Gaming – playing and creating using 2DIY

Our kids are learning content increasingly through online computer games. It’s a fun way to learn with an added bonus of some of the better designed ones requiring problem solving and critical thinking skills. So its great when game making can be introduced as a skill – a problem solving and thinking task as a natural extension to playing games in the younger grades.
Firstly I like to start with a bit of a brainstorm – what makes a good game. Is it the content, the characters, the design, the challenge? We have a bit of a discussion which can get quite animated with many students very knowledgeable about the games they play.
Its time to then direct our attention to educational games, the point of them and how best to construct a situation where the game player can have fun and learn at the same time.
Queue 2DIY, part of the 2simple suite of software. It’s possible that they have played a 2DIY game in an earlier grade. Its something I sometimes prepare as a pre-test or a learning task – they are familiar with some of the formats too – the snake or maze game, multiple choice quizzes, cloze exercises, labelling diagrams etc.
Some ‘Sandbox’ time is then scheduled in a computer session where students investigate the videos and play the example games. The point is for them to identify the best games for learning. The session wraps up with a discussion focussed on their top suggestions for an educational game.
The understanding of the mechanics of some of the games now out of the way, the students turn their attention to writing a game proposal. Some criteria needs to be considered, the purpose of the game, the player age range, the type of game, the content of the game. At the bottom of the proposal page it is important for students to gather information that might be useful when they are making their game. I require students to find at least 10 pieces of information so they can kick-start the content and inform the background to their game.
I give feedback to each student on their proposal and then its time to start designing the games. The range and depth of creativity is obvious. Our topic this time is finite resources of the world with a particular focus on rainforests.
Some of the games created by students include:
* A snake game where the snake collects endangered trees.
* A catching game where points are scored for catching renewable resources and points deducted for catching finite resources
* A matching card game identifying endangered trees of the rainforest
* Lots of different labelling games including maps that identify the rainforest of the world
Time is also spent making sure the instructions for the game are clear and concise and timings, sounds and images are all appropriate to the design of the game.
Once the games are made its time to test them. Each student game maker then becomes the game reviewer, testing one game designed by a classmate. A rubric looks at the design, the content, the creativity and the appropriate age level.
Our students always cast a critical eye on their classmates work and come up with some great comments for each other. All the games are then put on our school portal and all our school community can have a go.
This task is filled with 21st century learning skills: creativity, communication and critical thinking as well as problem solving are successfully combined with real learning for a real (game playing) audience – they really understand their topics and can explain the purpose. The students are understandably proud of their creations and cant wait to play each other’s games.
This task was created for Year 4 students as part of their work in the PYP unit of inquiry 'Sharing the Planet'. Other game creation methods are investigated in other years including Scratch and we are soon introducing a similar free tool Stencyl.

Boys and Technology Conference 2011: 5 take Aways, 10 Tweets and 3 videos

5 take-aways from the Boys and Technology Conference 2011

1) Teachers in 2025
Teaching may be very different in 2025. This is the year that next year’s K students will be graduating. It will also be the end of the first quarter of the 21st century. Those of us who believe in the skills and values of 21st century learning will be hoping that this framework is entirely embedded in our curricula; students and teachers involved in different types of learning – both face to face and online. But the sense of community a school brings will still be important – a community of learners with teachers as the facilitators of knowledge gathering and synthesis, innovation and creativity – empowerment through ICT enhanced student-led learning. Teachers do not need to be the expert, rather be able to assist students to manoeuvre the vast arrays of information out there. Quality teachers will still be important as coaches of life skills and inspiration to their students.
What we need to be increasingly aware of is the safe and responsible use of the internet for students. The digital and mobile world poses challenges for teachers and students that need addressing. The ability for future employees to Google the digital presence of an applicant means that students need to be directed in safe and appropriate behaviour online.
Teachers working in collaborative teams should be a feature of how we work not just for planning but also for teaching. This is a preferred model for Steven Harris from NBCS, the power of many rather than one to excite and engage learners working independently and in groups.

