Ulearn Conference Lois Fraser

What an awesome 3 days I had at the Ulearn Conference in Christchurch last week. Having just returned to the classroom after a break of 5 years the technological advances have been somewhat overwhelming to me. Plus a great challenge. So the conference fair blew me away with the classroom uses and communication globally. I did perhaps feel that computers in the junior room were an extra but now realise that they are an integral part of the whole learning experience and I am really excited about implementing ICT into everyday practice. My first challenge will be to get my classroom blog up and running and look forward to sharing our successes with the wider community. The children have already, with the help of a mother help, published their written expression. Next week we will do this again but use a paint programme to illustrate their work.

ULearn Conference

This was the third ULearn conference that I have attended. Everytime you go to these conferences you come away with inspirational ideas on what to do with your children in your class. The three days backed up my thoughts on the future educational practises and how important ICT and inquiry is with their learning and the fact that the tools with ICT are both motivational and important with children's learning. Obviously this was the view of many keynote speakers, including Anne Tolley. Conferences such as these also make you feel good as you know that as a teacher you know where you're heading and the direction education is going, so it isn't a surprise when you are asked in the future. The one thing that I've come away with from conference and would like to use in the future at our school is the use of e-portfolio's. They are the way of the future where parents can get involved more with their children's education, knowing what their children are doing at school and commenting on it as they are doing it, rather than a snapshot of work at one time as our paper portfolios are now.

U learn 2009

Kia ora,

First and foremost what a fantastic achievement it was to take all Poroutawhao teaching staff to the U learn, ICT, conference in Christchurch this year. Without a doubt it was money well spent in so many ways. Exposure to this high quality professional development is absolutely essential if major changes are going to take place in any area of a school's performance. To have the whole team hearing the same thing at the same time is the ultimate dimension. The buzz on day one back at school this term was evident amongst us all.

Our major objectives of further reinforcing in our minds the importance of the integration of the ICT tool and then exploring different tools and applications we would actually use in our classroom was achieved. Alongside this there was also the invaluable experince of meeting some pretty impressive people working in this field, including other from within our own cluster.

I now look forward to staff introducing a new ICT tool or application into their classroom programmes. Each staff member has been challenged to do this by the end of week 4 and then give a presentation about this to staff, (using ICT of course).

Over and above this, all staff have also been challenged to not only get their class blogs up and running but ensuring that their class community is regularly contributing to it. This is also an expectation that must be shortly met.

Regards

Neil Hirini
Principal

Wow! What an amazing 3 days. There were so may positive aspects about attending the Ulearn09 conference, where do I begin? Firstly I left the conference exhausted but totally motivated to implement as many of the fantastic ideas that were shared, that i possibly can.

Tony Ryan was an inspiration. I think the biggest idea that I came back with, is that I need to provide a lot more opportunities for my children to just "think". I have begun to use the 'see-saw' thinking activity that Tony Ryan shares. The children get into pairs and say one word related to the topic I give them, then its their partners turn. They go back and forth for about 2 minutes. I had the children do this activity when I introduced our 'Float on By' inquiry unit. We used the words Christmas and floats. I used this activity to get the children to think outside the square. My children responded well to this and I can now see where I can use this activity in lots of areas. I am really excited about finding out a lot more about Tony Ryan's Thinking Keys.

I have come away with a confirmed belief that the use of ICT in the classroom is another tool to engage children in their learning. I didn't realise how much support and how many wonderful ideas are out there to provide our children with an amazing tool to extend their ability to gain more accurate and up-to-date information so easily.

I was also shown what a wonderful tool 'Blogging' is and how i am not utilising its availability as much as I could. I can now see the rewards that this gives the children when their work is "up in the clouds". The children obviously will gain a lot of rewards from feedback that they may receive. I am really excited about getting my class to blog more regularly. I would also dearly love to see parents and whanau visiting our class blog, so I will be advertising the blog a lot more.

Staff collegiality was another huge bonus that I felt came from attending the conference. Not only with our staff but also with other teachers from our wider community.

I am really looking forward to seeing myself and the children using the ideas from Ulearn. I would like to acknowledge Neil and our Board for providing me with this wonderful opportunity to extend my personal growth in the implementation of ICT in my classroom.

U Learn Reflection Nicky Jeffries

What an excellent opportunity to learn new skills, gain motivation for integrating more ICT into the classroom and meet fellow teachers(especially local).
I attended 6 breakouts and I enjoyed the two practical workshops the most. This was because they were targeted to junior children were presented by an enthusiastic teacher with examples of how she used these in the classroom and were ideas that inspired me to think about incorporating into the classroom ths coming term. Both had many great ideas for digital camera use and getting the children to take charge, much easier to implement quickly in the junior area.
Two things I have introduced straight away are just letting the children 'play' more with the programmes introduced last term like comic life, and allowing the children more freedom with the digital camera. Last term there was a set task for the use of comic life and now, they can create trying out many more of the options available. I had introduced a cameraperson last term and tended to call on the more reliable of the children. This class opened me up to just making sure the cord was around their neck and let all have a go! I now have a list so all will get a turn and I am getting the previous camera person to show the next how to download the pictures into our class file.
Two other breakouts gave me alot to think about as they were creating thinking and inquiring minds.

ULearn Reflection - Amber Sanson

Wow!!! Another great conference and a fabulous opportunity to learn new skills and gain motivation for integrating ICT into a new term at school. I attended 6 breakouts and I enjoyed the two practical workshops the most. They were targeted to junior children and were presented in such a way that I thought "YES I CAN DO THAT". So on Monday I was keen as mustard to get stuck into it. I have introduced 4 new ICT/thinking processes in my class already. The most influential idea I have come away with is to "let go" let the children have more independence with ICT and give them the opportunity to play - figure out - and experience each tool. This week I have let the children loose with the camera to record blend sound pictures for blend posters - each week I will assign a group of children to create a blend poster using the camera, comic life and word. The children talked about and wrote about their holiday expereicences and then using the camera they took pictures of each other posing to show what they did in the holidays. We have cut the photos out and will be using them for art work. For reading each child used a question matrix to ask question about the front cover of a book that they will read next week. This has been a great exercise as I have been able to read their ideas, prior knowlegde and wonderings. We can also use their questions to find answers as a reading response activity. We have also used a question matrix for oral news.

ULearn 09

We had the fantastic opportunity to send our whole staff to this conference last week. Once again, there are so many ideas, concepts, new tricks and learning that has been shared with us. One of the many breakouts attended that really stood out for me was about the use of e-portfolios as a way of communicating learning with families. I am looking forward to developing this idea more and making it work for our school in the future, as one of our goals over the next three years. There will need to be some programming played around with first to find the most ideal way of presenting these online learning connections. It is very exciting to think of this becoming a reality in the near future for our school.