Naketa's Newsletter 31/5/10

This evening we looked at the tools of the 21st Century presentation and discussed
wys we can use these in our teaching and learning practices. There were a number of
ICT's presented with examples of how these tools were used to enhance children's
teaching and learning.
Teachers were asked to document in a letter ways in which they themselves could
take responsibility for strengthening their current use of ICT tools for teaching and
learning. These will be scanned and emailed to you indidvidually and posted out to
you in 6-8 weeks. I have noticed in these letters ways that I can support you and will
make a centre visit shortly to support you with your goals. Please contact me at any
time via email to discuss the support you need to reach your goals.
Ulearn 10
Rachel, Louise, Jes and Maddy have indicated their interest in presenting at Ulearn
10. How very exciting. Abstracts for these are due 20th June 2010, please let me
know if you need support in pulling this together.
Integrating 21st Century
tools into Teaching and
Learning
NEXT GENERATION
31ST MAY 2010
Top 10 Tips at Next
Generation
As an extension of the presentation
about 21st Century teaching and
learning we explored the article
from Edutopis - Ten Top Tips for
teaching with new media. Each
group were given 2 Tips each and
asked to explore ways they were
relavent to Next Generation
Childcare. Below are the findings
from those groups:
Tip 1 - Break the Digital Ice
•Voicethread enable teacher and students to
get better acquainted using visuals and
audio comments
•Can be whole class activity
•Useful for goal setting as can be reflected on
throughout the year
•Interaction with parents and their goals for
their children
•Encourage families to share their weekend
with the centre. Take photos
•Email to us we can record the child's voice
•http://voicethread.com Check it out!
Tip 2 - Find your classroom experts:
•Check out children's knowledge
•Students to survey family members to see
what they know
•Expose our children to our digital media
and encourage them to be experts.
•Make sure we can use the equipment to
support the children.
Tip 3 - Get off to a Good Start and Tip 4 -
Think Globally
•Public web page to inform parents
•Get the children motivated from the start
•Teacher needs to know the equipment well
•Have resources available and ready to go.
•Social networking sites
•Encourage children to initiate their own
sites/pages.
•Collaborate with team members
•Take advantage of distant experts
•E-Pals
•Connect globally with video and schools
internationally
•Find others who share the same interests
•Globally - International families we can
email, skype, get their life stories
•Organised, good start, getting all on board
with community blog page.
•Encourage parents to add
•Teachers upskilling with equipment can
peer tutor parents
•Connect with other kindergartens
•Create a Next Generation Skype account
•Send out how to emails
•Skype Over 2's for settle in stage
•Get together with both centre teacher to
learn off each other.
Tip 5 - Find what You Need
•Using sites like Donorschoose.org to ask for
resources. I think the NZ equivalent is
http://www.donatenz.com/
•Scrapaction.org and Freecycle.org
Tip 6 - Make meaning from Word Clouds
•Wordle.net
•Turns a block of text into a cloud pattern
•Frequent word prominent
•Talk about key vocab in a story
Tip 7 - Work better together
•blogging
•wireless, paper + pens
WHAT NEXT?
• Jes and Maddy to work on abstract for Under 2's presentation for Ulearn10
due 20th June 2010.
• Louise and Rachel to work on abstract for Over 2's presenation at Ulearn10
due 20th June 2010.
• Teachers to work on their individual goals (letters emailed and will be sent
again on 24th July 2010)
• I Can Animate has been installed on Rachels computer. Have a go and see
what you think of it :D
• Transition to School - There was lots of discussion on the workshop evening
about working with schools in the local area to support children's transitions
but also having an evening where we share some ICT technologies with them.
• SKYPE - Tip 4 talks about "Taking it global" we discussed that is was timely for
Next Gen to create a centre Skype account (one for each centre) to start
Skype conversations for transition between centres and also other centres
around NZ and the world. Some Skype addresses you might like to start with
Yendarra Kindergarten teacher Kea (kea.te.rurehe.latu) or Manaia
Kindergarten (manaia.kindergarten) or Fiordland Kindergarten (fiordlandk) or
me (naketaferguson). HAPPY SKYPING!!
• Listening with our Eyes workshop - 30th June 2010 - 6pm - Bayfield Pre
School, Jervois Rd
• Wordle.net - Have a go with this and see what prominent words there are for
your centre blogs. What does this reveal about the content of your blogs?
•sharing ideas
•teamwork
•using tools to communicate
•outside the centre
•skyping with wider community
•GOOGLE DOCS
•sharing of work/home
•teachers as a team
Tip 8 - Open a back channel
•Not all participate
•own interests
•smaller group
•Photo Story 3
•Confidence
•Own action plans
•FUN and NONSENSE
•Communicate in different ways, eye contact,
body language
•time to listen to children and each other
•creating stories/characters
•time to talk chat
Tip 9 - Make it visual and Tip 10 - Use the
buddy system
•Keep us up to date
•Powerful - and more than one dimensional
•Wider network
•Media - we can use and extend on
•Look into different visual resources and
media
•Facebook
•Literacy
•Set Goals
•Keep us challenged