Google for Educators Basic Exam Level One

Passed!

If you use Google Apps for Education it's easy peasy. Moving onto my level 2 training now!



Sit the exam here.

Cardboard Challenge

This term Grade 8 are taking part in our own Cardboard Challenge. Inspired by the film Caine's Arcade, students will design and make their own arcade games and they will organise, promote and run an event. Students will create posters linked to recycling, asking students and staff to donate any cardboard packaging. Our room will be decorated, with cardboard decorations too! Students will also look at the business element of the arcade - how many tickets should people be able to win? What prizes should be on offer? How much should games cost to play?

Today we watched the following two videos:





After students put themselves in small groups and started discussing ideas. They were buzzing with excitement and students worked through the break sketching out ideas and discussing the practical issues of their games. In the next lesson students will be working on a presentation to show off their initial ideas. Their homework will be to create a poster advertising their unit, the videos and asking for cardboard donations! I will get them to also write notes to go out in a school wide email and a parent newsletter and they will also plan a film screening! Students will aim to raise money for the Imagination Foundation, so will also make promotional material for this.

This unit is very exciting and pretty much runs itself! I am excited to see what they will produce and will show off their creations here!

If anyone else is running a Cardboard Challenge, let me know, as we would like to partner with some other schools- possibly through Skype?

Google+

I use Google tools every day - especially the calendar, Gmail, Docs and Drive... However I have been a bit slow with getting on board with Google+. I am aiming to start using it more often as I think it is a great way to share ideas with others - something which has changed my life completely through Twitter! I know that Google+ has the potential to improve my teaching practice greatly, so I need to pull my finger out and get on it.

I actually have three Google accounts, my personal one, work one and a professional one, but have decided to stick to using just my profressional one. You can add me here.

If anyone has any tips for using Google+ please send them my way!

Thanks

Why Cite?

I was asked by our lovely Science teacher to help her grade 7s with creating bibliographies for an essay they were writing. The particular push they needed was to understand how to cite images properly. We use the MLA Referencing style, which means we can use EasyBib for FREE! I have an EasyBib tutorial video on YouTube, which sits in the students Library iTunesU course and has been sent out in school newsletters several times. We also use Britannica Schools and Britannica Image Quest - these give you the reference right in the article or next to the image! Easy Peasy!

I created a short presentation to try to explain some of the reasons we need to reference in a positive way. Far too often these sort of lessons tend to warn students off plagiarism and make students afraid to use other people's work, so I tried to move away from this, even showing them how to reference your own work!

Here are some screen grabs from the presentation. There is a link to the presentation on TES here. I can also make the Google Doc available to you if you want.

























Hopefully this explains itself. There are a few sections which were meant to start a class dicussion, such as "how do I know if a source is reliable." At the end I created a bibliography, showing all the images I used. I refered to this bibliography several times in the presentation. I am also creating a bibliography for every presentation I deliver, to any grade, so I can lead by example!

Why Cite? TES

Again if you need any help with this, pop a comment on this article of tweet me.

World Book Day 2014

World Book Day was RAD!

Here's what we did:
Period 2 - Students had a Literay Inspired Breakfast! Parents came along too!
Period 3 - We had a readathon, with students reading books, magazines, newspapers and e-books, in our lovely bean bags
Period 4 - The whole school watched a live stream of an event with the fantastic Robert Muchamore

Students all got so involved and really enjoyed the day - as did parents and staff!
Student also recieved a goodie bag containing Garfield Bookmarks, 'Books are Magic' pencils and their WBD vouchers!





Some food prepared by our students:









The room:




and Robert Muchamore!


Did you know if you buy his WBD book in a WH Smith you will get a free plectrum!!!

My favourite World Book Day so far!

Google Science Fair

I am so excited to introduce our grade 8 and 9 students to the Google Science Fair 2014! I have made a quick Google presentation, which other people are free to use. The website itself is really straight forward and easy to use, so students will have no time navigating it. I just wanted to make a linear presentation as it is easier to show a big group of students. Feel free to use and enjoy!
Also on TES!
The site has no many similarities to the MYP/IB curriculum, linking up to different subject criteria, key concepts and the IB Areas of Interaction/Global Context - it can even be used as part of their Community and Service! LOVE IT!

Coding Class

I have uploaded a very simple coding lesson. this could be used as a stand alone lesson or you could expand it to make it run over a few different lessons. I actually used a similar lesson for cover when I was off sick, but changed it, so that anyone can use it.

It is available on TES as a PowerPoint or a PDF. ENJOY! If you have any difficulties with this, please let me know, I am always happy to help! This lesson should be self explanatory and students should understand the sites straight away. Also all websites used can be used on the iPad or on a computer. I put an extension where students could use Light-Bot - Light-Bot is an app, not a website, so only available for iPad users.