Teaching across the world - again!

The second of our 'teaching across the world' sessions took place today. Despite skype dropping out a couple of times the children were able to follow David's lesson and today they highlighted the shares they wanted to buy and then linked them to their stock portfolio tables, ensuring that the company name, current price and hence the buying price were recorded. There was certainly more interaction between David and the children via the chat facility in dimdim so David could respond to specific questions.

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Dimdim Success

Today saw the first sessions for our Stock Exchange competition. The sessions were led by David Kinane offering his expertise on web queries in Excel. The children could hear and see David via our free Skype video call and they could see his desktop using the shared desktop feature of Dimdim once we had all joined his meeting.

BubbleShare: Share photos David explained the challenge for the students over the coming weeks, made more difficult in the current stock market climate!! We are looking to see which school (exchange) has the best trader, making the greatest percentage gain on their initial investments (virtual not real).

The session included using Google Finance to look at stock performances over a period of time. The children soon noticed the downward trend in stocks recently!

The web link for linking to Excel was from MoneyExtra.com importing the data from the FTSE 100.


Our sessions will continue next week after the children have researched stocks as possible investments.



You can read David's perspective on his blog, Turning the Supertanker

New collaborations on the horizon

Next week will see the start of two new collaborations between the students and staff of Woodford and Meadowbank. The year 6 children will undertake a challenge on the Stock Market, using Excel to track stock shares of up to 1000 units in their own currency. David Kinane will teach the Woodford children, via a free Skype call and Dimdim's shared desktop feature, how to add a live web inquiry to excel. The challenge for each trader in the Exchanges (schools) is to choose their stocks carefully and over a period of time track the profit / loss, selling and buying new shares where appropriate. The trader with the greatest % gain on their initial investment will be our best trader. We will post examples of the children's work here over the next few weeks.
The second project will be a collaboration of groups of children from each school designing and creating a global themed game using GameMaker. Again Woodford children will benefit from the expertise of David Kinane in the basics of using GameMaker. The children will use a wiki to collaborate: sharing ideas, discussions and resources to ensure that tasks are allocated to each member of the team.

We will share our collaborative triumphs, despairs and progress regularly via this blog. Who will be a best trader? Which "Exchange" will make the best gain on their initial investments? Who will create the most interactive and challenging global game?

Wildlife from Meadowbank

This is excatly what this blog was initiated for. I have been watching with excitement some of the live feed that Mr Kinane and the children have been broadcasting from Meadowbank Primary School. How often do you get to watch the groundwork of swallows as they prepare a nest for the rearing of their chicks? Here we can observe this remarkable event happening on the other side of the world! What a great way for us to learn about the life of these birds from the comfort of our own classrooms, whether in New Zealand or in the UK. This is the perfect opportunity for children to share and view the wildlife of their own countries.

Microsoft Innovative Teacher Award poster

After a flight delay hassle, reminiscent of flying Easy Jet in Europe, we finally arrived in Christchuch for the annual Ulearn conference, the biggest gathering of ICT focussed teachers in New Zealand. I had to set up my poster that illustrates the link between Woodford and Meadowbank. Other candidates spent hours taping up their posters and making their boards just so. I did mine in 5 minutes and as you can see it fits perfectly!

I have now made my presentation and tomorrow I will know if I am one of the lucky four who make it to the next round in Kuala Lumpur. Wish me luck.

Inkscape Digital Portraits

Since Mr Kinane's visit to Woodford, the Year 4 children have been working on their digital portraits. The results can be seen in the Rogue's Gallery below! We are off now for a long earned rest! We will be back in September and look forward to continuing our partnership.

From Virtual to 3-Dimensional!

The year 4 children at Woodford were delighted to have the opportunity to meet their 'virtual' teacher, David Kinane. After a week in Prague at the International Federation of Information Processing conference, David took the opportunity to visit us at Woodford. We took advantage of the visit to continue our inkscape sessions. Using to ICT suite, whiteboard and projector the children could now see in 'real' time the new skills that were being taught. In this case how to trace their own portraits using the pen and calligraphic tool to create a 'digital' image of themselves. The children worked hard and were encouraged to celebrate being stuck, as this was the forefront of their own learning. Layers were added over a photograph and then a face was created on one layer with eyes on another before the eyes were 'cut' through the face!

