In ‘Take 1’ of this topic, I set out to reflect on why the Carronshore class blog managed to survive successfully for 2 years … while some other class blogs seem to fail.

I want to add some more here about Jamie’s ‘secret’ gift for writing!

After he posted his story on the wiki, everyone in the class wanted to know where he got the idea from. It turned out that, as well as being an avid reader of certain types of books, he regularly logged on to his computer to play the online adventure game of RuneScape. More and more of the boys in the class logged on from home and became members.

Thomas was one of those persuaded to give it a try and I remember him writing about it ….. and I’ve managed to locate what he wrote (almost 2 years ago now?). It can still be accessed HERE.

The boys in the class took to writing about it in their spare time. They made little notebooks by stapling bits of scrap paper together, and regularly compared drafted stories. I tried, unsuccessfully, on a number of occasions to have the site unblocked at school (after much pleading by the boys). It’s a pity we weren’t able to make more of this great opportunity to motivate.

We had previously had some success with Samorost after having read about the great results blogged about by Kim (I think we’d have been able to experience the atmosphere much more had access to a whiteboard been available …. unfortunately, I’ve never had the luxury of having one in any of my classrooms).

Well …. that was yet another trip down memory lane 🙂 I’ve just realised, though, that this particular example demonstrates that even then there was a merging of the online / offline classroom, and that giving the children an online voice had an impact on the informal learning …… just as was demonstrated a year later when I studied things more closely when collecting evidence for my dissertation!

I see that Cassie has just given primary 5 L/W children a wikispace too. She also discovered this great site. It looks super – I’ve used it to leave a message for the children in her class …. hoping it works …. fingers crossed 🙂

 As the number of class blogs continue to rise in Falkirk, I’ve been contemplating why it is that some blogs go on to be very successful … and some just peter out (a few more blogs could have been added to the ‘Falkirk Blogs’ list in my sidebar, but they didn’t survive beyond the initial ‘first post’ stage).

I produced a powerpoint presentation to demonstrate ‘reasons to blog’ with classes. I’ll try to include it below ….. true last minute edublogs style 🙂

More recently, however, I’ve reflected on my own attempt at maintaining a class blog and why it has managed to survive successfully for 2 years now. I think it might have had to do with the fact that I had a definite focus for having a class blog? I wanted to use it as a vehicle to improve the children’s writing. Our original Blogger blog still has the ‘About Us’ statement in the sidebar – still accessible HERE

I’m glad that I still have access to the original class blog, because it reminds me of how important it became to give the children their own space to write. I wasn’t comfortable enough with the medium in the early stages to give them their own online space, so we shared a wiki. I set it up and we shared a common username and password …… an exercise in trust as the children were encouraged to log in at home.

It was from home that Lisa posted her Two Stars and a Wish post on her wiki space. We’d been experimenting with the idea of assessing our own writing and the writing of peers using the formative assessment strategy of awarding 2 stars and a wish

We even made our personalised ‘2 stars and a wish’ templates … I think this might have been Danni’s? (this link goes to her own blog …. I eventually found a comfortable way of doing this thanks to Don who pointed me in the direction of David)

One of the stories that Lisa peer assessed belonged to Jamie. Jamie was (at the time) a popular, quiet member of the class. He didn’t seem to ‘shine’ when it came to writing …. until I saw his entry on his wiki page! If I hadn’t seen him writing it up in the computer suite, I’d have accused him of plagerism 🙂

Some of it is included here:

