I heard or read a quote somewhere that essentially says- “If you’re riding ahead of the herd, take a look back every now and then to make sure it’s still there”. I think that this is particularly applicable to any quality improvement work we undertake in a team. Invariably we have one ‘expert’ who leads the others. This is a good thing – but has inherent dangers. Any new initiative or improvement should only be attempted if there is a commitment to make it sustainable – presumably you only attempt it if you

feel it is valuable! This is not to say the team can’t change direction based on evidence. But how sad to change direction because you relied on one person to ‘do ICT’ or ‘run music’ ‘ be good at carpentry’ or ‘ deliver kapa haka sessions” ( for example). We all

have areas of strength and challenge- but to make any change an embedded part of our culture we need to all be ‘singing from the same song sheet’. So a supporting role is ok-

but don’t make a decision to support from too far back in the bleachers!!!

Transitioning into Kindergarten can be made easier with digital stories as well. Great Feedback

has come from the team at Paremata Kindergarten who are supporting a

developing relationship with children and families

by sending them a ‘welcome’ photostory after

the first day of kindergarten. This is a great

way to foster the notion that information sharing

between home and kindergarten is actively

sought and will hopefully lead to more of this in the

profile context!

Well done to Parsons Ave Kindergarten who are

exploring the role of digital images to support transition

to school. After some discussion earlier in the year

about NZ research into what makes a successful transition to school we

made a plan – We went on a school visit with one of our keen Kindergarten 4

year old photographers and had a tour. The plan is to make use of the digital

record of our visit (with a 4 year old narration) in the

kindergarten and as a resource to share at home for other children via DVD.

Transitions…In and Out!

Over the past month I’ve been using an on line tool called ‘artpad’ in a few Kindergartens. …in fact Bellevue is using this themselves. This tool is a fairly ordinary art tool, with one or two added advantage. There is a facility to rewind the painting – when it’s finished you can ask it to replay the painting process you followed from start to finish. This is a great way to get children talking about their thought processes, what they liked, what surprised them, their agenda as they worked… and promote the idea that revisiting and assessing for yourself is useful.

The other feature that could stand us in great stead when we are thinking in a ‘Te Manawa’ frame of mind is the ability to email significant work home with a ‘child’s voice message’ (or to the office for keeping etc,) the bonus here is that

It becomes a vehicle for ‘multiple voices’ to happen in the assessment

process, and a way to review once more with different players…

Keeping the ‘darned’ machines running!!

Computer a bit slow? Or slower than usual? Any

machinery generally needs

some maintenance occasionally!

Windows does have some basic Utilities that you can use to help- it’s good to get your computer

doing this every so often….

Disk cleanup. On windows XP computers this is easily found in the

control panel….

Slightly more hidden in vista or windows 7- however these have fab search functions that find disk clean in a short jiffy.

Another is disk defragmenting. Your computer might be set

to do this automatically at a particular time,

and will do it …. For some this will involve it being turned on at the scheduled time

though! This is also in the

control panel or found with a search. This

organises files in your computer so they

‘speak’ to each other more efficiently

Lastly – virus Checking!

Your virus programme will generally squawk if

there is something wrong- it often turns different

colours on the bottom tool bar. If your computer isn’t able to go on line or it’s a

children’s computer where the teacher profile isn’t used much- put it on

this profile and let it do it’s thing every so often…

so the virus list it is checking for is up to date! You can transfer virus’s in

many ways so this is a good idea!

Open ended resourcing isn’t only especially appropriate for children-

it’s jolly useful for teachers too! The Mimio notebook software that comes

with this interactive whiteboard equipment allows children to move the characters around based on

their ideas rather than prescribed programming – like a huge scale felt board! here’s Maraeroa’s take on a

familiar rhyme where all the monkey’s can be moved and the

background is a movie clip for the children to match to. The team have thoughts about making belonging and

family boards with it, matching games, boards to support story telling, interests and perhaps

project work. When you can easily make it yourself you can tailor the resources to support the children’s

exact interest!

! Check out the latest posts on our project blog….

http://wonderingaboutict.blogspot.co.nz Recent posts include….

Children’s voices in the programme… teaching our learners to revisit their work…. Artpad

Solving puzzles on line – have a play! ICT to support transitioning into Kindergarten- link to NZ

research. ‘Foundations for Discovery’ the ICT curriculum document

Skyping – two clips Reading… ‘Digital Natives, Digital Immigrants’

Video clip – Julia Aitken- ‘Multiple ways of knowing’ Check it out! Our blog counter says we have had over a thousand

peeks between us so far!

And Finally…..

Learning through play…