A special school dinner had been requested of shepherd's pie followed by apple crumble and custard, which he said was his favourite school dinner when he was a child.

David also took the opportunity of visiting the infant school with letters from children at Meadowbank. After a question and answer session with the year 4 children, he taught them a popular game that the children play in the New Zealand playground.

The day ended when David shared his and Meadowbank's vision for ICT with the joint staff of Woodford Schools. A real inspiration and long may our partnership continue to flourish! Thank you David for your time and enthusiasm!

Jack: It was a great experience and I will always remember it. The game ‘six square’ that he taught us was great.
Sam: It was good to meet Mr Kinane face to face.
Rebecca – Mr Kinane looked different in real life!
Lauren: Mr Kinane’s accent was very different to ours.
Joe: I enjoyed meeting somebody from the other side of the world.
Maya: It was fun, having him teach us in ‘our’ ICT suite.
Megan: It was enjoyable and I learnt that although NZ is on the other side of the world the people aren’t very different to us.
Megan: I got stuck, but I got there in the end.
Charlotte: – Mr Kinane told us that if our brains were hurting we were working hard! And they were!
Andrew: the day with Mr Kinane was great because we learnt a new game for the playground and we learnt some new Inkscape skills too.

Guess Who!

It may appear all quiet on the blog front at the moment but rest assured we are still working together, beavering away industriously in the background. We have started an exciting new project with our Year 4 students. A virtual Guess Who! None of our children (about 120 in all) know who each other is, but we have begun an enquiry to see if we can Guess Who? We have exchanged photos without names and these have formed displays which arouse much discussion. Who is who? The children are partnered by name and are now trying to find out who their partner really is. What do they look like? What colour eyes do they have? How long is their hair and what colour? This enquiry is undertaken through different methods. Firstly and quite simply by questionnaire and email. The children are exchaning their questions which they hope will help them identify their partner. The second method is by a Voicethread. This involved yet another lesson delivered by David via Skype to ensure that we were all able to use voicethread to record our questions. You can see the development of this below.

We hope that from these partnerships the children will use Inkscape to create joint pictures which include images of their partners and elements which represent part of each child's cultural heritage.

During this project our collaboration will take an exciting step forward when David Kinane is due to visit the children at Woodford at the end of June. We will certainly be sharing that here!

Global Warming Posters

Year 4 students at Woodford have been learning about explanatory texts. This was also linked to our Geography work on Climate Change. We used the skills learnt from Mr Kinane in our last inkscape sessions to design a poster which would explain Global Warming. This task allowed us to combine a range of curriculum subjects, showing our understanding of explanatory texts, our knowldege of the effects of Global Warming and our ICT and design skills. We started by creating a background image. This was locked and a new layer added before we added our explanatory texts. Completed posters are going to be displayed around the school as part of our EcoSchools project.

The slideshow below shows some completed posters as well as some work in progress.

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Inkscape Developments.

This morning we had a lesson in our ICT Suite from Mr Kinane in New Zealand. This is the third time we have been taught by him. It was 9am here on the 19th March and 10pm on the same day in New Zealand. We could see and hear and speak to Mr Kinane via a webcam and Skype. He was teaching us how to use Inkscape to design a poster. We could see what Mr Kinane was showing us and talking about on a skrbl page. He taught us how to write text and make a shadow. It was interesting to look at the shadow in different places. It was fun. We experimented with polygons and stars which really was fun and exctiting. Some people asked Mr Kinane how to make a star. He is really clever because he just knew the answer and what to do! At the end of the lesson we learnt how to put text on a line (or path). Sometimes the path was too short so the words overlapped and you couldn't see it clearly but you just had to stretch the line out to make it fit. It's amazing how we can learn from another teacher round the other side of the world just using a webcam! We really enjoy these lessons - we are addicted!!



























Chloe Fear, Jack Hayes, Rebecca Skelton and John Upcott of Class 3, WJS

Outstanding

On the 11th December 2007, Woodford Junior School underwent an OFSTED inspection. The report which was published today opens with the statement;

This is an outstanding school providing a high quality of education for its pupils.