 Laughing In The Face Of Death

His face shone dark in the moonlight, while his coat lay torn slowly floating in between the reeds. His shirt was dirty and wet. The dark waters that lay behind him gave him the appearance of a demon or a dark shadowy creature moving in the night. His sheath was well padded and worn away because of constant usage, it had three diamonds encrusted in it. It had a gold rim and a thin copper lining wrapped around it. This lay on his back but it never wieghed him down as it was as light as a feather. He had black boots on and they were half-covered by his camouflage trousers.
He walked on at a normal pace when he heard a purring noise, after a while he ignored it and carried on his stroll. He heard it again. He was watching a certain bush knowing that there was a creature behind it because of all the wierd purring noises. the world stayed as still as a stick insect as they lay eyes on eachother there was more rustling then the beast came out, a tiger that was as orange as sunset heading speedily at Kai. In reaction Kai drew his sword from his sheath and took a deep slash at the tiger’s leftpaw then stabbed it twice roundabout the same place the tiger had gave in to the pain and there it lay dead……

You can read the rest of jamie’s story HERE.

Before I press ‘publish’, I have to admit that going through the process of writing this post has raised some important questions for me.

 Is my own qualitative research (a case study methodology was chosen) really less valuable than Jaye’s and Derek’s as suggested?

I wouldn’t know how to quantify my ‘story’ 🙂

I think I’ve got Calameo working on here now – but the important ‘view full screen’ tab is the only one not working 🙁 

Oh well … I’ll put a link to the ‘working doc’ on the Falkirk VTC area HERE

Here’s the ‘full screen not working’ version on edublogs …. hopefully 🙂

I’ve spent a long time avoiding posting on this site …. not sure why 🙂

Happy to see that edublogs seems to be up and running again, too.

Anyway – I’ve been VERY busy in my new post. We’re about half way through visiting each of the ICT co-ordinators in their own schools and it’s great to be able to help out with school websites. Almost all schools have moved over to Schools-Online and I’ve become comfortable with the set-up.

I was happy to discover that it’s possible to embed files using html codes, and this has meant that I’ve been able to allow staff to access some CPD courses online via the Falkirk VTC staff website. For example, courses on Blogging, Podcasting and Comic Life are all online. I’ve uploaded some ‘How To’ videos on to the site as well.

Last week, however, I learned (while delivering a course!) that it’s not possible to upload more than one photobucket video to schools-online sub pages – each video appeared to upload ok, but when I clicked on the sub-pages during the actual presentation, all we got to see was the first video over and over again 🙁

Luckily, a bit of ‘thinking on my feet’ led to me logging on to my actual photobucket account and we viewed the videos from there …. phew!! I’ve since hosted them at schooltube … things seem to be working fine now 🙂

 I’ve also been experimenting with other ways of showing the videos. Sliderocket, for example, allows you to easily embed videos within an already uploaded powerpoint slideshow. It’s also very easy to resize the uploaded video by just dragging from the corners (the same way as you would with a pic here on edublogs). Hopefully this link to the falkirk vtc site will work to show what I mean (the video is on the second slide – a work in progress).

Click HERE to find out if it works 🙂

I’ve also found that powerpoints hosted at Google Docs can take an age to load in some schools. A better option seems to be Calameo. Check it out below. It’s also possible to upload and share large pdf files. I tried it out with my 98 page dissertation and it showed up fine at work … unlike scribd which, like Go-Animate, can be hit or miss (dreaded bandwidth issues?).

I’ll do the usual edublogs thing to embed html codes … just have to press ‘publish’ and can’t check it works before I do that so fingers crossed. Let me know what you think of calameo (if it works) – check out the option features as shown in the image below, too!

 Didn’t work 🙁

I’ll try again!

 Thanks to Mr W for the photograph. I spotted it on his flickr link. I’ve cropped the original a bit to show Shirley and myself deep in conversation at Teacheet. Shirley decided to come along at the last minute and I’m glad she did ….. more great CPD 🙂

……And she’s hoping to come along in January to meet up with Kim. Isn’t it amazing that we’ve all become virtual friends as a result of having class blogs!

This was my third visit to the Learning Festival, but my first time viewing the events in my new role. I’m not sure why I was able to attend the festival as a class teacher for two years in a row (I think I must have said I wanted to hear one of the speakers who was talking about a topic that might have helped my Chartered Teacher studies). Normally it was only members of the management team who went …. I’m pretty sure that, in my 12 years of being at the school, no other classroom teachers had the opportunity to attend – maybe they never asked :).