2) What needs to Change
Currently the average age of teachers in Australia is 48. In the next 14 years most of those teachers will not be teaching. Steven Harris believes that there are 10 key factors that need to change to promote the skills and support educators.
• A shared vision
• Intuition
• Risk-taking
• Collaboration
• teamwork
• Creativity
• Edbed ideas
• Action
• Lots of PD
• Creative curriculum models


3) Schools in the 21st century
Restructuring of school staff, particular management structures to reflect new ways of teaching and learning will be paramount to the success of a 21st century learning environment. Professional development of teachers is also a big ticket item for schools expecting their teachers to shift to new learning models – the support is vital. ICT features but there will be a move to a BYOD (bring your own device) model and ICT needs to be seen as the tool NOT the driver of the learning.
Schools need to change – the salutary tale of Borders (Steven Harris) is a warning to all institutions that we cannot keep teaching and learning in the old factory / industrial models of the past but look to a future educational paradigm that engages students and prepares them for a future that we cannot predict.
Learning spaces will require more flexibility for different styles of learning and enhance group work and collaboration as well as support the use of technology (in all its forms).

4) Technology as an empowering tool for all
The proliferation of the mobile device – the iPad or Android tablet, the smart phone, the iTouch, various recording devices and portable video has meant that learning can take many forms and be tailored to the learner’s special needs or preferred learning styles.
Apps for the iPad are numbering 425,000 and growing. The power of being able to find (or create) an app that suits a particular needs is extraordinary in range and capability. Assistive technology is one area that has benefitted from the growth of mobile devices and speech driven software for example is useful for many students that face learning challenges.
There are apps for the management of learning, organisation, collaboration, independent learning, communication and creativity. Using these tools helps us to create new models of learning, re-thinking teaching.
The trick is to use these apps as a tool to facilitate learning, discovery, creativity and innovation and as a place to organise learning to save time and manage.
It is however a cautionary tale. Distraction is a major issue, especially with boys using mobile technology. We all know how easily it is once a mobile device is in your hands to experiment and get off task and its no different in a classroom situation. The quality of the teaching and integration of the use of the device must be carefully targeted.
Mobile devices such as the ipad have a real place in the delivery of epublishing and an advantage can certainly be seen once there is a good availability of text and other books to download. The portability, the ability to copy and paste text, highlight and make notes etc means that the text becomes more easily manipulated, portable and available.
Mash-ups are the future of learning – the ability for a variety of delivery methods to students via video, audio, text and image and also students doing their own mashing up of content to create and innovate new knowledge.


5) Learning Spaces
During the conference several providers of technology equipment were available to chat to and there were a couple of really exciting products that would enhance any learning environment.
Video conferencing
Digital microscopes
Digital measuring equipment
Tables with short throw IWBs
To name a few….
After the conference I dropped in for a quick visit to the RM Education Real(Re-thinking Education and Learning) learning centre for a tour. The set up there is one that is designed to provoke discussion and debate about how an integrated approach to design, furniture and technology can extend teaching and learning opportunities. The space is divided into zones:
• Mobile presentation and discussion
• Collaboration
• Creativity and Media
• Individual
• Explore

Ths space is perfect for inquiry learning, collaboration and creativity. It is a rich 21st century learning environment that incorporates a range of technologies from green screen video recording set up to digital microscopes, a write on wall space using ideas paint, listening and speaking equipment and interactive white boards. Inspiring spaces that epitomise 21st century learning in action.

My top 10 tweets from the conference

• Education occurs when you ask what sort of society do you want? What sort of people do you want? (Gardner)
• By 2025 we need to change the way we measure success in education
• Technology can connect learners with similar interests across ages across cultures
• The gathering of content is not learning how to learn
• The tablet is not necessary for people in this room, it's for normal people. (Steve Wozniak)
• Use the SAMR model to define tasks you want to do with a mobile device
• Some students (the quiet ones in class) like the anonymity of commenting online
• The ipad is a game changer in education because of ‘hope’ ‘serendipity’ and ‘convenience’ (Gerry White)
• Flipped classrooms as a model for better learning
• Think then do … dot then think, which one are you?

