good behaviour
• My post on sharing education youtube videos with your students. Medium level of difficulty.
• Powerhouse Museum photo collection. Free for you to use in media projects.
• Civics and Citizenship video from Film Australia Digital Learning
• Prepositions Activity
• How We Became Writers: Inspire young writers with posts from this blog

From the kids

• Aussie Kids Being Proud podcast