User:Dragonsinger57/Personal



Kia Ora

2012 update: This year I've been working with 2 other teachers to see if we can work collaboratively across traditional levels, rather than as independent teachers. We have ~90 students across 5 traditional school levels - year 2 - 6.

2011 update: I applied for and was accepted to be a CORE Education eFellow. I'm looking forward to the learning that will happen for me as part of this award. My eFellowship work centers around writing and reluctant writers and how the use of ICTs could help them find their writing voice.

I am still teaching a Year 5 class but am lucky enough to have moved classrooms and am able to use the adjoining learning street as an extension to my classroom. In looking over my comment below from 2009 and MS Word, I'd like to reiterate that my students use Google Docs (free) for their online work - this gives them the freedom to work where ever and when ever they like - truly magic!

2010 update: I teach at Raumati Beach School, on the Kapiti Coast of New Zealand. I'm currently (2010) teaching Year 5 students (9-10 year olds) and love this age group.

2009 This is what I've posted as my introduction in the email discussion group.

At the moment I'm "going where no one has gone before" at my school and running an eLearning environment in my classroom. Approximately 70-80% of the work is presented online and I'm encouraging self-management of learning. I have 31 students arranged in 6 groups, each group with a computer + an old acer running ubuntu and my old iBook as extras.

Someone asked me yesterday if I ever used MSWord in my classroom and I couldn't remember when the last time word was opened. I use google docs extensively (for their ability to publish as webpages) and while MS Office is on my macbook I prefer to use Open Office.

Classwork content is provided via google docs & the class work blog and we've been using Edmodo (social networking) also (2/3 of my class signed up & using Edmodo); most recently - and the path I will take over the next little while has been the discovery of eXe - which I discovered a reference to while reading through the eL4C29 course material - and that marries together the difference resources I've been using. While I don't have ready access to Moodle I am able to create packages and host them myself via my online dropbox.

I'm looking forward to this course. I have dabbled on and off with wikis over the last 3-4 years and would like to move past dabbling.


 * Thanks to the eL4C29 course I'm now doing more than dabbling! My class is basically running on a wiki (albeit wikispaces) and I'm teaching my 7-9 year old students how to add content etc in a wiki.--dragonsinger57 07:54, 5 September 2009 (UTC)

Short Intro Sound bite|JMF_Wiki_intro2.mp3|Click to begin download