3 Videos... the future:
Watch these for a taste of what our student’s world will be like:
The Pranav Mystery
A day made of glass
I teach therefore you learn (or do you)

Animation the online way

Claymation is a tool that has been used in primary schools for some time. So many skills can be applied to one task and students benefit in so many ways. Animation group work tasks promote collaboration, sharing, technical skills, patience, creativity, design, writing, time management, storyboarding, character development, plot and scene development, problem solving and organisational skills. It is a valuable way to present information or tell a story.

Claymation however is time consuming and has organisational and logistical issues that may or may not be convenient in the classroom environment. There are a number of online options to get those animation ideas and creativity going that are suitable for primary aged children. Here are a few.

Zimmer Twins This site is a fun, safe place where kids can use their imagination and create their very own movies. The site is moderated daily and uses text filters to make sure all posted content is appropriate for viewers of all ages. You must make an account on Zimmertwins.com to save movies.
Dvolver . In this tool you can make a short animation with no need to sign up – no passwords required. Choose from a range of backgrounds and characters. It’s quick and easy and the results are very effective.
Kerpoof is a suite of online tools that includes animated movie making. Teachers can access lesson plans and register for teacher accounts
DoInk is an easy to use tool for animation which has a very child friendly interface.
The Go animate suite is expanding and is a very popular animation site with students. The parent site, the original go animate, should be used in the classroom under supervision as some of the content (eg the characters) needs some vetting for younger children. Go animate for schools, allows teachers to create 100 accounts to use with their class which might be a better option.
Domo Animate is powered by Go animate so uses the same format. The scenes, characters, and the props are all from the popular Japanese Domo animation series. Unique animations are made by adding characters, backgrounds and lines of dialogue.
Aniboom allows students can create frame by frame animations using geometric shapes. Each fortnight a new tutorial is uploaded to the forum.

Gaining Inspiration
Inspiring young animators is easy. There's plenty of amazing Youtube videos that showcase the very best of animation to give students ideas and something to aspire to and presents are variety of animating techniques. Try viewing Kiwi, Lego Raiders of the lost ark Goyte’s “Hearts a mess” music video The making of Wallace and Gromit and a remix animation of The Wizard of Oz called Mellow Brick Road
.
What's for certain is that just a small introduction to animation as a tool for story telling is often enough to get your students working as mini Nick Parks, who knows one of us might just unearth the next animating genius!

Innovation in Education: a day with Charles Leadbeater @ SCIL

SCIL at NBCS is very pro active about innovation in schools - different learning spaces, different teaching and learning models and innovation that includes technology. These photos (taken from a blog post in Playducation) are great and reinforce what they say about learning, how it should be: motivating, fun and inspiring.
Love the furniture options and the flexible classroom models:

Learning from Extremes challenged us to think about where and how learning takes place. Being involved in a project to build schools in Central Sulawesi, I was particularly taken with the ideas of learning and innovation in developing countries, three ideas stood out:
1) Where need is greatest and resources least there’s radical innovation
2) Innovation in learning is needed at the most disadvantaged places in the world - currently they are in school and not learning
3) Mobile devices have a big future in the developing world – expanding access to communication and the scope for learning.

Charles Leadbeater suggested there were three important ingredients to innovation in education:
1) Learning: He asked us to think about what is at the heart of learning: emotions, thinking, self regulation, need, desire
2) Technology: Technologies have always been a part of education - whether its the blackboard, the printing press or online technologies - they all enhance our learning experiences.
New technologies (particularly mobile) have given access to learning to more people than ever before, its immediate, its anytime/anywhere, its creating knowledge as well as consuming it. It leads to a different style of learning to which we all need to adapt.
3) Innovation: Educators should take the leap to discover new ways to engage and relate to the 2025 generation. Innovation comes from crisis, curiosity or need - we need to discover our vantage point and this will determine everything.
We were challenged to think hard about our own questions about school innovation, first determining an end point and then working to understand how we are going to achieve it. Schools need to be high systems / high empathy organisations in order to cater for today's learners.

Innovation, Leadbeater analogises, is a series of recipes and cakes – blending ingredients to create some sort of new cake.
By blending our approaches we will rely on making connections - most good innovation relies on connections, best innovators are socially connected. We should, as educators, learn from this and apply it to our learning models - both for ourselves and our students.

