Aug 05 2007
Meeting Reflections
I have just been to Hastings this week for a two day meeting with other key staff in clusters. I enjoy these meetings as it is a great time to be around like minded people with a real passion for the use of ICT in education. There is so much expertise in the room at these meetings and it is wonderful to be able to swap ideas and information.
For instance, Sara is a facilitator for another cluster and she gave me a handy tip about a piece of software called Umajin that is great for layering images and video (some with the use of blue screening). This is so easy to use and much more affordable than Photoshop and easier than GIMP. They offer discounts for bulk buying and that includes buying through clusters of schools.
Tessa highlighted her great collection of resources on her area in Centre 4 - the managing change section is excellent.
Other than that, I have found a few new things on my own. I have now managed to sign up for Imbee (a safe social network for teachers, parents and children) as they now support New Zealand. I think it looks like a very interesting platform and may use some people in my cluster as ‘children’ guinea pigs (or anyone else that indicates being interested). It would be great if I could get a test group of children involved in a project around this tool. Watch this space…
I am also enjoying looking through the blog and wiki of Wes Fryer. He has a lot of interesting things to say and has fantastic collections of resources including a page on Digital Storytelling.
I also like the layout of Soople which shows you all of the advanced Google search options in a really user friendly format.
Well, that’s about enough from me for the moment 
To bed!
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I have my class signed up on the Thursday after you mentioned it to me . They loved the layout and one girl said it reminded her of Bebo- praise indeed. I am getting a flood of email as kids change aspects and join groups, so maybe a gmail account set up to handle this would have been better. But so far the kids are going on and having a play at home, which is more than they do with their blogs! There are 3 downloadable lesson plans that help you introduce it to your class too. So good stuff and thanks Suzie! I have some stuff from Sara on finding information effectively that she has developed (Slurp, Surf and summarise and Triangulation). Let me know if you want these Suzie.
Have a look at my cluster EXPO blog too- http://pfcblogging.blogspot.com/
http://www.macworld.com/2007/05/secrets/2407workingmacextra/index.php
Check this link out for some great non copyright images.
Hi Suzie,
You have been tagged for the 8 random facts meme :).
You can read mine on my blog.
http://allanahk.edublogs.org/
Allanah
Hi Suzie,
I tag you too for the 8 random facts meme
http:edgeoftheseat.blogspot.com
Thanks for reminding me about Umajin, it is a great kiwi product, and it sounds like it has improved since I last saw it!
“Thanks for reminding me about Umajin, it is a great kiwi product, and it sounds like it has improved since I last saw it!”
Indeed - David and the team at UR just released v1.5 of Umajin and it is even better now. The two things I love so far are the ‘getting started’ tutorials that I always thought were missing and also the “storyboard” thumbnails you get across the bottom of the editor so you can see where in a multi-page document you are.
Lots of other really nice behind the scenes enhancements too which seem to make it run even better.
Very cool,