Tag Archive | Glow blogs

Safe and Responsible Use of the Internet

Last week Primary 6V hosted a ‘Safe and Responsible Use of the Internet’ information evening. I think the title is more meaningful than the usual ‘Internet Safety’ one. I chose it because (quite a while ago now) I read a post on Ollie Bray’s blog describing the subtle difference between the two phrases. I can’t find the link to Ollie’s original post, but we did use some of the free Internet Safety and Responsible Use Cartoon Illustrations he blogged about more recently – the class loved them!

The aim of the evening was to enable the children to share:

how they have been using Glow blogs and wikis in school and at home to improve learning
what they have learned about the dangers of the internet
strategies they use to keep themselves safe online

I introduced the class to prezi and they all voted to use that instead of their powerpoint presentation. I’ve included a copy of it here.

Parent Information Evening on Prezi

It’s taken me longer than I’d intended to blog about this.

I’ll also try to blog about our attempts at ‘Negotiated Learning’ before the end of term. The children are loving it – thanks to Oliver Quinlan for the idea 🙂

ePortfolios and Transition Stages

Apr27

My last post ended with a remark about what the future holds for for our class emerging ePortfolios. I was delighted that Jaye Richards took the time to write an indepth comment to the post shortly after reading it – it was Jaye, after all, who inadvertently led me to the concept of ePortfolios via twitter … and I’ve been sold on the idea ever since 🙂

I made an attempt to reply to her comment but after reading her follow-up blog post on the subject and her thought-provoking accounts of her own experiences, I decided that another blog post on here was the best way to reply. She got me thinking about the stumbling blocks that have been encountered when children I’ve taught in the past have moved on to High School. I also went on a trip down memory lane this evening and experienced (again) some of the frustrations that Jaye talks about in her post. I’ll quote from Maryam’s transition blog posts to try to demonstrate what I mean.

Towards the end of primary 7 at Carronshore, Maryam wrote on her blog: ” My favourite thing ever is English. I love reading and writing. They are the only two things that are important too me. I have been writing quite alot of posts about reading and writing, well i just love writing and stuff. …. I can’t wait to get to high school to ask my English teacher for advice for getting really good ideas. “
In this blog post she describes the excitement as her entry to High School looms ever closer: “I can’t believe we have finished primary school already! Its a bit quick. Well we still have a couple of weeks left of school but it doesn’t feel like it. We are finally the oldest in Primary school but now we will be back to the youngest in high school. That’ll be a bit hard. I’m looking forward too all the new lessons there and making new friends and stuff. I just cab’t wait for tommorow.”
Maryam is now in 1st year at high school (last term): “I thought i would go on my blog just for old times sake. High school has been SOOO weird. It’s like i have been there all my life and not been to primary school once, but i have not forgotten primary school, I MISS IT SO MUCH. We have been doing all sorts of stuff and we have had sooo much .. drama? I think that is the word for it. It has been so BIZZARE. I have just chosen my subjects before the easter holidays. It was kind of depressing.”
Her final post on her blog was when she entered 2nd year (she’s already regretting her subject choice) “So yes, it has been almost a month of school and i am in second year. It is alot harder than i thought, well kind of. I did choose the subjects i wanted , [i still regret picking some of them]!”

Maryam’s posts dried up soon after this, but her experience of her transition to High School echo the thoughts in Jaye’s post when she wrote:

“my old school is now making children choose their examinable subjects two thirds of the way through S1 !!

If I had my way, they wouldn’t even get ‘distinct’ subjects until S3…”

Hmmm!!

Anyway – back to my post title! – ePortfolios and Transition Stages.

I’m hoping that the ePortfolios might succeed where the blogs alone failed. Maybe if the children know that the purpose of them is to demonstrate progress in their learning journey, then the responsibility for the upkeep and the freedom to choose what is included would enhance the feeling of ownership. The wikis seem to accommodate the ‘growth’ aspect more than a blog (even with tagging, etc).