In the break out sessions we spent time in groups devising some sort of disruptive approach to innovating schools, here are some of the ideas that came from the groups:

1) Combine school /family and community - we are all learners and should learn from each other - use experts and the community to extend the learning beyond the classroom walls
2) Distributed architectures: learning in all sorts of places - traditional classrooms loose their relevance.
3) Collapsed timetables: focus days/weeks where students are emersed in relevant, learning that develops their curiosity, interests and focus. Teachers available as tutors, convenors of groups and one to one mentors - not classroom teachers
4) Assessment happens when the student is ready to be assessed - when they have mastered the outcomes - not necessarily at a designated time.
5) Make outside spaces learning spaces - places to play and learn, relevant to real life eg coffee/food court plaza style
6) Use school spaces in innovative ways outside of school hours - community comes to school to share the learning
7) Connect classrooms across the globe - not necessarily like with like schools and classes - but look for difference
8) Engage virtual mentors using technology to connect learners - through social networking and mentorship programs
9) Have greater movement of students through grades and stages and subject areas to match their abilities
Out of the day - the group decided that it was important to keep the enthusiasm and interest going for change, we proposed that a group be formed called the "Coalition of Innovative schools" and have teachermeets / online conversations and ongoing thinking. This is a really exciting outcome of the day and I'm looking forward to getting involved.

An amazing day - full of people who really care about future learning and the future particularly of our schools and how we can adapt to our changing students and the changing environment.

365 Project

This year I have taken on the task of documenting our school year as a visual diary using 365 Project. As I'm just about half way through, its time to reflect on the process and its value.

The Process:
The 365 Project is a simple photo blog, take an image a day, add a caption and tag and upload to the site. For some students and teachers in the school it's been an easy entry into the world of blogging and interacting online in a safe environment.
The fun part has been taking the photos. Each week I look at the school's ever increasingly busy calendar and decide what should be covered. Often two or three days have special events going on - visitors to the school, a fund raising activity, excursions, sport etc - so they are easy days, but often not the most interesting. Its the random little snapshots of the school I find the most endearing. For example a Yr 3 boy has started a 'french knitting' craze in the grade. Its building, and each day more boys are getting into it. In fact I overhead the other day one student saying to another "I'm going to take this up a notch and get into sewing". These moments are priceless and in the big picture of a school year would normally get totally lost and forgotten. Now its there for posterity.
Taking photos around the school also allows some students to shine - they are not the sporting successes, the brilliant musicians, the popular boys that always seem to get in the money shots for the school - but instead I have been also highlighting the quiet achievers, the quirky characters. This is what makes a school rich.
I've been also asking for teachers to watch out and send me shots that they think might be worth including. Here's where the buy in from teachers and students begins. If they have contributed - their willingness to join the conversation about the images is heightened and we suddenly have a social network talking and looking at the pictures.
The photos literally take a couple of seconds to upload and write a caption - not a burden and at the end of the week I send out an email letting teachers know what's on for the week so they can share it with their class.
Each month I take a screen capture of the month calendar and print it - so an accumulated set of thumbnail images is growing on a notice board. This also serves as publicity for the project.
Next term I'm going to allocate responsibility to different classes each week to take "a week in the life of the class" - where their class is showcased. Similarly I think that can also work for specialist areas such as Art, Music and Sport.

10 ways to use the project with students:
The project can be used in many ways by many members of the school community. Here's some of what I've observed from the project so far:
1) Classes look at the weekly photos and vote on their favourites - discussion, argument and stating a case and finally voting for a favourite gives the boys a chance to think and reflect on the week.
2) Teachers and students select photos to include - again this is whole class decision making in action. Classes can agree on captions to accompany an image - or a student can be set the task.
3) Boys independently log on and comment on photos and therefore events around the school.
4) Parents can see what's been going on and also be part of the community and comment also.
5) The schools we connect with in other cities can see what we are up to and when we do things together, these images can be included and they can also comment - joining our community conversation.
6) Teachers can set a reflective comment as a homework task.
7) Once the Project comes along some of the way, there are mathematics opportunities for the class to tally number of times a class or subject is featured using the tags.
8) There are also opportunities for text type writing that can launch from the photos.
9) It presents an opportunity for the students to become engaged in a web 2.0 environment, interact with others and value the power of the image and reflective thought.
10) By the end, it becomes a really nice time capsule of the year.

