I thought the January-March term was the quieter one. You know, the time when you catch up on all your work, get stuck into that big topic, clear your assessment. Maybe even tidy your desk. Okay, the last one’s unlikely. But still..?! Is it World Book Day already?

This year we’re going to stick to an idea that worked. In fact, it worked really well. We had arranged with three other primaries to do some collaborative story writing. We wrote a storybook in one day, by email!

So, the planning is almost in place. We will start the story in our school with the P1-4s, who will write it on the Wednesday afternoon ready for the big day. First thing on Thursday it will be emailed to St Kieran’s in Cambeltown, Kilchattan on Colonsay and Tayvallich in Mid Argyll. They will all add a chapter, leaving it on a cliffhanger, and it should return to my P5-7 by 2 o’clock. We will then, some how, bring it all to a conclusion, trying to draw all the threads of the plot and characters together. The completed story will then be emailed to everybody in time for it to be read before the end of the school day. Pictures will get emailed, faxed and sent in the next few days, and after some work layout work, proof reading and assembling, each school will get it’s finished, colour hard-copy of the whole story.

After last year’s experience, we remembered to check that we have the write email addresses! We waited half an hour for a story that was hiding in the wrong box. We lost two years off our life during that one! But, the pupils became such focused, excited writers and readers, and grappled with continuity, plot development and descriptive writing for a very real audience.

My only regret is that it can’t be bigger. There are a few schools who wanted to be involved in our abortive attempts to do similar on Poetry day. I would like to have worked with Cardross, in fact I’d love to have seen this criss-cross our Authority. . So why not?

Mind you, at the end of the day, my long-suffering Head Teacher needs a large drink. Tea of course. Oh, and if you’d like to see a copy of their hard work- let me know.

The P1-3 children spent their period with me last week proof reading the comic for a few ‘added’ errors, and then after storytelling an extension to the book, where the main character is visited by the witch who needs her help, we convened an editorial conference. Actually we held it under the tables (they, like me, like the idea of being bad, in a nice way!).

It probably wasn’t a good time for the Head Teacher and our Probationer teacher to wander through.

However, having discussed why the witch might need her help, and where she might end up going, we are going to use some blank ComicLife frames to write our own comic stories.
I’ll keep you posted!   If I’m still working.

Many thanks to Andrew and James for the advice, and for pointing me in the direction of the Akismet widget in Edublogs. It’s already begun to block some of the spam that was turning the experience sour.
No excuse for trying to get the children writing now!
And in the spirit of ICT- if anybody who wrote to sympathise with the problem of edublogs spam wants to know about Akismet- I’m happy to pass on what was passed on to me!  It’s how it all works, isn’t it!

Oh, and you can get you’re chocolate thank you bar from www.baskets2give.com , but you have to pay for it!

I’ve just realised that I’ve been ‘doing ICT’ without realising it!
Getting the pupils to use the internet for research is now standard practice. Blogging remains easier to talk about than action! And the issue of spam in Edublogs is getting to critical level. Beyond that?

My forays into the P1-4 class has focused on them creating a Comic version of “The Wise Doll”. Oohs and Ahhs all round from the children. Comic Life has so much potential across every curricular and planning areas. We had taken the Russian tale, read it together, reenacted it through Drama, looked at Freeze Frames then moved onto using the digital camera to take key snaps of the plot, with pupils taking the roles. Then we placed the pictures into Comic Life frames, discussing how we could summarise the action with just a caption.

Now, it looks as if we’re going to attempt a mini enterprise by selling their comic version to friends and family. So order here for your copy!

The damage being is being done to my fragile ego and to my willingness to continue to blog! It’s so depressing to read that someone has found your site and thinks you are doing a great job, posting a fab blog, and have the best blog they’ve seen yet, only to realise, when you look at the ‘whois’ that, it’s a robot spam from some irrelevant part of the spamiverse.

Unfortunately, I’m fed up having to empty my limited A&B mailbox every morning, login to edublogs and bulk moderate the comments.

