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Edublogs awards 2010 at Shanghai American School

November 17th, 2010

Sarah Toa, for best class blog

Kimbra Power, for best teacher blog

Amy Hossack, best resource sharing blog

SAS teachers do an amazing job, of directing their students to worthwhile content online. Daily I am impressed and often in awe of the content teachers are developing and writing about with their students. 3 teachers in Elementary on the Pudong campus constantly engage their students in online learning by making their blog “the Go to” place on the web.

In 1st grade Amy Hossack has developed a blog that delivers, just the right amount of content for her 1st grade students to develop technology and online skills that allow the students to shine. Just look at the news post titled The World’s biggest and Longest. Mrs Hossack has a group of 1st grade students eager and willing to embrace technology. Her ability to introduce and find resources for her students has allowed classes around the world to easily find resources and ideas of embracing technology. Too often I hear of programs and websites being used by teachers that Amy has introduced them to through her blog.

Sarah Toa has been involved recently in a collaborative project raising awareness and money for a school in Uganda. The Uganda Global Project, was embraced world wide with Shanghai American School raising over $15,000 US dollars! Through Sarah’s blog, she engages the students and develops strong writing skills, social awareness and a “a whole lota fun”. This site is the go to place for 3rd grade students. It has become the Portal to the world, with links to keep the students safe, learning and commenting.

Finally, Kimbra Power in her 6th year of blogging continues to develop strong bonds on a global scale with her students. Her engaging posts and links to interesting and educationally sound sites allows her students to view blogging as a medium to develop writing skills, social awareness, interaction and lifelong skills. Her examples allow students the opportunity to understand personal safety online whilst building their own online presence. I don’t think there is one post without a student comment on it!

So without further ado, I would like to nominate these three teachers for the outstanding job they do!

Tags: ahossack, kpower, spower, stoa
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Using Hyperlinks to create games in Powerpoint

April 8th, 2009

The grade 2 team here at school are an amazing bunch…..come to think of it all grade levels are amazing here….but after a quick conversation with Jackie Speece over lunch one day and her enthusiasm at sharing her students work with her 2nd grade buddy class back in the US, we were able to add that extra dimension to the monster project developed by Mike Romard. Using Powerpoint and the Jeopardy Powerpoint layout around on the internet I set about planning out how we could show the great pictures designed by the kids and the writing describing the picture……..what a lesson for the students exploring if their description actually looked like their picture…..Fun was sure to be had!

Uploaded on authorSTREAM by spower

And by all reports it’s been great. But how to do it? Hyperlinks!!!!!!! Setting up a template slide for all of the stories and only having one “Correct” slide and one “Oops try again” slide.

Once you have a picture you want students to click on, simply right click on the picutre and select “hyperlink” and tell it where you want to jump to…..Powerpoint is so well set up that it pretty much asks which slide you would like it to jump to.

The key to this picture layout was to make one slide with all the pictures hyperlinked as “Oops try again”…..copy and paste this slide as many times as you need then you only need to select the one slide that is correct and change it to “Correct”

But the possibilities seem to be endless with powerpoint and the games we could create……………

Tags: authorstream, grade2, monsterproject, powerpoint
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Wikipedia is up and running in Shanghai!!!

April 7th, 2008

Have you noticed? She’s up and running. Without getting too political this seems to be the most noticeable blockage of freedom of information here in China, when Googling. Well done China, it is a great step forward! But 7th grade, don’t get complacent when searching for information and take Wikipedia as the Holy Grail….I think we all know that researching and finding information from several sources is always better than the one click approach. I have one more request though…….please China can we have Wetpaint back? We were on fire before it got blocked creating amazing stuff and never got to truly work it!!!

Posted in Fun stuff, Humanities | Comments (4)

Poem analysis & S.E Hinton time period

April 4th, 2008

Wow!!!!!! Reading your analysis of Robert Frost’s poem has stunned me 7th grade. Check this excerpt from Chelsea….Robert Frost says nobody can live an extraordinary life; you only have extraordinary moments. She continues by talking about cherishing those momens when they do happen. Charlie says the lesson to be learnt is…always try to enjoy and make the most out of everything because it will not last forever. And James says….the first leaf is the happiest moment for the person taking care of it. Well done everyone your blogs are looking great! Now to something new……….

By understanding the time period that immediately preceded the publication of The Outsiders we can get a sense of what S.E. Hinton was living through at the time and why the themes of the book resonated with the population then and still do now.

On Monday and Tuesday in class we will review this short video and name all the events or describe what the image is telling us.

Try naming or describing every image and in class on Monday and Tuesday we will choose 2 images each to research a little more and write up a paragraph explaining why it was important and the effect it had on the population. Check it out……..

[kml_flashembed movie="http://www.youtube.com/v/TrInBJ8zmA8" width="425" height="350" wmode="transparent" /]

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Dear Students and Parents

February 14th, 2008

Please find attached a letter to you regarding my paternity leave. You will be happy to read that the mistakes that existed in the hard copy sent home have now been removed!!!! In my haste to send it out I was lacking several commas! Ms Flott will be replacing me and I can assure you of the high standard of learning that will take place in my absence.