During recent visits other schools, however, I’ve become aware of the extent that some school management teams have gone to this year to make sure that as many class teachers as possible were able to attend the festival. On my own first visit in 2006 l stumbled upon (only because I had some time to ‘kill’) the one seminar that led to a total change in my classroom practice, the basis for my CT dissertation … and my eventual secondment opportunity!

Wednesday was a very long day. I attended some great seminars. On Thursday, I even met Sharon Toner when I attended her 12 minute session on the use of mobile phones in the classroom (I seriously need to upgrade my phone!)

But back to Wednesday ….. before Teacheet, there was Teachmeet – it was great. I really regret not taking notes. I remember thinking … gosh, that’s a great idea! …. several times during the evening. When I returned to work on Friday my colleagues asked me what the highlights were and I talked about quite a few, but I knew I’d missed some. That’s why it’s great that some of the presenters are blogging about their ‘slot’. Jonesieboy was one of these bloggers. His pupils made a great GoAnimate animation – unfinished 🙂

I’m also glad that he mentioned that it would work just as well with Comic Life – we’ve just installed it in all our computers, and as we only have intermittent access to GoAnimate (something to do with bandwidth?), it’s great to know we can have similar projects in our own classrooms.

The first bit of news is that I finally got round to signing up for this year’s TeachMeet and I’m looking forward to ‘lurking and listening’.

I see that on the list of ‘lurkers’, there’s an Ian Cameron – I wonder if it’s the same Ian? 

The second bit of news is that I received an email to say that the Voices of the World project is all set to resume soon.

Cassie only mentioned last week that she’d love to be part of this with Primary 5L/W via the Carronshore Blog ….. great!!!

The last post showed an example of how Ian Cameron used Comic Life in his classroom. I referred to how he used it on the Falkirk VTC website …. but because Schools Online has got a really annoying habit of timing out after a very short time, I can’t link to the entry so I’ll include the text here.

“Ian Cameron, a Staff Tutor with Dundee City Council, kindly allowed us to use this video. The children used a very simply made cut out figure as a stimulus for making this comic. They brainstormed what ‘mischief’ the character could get up to. They then wrote a draft script before going off to record the action on camera. The comic was constructed using photographs and text before being exported as a video.”

I’ve quoted him from memory …. hope I got it right 🙂

Ian was also interested in some of the freely available online tools we’ve used in class blogs. Some of them are listed (with examples of how they were used) on the Staff area of the VTC. The example below shows how we used Voicethread to showcase how groups of children were responsible for researching a particular Aboriginal Dreamtime Story as part of our ‘Australia’ topic.

I’ve since found this wonderful wiki that gives links to loads more …. and they’re really well organised, too! I’ts at cooltoolsforschools

http://www.schooltube.com/
I recently found this site and I’m testing it out. It certainly seems secure …. I’ve spent ages trying to sign up and then upload this very short video 🙂

The support I received has been great, though. All email enquiries were very promptly dealt with.

Here’s the same short video that appeared in the last post.

I’ve been thinking about the community we might be building via the Carronshore blog.

Miss L replied to Maryam today …. she wrote:

“Thank you for replying. We hope your fingers aren’t too sore!

The children in P5LW would love to meet you if you come to parents’night.

Memoona in our class will be doing Ramadan on Saturday so she explained all about it. Good luck with the rest of Ramadan!

Great to hear from you!

P 5LW ”

Maryam also left a comment on this blog (I’ve still to reply!) and another comment appeared from Monica. She commented that one of the Falkirk Bloggers mentioned in the last post is her French teacher.

Meanwhile Miss Keane’s pupils are still blogging about their learning through Drama, and the Dunipace pupils continue to leave comments on the Carronshore blog.

