Andy Carvin called for an anti-cyberbullying day today, Friday, March 30th and I’m with him. Vicki Davis seconded Andy Carvin’s call and also asked that today be Anti-cyberbullying day and I’m with her. Jen Wagner posted

“Please mark this FRIDAY, March 30th, 2007 — as STOP CYBERBULLYING DAY!”

and I’m with her too!

Wes Fryer’s very informative wiki states

“According to the Pew Research Center, 20 million kids between the ages of 12 and 17 use the Internet, almost 87% of all US teens. Of those, 60% say they have been contacted online by a stranger, and 15% admit to lying about their age to gain access to an adult web site (including one out of five boys surveyed). Almost half (45%) of teens have used the Internet to post or send photos of themselves. In addition, new research shows the Internet is a growing gathering place for “marginalized” teens engaged in self-injury and other harmful practices. In these online communities, such behavior is often normalized.”

BUT it shouldn’t be just a day. It should be stop cyberbullying day EVERYDAY! We’re discussing cyberbullying in class today. We’re discussing cyberbullying in class on Monday, we’ll be discussing cyberbullying on Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday and Friday too! And we’re going to keep on discussing it because we have zero-tolerance for bullying in the classroom and playground - we should definitely have zero-tolerance in cyberspace.

Here’s some of the sites we’ll be looking at:-
Cyberbullying.org
Stop Bullying Now

Here’s some sites I’ll be sharing with my colleagues:-
Addressing Cyberbullying in Schools
Cyberbullying Ning
Cybervocabulary
Centre for Safe and Responsible Internet Use

We must continually address this issue.

 Jen Wagner’s started another MeMe - I LikeLike - and I’ve added a couple of other sections …..

My Blogs

• Teaching Sagittarian

My Websites/Wikispaces

• Doing IT Differently
• Digital Weather Station
  

Collaborative Websites/Wikispaces

• Room 18 TIS
• Room18tis Wikispace
• ProjectFeelGood
• Skype Talk and Write

IM Stuff

• yahoo: nope
• aim: nope
• icq: nope
• gtalk: nope
• skype: teachingsagittarian

Sites that I frequent alot

• CoolCatTeacher’s Blog
• David Warlick’s Blog
• Google Reader:  31 feeds
• Flikr
• WOW2
• Interwrite Learning
• TKI - Online Learning Centre

Podcasts I Subscribe to:

• Tech Chick Tips
• Coffee Break Spanish
• EdTechLive
• Open Source Classroom

Enough about MeMe — now tell me about YouYou!!!

We just had an amazingly smooth skype today with our collaborative partners and their very clever teacher in Malaysia. The picture was clear, the sound had a minimal delay but was very clear too. (All that finger & toe crossing must have worked!) It was cool to watch these 11-13 year old students interact with each other.  Some questions were exchanged and I’m sure that my students were most impressed to hear that monkeys quite often make their way into our partner’s school. Unfortunately we couldn’t say the same about sheep! (Although we realise New Zealand is famous for it’s many sheep!)

Together we’re building a wiki teaching each other how to use movie making programmes. We’re using Windows’ MovieMaker, our partner school are using Mac’s iMovie. Please check out our wiki to see our progress on this very cool learning journey we’re taking over the next ten weeks or so. If today was anything to go by - this project will rock our socks!

 There’s a fantastic new site that everyone’s talking about called TeacherTube.  It’s like YouTube but geared more towards educational videos.  I’ve had a go with CamStudio and VirtualDub - both of which were very easy to use and understand.

I’m just having trouble with uploading the finished product to TeacherTube. *  Never fear though - the very helpful people at info@teachertube.com are on the case!   I was very impressed with their speedy reply to my call for help.  The solutions offered were very clear and helpful plus they even have a Plan B for me if it doesn’t work.  Now that’s impressive service!

^{*I used my IE browser instead of my Mozilla Firefox browser  and whooohoooo - my video uploaded. 
It took a while though so I think I’ll be having a chat with my internet provider about my upload speed!}

Here’s some other links that I found helpful to get me going.
Recompressing AVI’s using VirtualDub tutorial

Recording your computer screen using the CamStudio tutorial

And have a look at Simon’s first upload!  Impressive - Way to go Simon!

As a result of posting about Video Conferencing Anyone? I’ve had two awesome replies.

The first was from Gill D. Gill works with the BBC Scottish Symphony Orchestra. They video-conference with school children in remote areas of Scotland. Since we have many students in our class who are have been learning instruments for a few years now and some that have just started learning instruments this year for our school orchestra. I couldn’t help but think what a fantastic motivational experience to video-conference with members of the a Symphony Orchestra. (I wish I’d had this opportunity when I was learning violin at Intermediate!) plus it may just encourage a few more students to learn a musical instrument!