The DragonKeeper assignment will be due February 22 and will constitute most of the homework next week.

However, there is a homework task that needs to be completed asap. A paragraph sent to your blog from page 158 of our textbook. This paragraph is essentially the three detailed questions we answered in class.

I will check this homework off tomorrow. Good luck in my absence and make sure to check back regularly for news and information!

Posted in Due dates, Fun stuff, Humanities | Comments (12)

Gotcha day is fast approaching

February 11th, 2008

Well I can just about count in hours until we meet our new daughter Mimi. We are all so excited and can’t believe it is finally here. Nothing is ready. Sure we have bits and pieces and really one big shop at Carrefour would have us in perfect position. Because Mimi is 13 months old the materialistic side of me hasn’t been as strong. When Hannah was born, it was all about the clothes, pram, cot etc. This time it is all emotional……what has her last 13 months been like? Will it be seamless, Mimi joining our family? I am not ready….but then again how could anyone ever be. I know I will want to kiss her at least 100 times…..but this might scare her. The best thing though is, Hannah is 100% ready……Oh to be 7 and not have the wait of the world hanging over you.

So 7th grade………………. Ms Flott is going to be doing my favorite book for 7th grade The Outsiders and all the other fun and cool stuff. It has worked out so well timing wise….as the next 5 weeks work wise is probably the best topics of the year…..ver hard to give up. Ms Flott will be with you until Spring break and then I am back. I am really going to find it hard not seeing you everyday. This group of 7th graders has turned blogging into a very exciting and real educational tool. I plan to keep this site up and running over the next 5 weeks and with Student Led Conferences fast approaching, most of you need to use your blog………it will mean your workload is cut by more than half when getting ready for the SLC’s.

Posted in Fun stuff, Humanities | Comments (9)

Rule 240 when stranded at airports

February 1st, 2008

OK…as I sat stranded at Pudong airport today for 10 hours (before being sent home) due to the bad weather, I remembered reading on lifehacker a while ago about rule 240.

Get this….if it’s the airlines fault that you are delayed, invoking rule 240 means that you must be scheduled on the next flight available on ANY airline….or get a hotel or food vouchers etc………….wow I thought!!!!

Only problem is it must be the airlines fault. Not weather/war etc. So as I wait for the flight to leave at 1.15am!! instead of 17 hours earlier and no planes leaving Shanghai I am sad to say rule 240 isn’t going to work for me. Keep it in mind next time you fly though…….remember…if you ~~demand~~ sorry…..ask….. you shall receive.

Why did I post this? First and foremost…I am delirious and reallly need sleep and secondly I guess it is a good promotion for Netvibes. My handy reader that allows me to read a million things going on in the world really quickly.

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Happy Chinese New Year!!

January 31st, 2008

One of my favorite breaks living in China would have to be Chinese New Year. The spirit and determination of everyone to spend time with their family is so strong. You feel it every where you go…..it is hard not to get caught up in the excitement. We just had our New Year concert and in the flyer it stated everyone wants to eat Jiaozi, and friends and family drop in on one another. I love it. Let’s hope all that want to get home safely…….. I look out the window and snow is starting to fall again!!!

Enjoy yourself and if time permits blog away…keep us up to date. See you in a week. Mrs Power had this clip on her blog and I just had to follow suit. Check it out.

[kml_flashembed movie="http://www.youtube.com/v/5J-9LyLPfTM" width="425" height="350" wmode="transparent" /]

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Michelangelo homework

January 30th, 2008

The Renaissance and Reformation

One of the greatest Renaissance artists was Michelangelo. Read about his life and works on the Encarta Web site.

On Encarta his works are explained in some detail. Choose one and google image one of Michelangelo’s works of art and tell us why you would like to see it the most. Due Saturday February 2.

I was lucky enough many years ago to backpack my way around Italy. The one piece of art that caught my attention the most was A Pieta. This beautiful sculpture is in Saint Peter’s Basilica. It now lives behind a bullet proof glass structure after…..an Australian who thought he was Jesus, in 1972 took to it with a hammer splintering and damaging A Pieta!! Restorers painstakingly fixed the statue and to look at it now you can’t find a blemish anywhere on it.

It was one of the first sculptures I had seen that looked so life like. The clothes looked real and her lamenting face made for a serene moment as I stared at it intently. The brilliant white color of the marble and the way it was restored all lead to this being my favorite Michelangelo work of art. Mr Power

Posted in Due dates, Fun stuff | Comments (4)

This is why I am a teacher!!!!!

January 28th, 2008

I can only look at this quote in the most proudest way. Dianna (with 2 n’s) in a wonderful indirect way has made me feel a million dollars. “Neither rain nor sleet, hail nor snow, no matter what the situation, Mr. Power always can accomplish setting homework tasks for us…” Dianna’s eloquent language gives me the widest smile. If you haven’t, you must visit the writings of one 7th graders take on life. Dianna in all her wisdom, tries to act bored when in fact the writing she does could easily be made into a million movies and make her a rockstar!

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