I love the way Kian has already set his pages up for Primary 7 and his transition to High School. All the children choose their own layout and this one obviously made more sense to him.

I also really like his ‘Life Achievement’ section – others have used this phrase when referring to their ePortfolios. Check out Alyson’s ‘sticky’ post on her Glow Blog 🙂

Click on the loveheart to see my ePortfolio.I have all my achievements inside and outside school!!!

(All my achievement through out my life) Fingers cross it works!!!

I also really like Andrew’s ePortfolio layout. He felt it was important to include a page with links to his favourite Glow Blog posts:

I have a blog as well as this ePortfolio. Click here to visit it. I am going to put some of my favourite blog posts in this section of my ePortfolio. So use the links in the banners below to view my best blog posts.

The children are already asking questions about what will happen to their Glow Blogs and Wikis when they move on to Primary 7 and then on to High School.

Ideally, I’d like to support them for one more year to continue to provide feedback …… but that’s not for me to decide 🙂

Feedback is a very important ingredient if an ePortfolio is to succeed. It’s mostly oral in Primary, but the wikis have a comment facility that could be used by Secondary staff in S1 and beyond?

Too many questions still unanswered – time to publish 🙂

Glow Blogs and Wikis – A Closer Look

Apr25

There’s been a lull on here of late because I’ve been taking time to observe what’s been happening with our individual class Glow Blogs and Glow Wikis. I’m hoping that the process of writing this blog post will everything intp perspective 🙂

Our Individual Blogs

@cpsprimary6v usually update their Glow blogs from home, rather than at school. I think there are two main reasons for this:

We have two hours a week in our school computer suite – and the children need to share the 16 machines (it’s a class of 30) – we have been known to beg, steal and borrow it at other times, too, but there are so many exciting things to do there, that there is rarely time to put on blog posts :-). We have a computer in the class, but that’s usually taken up with other things such as AR Reading and Smartboard use
From the outset, I made the decision not to dictate how the children used their blogs. I’ve blogged before about the importance of a feeling of ownership if online spaces are to be sustainable. There have been lots of great posts made from home and we always share them in class. This has inspired others to write their own blog posts – and even just reading them out aloud has helped the writers and the listeners to think about how they might improve their writing. One very recent example for me of a feeling of ownership was when Mason chose to share his experience of travelling to Qatar to visit his dad – great 🙂

Our Individual Wikis

The growth of our Glow wikis has been slower. The children understood the blog ‘Online Diary’ concept but building an ePortfolio is much more complex and I’ve been taking a closer look to see what’s happening. I’ve been pleasantly surprised to find that there has been evidence of:

Gathering evidence of Learning and Achievement – For example, Robyn posted her Burns’ poetry comptetition entry and continued to update her Glow wiki from home. Have a look/listen – Robyn’s ePortfolio .

I was also very impressed last week when Andrew suggested that he could add his thoughts about his love of books to his ePortfolio. He wrote:

“I have always loved reading and I have a card for the local library. At school we do a thing called AR Reading. It’s where you take a test at the start of the year and get given a level. You then choose a book from our school within that level and read it. Once you have read it you take a test about the book on a computer at school. You then print out a sheet showing your result. You have a big jotter where you record what books you have read and score you got on the tests. I am on the highest level for AR Reading, and I enjoy it.”

Showing evidence of how learning has progressed – reflecting on learning – Andrew wrote about his attitude to maths and how he has “.. enjoyed maths from Primary 1 and have always tried hard in it. I find the work I do fun and I learn new things all the time. My favourite thing in math is long multiplication. My mum and dad taught me how to do long multiplication in P4. I can do most things I have been taught in math but there is a few things I could improve on. I mainly struggle on Rotational Symmetry, but I don’t think you will need to know that in life.”

Charlotte also showed evidence of reflecting when she wrote about how she found it hard to work with someone else on a task – “Well at first we could not agree on an idea but then we finally came to a compromise that we would combine both our ideas.”

