Blogroll
- 2 cents Worth
- Cool Cat
- Educational Origami
- HeyJude
- Hossack’s House
- Howitt’s Home
- Lifehacker
- Lucacept
- Power Palace
- Sentiments on common sense
- Some tech sense
- Toa’s Troop
- Yick’s Yin & Yang
Spam Blocked
Blogging and social networking in school
August 25th, 2008Staff are engaged and genuinely interested in taking the leap into c
reating their own space on line…..I am steering a little more away from calling it a blog with new comers as some consider a blog a place where they divulge their deepest darkest secrets in a dear diary format. For me and the direction school is taking, it seems to be a very useful communication tool not only for staff but students and parents. To get to a point where all Elementary staff are replacing their weekly newsletter printed and sent home only to be be found 4 days later…( I am talking about me here) would be exciting. To be able to post student work, photos, voice threads, daily, every other day, weekly updates…whatever and have an on going record that parents can view in real time is incredible. Already 5th grade are doing it. 4th are nearly ……. But it has to be measured steps. To sit and have staff create their blog, sign up for twitter, delicious, Flickr, Picasa, Widgetbox, Netvibes, youtube, gmail, pimp their firefox (as Jeff Utecht calls it), with add-ons such as twirl, adblock Plus, All in one sidebar, Foxytunes, Pic lens, screen grab, stumble upon, hotspot shield, friendfeed, can totally overwhelm….but to have one without the other just doesn’t cut it! How many do you introduce at once? What ones am I missing? So much I want to do tomorrow!!!!!
Tags: education, networking, school tools, web 2.0
Posted in Uncategorized | Comments (2)
Now that the hardware is connected……
August 9th, 2008We must socially connect!!!!!
And what better way to connect than telling the world what you are up to. As educators especially elementary, the use of newsletters is one way we keep the school community connected. It’s great to be able to see what everyone is up to and look at the wall of newsletters, but why not start your own blog and keep us up to date a little more regularly?….This doesn’t mean that you post daily, it just means that you post when you want. One week you may post only once the following week twice, maybe three times….it’s up to you.
SAS has many bloggers, and the software for you. Of course your elementary tech guys Mike Romard and I are blogging but, so are staff all over the campus, from teachers to admin! Check out the following…. Kimbra in grade 5, Amanda Decardy in Middle School, Principal Ron Roukema, Deputy Super Andy Torris, Shaun McElroy, Alfred Olivas, just a few to get you started. Once you have visited these few I suggest turning your attention to educators blogging all over the world that contribute to education and pedagogy allowing you to view things differently and incorporate new ways of doing things into what you are already doing…check out the following bloggers…..Jeff Utecht, David Warlick, Jenny Luca, Tim Munnerlyn, Viki Davis
Some links won’t work here in China…mostly anything that has bloggerspot, wordpress.com etc in its URL. I would suggest downloading hotspot shield a free nifty little thing that is a vpn…much like a secure bank line out of China that can’t be read by the amazing firewall “protecting” us all in the PRC.
Now to read all of these can take some time and we can talk more about this in a future post….but start thinking about putting some of your energy into creating your news online rather than paper. And ask questions, we are more than happy to help one and all!
Tags: Alfred Olivas, Amanda Decardy Mike Romard, Andy Torris, blogging, David Warlick, Jenny Luca, Kimbra Power, Ron Roukema, SAS, Shaun McElroy, Tim Munnerlyn, Utecht, Viki Davis
Posted in Uncategorized | Comments (2)
Make sure you’re connected
August 3rd, 2008Well, we are back…and connected big time! More of that in a moment. First up though, what a summer break….we arrived back in Australia to temperatures I forgot existed!!! Just when summer in Shanghai was firing up we headed home to extreme cases of the flu, Chickenpox, rain, rain and more rain….followed by food poisoning. Fun times……all in an apartment you couldn’t swing a cat in!!!! The place we stay is fantastic, especially in good weather with the back door open and sausages sizzlin’ but when it is constantly raining the space seems to get smaller!!! Luckily I wired it with extra fast internet, airtunes, B&W speakers, LCD TV etc……all those Chinese DVD’s we brought home were fantastic.
And now we are back and feeling very positive….a new apartment with a gorgeous big kitchen, Satellite, 2 Macs and Kimbra’s pc laptop. 3 days of connecting TV’s, networking the house…..wirelessly of course and things couldn’t get any better……but wait….tech, tech and more tech this year!!!!!! I just can’t wait. For those requiring a hand or advice on how to network your home be sure to ask as I love working out the best way possible. It is good getting all our machines and equipment “talking”.
