Music

The realm of music...

So you want to put together a slide show of photos - add a bit of music behind them to set the scene? Unfortunately it is nowhere near that easy...

I have spoken to many experts about this area and when you get to the bones of it all the best option is to encourage your children to make their own music on garageband or some other recording programme.

Free online music is great BUT if you read the fine print you can't use this music when you are posting to blogs or websites...

My current class has had a play around and loved making their own tracks - it was even better when we could use the track as the background music for our photos in i-movie!!!

E-Learning

Looking ahead to 2010 my goal is to dive into the world of e-learning. My class of 2009 have shown passion for their own blogger pages and for the class blogger page throughout term 4. It has been a way of potentially making ourselves known to the world. When visiting Pt England School, one of my students was asked if he was the one who could dance like Michael Jackson - very powerful !!!

With my new class I will begin the year with only a Class Blogger page (carrying on from 2009). As I build up talk about it being a professional place to be, the consequences of not using it in the way it should be and going over internet safety I will decide to create personal blogger pages for those who are ready.

I want my children to:

• reflect and discuss learning,
• have an authentic audience to publish to
• recieve support and feedback by teacher, peer and family (making these connections stronger)
  
• learn to relate to others online,
• collaborate with others,
• have an ongoing record of events and experiences,
• have an extension of their classroom - extending them beyond school hours

I want to teach the content of subjects such as social sciences, science, health, maori, literacy etc through full ICT intergration.

I want children to be able to share school events (mufit days, hat parades, grandparents days, discos, bad hair days etc) to their peers, parents, community, new zealand and the world and do so using ICT.

TV, DVD, Video, Digital photos, Worlde, animation, imovie, garageband, podcasts, comic life, photobucket, voice thread, youtube, storybird, xtranormal, graphsy, sketchfu, wallwisher, kidpix, photobooth....etc etc etc

My mind is thinking double time at the moment...so I am sure there will be updates to come.

At the 2009 Ulearn Conference in Christchurch, we were given this book and I believe it is truely amazing. Below are the things that are going to be shaping my teaching philosophy:

• 'Start with individual passions, talents and interests and unleash each person's almost unlimited ability to flower'.
• Most schools are teaching students for a world that no longer exists. We are not talking only about a different world. We're talking about a different people. Our students have changed radically. Todays students are no longer the people our educational system was designed to teach. Our brains are now actually wired differently.
  
• Most schools are still teaching in ways similar to the blackboard and chalk, desks in rows classroom model invented more than 300 years ago.
• Use the world as your classroom.
• Truly education citizens should be familiar with a core body of knowledge, and be able to read, write, spell, count and understand the basics of history, geo and science. But we live in an era where around 10,000 new research papers are published every day - in science alone! So its much more important to learn how to find the new information, and to turn that combination into new knowledge, ideas and actions.
• kids spend much of the day as their great-grandparents once did - sitting in rows, listening to the teacher, scribbling notes, reading textbooks that are out of date by the time they are printed.
  
• The formal classroom needs redesigning.
• Visonary educators are already well down the road to create a Global Cyberspace Interactive Learning Web - which everyone can access, anywhere, any time. Not only access it - but contribute to it.
• We are talking about a new world where information is available virtually on demand - in virtually any form and free. So the teachers role as mainly a purveyor of up to date informatiuon is changed forever.
• Almost certainly, schools will become open any time, hands on community centres for life long learning - in partnership with cyberspace learning programs and specialist local coaches, mentors and skilled teachers.
  

I want to be a trend setter!!!!

Room 12 - Michael Jackson

In Term Three, my class were motivated to dance and sing in memory of the late Michael Jackson. They watched youtube videos of The Jackson Five and of Michael Jackson in his solo career. In the end Room 12 sang Rockin Robin (as a Middle School team song), and danced to Blame it on the Boogie and Beat it. Before performing the dances to the whole school the children took a trip to Panmure in the Riverina School van and bought gloves and hairgel. Each child wore black and white clothing for Beat it. The performances were a success and the children of Room 12 were left feeling very proud of themselves - I was extremely proud of them too. Well done Room 12!