What I’ve learned

I think allowing the children to use their Glow blogs and wikis in this way has provided me with evidence for assessment – I’ve seen a closer ‘snapshot’ of who they are. The children have shown evidence of achievements both inside and outside of school. Anna’s example is typical of an outside school achievement:

…..”We did our floor routine’s first. The judge would judge us on how slowly and neatly our routines were done. After that it was the volt. What I did was run, and then jump on a spring board, then land in squat jump onto the volt and then straight jump off. One of our coaches were compeeting. Then it was the award ceremony. It was team points. I kept saying to Alyson ‘ Were never going to win because we have 2 people and they have 3 or 4 ‘. In the award ceromony it was the 1-3 resuts, then 4-5 and then my one 6-7. I wasn’t even listening when the man called out the results because there was no chance we had one a medal because only the 3rd, 2nd and 1st got a medal. I heard the man say ‘Alyson’. It was then that I relised we had one a bronze medal! …”

… I’m already filling my head with more questions – I wonder what will happen to their ePortfolios in Primary 7 … and the S1 transition period. Hopefully they will survive as it’s the children themselves who are ‘in the driving seat’ 🙂

P6V Burns Poetry Finalists!

Mar24

Natasha wrote a ‘nail-biting’ post tonight as she prepared to go to the annual Burns Poetry competition.

Here’s what she said:

“I know burns night was like TWO WHOLE months ago but our school are only having the competition now. Anyway me, Andrew and Robyn are the finalist’s for p6 for carronshore primary school. I’m quite nervous, but I’m sure I’ll be fine. I did a little pretend competition in front of my Teddies and I was fine, so yeah!

Andrew told me he was SO nervous he threw up last night because of it! I’m sure I’m not THAT nervous!! I’m doing ‘My Heart’s in the Highlands’. The competition is in Carron and I’ve never been there before so that’s something! I hope we win…..”

You can read the rest of her post by clicking on her Glow blog header icon.

Good Luck, Natasha – you’ll be GREAT!

And good luck to Robyn and Andrew, too. We’ll be checking out their blogs to see if they write anything about how the competition went for them 🙂

Good luck, Robyn!!!

Best of luck, Andrew 🙂

We’ve Moved!!

Mar13

We haven’t posted on here for a while .. but that’s because we’ve moved 🙂

We’re now blogging from our new class GLOW blog. Have a look!

You’ll find lots of links to our Individual GLOW blogs on there, too – we’ve included some links below to entice you.

And keep an eye on our class Glow maths blog, too. We’re planning to add to it very soon. You’ll find it HERE

We’ve loved all your comments over the last five years and we hope you’ll continue to visit our class blog at our new home

Glow Wiki and ePortfolio Update

Feb6

Well, it’s taken a while to create something that looks like an ePortfolio for an upper Primary aged class – but I think I’m getting there. When I first heard of the concept, I wrote a blog post on here and I like to revisit it now and then to make sure that I’m not cheating and calling something an ePortfolio when it clearly isn’t. The original post is here.

I wrote that post while on secondment, and it helps that I now have my own Primary 6 class to experiment with 🙂 Much of what we’ve been up to can be seen on the pages of our class blog – but I thought it might be a good idea to record the recent ePortfolio journey on here.

My previous post explained my thinking behind using Glow wikis as ePortfolios and here’s the story about how things are going so far:

When I first introduced Glow wikis as ePortfolios, Andrew wrote:

“Hi everyone! Welcome to my ePortfolio. Well, this is actually a GlowWiki but I am using it as an ePortfolio. Incase you were wondering, an ePortfolio is something online where you record your achievements throughout the years. You can use it to get a job when you grow up as well. So if you want to view all my achievements throughout the years, click on the pages to the left, or use the links on the banners below.”

