John Butler Primary College Winthrop Australia Ongoing PD Blog

The students in Mrs Foster's class learned how to do a 'short-cut' Google Advanced Search to find images of Toys from the Past. They opened their search with a speech mark, then typed their key words and closed their search with a speech mark - "toys from the past". This ensured that the Google Search Engine would search for all of these words together instead of individually. The students agreed that their search showed good images of old toys. They then learned how to save the images they wanted to the Camera Roll and insert them into their Book Creator Books. They had already saved images of Toys from a search of the Creative Commons image site www.pixabay.com  Further, they learned that if any images they find on the net have a watermark over them or a website address on them they are not free to use or Creative Commons.

The Year 6's in Mrs Wades class learned to used the Notes app, which is part of the Apple suite of apps that come with iPad. The students practiced and demonstrated their note taking skills such as key-word selection and abbreviations while listening to a dictation of the notes. In addition they applied their touch typing skills using the home row. The notes will be a part of their HaSS project on Australian's who contributed significantly to our society. These notes, as with all notes created in the app will be able to be colour coded as part of a self-assessment process and exported also.

The students in Mrs Crabtree's class learned how to use Puppet Pals to create a show of their talk for writing story 'Monkey See, Monkey Do'. They created characters and backgrounds from the story by taking photos of themselves and downloading images from the internet that would match the story. They then recorded their story and created their shows to share with the class via the Apple TV. Up to 8 characters and 5 backdrops can be created for each show within the app. Puppet Pals exports as a 'mov' file to Google Drive. Sharing out direct from Google Drive.

The students in Mrs Westlund's class did some digital coding using the Scratch Jnr app. The students learned to code a character or 'sprite' through a birds-eye-view map they drew of their clasroom. The aim was to get a pen to Mrs Westlund and communicate this with text and audio. This was a digital coding phase of a Design and Technology project 'Helping Mrs Westlund' which will be assessed later this Semester.

The Year 6's in Mrs Wades classroom used the Explain Everything app to demonstrate their understanding of fractions and the relationship with decimals and percentages. Mrs Wade posted the learning goals and success criteria for the students on a Padlet wall. This was accessible at all times via a QR code posted around the room. The students developed visuals and captured images within the class to record an explanation and then self-assess this against the 'Should - Could - Helpful' success criteria on the Padlet wall.

Mrs Crabtree used the Stop Motion Studio app to enable the students to create patterns and counting on (in 1's and 2's) movies. The students worked as partners to take photos or 'frames' of each step of their pattern or counting. They used manipulatives to show this and reviewed for mistakes using the play-back feature. Finally, as a plenary the whole class was able to review and reflect by viewing the movie files via Google Drive on the Apple TV.

This blog provides a window on the ongoing Professional Development programme with Winthrop Australia being conducted in 2018. The focus of this blog will be on products and processes developed that integrate Educational Technology in the context of the learning areas at John Butler PC. Please feel free to share any element of your journey or seek ideas from others.