I would recommend the project to anyone, a class, a student or teacher with a special interest or as a simple a reflection of the year. A family even can work together and collect their favourite snapshots and share them online, the site really has many possibilities to use it in a variety of forms. I'm hoping exposure to the project will give our students and teachers some inspiration to have a go.
Visit our site at http://365project.org/cjsphotos/365 and follow us, or join the project and leave us a comment.

What is iLearning?

I have had reason to think about what ilearning (or innovative learning) is lately. It encompasses many things and involves buy-in from all parts of a school.
Ilearning is not just about the technology, although to truly innovate an educational program the technology should be a piece of the puzzle. It not just about the skills set, although when thinking about the delivery of curriculum one must be aware of the skills that need to be embedded into learning experiences. And it is definitely not about the content. The content is the driver of the learning – but the underpinning approach by teachers is what can make learning truly innovative.

We are teaching in exciting times – although this sort of phrase is turning into a cliché – it is true enough. There is lots of thinking going on about what students should really be learning about at school, the new National Curriculum has a huge content component attached to it although it does pay some attention to the skills students also need. It is also true to say that students are now more than likely learning more outside of school time that within it. We are battling with multiple sources of connection and engagement in the real world that if we don’t keep apace with the how and what of learning outside the school, we are in danger of becoming irrelevant institutions, something students ‘have’ to do rather than something they see as relevant and interesting.

21st century skills are the gateway to understanding what’s required to live and work in this century. The 4 C’s are front and centre to a modern educators thinking. Students need to be able to competently communicate in a variety of ways, collaborate with others both online and face to face, be creative in their output and think critically – understanding issues and solving problems. They also need to be reflective and socially / globally aware (my 5th C – global citizenship).

Engagement is the key – if students are engaged in their learning, more will follow. Developing passions and understandings in students, being culturally and socially aware and giving students the tools to see past what is feed to us on a daily basis by the mass media is our task as educators.

A “Bells and Cells” model to learning is not in keeping with an innovative approach to curriculum. It is artificial and counter productive. It is not how we conduct our lives in the real world. Opening learning spaces, team teaching, collaborative and anywhere/anytime approaches to curriculum should be investigated. The freedom to have learning choices, in the ways we not only find our information but also communicate it to others.

Information technology, our ability to connect, work and learn in online spaces and reach people we could not previously even know about, are exciting prospects for educators. We can blend our students learning to expand horizons, see possibilities and foster creativity and hopefully engage students to so that they not only learn effectively during their school and tertiary years, but that they become life-long learners.

Writing for a Real Audience

The dilemma for most students is – when they are asked to write a piece as an assessment – either formative or summative – they are usually not writing for an authentic audience. Their teacher is often the only person who gets to read what has often been laboured over for some time. Feedback is brief and the writing is then put away. This process is not a very edifying experience for any writer. The online world has opened up the possibilities of writing for a much wider audience – and in doing so allows for much more feedback and on going discussion about a student’s piece of writing, their ideas and the writing process in general.

The audience can be peers – other students in their own school or other schools around the globe, their teacher and other teachers, their parents and other parents, other members of the school community or experts and mentors that have been selected for students. It’s a rich environment that can lead to lasting connections and collaborations as well as being a great motivator for writing.

Writing can take many forms in the online environment – it can be personal ideas and jottings – in the form of a blog, narrative writing on one of the many custom websites that allow story publication, discussion and exposition writing where the generation of feedback is so important or the collaborative efforts of an information gathering site such as a wiki. Excitingly reluctant writers might also like to work expressing themselves through online comic creators and graphic novel generators.

