In The News

I was recently contacted by Shanthi Venkataraman, a student from Columbia University, Graudate School of Journalism, as my friend Silvia Tolisano (Around the World with 80 Schools skype project mastermind) had passed on my name as a teacher who had been using skype in the classroom for a number of years and had taken part in the Around the World with 80 Schools skype project.

Columbia News Service is staffed by master’s candidates at the Columbia University Graduate School of Journalism. Articles are written by the students, then edited and vetted by professional journalists and professors. All articles are transmitted to New York Times News Service clients, but are also available for republication by any professional media outlet at no charge. Photos may also be downloaded from this site; multimedia links are also provided

Shanti was interested in hearing how Skype was used in Schools. We connected when our timezones were decent for the both of us via , yes, you guessed it via Skype. She just informed me by email that her article Skype Gives Students Window on the World was published.  Of course, Silvia was interviewed and Wes Fryer, was too.

Columbia News Service » Blog Archive » Skype Gives Students Window On The World

Handy Tips for SMARTBoard Notebook 10

blankhttp:__www.flickr.com_photos_mark78_1463574952_It’s summer vacation, my son is enjoying an hour on his PlayStation, and I’m enjoying the time to just browse the internet, catch up on the starred posts in my google reader, read some books (some fiction, some teacher-ish!) and generally relax.  It’s been a while since I last posted …… I thought I might be having writer’s block again, but the more I think about, the more I’m convinced that I really haven’t had anything worthwhile to say for a while.

I do have a few posts brewing, one on Writer’s Workshop (my own personal area for development and improvement for the 2009/10), a reflection post on the whirlwind year moving from New Zealand to Bangkok, Thailand, and a few other little projects gently simmering in the background!

I did stumble across this handy little video today, thanks to my good friend, Silvia (aka: langwitches):
It’s called 5 Tips and Tricks for SMARTBoard Notebook 10 by YouTube show of eduTecher Steve Bellow.

The tips and tricks are very handy indeed – I didn’t realise that you could drag PDFs or Word Docs straight over to your Notebook file (if you’re a mac user) and I didn’t realise that the magic pen had 3 extremely useful functions!

Image attribution:  http://www.flickr.com/photos/mark78/1463574952/

Meme Passion Quilt

The lovely Sylvia T, from Langwitches, tagged me for this new meme, ” Passion Quilt” created by Miguel Guhlin. I am to find or create an image that captures what I am most passionate for kids to learn about.

Hole in the Wall

Our Classroom Has No Walls.
This is what I am the most passionate about.  I want to show and model to the students that pass through my class each year, that we don’t have any walls to our classroom.  Our learning just don’t come from the books on our shelves, or from the brain of the teacher, or from the many computer screens dotted around our classroom.  We are connected to and by people from all walks of life, in all parts of the world.

3 Simple Meme Rules:

  • Post a picture from a source like FlickrCC or Flickr Creative Commons or make/take your own that captures what YOU are most passionate about for kids to learn about…and give your picture a short title.
  • Title your blog post “Meme: Passion Quilt” and link back to this blog entry.
  • Include links to 5 folks in your professional learning network or whom you follow on Twitter/Pownce.

I would like to know what YOU are passionate about:

Kim Cofino from Always Learning
Allanah K from Life is Not a Race to be Finished
Simon Evans  from Educating the Dragon
Sue from And Another Thing
Claudia from ELT notes

Photo Attribution: Image: ‘A way to get through the wall‘ www.flickr.com/photos/64294921@N00/227360076

Love iGoogle – Let Me Count The Ways

Recently Jen Wagner posted some of her thoughts about iGoogle after having John Pederson on the WOW2.0 Show. In that post Jen asks “Do you use iGoogle? How?” As I was pondering how I use iGoogle, up popped this post from Sylvia (Langwitches) about
iGoogle – Really Personalized

So thanks to Skitch, I am able to share with you my personalised iGoogle page. It’s my hub-home-page! It makes my internet life much more manageable, therefore much more organised and I love it!

iGoogle
Uploaded with Skitch! Click on image to see larger version

What do you use?

Merry Christmas From NZ

PictureTrail (many thanks to Langwitches for having it in her Del.icio.us Links).

PictureTrail.com
Uploaded with Skitch!

It was very simple to do and the array of “flicks” to choose from to display your images is really cool. Embedding the code for so that your “flick” appears in Edublogs was a little bit technical (but not too hard) …… Here’s how to do it incase you want to give it a go! (It really was easy!)

When you’ve signed up (free of course) and made your flick in PictureTrail you will be given a copy and paste code for embedding.

1. Copy that code (entire) and paste into a textedit app. of some sort (or I guess a word doc. would work too)
2. Look for the code that starts with http://flash.picturetrail.com/pflicks…….. etc and copy……..up to it’s ending of .swf
3. Click on the flash button of the edublogs visual editor and paste the url just copied from picturetrail embed code
4. Click ok and enter the WIDE pixels (which should be around about “460″) Click ok and enter the HEIGHT pixels (around “350″)
5. Click ok and you should see a code pasted in your blog post. You be able to see your “flick” from PictureTrail embedded in your post (using preview)

Merry Christmas everyone. May you enjoy the festive season with your family where ever you may be!


Whoops! It would seem that Edublogs will not allow you to embed this kind of swf. You can click the links below though to see my Christmas Tree Flick that was easy to embed in Blogspot and Wikispaces. (PictureTrail offers code for many other spaces too like MySpace, FaceBook, Typepad, LiveJournal etc)Click here to see my Christmas Tree Flick embedded in Blogger
Click here to see my Christmas Tree Flick embedded in a Wikispace