Others have also begun recording their achievements. For example, Anna was keen to record her class talk about her cat called Pepper and she made a reconstruction of her original talk so that she could add it to her ePortfolio. Have a look/listen here

And, as part of our Victorian’s project, the class were asked to interview an older member of their family so that they could get a sense of the past. Brooke uploaded her interview with her Gran to her ePortfolio. Have a listen: Brooke interviews her Gran about schooldays in the past

Ryan, on the other hand, was less taken with the idea:

“Hi my name is ryan r and I am new to the eportfoio and I do not know what to do on it. Hopefully my friend Jack D the expert can help me.”

His attitude changed, though, when he saw that others had been recording outside school achievements. Some have started bringing in trophies and medals so that we can have photographic evidence to upload. Check out Lucy’s TaeKwonDo narrated slideshow

After seeing these, Ryan was keen to show off his own achievements outside of school and brought in some of his football trophies. With help from others, he managed to update his own ePortfolio and record his football achievements on photostory 3

There are more Glow wiki examples I could link to, but what I’m hoping is that the children will see the connection between their Glow wikis and they great posts they’ve been adding to their Glog blogs. There are lots and lots of examples of great blog posts, but I’ll link to Mason’s one about finding a reading book about his favourite film ‘Charlie and the Chocolate Factory’. I didn’t know that Mason liked the film … or the book 🙂 Mason’s blog post is here.

Their story writing, started on their wikispaces during their ‘pre Glow wiki era’, should also be included. The Terrible Time Machine is a great example. Read it here.

We’ve also recently set up a class Glow wiki so that the children can demonstrate their ability to work with others.

Check out our first task here: Our Writing Task

Eight groups are involved. The Billionaires have completed some of the tasks. Have a look.

More to come 🙂

The Visit From The Bookbinder!

Jan26

It was well worth the wait!!

A couple of months ago, we wrote letters to a local Bookbinder. He replied and offered to come to visit our class to show us what sort of things Tom Valentine Bookbinders does. This prospect inspired us to write our own books and we linked to some of them in a blog post. You can read the post by clicking HERE

When Louis visited our class on Friday, we were all amazed and delighted that he’d read all our finished stories … and had made them into real books – we’re going to design our own illustrations for the front covers. We’ll post pictures of them on here soon.

Meanwhile, Andrew and Kian had the job of writing up what we learned from the visit
Natasha, Charlotte and Mason had the job of ‘tweeting’ about the visit. Follow us on twitter at: http://twitter.com/cpsprimary6v
Kyle, Ryan and Andrew were the photographers
Lots of us contributed to the Photostory about the visit

Here’s what Kian and Andrew said about the visit:

“We had a very exciting day! Mr Valentine came in and gave a demonstration on how to bind books. He talked about how paper has developed through the years. At the start people scratched on rocks, then the Ancient Romans invented tablet things to write on. After that the Egyptions invented Papyrus made from reeds. Next people copied papyrus and made a scroll. Then the japanese invented paper made from grass. After that the Japanese invented the first notebook.

He then told us about what skills you need to be a Bookbinder. There was reading, listening, patience, spelling, imagination, maths, communication skills and you had to be good working with your hands. As you can see there are a lot of skills you need to become a Bookbinder.

Next Mr Valentine told us about the tools and leather you use. Did you know that the glue is melted animal fat!?”

We looked at the pictures we took and tried to remember some of the things we learned. Press play and have a listen.

Our Glow Wikis – So Far

Jan23

The class now have their own Glow Wikis. I’d been waiting patiently for their launch to assess their suitability for use as an ePortfolio. I’d played around with the idea of using wikis as an ePortfolio last year while I was on secondment and wrote a couple of blog posts about the ‘experiment’. One of these can be seen here.

While I was waiting for the Glow Wikis to make an appearance, I toyed with the idea of using the Glow Blogs as ePortfolios. The children seemed a bit bamboozled by the prospect, however, and I suspect that it was because they had been using these online spaces as a traditional weblog and found it difficult to make the connection.