Here are some of the best places to encourage your students to write online:

Blogging sites:
Use blogs to for students to personally follow a passion, a learning experience or a reflection on their learning.
Edublogs: A safe and reliable student platform for blogging. Teachers can create and manage their own students’ blogs. Teachers can also set up a class blog where students can take it in turns to write or the class can collaboratively write. This makes a great communication tool in which all the class and their parents can participate.
KidBlog: Kidblog's simple tools allow students to publish posts and participate in discussions within a secure classroom blogging community. Teachers maintain complete control over student blogs. Teachers set up and monitor sites.
Blogger: This platform is accessed via a gmail account and offers many options for blogging (access for over 13 yo’s only)
Think.com: This online collaborative space can be set up as a blog for students. Run by the Oracle Foundation, it is a safe and secure environment moderated by teachers.

Online picture and story books:
Storybird: Storybirds are short, art-inspired stories that are fun to make, share, and read. Teachers can set up class accounts. The art work included on the site is really inspirational and beautiful and students can collaborate or work individually. Books can be printed. It is also useful for foreign language writing.
Zooburst: Run on Adobe Flash, Zooburst authors can arrange characters and props within a 3D world that can be customized using uploaded artwork or items found in a built-in database of over 10,000 free images and materials.
Once constructed, books can be inspected from any angle from within a 3D space, and rotating around a book is as easy as dragging and dropping a mouse. In addition, authors can choose to make items "clickable," allowing readers to learn more about individual characters within a story. Each character can have its own “chat bubble” that pops up when that character is clicked. In addition, authors can also record their own voices using the ZooBurst audio recorder to have their characters really “speak” when clicked!
Little Bird Tales: Students can tell a story, upload their own artwork and create an audio file to accompany their writing. Teachers can set up class accounts.
Issuu: Issuu allows students to publish e-book content. Simply create a pdf of a story with illustrations. (This can be created first on ppt). The pdf is then uploaded to the site. The finished product allows for a page turning experience for the viewer on the screen.
Myths and Legends Story Creator: is a great site for kids who love to create stories. Not only can you create stories with several backgrounds and clip art pieces to choose from, but you can also read and listen to stories that other students have written. Click "Play" to play the story and watch as the stories animate and you can follow along with the narrator.
CAST UDL Book Builder: is a site where you can read, explore, create, and share digital books that build reading skills for your students. UDL Book Builder also provides three coaches that you can build into your books. (See the 3 little characters at the bottom of the book page?) When you click on a character, the character will speak (and show a text bubble) as it guides the students through different reading skills, such as predicting, clarifying, reading for meaning, etc. Book Builder provides links to free text, free images, free reading strategies, etc that will help you create your book.

Comics and Graphic Novels:
Chogger: Use the comic builder to draw your own comics, caption photos, take webcam pictures and add speech balloons. Read, rate, and comment on comics made by people from all around the world.
Comiqs: This site is for over 13yo’s, but there’s no reason why a teacher cannot create their own generic school/class login and monitor the participation of their students. Make comics with your own photos or some of the online clip art available.
Toondoo: is a comic creation site for kids, there is an educational package which does have a subscription fee, however students can create their own individual account for free. Toondoo is a simple drop and drag interface where students can express views and opinions, or tell stories without the need for great drawing skill.
Comic Master: is a portion of the Read Me program. This is a really cool online comic creator, the interface is fun to use and very intuitive. It is obviously geared toward students with a great look and even an embedded music player. There is great detail on the site, including the headline “Reading isn’t only in books, it’s everywhere!”. Using the Graphic Novel Creator, students can create their own multi-page graphic novels with interesting backgrounds, characters, props, and customized text. The graphic novels can be saved and printed out.

So, students can now participate in the online world, write for a real audience and get feedback from many sources - doesn't that sound better than what they have been used to?

Alternative Search Tools to Google for Kids

We all do it, just log onto Google to find the information or image we need, and the kids do it too. The following are some great alternatives to use with your class.
A good strategy is to mix it up – ask them to specifically find resources using different search engines.
Some kids are definitely more visual learners, so some search engines are terrific for them. Others present their findings in very unusual ways that are excellent resources in themselves.
Advanced searching is a breeze as well with some well designed search engines that allow for Boolean searching without your students even knowing what they are doing!

