Hi all, welcome to my first ever blog. I began writing it for a university assignment when I was studying primary school teaching. When I began I was a complete Web 2.0 novice. I've graduated now but I still find it useful to occasionally discuss and record my ICT 'discoveries' here. I'm doing my best to keep advancing my PC skills because I consider it an essential literacy and skill set to teach children in school. ecks

Monday, June 13, 2011

iaza and prezi

I've had a play around iaza, a simple to use and free online image editor.

It was The Book Chook's suggestion, and she has written a number of posts about using image editors for literacy teaching that are worth a read.

I found the program very classroom (and CRT) friendly as it doesn't require any login and it is easy to use a file or a web sourced image - so, you don't even need a camera in order to use it.

I've used prezi as a kind of album to display the photos I made on iaza. Prezi, a web-based alternative to powerpoint has a free basic model that older primary students could enjoy, but it requires an email address to make an account. (Also, there is a 30-day free trial of the offline program available). The website has a number of video tutorials and examples to get people started and I found them informative enough to make this without any other guidance. It is a slightly idiosyncratic program, so kids will probably need a number of sessions to get the hang of it and make anything. Could be useful for story-boarding, making comics, and organising information.

This embedded prezi seems to take most of a million years to load (and even then struggles). You can also view it through the prezi site. Click on this sentence to find it there!

I highly recommend checking it out.

Bookmark: Twitter for teachers

I'm just (very tentatively) beginning with twitter. I want to use it for professional conversations and political participation, and follow a few of my favourite public commentators. It seems a bit full-on at the moment and I worry a bit about privacy and security.

Some useful resources:



#DUedchat 7pm thursdays, Down Under edchat

For once I have the basics down, some advanced twitter skills for teachers

Kids blogging:

Useful youtube vid about adding multiple users to edublogger

Sunday, June 12, 2011