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Monday 1 June 2015

Seesaw-Learning Journal


I have just discovered a fantastic iPad app for creating and sharing digital learning journals.  Seesaw is free and extremely easy to use even for young children.  Below is an example of what can be done within the app.  Take a photo/video or import one from your photo albums, annotate it with text or drawing.
Customer service is excellent if you need any information or help, and you can follow them on Twitter @Seesaw



Thursday 9 April 2015

Minecraft in the Classroom



I tried to avoid showing any interest in Minecraft despite the fact my daughter and students seemed to be obsessed with it.  In the end I decided that rather than try to avoid it I would endeavor to harness it's 'educational' benefits (if indeed it had any).  Suffice to say that I am a convert,  and now regularly use it in my classroom.  The above is an example of how we used Minecraft to model the human digestive system.  Students worked in groups inside Minecraft, where they worked on creating the different parts of the digestive system.  There were very interesting conversations going on such as 'Can you please get out of my pancreas and work on the liver?'
In the above example, once they had finished their digestive system, they took a screen shot of it and imported into PicCollage where they then labelled it.  One of the great things about Minecraft is the 3D aspect, which you can't appreciate from these examples. Students could navigate through their digestive systems in a walk through of their creations.  Highly engaging and I can attest to the fact that they all had a thorough understanding of the different parts of the digestive system at the end of it!

Saturday 7 February 2015

Genius Hour

My Introductory Haiku deck...

Thanks to Chris Kesler  for the inspiration for the Haiku deck that I intend to use as an introduction to our Genius Hour this year.


You will be surprised.. - Created with Haiku Deck, presentation software that inspires


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