Concetta Gotlieb's blog

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Tuesday Feb 10, 2009

It's only been a couple of weeks using the OLPC laptops at our school but we are already seeing a glimpse of the potential results of putting laptops in the hands of kids with intellectual disabilities and emotional disturbances. Here are some comments from the class teacher:

They have an impact on behaviour management and engagement
The kids are really enjoying using the laptops
They are enthusiastic to learn
Exploring by themselves (this is a really exciting point)
They have been pairing up with each other to achieve a goal (another really exciting point)
If they are playing a game they'll try to find out from a classmate where it was etc.

For me the trialling of these laptops in our school could have a significant impact on how we understand creating individual education programs both in schools like ours but also how we can provide support to all students to achieve educational goals that inspire them to keep learning.

Some ways that we could use the laptops/technology to support students with special education needs:

Video conferencing with home schools and other schools - both for teachers and students
Working collaboratively with students in home schools in a secure environment to enable demonstration of
More student control over choice of activities eg choose 2 from column A and 2 from column B
More engagement in activities that require rote learning such as sight words
Provision of alternative ways of communicating and finding information - the inclusion of more audio and video to give students who find text based activities difficult
Provision of more tailored education programs in mainstream schools

[Read More]

Tags: primary feedback laptops olpc
Posted at 07:45PM Feb 10, 2009 by Concetta Gotlieb |

Sunday Jun 29, 2008

Online Visual Thesaurus

The Thesaurus has always been really important in the classroom. I believe it's becoming increasingly important to understand the meaning of words and the connections between words. Understanding the connections between words enables you to help you reader make connnections. It's also useful when searching for information, having a range of words that can be used to try to locate resources you require is very important. Increasingly it's also important to understand the subtle differences in those words.

Visual Thesaurus

That is where a tool such as Visual Thesaurus is really useful. It provides a visual map of words that relate to a word you type into the search bar. You can then segment the words by the type of word eg nouns, verbs, adverbs etc. You can also launch an internet search based on words directly from the map. It also has a limited selection of lesson plans. Depending on the word the results returned may be challenging for the primary school classroom. This product does have an annual subscription of about $20 a year.

Other Thesaurus Resources

There are a number of other useful resources that can help increase students vocabularly and improve word usage.

Rhyme Poetry - This provide words that are related, rhyming or connected by a number of other categories.
Thesaurus Game - The students really enjoyed playing this game. We put it up on the projector and they raced to figure out the words the quickest.
Visuwords.com - This is a free application similar to Visual Thesaurus but without some of the features. Particularly you cannot click on a word to continue exploring similar words.

Something to subcribe to:

Grammar Girl - Quick grammar tips, usually interesting and useful, with links to other resources.

Please post your thesaurus resources or activities in the comments below so we can all learn from them.[Read More]

Tags: onlinetools language primary fun literacy showme
Posted at 03:05PM Jun 29, 2008 by Concetta Gotlieb |

Wednesday Jun 25, 2008

Movie Maker Projects

Using Movie Maker in the classroom is fun, it's pretty easy to get started and there are lots of resources available online to help you. Having worked on Movie Maker projects it's great how quickly kids learn the program and how creative they can be when creating their own projects. So here are some examples of Movie Maker work I've found in the past few weeks:

Movie Maker projects from a sports day. Click here to view
Movie Maker projects on Capital Cities. Click here to view

Atomic Learning has a great series of videos on using Movie Maker. I have used these myself and with Year 4 students. You can also check out this video which explains a bit more about using Movie Maker in the classroom.

[Read More]

Tags: multimedia tips showme work samples primary
Posted at 08:04PM Jun 25, 2008 by Concetta Gotlieb |

Tuesday Jun 24, 2008

Resources - Global Connections Units

I have been working with a class on integrating technology in their Global Connections Unit. Here is a list of resources we have been using.

http://www.drinking-water.org an interactive map showing where water is available and how it is used.
http://quikmaps.com/ draw on google maps. Create an interactive annotated map of your unit.
http://www.breathingearth.net/ The kids were amazed by this. It's an interactive map with statistics on population, CO2 emissions, births and deaths. We spent some time comparing the size of countries to their emissions. Particularly interesting was the comparison of Australia's small populations and high CO2 emissions to countries traditionally blamed for high emissions such as India or China.
United Nations Comtrade database. This is good. You need to go to the metadata and reference section, then to a country. For example if you go to Australia you can see the major trading partners we have.
http://earth.google.com/ you can explore the Crisis in Dafur using tools created by the Museum Mapping Iniative.

Please feel free to add your own suggestions and links in the comments.

[Read More]

Tags: primary worl link tips stage showme hsie globalconnections idea
Posted at 11:24AM Jun 24, 2008 by Concetta Gotlieb |

Tuesday Jun 10, 2008

Reporting on Blogging Behaviour

Have just been writing some report comments for a class of bloggers I've been helping out with. I found these resources which helped me come up with a basic comment format.

I found Derek's four C's particularly useful and I think they probably formed the basis of my report comments. Some examples of the report comments included:

<name> has been a regular reader and contributor to the blog. Her comments are insightful and questioning. She also provides additional information that adds to the general knowledge pool of the class, at times even making connections between the outside work and the blog.

<name> is a regular reader of the blog. She provides simple positive feedback. <name> could add to the discussion by providing personal insights and linking to additional information sources.

Does anyone know of anything else that might be useful when writing reports on commenting on blog? Has anyone else written comments for primary students on their blog writing ability? Please share your ideas in the comments below.
[Read More]

Tags: primary reporting blogging
Posted at 02:50PM Jun 10, 2008 by Concetta Gotlieb |

Friday Jun 06, 2008

Sound Links and Lessons

Today I taught a class about sounds. We used lots of different media including listening to podcasts, searching for animals sounds and blogging.

WillowWeb sound podcast (easy to set-up, highly engaging, need good speakers for the classroom) Yr 3 students produced this high quality podcast which includes sound facts, a sound quiz and jokes. The students thoroughly enjoyed listening to this podcast and engaged critically analysing the quality of the podcast and picking up ideas for their own recordings.
American Zoo Animal Sounds page and Seaworld Animal Sounds page speakers required) students downloaded the sounds by right clicking on the picture of the animal and selecting Save Target As. Student then created their own short 'sound bite' using these sounds.
Wormbins Sounds blog post - as we did the debrief of the podcast we also wrote a short article on what we learnt. I choose a couple of students to finish the post and publish. It was amazing to see the hands shoot up when I mentioned that the learnings were to be published on our blog.

Here are some other sound resources from Edna