Here’s some of the best:

Spezify A visual search engine, results are given in multimedia rich format. It is a great ‘big picture’ tool and includes blogs and tweets on the subject area as well – therefore including social networking into the mix, visuals including images and videos are presented – a draw back is the download time of some of the images – but it’s a great tool to browse through.
Search-Cube Giving a visual result display, Search cube grabs its results from Google and site preview thumbnails from Thumbshots, then combines them in a 3D cube that you can rotate freely either with your mouse or keyboard.
Mashpedia Mashpedia is a web application structured thematically around topics, like in an encyclopedia. It integrates contents loaded from different online sources under one single interface, providing a wide spectrum of digital contents and up-to-the-minute data. For every valid topic, Mashpedia presents a list of modules with content loaded in real-time from multiple web services, categorized by media type or data source. By jumping modules, you'll find fresh data and digital media from Newspapers, Magazines, Blogs, Books, Wikipedia, Youtube, Twitter, Facebook, Flickr, Social Answers and additional online resources.
What's clearly missing here are which results are worth clicking on, something you get with Google's search result relevance algorithm, however, on the flip side (literally), you get to see a lot more results at once, and with a little visual flair.

Duck Duck Go Duck Duck Go is an Internet search engine that makes it easier to find the information you're looking for. When you search a topic, in addition to links, it provides a synopsis of that topic with zero clicks. Duck Duck Go also gives you links to related topics, news, and images on the same page.

Kigose From yahoo Kids: Kid safe Kigose is a website designed for students and teachers to find educational resources. Kigose only includes public websites that are for educational purposes only. The list of the websites included are suggested by teachers, parents and students.

Boolify: The advent of the internet increased the amount of information available to the general public exponentially. The people of Boolify, joined together because they realized that while the amount of available information had increased, the tools to find it were not being properly taught to children. Boolify is a tool that enables students to be able to visualize the search process by using puzzle pieces to put their search together. Boolify uses the Google Safe Search engine so results are appropriate for children and it teaches children to use proper Boolean searches. While aimed at primary and middle-school children, Boolify is a great tool for anyone who is not familiar with the ins and outs of Boolean searching.

Sortfix: Search Bing, Google and twitter at the same time. It does all the hard work and leaves you only the easy part. It fetches the search results from Google, Bing and Twitter in one interface. Behind the scene an intelligent algorithm does the work – by scanning and examining the results, it reveals the significant keywords and terms that will help you to define a better question. Then comes the best part, by using SortFix’s unique interface you can play with the suggested keywords, and create your own individual and precise query, and when you ask a precise question you usually get the right answer.
SortFix has 4 search sections on the search results page:
1. Power Words – Keywords that are automatically filled after checking the relevancy with the searched term.
2. Add To Search – The actual entered keyword by user.
3. Remove – Drag the search terms and drop in this box to exclude from search results.
4. Dictionary – Drag and Drop any keyword in this box to see the term’s definition instantly.
Comparison Search Glean Comparison Search (formerly All Sides at Boolify) is a tool designed to help its users explicitly explore differing points of view about a topic. By providing a fluid scaffolding structure for the comparative research process, it is our intent to help researchers develop a keener, more refined ability to explore their own conceptions vis a vis differing views.
Quintura for Kids is powered by Yahoo. It gives a more visual way of searching using a keyword cloud. You start off your search with a keyword in the text box and then modify it with any of the keywords in the cloud. Quintura displays five results per page. You may miss it, but clicking on the surrounding icons takes you to the five preset search categories – Music, History, Animals, Sports and recreation, and Games.

So much to choose from here, but when introducing students to the tools, make sure you highlight the very best one for the job.