Of particular note for this blog is a section which deals with the curriculum.

The curriculum's strong global dimension is illustrated by the exciting ICT link with a New Zealand primary school. This is maintained by pupils exchanging information about their lives and school events. The pupils talk enthusiastically about the lesson taught to them by the New Zealand teacher through the web link.

We are very proud that our work has been recognised by OFSTED and thank our New Zealand friends for making this possible.

Christmas Greetings from Woodford

It is with great tidings of Christmas joy that we write this post! We enjoyed reading about Christmas in New Zealand and it inspired us to create some traditionally British images of Christmas to send to you. (We rose to Mr Kinane's challenge - no more clip art!) We have combined our pictures with photographs of our Christmas performance "Witnesses" and our own soundtrack! We do wish you all at Meadobank a fantastic Christmas, a prosperous New Year (2008!) and a great summer holiday!

Christmas in New Zealand

It is Christmas and it is a special time of the year no matter where you live in the world. For us in New Zealand we are out shopping, buying presents, preparing food like you do in England but we are also planning our summer holidays! There is no talk of white Christmas's here! Christmas is our summer here, so we celebrate Christmas differently, we do not sit around a fire and eat turkey. We do celebrate mid winter here with a Turkey dinner, but at Christmas we head for the beach! Our traditional Christmas lunch is, well see if you can see what it is from our images.

For us there is no Christmas pud, but pavlova and then, depending where you live in New Zealand it is off to the beach, well maybe on Boxing Day. Have a look at what you see here, what is different? What is the same? What more would you like to know? What do you think that it would be like celebrating Christmas in the sun? Would you like to? If not, why not? By seeing how we celebrate does that make you think more about how you all celebrate Christmas in England?

We all hope that you have a merry Christmas and a happy and prosperous New Year. We will be back in February after our holidays in the sun!

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What do you call a group of Spiders?

......Mrs Hardie's nightmare! Here are some of the Inkscape Spiders that the Year 4 children of Woodford Junior School created under the instruction of Mr Kinane. We hope that they don't cause too many nightmares!

My Journey through your Eyes.

Since September the children at Woodford and Meadowbank have been working on a joint project. The aim was to explore the journeys they made and learn more about each others world as well as the collaborative aspect of the task. The project started with the children recording audio logs of a journey they had made and these were then emailed to our partners in Plymouth or Auckland, where the children listened to them and made notes about the journey. The next stage was to use these notes and search for images which could be used to illustrate each journey. The audio files and images were collated and edited in Movie Maker to create a short film, " My Journey through your Eyes". Examples of the finished films are here for all to see. Enjoy!

The students at Meadowbank have been working on the audio files that the students at Woodford have sent to us. Here are our interpretations, so far. We have had some trouble with some things, we had to research what a pastie is and what or where Bodmin is! We all assume that we all know the same things, I am sure that we have spoken about places and things that you at Woodford have not the faintest clue about. This is interesting and maybe we need to be more careful how we explain things in the future. We need to paint pictures with words, so that we can all understand each other. This project has been very exciting and has thrown up all kinds of issues based on assumptions!

Lessons around the World!

The last couple of week have seen some really exciting developments in the links between staff and children at Woodford Junior and Meadowbank Primary. Here at Woodford the Year 4 children have been taught by the IT Director of Meadowbank, David Kinane! How, you may ask is this possible? 11,000 miles between us and a thirteen hour time difference. The power of technology and ever increasing Web 2.0 tools meant that those miles and hours disappeared in cyber space! A Skrbl board for demonstrating and communicating, a webcam, a microphone and a free video call via Skype enabled David to teach the children how to use vector graphics program Inkscape.



During the first sessions the children were "shy" and did not communicate with their New Zealand Teacher, however the second sessions saw such inhibitions disappear and dialogue taking place.



The lesson created great interest here, with the local newpaper printing an article, as well as a small note in a national paper the following day. Governors, staff and Local Authority representatives were all amazed at how the children took the lesson in their stride.

