Category Archives: Blogging

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Do you know about YAPPY?

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Professor Garfield Foundation: Internet Safety and You

I was looking for some suitable Online Safety material for Grade 3 students.  My good friend Keamac reminded me about Hector’s World.  I would love to have used that but I was afraid that they just wouldn’t understand the kiwi slang and accent!  So I continued to search (loving Google chrome!).

It wasn’t long before I stumbled upon this little gem – sure to be a hit with 3rd Graders!  Internet Safety with Professor Garfield! from the folks at infinitelearninglab.org.

Professor Garfield Foundation: Internet Safety and You
Professor Garfield Foundation: Internet Safety and You
One of the fabulous things about this gem of a site (aside from it’s instant appeal to students) is the 3 levels of interaction with students.  First you watch the video, then you try out what you’ve just seen, then you have a chance to apply it.  (Appeals to the Blooms thinking in me!) Another winning aspect of this site is the ability to download teaching materials (.pdfs) to help teach the message of Professor Garfield in his videos.  The pdf’s contain extra material such as wordsearches, questionaires if appropriate.
There’s even a section of internet safety tips to direct parents too! (.pdf download)
Well, the Grade 3′s loved it! YAPPY was a hit!  YAPPY is the stuff you shouldn’t give out.
And it’s so easy for them to remember:

Y – your name

A – address

P – password

P – phone numbers

Y – your plans

Thanks Professor Garfield!!

I also came across this great poster for the classroom too.  It’s from  ACMA cyber(smart:)

CyberRules_Poster_A2_Generic.pdf (1 page)

Cybersmart provides activities, resources and practical advice to help young kids, kids, teensand parents safely enjoy the online world.
The poster comes as a pdf download – easy to print out, laminate and hang up on the classroom wall.

G3 Students Begin to Blog

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The students in this G3 class are awesome!

For the past three weeks, their fabulous teacher, Mr Jessee has been teaching them how to access the class blog, leave a comment and show their parents how to access the class blog too. They know their usernames and passwords for the computer as we have a familiar system for all grades. The blogging guidelines & contract went home last Friday afternoon and all were back on Monday morning signed by both student and parent! Room 210 is so motivated and ready to learn how to maintain their very own blog each!

It was my pleasure to step into their classroom today and introduce them to the front-end and back-end of their blogs which I had set up the day before on our wordpress multi-user platform hosted on our very own server here at ISB.  The lesson is cross-posted over at the blog I’m using as a model blog for blogging at ISB.
We talked about how the “front-end” was what everyone looking at your blog saw, and the “back-end” was where you did all the work on your blog. Nobody but you sees the “back-end” of your blog and you have to log into the “back-end” of your blog to work on it.

Here’s the step by step instructions we followed as a class to get started with the technical side of blogging on our own individual blog.

  1. Go to the Class Blog
  2. Click on tab Student Blogs
  3. Click on your name to go to the “front-end” of your own blog
  4. Take a screenshot (command+shift+4) of your blog (so we can do a then and now comparison post later)
    5. Preview
  5. Look for the “meta” widget and “log-in” (our default blog theme has this meta widget)
  6. Type in username and default-set-up-blog-password
  7. Dashboard discovery – we stop at this point and take a closer look at the dashboard – what do we recognise, what words do we notice, what’s our thinking about different sections
  8. Edit our profile account, change our nickname to the name we want to author our posts as, change our password to our own password. (Classroom teacher keeps a record of usernames and passwords for emergencies on google docs & shares with the Technology & Learning Coach)
  9. Follow instructions from TLC for allowing comments on our blog (Settings, Discussion)
  10. Practise logging in and out of the back-end of our blog (repeat this step several times)

Once we were satisfied that everyone could log into the back-end of their own blog successfully from opening Firefox, we gave the students 10 minutes to explore the themes. G3 learned how to

  1. Access themes
  2. Preview a theme
  3. Activate a chosen theme
  4. Install a meta widget (if the final theme choice did not have one)

I mentioned to the class that each theme came with its own default widgets installed and some themes might not have a meta widget (for logging in). In those cases we quickly showed those students how to add the meta widget to their new theme, once the theme was chosen.

Believe it or not, this class listened so well, with those that got it helping those at their tables that were a little slower (this class really looks after one-another) and all of the above was complete in 35 minutes. Yes, that’s right – 35 minutes!