 It was also great to read the post on 08 AllStars blog congratulating Carronshore for coming up with great ideas for them to try out in P.E. ….. well done Miss L and P5L/W 🙂

Elsewhere in Falkirk, the pupils in P7 at Easter Carmuirs have been trying out the great things that comic life can do to improve literacy skills.

This short video was made by a group of pupils using the comic life software. It was given to me today by a Ian from Dundee  . He was very impressed by the difference it made to the children’s learning…… I’ll give full credit tomorrow when I have access to his ‘proper title’ 🙂

Some Falkirk Blogs …..

When writing this post earlier this evening, a new comment arrived from Maryam  .  I pressed ‘publish’ but then realised my blog was a bit ‘dis-jointed’ because I’d been experimenting with ‘copy and paste’ from the Falkirk website and from ‘word’ .

When I checked the post, I realised that the sidebar had disappeared completely and decided to delete the post and re-write it ….. so part of this post might be a repeat read for some  🙂

http://mrmeikle.edublogs.org/

http://eastercarmuirs.edublogs.org/

https://carronshore.edublogs.org/

http://bainsford.edublogs.org/

http://srbrown1.edublogs.org/

http://bantaskin7k.edublogs.org/

http://sacred6.edublogs.org/

http://misskeane.edublogs.org/

http://bitlarbert.edublogs.org/

http://misslaw.edublogs.org/

http://p7dunipace.edublogs.org/

http://carronshore6s.edublogs.org/

This list doesn’t include the Carronshore individual Pupil blogs from the last 2 years. Some of them still take the time to be part of the blogging community even though they’ve moved on to High School.
Just recently, Maryam commented on Primary 5L/W’s class blog. She wrote:
 

“Hello everyone!
Its me Maryam.
Im sure some of you might remember me. I use to go to Carronshore primary but now i am in high school. Phew! I am so tired waking up every morning ans going to school that i think my legs might just fall off. He he. And its bad enough to find my classes. THE WHOLE SCHOOL IS LIKE A HUGE MAZE! I keep getting lost and i have to keep asking the teachers for help which is a bit embarrasing.
And when you guys start high school. Don’t worry one bit about the stupid rumour that has been going round, that you will be getting your head flushed down the toillet. Our headteacher, who we call the rector said that rumour has been going round for OVER 100 YEARS! Wow! Don’t worry its not true.
I have just saw your video and WOW you all look SOOO different. Very different i hardly recognized you.
I will hopefully write back soon.”

Miss Law replied:

“Hi Maryam!
How are you? I’ve spoken to the class and a lot of them remember you from last year! How’s high school going?
5LW really appreciated the fact you told them that that silly rumour isn’t true! See, I told you!
Keep blogging about your high school adventures, we’d love to read about them!”

….. And yesterday Maryam did reply – she wrote:

“Hello everyone.
Its me agian
Sorry i haven’t been able to write back, been a bit busy alot with homework. I have been doing all kinds of stuff this month, i have been keeping ramadan which i think some of you are maybe fimilair with, you know. The time of month that you don’t eat, Well ovbiously you dont eat for A WHOLE MONTH!Hehe. No, you wake up early in the morning like about four or something, the time changes every day. Then you eat and then pray then back to bed and then don’t eat ANYTHING till the evening, which that time changes aswell. The time you wake up goes higher and the time you eat goes lower.. so its kind of getting shorter. Get me? You kind of get hungry but i’m getting use to it… Sorta.
I am really missing Carronshore, ecpecially the time you have to get there! At high school you have to be there at 8:40am, and you aren’t alowed to be late. It’s not tricky but you’ll get use to it :).
I was hoping on coming to parents night at Carronshore, with my little brothers. I wan’t to see there reports AND everyone else, like the teachers like Miss Law :).
Augh, My fingers are getting sore typing, I’ll write back soon. Bye bye!

Maybe we are building a community?

You can read Maryam’s comment by clicking here.