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Intel@ Teach recently celebrated training 10 million teachers! (SchoolNet offers their marvelous courses free of charge to educators in South Africa). Intel called this celebration ‘10 million teachers – Opening Doors of Opportunity’ and they asked teachers around the world to submit their teacher stories   Three of our South African teachers (all ‘Schoolnetters’) have their stories featured on their site - http://10millionteachers.intel.com/


1. Brenda Hallowes



School Name: Cotswold Preparatory School

Subjects: I Am Presently The Computer Teacher At My School

“I completed the Intel Teach to the Future course in September 2003. At the time I was the media teacher at a school in Durban and I was so excited about implementing project-based learning and ICT integration. Unfortunately, a few months later my husband and I re-located to a rural area of Kwa Zulu Natal. I taught in the village school, which didn’t have computers, but I used my personal laptop in my classroom to introduce my Grade 6 class to using technology when we did a project on water. This was a great success and the children couldn’t wait to do more. The project work was also a new approach for the other teachers on the staff and I shared some ideas with them – especially in the area of questioning. Read more…http://10millionteachers.intel.com/teachers/47/brenda-hallowes "

2. Dezlin Jacobs



School Name: SchoolNet SA

Subjects: Intel Project Co-ordinator

"I was first introduced to the Intel Teach Program as a student in 2006. I was completing my Post Graduate certificate in Education at the University of Pretoria and the Intel Teach to the Future Course was part of our training. It was my first taste of integrating technology into the classroom and was a springboard for my future. SchoolNet SA invited me to improve my original portfolio—which received a Silver grading—to a Gold and then to go on to become a trainer for Intel Teach to the Future (now titled the Intel Teach Essentials Course)."

3. Peter Moeng



School Name: Boikagong Secondary School

Subjects: Basic Computer Literacy, End User Computing, CAT

"The Intel Teach program has been embraced warmly by teachers and learners alike. There is remarkable interest in using ICT, and learning has been stimulated by the research projects that learners do. There is also remarkable discovery of new skills and new approaches to learning. New basic skills have been taught using computers and there is also development of new practices on how best to integrate teaching and learning. It has created good opportunities to explore and make use of other applications. However, some teachers do not have much interest in working with computers, Internet connectivity is still a need in this area, and a lack of good computers is still a large problem -- particularly with such rapid changes of technology and software."  

SchoolNet would like to congratulate these three educators and all the other SchoolNet trainers around South Africa for their dedication and enthusiasm in training our teachers in how to integrate technology with good pedagogy. 

Submitted by Fiona Beal
Garrett Ferguson is a teacher that I have worked with before on projects - he always does great things with his class.  They had a great response from classes around the world. Two classes from local Fish Hoek schools responded to the blog postand subitted videos - The Rock Academy and Fish Hoek Primary. The Grade 4 Lafayette class created a final verson incorporating everyone's video which I have embedded below. It is so exciting when classes link with other classes around the world. The spin-off of this is that the Rock Academy and Grade 4 Lafyette are going to have a Skype session together soon!

Well done to everyone involved in the video.

How to use Jing

I discovered an amazing site for learning how to use Jing.  Here is an image of it plus the hyperlink.



http://www.teachertrainingvideos.com/jingInReality/index.html

Give a talk on an issue

*I wanted the class to use their Vokis to express an opinion about an issue.
*I captured an example for them to use using Screenr.

The Task

Today you will make a Voki expressing some strong opinions. Use http://www.voki.com/ to do this.

1. Think of something that really irritates you, that you think something should be done about.

2. Here are some sentence starters you could use:

*What really gets on my nerves is … the reason for this is
*What drives me up the wall is … because
*What I can’t stand is … . I think
*What really annoys me is … You see


3. I got this idea and took a Voki screencast  from Ian James's fantastic blog that I follow (http://tefltecher.wordpress.com/2011/03/15/voki-grumps/)

 

A blogpost about using Screenr

I have written a blog post about how to use Screenr:
http://schoolnetsa.blogspot.com/2011/10/screencasting-with-screenr-is-so-easy.html



Provide access to your Screencasts to the students

What I did is I created a blog especially for Screencasting so that the students could just go to the link and open up the screencasts.  However both Jing and Screenr store your screencasts so you can keep them there with links. Alternatively you can download them to your computer as MP4 files.



Recently I provided this lesson on a PowerPoint at a TeachMeet but the screencasts wouldn’t open for some reason.  I hope that doesn’t happen here!

Further ideas

I think that in the iintegration of your curriculum with technology this would be a great way to help the students that might falter a bit and want to practise at home. If you have a large class the students could go over the instructions using your short screencasts (screencasts should always be short and to the point - no longer than three minutes, for example.)

