Sparkshop Auckland

This weekend I attend the SparkShop conferences  (un-coferences) held in Auckland. The day began with a Smorgasbord session in which we could vote for the presenters that we most wanted to hear. This was awesome because it meant that we were involved in shaping the event.

The first session I attended was all able chrome add-ons. There were some interesting add-ons shared and I came away with a mini me in the form of a Bitmoji.

The second session I attended was about Maker Spaces. In this season we tinkered with swishy circuits and played with robot. It was so much fun and now I really want a Robot!!!!! For my kids mostly but also because they are Amazing. It was great fun programming it say and do different things. 

The third an final session I went to was about mystery hangouts. This is when your classes calls another class somewhere in the world and the learners have to ask yes or no questions to figure out where the other class are. During this session we had a test run with two teams, each team was assigned a school somewhere else in the world and we had to figure out the other teams location. WE WON!!!! This session really made me think about the connects our learners can make and how this can support them to develop questioning skills. 

I had an awesome day at Sparkshop, met some awesome educators and learned about new way to use technology in the classroom. I am excited to keep connecting online and at more events. 

Building with the Force: A StopMotion Animation

At our amazing MDTA Day today we learnt about StopMotion animation using lot of pictures to create an animation. This was a fun process and although my characters kept falling over I think my movie still turned out alright.

Our movie focus was to create an animation to motivate or inspire our learners. I choose to use the Star Wars characters that I had on hand to create an animation with a building and collaboration focus. I will use to animation at the beginning of an up and coming collaborative creative art lesson to remind learners what they can achieve when they work together. I hope you enjoy the movie.

  

StopMotion animation is an awesome skill and would be really fun to do with my learners. It would be great to create some StopMotion animations of the creation of buildings to link in with our art theme or Architecture.

Creating with iMovie

This weeks Digital immersion day focused on creating movies using iMovie. We learnt the basics of iMovie and then created our own movie to show a day or week of learning in our classroom. My video is an example of a day in the Pavilion and some of the amazing ways that our learners learn.

It was exciting using iMovie and I have learnt a lot about iMovie but I still have lots more to learn.

Explainer Video- Building Word Knoweldge

This is an Explainer Video I have created to explain part of my Inquiry around building word knowledge and fluency for struggling readers.

I hope you enjoyed my video. I learnt news skills around using pictures created on a whiteboard to create an animation. This is a great way for learners to share what they have learnt and their process of learning. I wonder if this type of animation could be used effectively to show mathematical thinking? Or the process of creating a piece of art? I would love to try getting learners to take photos of their art at different stages and turn this into an animation of the process. 

I also think this is something I could share with other teachers that they might want to use with their learners or to demonstrate their own learning. I also learnt that you do not have to be a great artist to animate your learning. 

Photo Shoot

Being a photographer is exciting, challenging and most definitely a useful skill for a teacher to have. Today at our MDTA digital immersion day we explored a theme (my theme was builds) within our local community. The photos that I took today will support our art theme within the classroom this term.

We have also learnt to create online tools. This is exciting because my learners can use these tools to create graphics for their blogs using pictures they have taken. 

We also create slide shows using youtube. I the future I hope to use these slide shows as motivations for writing and records of learning. 

Creating a site for learning

A recent focus of MDTA digital immersion day has been about creating sites. After creating a collaborative, we created a site for our own site designed to support a learning focus for our learners. My site is designed to support our school wide inquiry focus "as i see  it" which is an art focus. During this focus our team is focusing on the art and design  around buildings and architecture.

The site is designed to support this focus. It is divided up into three sections an architecture focus that looks at styles of buildings and styles of architecture, A geometry sections which looks at shapes and what we can do with them and an art section which outline the hyper studio task and the trip we will be taking later in the term.

Thank you to the amazing member of my team and the MDTA team for there support.
Please note this site will develop as the unit goes on.

Please feel free to check out the site and its links.