Strategies for improving technology skills for teachers

After just finishing off my four last essays for my post grad course, one of which was about ICT and teacher PD, I got to thinking how can teachers best manager their own personal IT professional development needs. We all know that we are all teachers of literacy and numeracy and now increasingly we are all teachers of ICT.
This can be daunting for some teachers as its already a very busy profession. So how best to go about improving technology skill and bringing it into your teaching.
There are some very simple ideas that can gradually be added to your weekly and yearly schedule.
1) Social networking. OK this seems a bit drastic - sites such as Facebook many people like to keep just amongst their friends, but add in a couple of really informative groups or people to your network and while you spend a bit of time browsing your friends news and updating yourself, you might stumble across something interesting to follow up. A couple of good people/groups to follow on Facebook are:
Jeff Utrecht; Free technology for teachers;ISTE and Education World.
There are lots of others out there.
2) Join Twitter. You might feel a bit awkward, but honestly its been my best professional development tool for some time now. Join up - that takes about 60 seconds and find some people to follow. At first you might feel a bit self conscious about talking about yourself, but 140 characters isn't too burdensome and you can limit your own tweeting to one tweet every few days or once a week to start. If technology is the thing you want to improve, link up with Ed tech specialists, other teachers are also talking about all sorts of things. They are so generous with their ideas and will link you out to lots of amazing things on the web that they have tried or are thinking about.
Something new I just gleaned from Twitter is something called Read it Later. Sign up to this site and you can add a bookmarklet to your browser. Just tag something you think might be interesting and 'read it later' when you have time. Perhaps make half an hour a week set aside to trawl through these and you'll be surprised at what you find.
3) Add sites like Twitter, Facebook and Read it Later to your iphone or Android phone and when you are stuck at a bus stop, waiting for your friend at a cafe or have 5 minutes and dont want to start up the computer, you can do a little IT PD!
4) At the beginning of each school year and term, we set our students some personal and academic goals - we should probably do the same for ourselves. Its really satisfying to select a number of things you'd like to achieve in a year and tick them off as you go through.
Keep it simple to start you could:
- commit to developing skills in one new software program
- create one task per UOI that emmerses some simple computer use eg graphing, looking up dictionary.com, brainstorming.
- choose one IT PD per year to attend and share with your colleagues
- create one interactive whiteboard lesson per unit of inquiry through the year.
- book in a session with the ICT integrator to embed some higher end skills into your lessons, make sure that session has some computer 'play time' for you, its the best way to learn.
- At grade meetings spend 5 minutes sharing some new ICT sites you've come across that might be helpful to everyone.

Once you've started with these simple steps, you might begin a photo-blog ( 365 project is an excellent vehicle to force you online each day to upload an image) or a reflective blog of your own. It doesn't even need to be about school stuff - perhaps you have a passion about something else that can be the catalyst for sharing in the online world.

Before you know it you'll be developing some good skills, feel confident about using IT in your lessons and the kids will love it!

Best of all, doing these few easy things will assist with any teachers attempting to meet the ICT skills standards when going for accreditation.
Good luck and importantly don't forget to share what you learn with your colleagues.

WatchKnow

WatchKnow is an initiative by Dr Larry Sanger, the co-founder of Wikipedia. It is a collection of online videos for education K-12. The beauty of WatchKnow, as opposed to other video sharing and collection websites is that you can collect videos from many sharing sites on the internet for example YouTube, SlideShare, Google Videos, Vimeo - to name a few.
WatchKnow has indexed over 20,000 educational videos, placing them into a directory of over 3,000 categories. The videos are available without any registration or fees to teachers in the classroom and to students at home 24/7. Users can dive into the innovative directory or search for videos by subject and age level. Video titles, descriptions, age level information, and ratings are all edited for usefulness. The Web site invites broad participation in a new kind of wiki system, guided by teachers.
So why not create a class, a grade or a specialist area page in WatchKnow Classroom and add all the videos and slideshows that you will use in your teaching. Alternatively organisations such as the library can start to create a repository of videos that the whole school can use. There's an introductory video on this page to get you going.
This is a very exciting initiative and one which is set to grow to 50,000 videos.

Trending Tech

This blog has been created to assist teachers at the school and others to find out about some of the emerging ideas in Educational Technology. Posts will highlight new tools, ways to integrate them into our PYP curriculum and specialist areas and some bigger picture ideas that are floating out there.
Some things will not be so new, but will be be on the blog as a reminder of some great tried and tested tools and student tasks, or there might just be a new slant on an old idea.
I'll be putting lots of links in to sites and online tools - photos and videos.
As we move towards more computers in the school and the investigation of mobile devices - I'll be reporting on progress and implementation.
In all I hope its a useful space for teachers to introduce new ways to integrate technology into the curriculum.