Why not give screencasting a try?

Here is a tutorial for using Photostory 3 from the Partners in Learning UK YouTube channel



Classroom uses for this programme are endless.
*It can be used to provide tutorials for the students.
*It can be used to reflect on a year in a class.
*Outings can be recorded on Photostory 3.
*It is very useful to use for students to create projects. 

This is a guest post submitted by Claire Dean from Stirling Primary. Claire has been a Microsoft Innovative Teacher finalist twice. She has been a world-wide winner of the Thinkquest projects competition along with Brenda Hallowes from Port Elizabeth in 2009. Claire is also a trainer with SchoolNet SA.

The Ghanaian Ministry of Education requested training on “Getting started with ThinkQuest Projects”. Claire Dean (from East London) and Shirley-Ann Oldnall Jansen (from Irene) facilitated these workshops in Accra, Ghana at the beginning of October 2011. They also had a meeting with Mr Charles Aheto-Tsegah, the Deputy Director General of the Ghana Education Service. He would like to put ThinkQuest in all Ghanaian schools with internet connectivity. All went very well and it was a great experience.

Shirley and Claire relaxing on the hotel's private beach

Microsoft Songsmith is an amazing programme to use in the classroom for creating songs. The students absolutely love it.

What is Songsmith?
Songsmith is a pretty smart programme that creates musical accompaniment to match the voice of whoever is singing. All you have to do is choose a musical style, sing into your PC or laptop microphone, and Songsmith will come up with the backing track for your music. After that you can share your songs with your friends and family, post your songs online, or create your own music videos.

Songsmith is free for teachers
The great news is that Songsmith is free for teachers to use in their classrooms. 
Let’s look at this great infomercial from Microsoft Research.





Classroom ideas
• Use it as a reward period for your students
• Make up songs about the curriculum (Maths, Grammar, Poems, Facts from particular subjects)
• Create backings for class movies
• Use in music lessons

Tutorials
Here is a tutorial from the UK Partners in Learning site.

CatchYou is an application for android phone. It can track the location of the target mobile phone. Useful for:-
1. Lost or stolen handphone.
2. Track the whereabout of your family members, friends or any target phone.

How to use this application:-
1. Install CatchYou app in the target phone.
2. Whenever you want to track the location of the mobile phone, just SMS "locategomoman" to the target phone.
3. Once receiving the passcode, the target phone will automatically find its location using GPS or Network Provider.
4. The target phone will then reply to the tracker phone with its coordinates.
5. The tracker phone can then open the location coordinates using map.



CatchYou application is free and you can download from the Android Market.

Kita enjoyyy....

Record all incoming and outgoing calls with our free call recorder app. Get it here.

I love all the Microsoft programmes that are free to teachers who join the Partners in Learning website. One of my favourites is AutoCollage. Have you tried it?  This is one really great way of capturing all the students in your class in various activities during the school year.

How does AutoCollage work?


1. Put the photos that you want to use in a folder in My Pictures
When you open AutoCollage you’ll see that it picks up all the folders of photos in My Pictures. Choose the folder you want and immediately all the pictures in the folder will appear in the middle.

2. Click on Create
AutoCollage starts to swirl the pictures around. This is where you make some choices in the settings. Do you want some to be bigger than others, for example?
3. Your picture starts to take shape




Classroom ideas for Autocollage


1. Create a picture to put on a classroom door that incorporates everyone


3. Use it to collect memories from a project. (This is from Lisa Gair’s Adopt-a-donkey project)



6. Other ideas that could work


• Make a card from the class for some occasion
• Creative writing exercises – ‘How does this make you feel?’ ‘Moods and feelings’
• Book cover for a planning book
• Create a vocabulary exercise using PowerPoint and store it on a blog
• Create certificates
• A collage of a novel’s characters
• Background for a PowerPoint presentation
• A record of a lesson with everyone showing their product

7. Microsoft has plenty of step by step instruction available on their website





http://youtu.be/1GAUW0wRd4A

Today I thought I would experiment with Screenr as a screencasting tool to illustrate some aspects that I want to highlight in a talk I am presenting tomorrow. I normally use Jing, and I will write about Jing at some stage as well.

Well first of all I went along to the Screenr website and joined.






















There was a video giving instructions right there and so I watched it.  In fact click on the picture below and you will be taken to the instruction video



See how easy it looks. For my talk tomorrow I was to show things as though I am on the Internet because it takes forever to actually click on a link. So after recording my snippet using Screenr I looked at it and it was fine. I then published it and downloaded it as an MP4 movie as I actually want to embed it in my PowerPoint as a movie. I worked! Success!

