Hello World!

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Permalink Reply by Jeremy Aldrich on December 10, 2007 at 8:29am

Hard to know where to start here...it's kind of like asking how teachers use pencils in their classrooms. Your question needs to be more specific, I think. :-)

You're probably already doing this, but sniff around on this site for a while and get a sense for some of the cool projects out there. Good luck!

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Permalink Reply by Jo Rhys-Jones on December 10, 2007 at 1:42pm

Hello
Well...firstly we use our own ning network - Kingswear to communicate with parents and children out of school. For us this is a major step forward as we are a tiny and very remote school - many of our students live on boats even, so it is a great medium to leave messages for each other as we are too small to have full time secretarial staff. Letters home and homework are also posted so they can be downloaded at leisure if anyone loses them. The 'blog' pages have proved a great motivation for children's writing - particularly boys. They like the technology side and the opportunity to have their work published for world view!

Then there is podcasting - using programs like audacity and sites such as podomatic has had a big effect...on reading! The children record themselves reading aloud and play it back. It has been a real revelation to some and they quickly improve and start to become more conscious of what they are 'reading'. It helps presentation skills and gives writing a real purpose too. It has also enabled children to become 'critical friends' - to acquire the ability to listen and deliver constructive criticism, becoming active particpiants in their own learning.

Voicethread has been a wonderful tool - particularly for Language learning and sharing work on an International level such as collaborative partner school work. But we have also used it in RE to order and retell the story of the nativity. For children who have problems writing down their thoughts/dyslexia/English as a second language this tool offers a chance to show their peers just what they can achieve - a second chance.

There's lots more - del.icio.us to share and recommend homework helping sites that have been checked out first; youtube (as long as teacher has watched the clips first) is a fantastic source of though-provoking video clips from around the world; blogs by other schools as well as our own; file-sharing etc..

Hope this helps start you off...

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Permalink Reply by Nancy Bosch on December 10, 2007 at 5:42pm

Jo, Your ning network looks great and I can see where it could take the place of a class website, class blog and parent newsletter. I noticed this ad

Singles Chat Rooms (Free)
Free Chat, Find Local Singles in Your ZIP code!
Singles-Chat.com/Chat

I thought ning was offering ad-free sites for kids---I'm thinking my parents might complain. Have the ads been an issue? Is there anyway you can control what ads are shown?

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Permalink Reply by Jo Rhys-Jones on December 11, 2007 at 2:16pm

Ning does offer ad-free but my children are 'too young' (its for grades 7-12 sadly) apparently for ning to 'support' us in this manner......yet (I hope!) It is a shame as most ads we've reduced by putting very very few 'key' words or tags in setting up the original site. What I do is make a point of discussing the ads with the children at the moment - they are much more savvy than many believe about NOT clicking on the ads, but some are inappropriate and we talk in class about what we do if something unpleasant/offensive comes up on the Internet as part of our esafety policy. The idea is that we are trying to empower the children to make choices and switch off/report what they are not happy/feel uncomfortable about. We also talk about the purpose of ads and if we consider their promises to be 'truthful' just as who we meet online may not necessarily be 'truthful' about their identity.
But yes - in short the ads are a concern and I am not happy about them.

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Permalink Reply by Nancy Bosch on December 11, 2007 at 2:20pm

I wonder if there is any control over the ads? I was once looking at a site for kids and saw an inappropriate Google ad, I reported it to the site and they were able to have the ad removed....

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