We spent the last 10 minutes of our session watching Professor Garfield as he taught us some things about Online Safety. He was a hit with his YAPPY advice – but that’s for another post!

Category Clean Up

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I’ve been meaning to do this “job” for a while now – and 7 weeks 3 weeks left of summer vacation means I just cannot make excuses any longer – I need to get it done!file cabinet to heaven on Flickr - Photo Sharing!

My categories on edublogger have just got outta control!  In the early times of my blogging attempts I really had no idea about the difference between categories and tags – I used to think they were actually the same things (and if you use blogger – there’s no categories, only labels – which I am guessing are the same as tags).

Hence this blog’s categories have spiraled out of control and are in need of a tidy up.  I’ve checked with edublogs guru extraordinaire Sue Waters to make sure that cleaning up my categories won’t make all my posts coming through anyone’s RSS reader again – I hate for you all to be subjected to all my early writing again!!  If by chance that does happen – my sincere apologies to you in advance!

So when I’m done, hopefully it will be easier for anyone to find “stuff” (aka: I’ll be able to find stuff more easily).

I’ve decided to categorise all blog posts with either Tools, Resources, Conferences, Collaboration, Classroom or Blogging (for now).

What categories do you use?

Image Attribution: file cabinet to heaven by t.magnum

Guilt Upon Accusation

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I’ve just become aware about some major proposed changes in NZ law that will have a huge impact on artists, businesses, and general members of the public: basically anyone that uses the internet, and I thought you should know about them.
The Section 92 of the Copyright Amendment Act assumes Guilt Upon Accusation and forces the termination of internet connections and websites without evidence, without a fair trial, and without punishment for any false accusations of copyright infringement. We should speak out against injustices like Guilt Upon Accusation being done in the name of artists and protecting creativity.
The countdown is on: we have until 28 February 2009 to influence government.
An organisation called the Creative Freedom Foundation has been set up to specifically represent artists voices on these issues. Check out their website: http://www.creativefreedom.org.nz , sign up and help our MPs make an informed decision about S92!

Nearest Book Meme

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After having this pop up twice in my google reader first by Crucial Thought (Chris Craft) and then by Langwitches (Silvia Tolisano), I couldn’t resist ……………

You can only make rain using 1/60 sec.

(Courtesy of Understanding Shutter Speed by Bryan Peterson)

raindrops on cab window

Rules:
* Get the book nearest to you. Right now.
* Go to page 56.
* Find the 5th sentence.
* Write this sentence – either here or on your blog.
* Copy these instructions as commentary of your sentence.
* Don’t look for your favorite book or your coolest but really the nearest.

Image attribution: dgphilli

Blog Action Day – Poverty

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Today is Blog Action Day – a day where thousands of bloggers around the world focus upon and highlight issues around one topic – poverty.

Blog Action Day 2008 - Poverty

I’ve always been a mix of a visual and aural learner = my creative side and musical side with a touch of kinesthetic woven into the mix.  Perhaps that way The Digital Photography School‘s Post entitled “17 images of Poverty” really struck a cord with me tonight.

What does poverty look like?  You might be surprised.  I know I was and then again I wasn’t.  Poverty doesn’t care what you look like, where you come from and what nationality you are.  Poverty could look like anyone.  Please take a look if you have the time.

Blogger in Middle Earth‘s post gives some really practical tips on what you can do to make a difference towards easing the grip of poverty.  If we all did one thing from that list imagine the difference it has the potential to make.

I find myself asking – what will I do?  I’m not sure – but I know that I need to do something.  Why?  Not because I feel guilty, or because I feel I should but because I can.

What will you do?

No Walls

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I had to laugh ……. because isn’t this always the way?  Just days, and I mean just days, after finding a creative commons image to represent my passion for a classroom without walls for the Miguel Guhlin’s Passion Quilt Meme ……… the perfect photo in my very own backyard presented itself! Our very own classroom with out walls – literally! So I just had to share!

no walls

This is one of four classrooms in our Learning Team, currently undergoing complete renovation. Renovation includes the replacement of windows, airconditioning, the adding of teacher office space, doors that open out onto the astro turf and field as well as the installation of an Interactive Whiteboard. When the fourth classroom is complete we will have eight classrooms out of 18 with IWBs! Exciting stuff!