Ruth B pointed me in the direction of CILC (Center for Interactive Learning and Collaboration). Thanks Ruth! What an awesome website! This is what makes blogging and sharing so worthwhile. Here’s a website that I’d never come across before and I really urge you to go take a look because it’s so easy to sign up for - and the basic access level is FREE (and teachers love free). You can look for other schools wanting collaboration partners, you can post an entry asking for collaboration partners. It’s cool. I’ve posted an entry looking for a collaboration partner school - hopefully someone might pick us up while we have the video conferencing gear from SONY on lend for the next 2-3 weeks.

Unfortunately it’s our end-of-term break in two weeks time so everything is a bit of a rush!

It’s really awesome when you get to try stuff for free! The wonderful man from Sony Business Solutions has just left my classroom after installing some pretty fancy looking equipment that will allow my class and I to video conference with some of my last year’s students who will be in Auckland in a few weeks time at the ICP2007 Convention.

Another man has just gotten off the roof after installing a satellite dish that feeds right into our class.To test it all we were able to dial up the Hong Kong office which is set up with a clock, a dancing flower underneath a sign that says Hong Kong. Now the real oooooooooo00000000 moment was when my students discovered we could take control of the camera in the Hong Kong office and pan it around, zoom in, zoom out. Next thing you know we’re looking at the traffic on the highway (”look at all the doubledecker buses Miss”) then zooming in on a junkboat slowly making it’s way across the harbour.

Now that’s amazing.
We would absolutely love to video conference with any other classes out there that have video conferencing gear. Apparently all we need now is each others’ IP addresses. If you’re keen please leave a comment and I’ll contact you to set up a time. I think we have the gear until the end of Term 1 (so just a few more weeks).

This is my new toy - a SONY ICD-U70. It has voice recording, MP3 playback and a max of 502 hours of recording time thanks to 1 GB of storage. I’ve got heaps of ideas on how I can use it in the classroom - to justify the $149 I just spent!

So here’s my mission (’cause I’ve already chosen to accept it - grins)
1. Learn how to use it (that’ll be a laugh)
2. Record a podcast and post it to our new class blog - (I think I’ll read a chapter of our class book )
3. Get some students to have a go at making a podcast - (I think we’ll read some good books for Simon’s class to listen to)
I’ll keep you posted on how it goes.

If you haven’t seen this yet …… you REALLY need to go take a look.

LetterPop the world’s best way to create and send newsletters online. And it’s fun!

I’ve got to admit ….. I groaned. I moaned. I stamped my foot (figuratively of course). But I went. Along with all my colleagues from school to hear Dr Anne Davies, Ph.D , from British Columbia, Canada, speak about
“Closing the Achievement Gap: Fine Tuning Assessment for Learning”.

And I have to admit …… She was very interesting, informative and challenging and nobody needed to prod me to stay awake (because when us teachers finally stop & sit down for a while - we usually fall asleep!) The message was simple.

“Whomever is working the hardest in class is learning the most.”

Who’s working the hardest in your class? I know who’s been working the hardest in our class…………. Me!!

This afternoon/early evening I learnt:-

1. I need to involve my students in the classroom assessment process MORE. (I do do it, but not as much as I could)
2. I need to increase the amount of specific, descriptive feedback my students receive. (And that ’s not just from me)
3. I need to decrease the amount of evaluation feedback students receive. (You know, those stickers, smiley faces etc)

I never really thought about the way I was using evaluation feedback. I draw smiley faces all the time. I never thought that some students may have difficulty decoding those kinds of symbols - that they might think that the smiley face meant I like them, rather than I like their work. I’m not telling them what I’m smiling about am I? Nor am I letting them know why it makes me smile. Now that made me think.

I’m really guilty of speed learning. There’s so much to do, so little time. Now I’m beginning to understand that if I slow down the speed of learning, my students will actually learn faster. When students are involved in the assessment process, they learn more and also learn the skills needed to continue learning. And that’s what we want. Life Long Learners!
If you get a chance, read Dr Anne Davis’s book:- Making Classroom Assessment Work. I’m sure I just had 2½ valuable hours of a condensed version.

It was worth it and I’ll probably buy the book.

And you can guarantee, I’m not going to be the hardest working person in our class anymore!

Can’t resist a meme challenge. Thought I’d check out this InternetFrog and compare speds between America and New Zealand.

Ok …..I”ll admit it…… I’ve been sitting on this one for a while …….. only ’cause I needed to figure out how to embed the image on my post!

Then I tried this one over at Speedtest