They (the students) seem to just accept there is someone teaching them that is half way around the world and 13 hours ahead - I find it absolutely amazing - must be my age!! (Jill Bailley International Development officer for Plymouth)

We hope that is the beginning of many such lessons. Helen Hardie is already looking forward to teaching in New Zealand in 2008.

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The slideshow above reaveals the interaction between David and the Woodford children as well as the spiders they created under his instruction. We hope to publish those here once they are completed! Arachnophobes look away!

The videos below captured some of the sessions from the Woodford ICT Suite.

A day in the life of room 1

Welcome back to school Woodford and hello all of you new year 4 students in Mrs Hardie's class. You will be getting to know us all a lot better over the coming weeks and months. I hope that you all had a great summer? We are hoping to use your summer holiday as a collaborative project over the next few weeks, but Mrs Hardie will tell you more about that.

Here at Meadowbank, we have been working hard on a project to show you what a day in our class is like. We shot the following film over a week and a half, but we chose all the things that make being a student at Meadowbank special. We tried to think of the kinds of things that make our school day, or the way that we are in school different from the way that we think you might be in school at Woodford. We all do Literacy and Maths and those kinds of lessons, so we tried to show you some of the other lessons that we do.

Look at our video and see what you can see that makes our school day different from yours. Let us know by posting comments. If there some parts of our school day that you want more information on, please use the comments for that too.

We made the movie using Timer Shot and a web cam, so the quality is not good, but you get the idea. We hope that you like it!

There are still a few items that we are planning to video, so this version will be updated. So keep an eye out for our updates.

Comparing Ethnic Data for Year 4

The children in Year 4 at Woodford have been comparing the ethnic groups of the two schools. They have collated the data in an excel table and then produced different types of graphs. They have written about what the graphs tell us. These are some of their graphs and conclusions.

· We found out that in both schools there are more girls than boys. In Meadowbank it is an almost even split but a Woodford there is almost 2 girls for every boy.

· Auckland has more people that were born in different places, than the people in Woodford school. In Plymouth , in the Woodford school, they only 3 Ethnic groups, and in Auckland at Meadowbank, they have 11 Ethnic groups! We have 63 British people, 2 Chinese people, and 1 other mixed background . Auckland have 0 British people, 9 Chinese people, 3 Indians, 1 Japanese, 7 Maoris 1 Middle Eastern, 63 NZ Europeans, 5 other Asians, 3 other Ethnicities, 10 other Europeans, 2 Samoans, 1 SE Asian other, and 0 Any other mixed back round.

· At Meadowbank school in year 4 there are lots more people in different ethnic groups than in our year four according to the graphs. In year 4 at Meadowbank there are 13 different ethnic groups and in Woodford year 4 there are only 3.

· The ethnic chart show us that Meadowbank school have eleven ethnic groups and we at Woodford only have three. The graph also shows us that all European schools have different people from different nations. The gender chart shows that there are less children in year 4 at Woodford than at Meadowbank.

World War Two Memories

This video was inspired by our World War Two Day when Grandparents were invited to talk to the children about their experiences and memories of World War Two. Ed Knight's grandad, Mr Hazel, was unable to join us for the day so Ed decided to interview him at home, recording it to share with everyone else. (Ed apologises for the creaking noise on the film - the video camera hadn't been used for a while)

Below are the photos of our day which show a real rapport between the children and grandparents. The children and staff all came dressed in appropriate World War two style clothes, complete with boxes for gas masks and evacuation labels. Rob and Roland also joined us from Plymouth City Museum with artefacts of WW2 and photographs of Plymouth during the War. Did you know that Plymouth was among the worst bombed cities in UK during World War Two. Can you find out why this might have been the case? Why would the Germans reduce the City of Plymouth to rubble?

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A great day was had by all - and we had the best weather all term!

Hoodwinked!

Woodford Junior School has always been proud of its musical and performance traditions. Every child has the oppotunity to take part in music lessons, instrumental tuition, choir, orchestra and each term a year group undertakes a performance. The summer term falls to the Year 6 children and is their final performance before moving on to the challenges of Secondary school. This year they performed "HOODWINKED" - a musical take on Robin Hood! We can't upload the whole 57 minutes but hope you enjoy this short preview. Listen out for the music and interviews in our iminent first pod cast!