I created a ‘sticky’ post and linked to pages on the sidebar. The ‘Sticky’ said:

Welcome To My ePortfolio

This is my Learning Space where I blog about things I’m interested in.

I also record my achievements inside and outside of school. Click HERE to read about them

I knew from the reaction that there was confusion and when Andrew changed his Sticky wording, I realised that they didn’t see the blogs as an ePortfolio:

Hi everyone! Mrs V gave us all ePortfolios!

An ePortfolio is a page on your blog where you record your achievements in and out of school. Click HERE to read about them.

Even with that subtle change of emphasis, though, no-one added anything to the ‘ePortfolio section’ of their blog.

But now that they’ve been given a Glow Wiki as an ePortfolio, everyone in the class seems taken with the idea.

There have been some frustrating glitches … but so far these have been overshadowed by the positives.

I’m really looking forward to seeing where this leads 🙂

In case anyone is interested, here’s how I set up our Glow Wiki eportfolios:

In the ‘My Glow’ area, I added the Glow Wiki webpart.

I asked our school secretary (our ASM) to turn on the rights for me to set up a wiki.

I’ve since learned that @claganach, our ICT Curriculum Development Officer had turned them on for the whole school – thanks Malcolm 🙂

I decided to set my trial Wiki to public immediately because I wanted to be sure that when it was live it would ‘behave’ the way I expected it to .. if that makes sense??

I soon discovered that it differed from the class blogs and from the wikispaces I’d experimented with previously. I still can’t embed videos etc. hosted elsewhere into the Glow Wiki and any links using the link icon require viewers to be logged in to Glow to view them.

I’ve been finding ways around these hiccups, though.

For example:

Uploading pictures is quite straightforward
Although I haven’t discovered how to embed media in Glow blogs, the children can easily upload videos, podcasts, etc without the need to host elsewhere
It’s possible to create links to other areas of the wiki if tinyurl is used to create the links. I’ve no idea why this is the case – but if any Glow experts can help me find the answer to this, the children in my class will be forever in your debt 🙂
The wiki URLs are very long so I’ve created a link to them on a page on our class blog. I think this also tends to create a sense of class community as everything we have is more connected.
It was also very easy to copy and paste these links into a text editor webpart in my ‘My Glow’ area.

The children set up their Glow wikis in the same way as their Glow blogs were set up.

I’m glad that I set up our Glow blogs in the way that I did as it meant that I was already a member of the children’s ‘My Glow’ area so I was automatically an administrator of their Wikis as well.

I’ll keep posting about how our Glow ePortfolios progress, and meanwhile I’d love to hear back from any ‘Glow in the Know’ folk who have solutions to the linking and embedding issues 🙂

Back At School Despite The Snow!

Dec13

On Thursday we all came back to school after being snow bound for over one and a half weeks. The playground was still covered in snow, though, – as you can see from our picture!

Some of us noticed the blog post on here trying to reach Primary 6V during the Snow Days and the responses can be seen on our previous post.

Now that we’re back at school others have also been writing about how they spent their time off and have been busy updating their Glow Blogs.

Have a look at what they’ve written by clicking on the links via our Glow Blog header images.

Poor Andrew’s family had arranged for windows in their house to be replaced … then along came all that snow! Luckily Andrew was able to spend some time with his Gran and Grandad while all the work was being done. He built a snowman as well – I have no idea how his snowman managed to survive – but he did 🙂

Andrew’s football had to be cancelled because of the snow, but he found lots more to occupy him instead. Read the rest of his post by clicking on his Glow Blog header image.

Hayley had a few attempts at building a snowman, too. She learned that it’s best not to rush it, though, because it could mean that all the work wasn’t worth it.

She had a lot of fun with her friends, but also found the time to help clear the path, put up the Christmas tree and tidy her room!

