Who Is This Woman?????

Or maybe lady is a more polite term? Anyway, she was in the news a great deal last week after publishing a long awaited report, which we will look at in greater detail in the next few weeks.

If anybody can let me know the answer before the end of the week, they will receive huge numbers of points, plaudits and praise! Here's a clue; she made her name presenting as a parenting guru and fronted a number of TV shows tackling poorly behaved children, one of which was delightfully called 'The House of Tiny Tearaways'.

Who is she and why should all pupils, parents and teachers at Kellett know about her??? Answers on a postcard... no, not really, just walk up to me and tell me. Or if you're not sure about that, send me an e-mail!!

Well done to all those who have responded so far. 100% correct, but don't forget to say who you are when you post to the blog.

Australia

Great beaches, great scenery, great food etc, etc. Awful wireless internet access! It's been a struggle to find anywhere to get online since leaving Hong Kong, even the internet cafe I found was closed! Here in Sea World there is the chance to connect and catch up on a few e-mails and see what's been happening in the blogging world. Heading up to Brisbane tomorrow, so there should be more online time before returning to the luxury of wi-fi enabled Hong Kong.

Are You Paying Attention?

Good to see the often mentioned Derek Robertson getting some press in the UK for his groundbreaking work on games-based learning. His pilot project on the use of the Nintendo DS within Numeracy has now been funded to allow for a larger scale study after the Easter break. It will be fascinating to hear how it goes.

Derek did the rounds on the BBC last week, filming interviews for Breakfast TV as well as Radio Scotland. As is normal, the BBC felt obliged to provide a couch opponent to games-based learning who managed to completely miss the point!

Judge for yourself!

My thanks to Ewan McIntosh for editing these clips together. Copyright BBC2008

Accessing Homework Pages During School Closure

Well done to all those students who have accessed the work left by teachers during the school closure. It's good to see you all using ICT to carry on your studies.

A big reminder to all those students who haven't entered the Digital Photography Competition yet. The closing date is next Tuesday so there's still time for you to get your entry to me! Of course, you will have to send your photographs in as attachements now by e-mail. For those of you in P1 or P2 it's ok to get somebody at home to help you with this part.. just make sure it's you that takes the photograph.

Here's one of the entries to get you inspired!

E-Learning During School Closure

With the school temporarily closed, the teachers have been working hard to ensure there's plenty to do over the next few days. P5 teachers pictured contemplating their learning objectives.

All year groups have homework provided on their individual pages, which can be accessed via the Useful Websites section here.

The specialist teachers have also provided homework which can be found on their pages; Art, Chinese Studies and PE all have lots of activities for you. If you're reading this you've already done some ICT! Why not carry on down the page and follow some of the links to sites such as Brainbox Challenge and the National Geographic channel. The archived site to the right also has plenty of info for you to look at.

It's good to see the Year 6 teachers using a Web 2.0 platform to communicate with students. The Kellett Ning now has audio by Miss Nichol and Miss Hitchcox reading their class text, as well as links to a popular video sharing site! The forum is available for students in Year 6 to post their homework too.

I wonder if anybody is able to give an audio or video response!???

School Closure

Like many schools in HK, we're closed today. More info can be found at

http://www.kellettschool.com/Announcements.htm

Later this morning you will be able to find lots of stuff to keep you busy here and on the school year pages. Year 6 pupils will be able to use the Ning to discuss work related (and non-work) related STUFF! Please use the forum section of the ning rather that mailing individual friends... that way everybody can join in.

Are You a Brainbox?

I'm grateful to Derek Robertson for pointing out the Brainbox web site on his blog. Brainbox Challenge is a TV show in the UK and the online version is an excellent tool for looking at various types of learning, such as spatial and visual.

P4 students had a quick look earlier today and they were pretty impressive in the way they answered the challenge. It's the sort of actvity that they could carry on at home, although seemingly it can only be used by one person at a time and retain the records. It would take far too long to take all the tests at once.

Have a go and let me know how your Brainbox Quotient looks. I have to admit my Spatial score was really bad, whilst my Language and Visual scores were much better. Obviously some improvement needed there!

You can visit the Brainbox Challenge website by clicking here.

Google Sketchup... again!

This time it's P3's turn to use the excellent Google Sketchup. A quick look at the basic tools and we're off and running. It's very simple to use and the creative power of the software means we can do all sorts of things.

Here's the HSBC building created in Google Sketchup... not my own work sadly.

Google Sketchup is completely free and should be at the top of the list of home PC downloads, along with Google Earth.

If you don't have Sketchup you can download it via the following link.

Room With a View

Here we are in KL... Day Two of the FOBISSEA ICT Conference about to start. Here's the view from my hotel room... pretty nice!

Just watched an excellent presentation on Scratch by Glenn Malcolm from BIS in Hoh Chi Minh. We used Scratch in Computer Club earlier this year and we'll definately be looking at it again in the near future.

Destination KL

Off to Kuala Lumpur tomorrow for a conference of FOBISSEA ICT co-ordinators and teachers. It should be a great opportunity to share good practice and look at the issues that face our schools as we come to terms with what it means to be a 21st century learner.

Hopefully there will be opportunities to update what's happening on this blog and I may even keep the Twitter going (see right hand menu).

This type of event is really important in an international environment as it helps to set up meaningful connections which can be built upon in the future. Another conference on the horizon is the Hong Kong 21st Century Conference coming up in May... more about that soon. It's also good to see that the Shanghai Learning 2.0 Conference will be taking place next academic year. This was widely regarded as hugely influential last year and was attended by a large number of HK schools.

National Geographic Film Site

If you're at a bit of a loose end, National Geographic have a nice video editing site which shows how students can use a basic timeline to create a movie from video and audio clips.

It's a great introduction to a timeline editor and a useful exercise in matching the video content to an appropriate soundtrack. Try adding the video clips first and watching your movie. Then add some music and see what difference it makes to the overall feel of the clip.

P3 have tried out the site with great success although the sharing and saving element was a little unreliable.

Have a go and see if you can share your movie. You can find the site here!