Don’t believe me? Well, it embeds on a blog as well. Here I am showing Storybird without actually going on to the Internet.

http://www.screenr.com/

Classroom blogging is one of the most exciting ventures for a classroom teacher to embark on. It opens a door of possibilities and makes the way for making a host of new friends around the world. Apart from that it gives parents an opportunity to take a peek into the classroom and see what is happening. I love blogging!

This weekend I presented a workshop entitled ‘Blogging for teachers’ at the EdTechConference at Elkanah House in Cape Town. I started off with the ideas that follow in the slide-share presentation below as a source of inspiration. Then we did the workshop part where the inexperienced bloggers worked from an e-book to create their new blogs, the educators with blogs used one of the inspirational ideas to develop their blog, and I walked around helping whoever needed help.   I also invited the participants who already had blogs to demonstrate their blogs to the rest of the class. 

Are you perhaps wanting to start a collaborative project with a class but you don’t quite know where to start? Omashani Naidoo who is the Operations Manager at SchoolNetSA brings our attention to the latest 2011-2012 iEARN Project Description Book which is now available on the web at: http://www.iearn.org/iearn-project-book. This book is full of project ideas where the originators of the projects are looking for a class to collaborate with. Why not take a look? (Please note that there will be new iEARN projects continually developing.  You can visit http://media.iearn.org/projects for the most up to date project list.)  

In an effort to evaluate the impact of ICT integration into our school curriculum, we recently conducted an informal case study consisting of student and teacher interviews. These interviews are based on seven projects with ICT components, ranging from Grade 4 to Grade 10 students, across a range of subjects, and were conducted by a representative from SchoolNet South Africa. (All projects have been posted on our school blog.) Although our initial findings are by no means conclusive or irrefutable, the responses from students and teachers highlighted the following interesting trends:

• Many students who usually achieve average to below average marks in ‘traditional’ projects such as essays or posters have shown significant improvement with the inclusion of an ICT component for e.g. Movie Maker or Glogster. They ascribed this to the fact that different types of projects engaged different learning styles, as not all students are good at writing or exam-taking. They also reported an overall increase in confidence and interest due to their higher marks and additional creative elements of the project.
  
• Students who usually achieve relatively high marks for ‘traditional’ assessment projects, such as essays, tests or exams, reported that they found the integration of ICT quite challenging. They felt this was due to the fact that these projects often included a high degree of collaboration with students of mixed level abilities. That meant that they had to learn patience and team work, both important 21st century skills.

• Teachers have reported that students with special learning needs also benefit from ICT tools, for e.g. Mouse Mischief, reading software tools and others. In many cases, collaborating in groups with their peers has given students the opportunity to learn from and assist each other, with some amazing results.

From the interview responses, we have learned some important lessons:

• Technology should not be the driver: ICT integration often overemphasises the need for digital literacy skills whilst ignoring important basic skills, such as reading, writing and maths. We have found that successful ICT integration involves a balance; technology should enhance and support teaching and learning, rather than drive it.
  
• Separating ICT from other subjects: In the past, ICT has usually been viewed as a separate subject, often taught in separate IT labs. Teachers have reported increased engagement and interest in their subjects by integrating ICT as a supportive mechanism or creative addition to a project, rather than as a separate learning outcome. We have also piloted mini ‘break-away’ labs in classrooms with increasing success; teachers can then access computers during class instead of booking an IT lab which often breaks the flow of a class.
  
• The best project ideas are usually the simplest ideas: In the case of our award-winning Grade 4 project, students still had to complete a creative reading and writing assignment as they usually would. Then one new element was added, which in this case was the creation of a multi-media movie based on their written stories. In the case of the Grade 10 book blogs, traditional book logs simply evolved to an electronic blog version, allowing increased visibility and the ability to comment on each other’s work.
  
• Some of the best ICT tools are free: Find out more under the ‘Resources’ section of the school blog.
  
• Rapid technology changes: We often worry about rapid changes in technology and are therefore constantly looking ahead at the ‘next best thing’. In our experience, there is value in concentrating on what you already have and making the most of it before moving on to something new.
  
• Teacher collaboration and sharing is essential for success: This can be through teacher show ‘n tell, by sharing lessons during staff meetings or by joining online learning communities. We cannot encourage 21st century skills in students if we don't practise them ourselves and we have found teacher collaboration to be a wonderful source of ideas, lesson plans and inspiration.
  
• Teacher training and support is key: Professional development needs to be part of school culture. With the right training, support and encouragement, even resistant staff can be motivated to try new methods or technologies.

Here is a movie in which some of the students and a teacher at St Cyprians are interviewed about the AIDS awareness project they completed using Windows Movie Maker.