So, I’m in need of advice. Advice that works please. Is this an experience of others? Or am I special? On second thoughts, don’t answer the last point- I don’t do rejection well!!!

They had been so intrigued by the shape of the Apodo, though I doubt “appreciating the Apodo design” is a very valid Learning Outcome!  So back to the skipping ropes!

This time – cut the number of ropes, reduce the knot to ‘barely tangled’ and … success. Whoops! Successful Learners I meant to say. (ahem)

Not bad. They enjoyed the activity and the one who yesterday said, “I’m bored. I hate this,” declared, “I love Apodo!”.

Kids! Don’t you love them.

By and large, using the Oscars to award to “Successful learners” has worked really well, in that everybody is familiar with the concept and the criteria. So, onwards and upwards!
In the multi composite you do tend to have many individuals working at their own pace, on their own things. Time to use the team building games from the Apodo, and something familiar; the tangled skipping ropes that have to be untangled one-handed whilst holding on to one end with the other. It worked so well on the courses I was on!
It died! I was left with dispirited, down-heartened, downbeat and “bored” pupils after 2 minutes. I’m still trying to work out what went wrong, or where I went wrong. I do wonder if anyone else has had that sort of response.
Or, as they say, “Is it me?” !!!

So, what to do first? I decided to use it to begin to formally introduce Curriculum For Excellence capacities to the class. These had been mentioned, and a school display has been created by the HT at the school entrance, but I had been waiting till January for the class ‘launch’.
The class were shown a version of the Successful Learners criteria that I’d developed (in more child friendly language) and, in groups, were asked if they had fulfilled any of them yesterday. They were then asked to nominate people who they thought were successful according to the criteria.

After a vote, the pupil deemed to have shown themselves to be a successful learner was duly awarded the Oscar from the Oscar Pod. This comes suitably engraved with a quote about success, “Success comes in cans, not cannots.”
There was content rich discussion. It didn’t take too long. And we will be able to choose another learner tomorrow with everybody becoming more familiar and focus on this capacity.
As we professionals say… it worked!
And we’ve got three more weeks to play with the pod!

I think I’m beginning to understand this, and the more I understand it the more I like the idea!
Create-a-Scape, from Futurelab, is all about getting pupils to turn any place into an interactive sound world. An example would help! Using a portable computer(PDA), they can wander across a playing field, but be on an African Savanna, following an on screen map which takes them to spots where sound and images tell the story of that place (a tribal gathering, a lion resting, the wind blowing, a child crying). One secondary school has turned part of the playground into a moon crater with simple markings. At various places in the Scape, listened to through headphones, the pupils have tasks- measure heights of crater wall (details on screen), solve a problem etc.. And, of course, the children can make their own scapes: a journey home, tree dressing, music in spaces or the Titanic!
This is a fascinating use of imagination and creativity enabled and supported by ICT. Perfect.
They site provides all the software links, instructions and worksheet templates.
There are drawbacks. PDAs aren’t cheap and they represent the top of the equipment list needed. Also, as most work with Windows Mobile, they need a PC, as does, I suspect, the HP software.
As it stands, I don’t think I can justify a pleading trip to the Headteacher. But it does set thinking off in a new direction. How could we achieve similar results, but using what we have in school already. I’m leading the teaching in the class about the Tudors this term. Could I tranform, or could the children transform somewhere, into something Tudor themed: a house, the Mary Rose, Henry’s Court? I’m not sure if I have the time to think about it quite yet!
You’ll find it all at www.createascape.org.uk

The Hinduism powerpoint essentially is finished. The blogs didn’t get done, but at least I know now that it would be better to timetable that into language on a regular basis.  I could get the class blog done as part of the developing “Friday Finish” activities.  Mind you, you only realise now how much the routines are disprupted by Christmas!

The video pieces for the service went well, though the editing had to be done at home, and took ’till 1am because the new computer dumped everything without saving and meant a restart from scratch. And why does Apple insist in changing the ‘dongle’ needed for digi projectors, and then not supply them?!

And now it’s time to switch off.  I don’t wish to have any updates installed for the next two weeks. Shutdown and sleep will do just fine.