Click on her Glow Blog header and have a read … and leave a comment if you have the time 🙂

Natasha’s Glow Blog post title is “Winter Wonderland” and she starts of by saying:

“I thought i could do my writing in white since its about my snow days but that wouldn’t work”

I’m so glad that she decided not to write in in white because we might have missed out on her entertaining – and informative! – post. There’s Christmas

‘hints and tips’
recipes
short stories

… and lots more. Don’t miss out by not having a read 🙂

Kyle was ‘over the moon’ when he heard his mum saying that school was off because of the snow but he soon realised that going out to play in it was risky – on day one he fell and hurt himself!

Kyle’s dad learned just how dangerous the snow was as well when he got stuck in traffic coming back from Glasgow where he works, but he was luckier than one of his workmates who was stuck in his car for 21 hours … scary!!

Lucy learned that winter was here when her mum got a text from the school to say that it was having to close because of the weather. Her mum had been planning to go Christmas shopping, but she soon realised that it would be much safer if everyone stayed at home instead.

A week later, everyone thought that it would finally be safe to travel to school again … and then the text came. The weather was now worse than ever 🙂

Robyn was not impressed by her mum’s efforts to build a snowman and decided to lend a hand … and so did some of the neighbours. Robyn describes the events really well and in te end their snowman was superb – I would love to see some pictures!

Robyn’s description of her little brother Lucas crying at the ‘Lion King’ DVD makes me want to hug him, too! Have a read by clicking on her header link 🙂

Don’t forget to check back for more of our Snow Day reports and activities updates … apparently it’s to snow again at the end of this week!!!

8 School Days of Snow, Snow… and More Snow!

Dec11

Well, we’ve finally returned to school after more than a week and a half of being snow bound!!

When I wrote the last blog post on here trying to reach Primary 6V, I had no idea if any of you were listening – but it turned out that you were!

Some of you wrote posts straight on to your Glow Blogs, and others decided to write in a Word Document first then copy this on to your blog. Thank you for taking time out from your fun Snow Day activities to write these reports and stories. We’ve already shared some in class, and we’ll be sure to read out the rest next week. Just in case any of you pay a visit to our class blog meanwhile, however, I’ve added a link to them here.

It was good fun having some time off, but it’s lovely to see you all back in class again for the Christmas Countdown 🙂

The first Snow Days activity report was from Jade. She wrote about an experiment that she carried out with the help of her dad. She made a great job of writing up a step by step account of what they did, and even included some super pictures to illustrate the results. There’s a link to her blog post via her great header picture.

Alyson was next to publish something during the Snow Days. She wrote a detailed report about how she spent her time. What a busy time she had – even managing a trip to Glasgow in that weather! There are great comments from her dad and grandad as well 🙂

Jack noticed the message on this blog and set about writing a wonderful story called. “A Snowy Adventure For Two Polar Bears”. He wrote it up on a Word Document first, then copied it on to his Glow Blog. Jack’s stories are always entertaining. I’m sure you all still remember the hilarious Rediculous Underpants Eating Toilet he wrote for the Bookbinder 🙂 His Blog Header image will take you to his latest story.

Jack mentioned to Kian that there was a message for primary 6V and, as a result, Kian updated a Word Document daily before copying it on to his Glow Blog to share with the rest of us. He spent the first few Snow Days enjoying playing outside and entertaining his little sister on his Wii. Sometimes he had to go to his Mum’s shop, and reports on what happened when the Motorway to Glasgow had to close because of the weather.

Now that we’ve returned to school, others have been updating their Glow Blogs with their own reports of how they spent their time off school because of the snowy weather.

Anna has taken the time to write this super description of how her Snow Days were spent. She even had the time to get her frogs in to the ‘Christmas Spirit’ .. we all know how much Anna loves her frogs!! Check out her report by clicking on her Froggy header 🙂

Finally, here’s a link to Eilidh’s new blog post about her Snow Days. She managed to make an igloo (eventually), and even though she hates shopping, she managed to put up with it because she had £30 to spend on buying Christmas presents! I’m sure her family and friends will love them.