Here’s what we have set up at home……
1 Airport extreme giving ultra fast connectivity…yes in China! to any computer that has permission to join the “Powerpad” …which is just the 3 computers. I debated this one heavily….invest in the time capsule, or go for the Extreme with hard drive connected…obviously I went for the latter I already had an external 500 gb hard drive…..I like to see the hardware and being locked in to the time capsules 500gb or 1tb scared me…what happens when I want more? Printer also hooked up so all computers can print wirelessly.
1 20 inch imac 2.4 ghz, 320 gb….big graphics card…I couldn’t justify the 2.6 ghz.
1 old Powerbook G4 still humming along…starting to show its age when sitting next to the imac in terms of speed.
1 windows laptop.
itunes and iphoto are now running on the external hard drive allowing all computers to be up to date with incoming media….when you update on one computer then move to the next one…bam it’s up to date and raring to go! I am finding when changing albums in itunes it does take a second or two to register, but no lag when the music flies through airtunes!!!!
LCD 37 inch…….big enough…..I am finding with Dream satellite that the picture is pretty good…any bigger and the grain would become annoying….but DVD’s…..ooohhh aaahhhhh!!!! Next in the artillery collection will be those ELAC bookshelf speakers or Focal…whichever is cheaper on Fuxing Lu… that pump out gorgeous lifelike sound…..no dodgy surround sound for me and those little speakers that feel like flies hovering behind your head!
The best thing about the system is there is room to move and change which is great as I am sure there are faster ways to keep connected. The other investment will be for Time Machine.
Yes most is Mac….and I go for it because as the video says…it just works…..having said that with school utilizing both platforms being bilingual is very handy and very easy
So welcome everyone….keep connected and let me in on your home network!!
Tags: 323onMain, connection, Elac, Focal, Mac, Network, SAS
Posted in Uncategorized | Comments (0)
And so we’ve reached the final curtain!
June 13th, 2008Reading Kimbra’s post about saying goodbye to friends just about had 
me in tears. For most of the time I find it quite easy fighting off those kind of emotions and avoid at all costs making myself think about those things. I have always tried to avoid funerals and goodbyes. It’s just easier…..for me. I have had an incredible bunch of students that far outweighed all my expectations. There was never a time they seriously complained and all of them stepped up and completed amazing work. Blogging really took off with my students and there are some that will continue to write prolifically, Peggy and Dianna have started their own and I encourage you all to take a look at what they write…amazing. Here’s a line from one of them…
I grabbed my jacket, slipped on my shoes, and hurried out the door, just managing to squeeze into the silver elevator that threatened to close on me.
So thank you to all that have read, commented or in passing complimented the blog and the students work they and I really appreciate it. I look forward to next year working in Elementary with another amazing group of teachers and I want to wish everyone a safe and prosperous break.
As we return to “sunny” Ballarat, Australia, my thoughts turn to the new imac and equipment I will pick up in the first couple of weeks and the writing I intend to add in preparation for 4th and 5th grade next year. This will be a fantastic journey and I hope to hear from people around the world with ideas and work we can collaborate on. It is hard to get too sad when you know that our friends and family in Australia have not met Mimi and this excites us no end. Stay tuned as I will post in a couple of days…
Tags: Dianna, Goodbyes, Kimbra, Peggy
Posted in Uncategorized | Comments (1)
Google Earth in the classroom
June 7th, 2008Everywhere I look at the moment I seem to be seeing amazing examples and ideas of how to use Google
Earth. GE for me in the past has been more of a novelty….finding my house and friends houses, but after seeing it used by Jeff Utecht with Kimbra Power’s grade 5 students discussing migration in 4 easy lessons and students at Shanghai American School plotting their own migration path I am now totally hooked! These students plotted their own maps in class placing markers on where they have lived, then Jeff combined all the maps into one. Amazing seeing the results. After a quick search, I found some amazing resources….interestingly though I thought I would have found more on the Google Earth Education page, but no GELessons.com is a fantastic site that has great resources, lesson plans, and nifty tricks. I plan to start the year with grade 5 students and Google Earth and getting the tech savvy students up to speed and spending the rest of the year incorporating GE into projects and work…letting the students decide if it could work for them in a project or two. Learning to fly and whiz around your home city showing the rest of the class some major landmarks as Jason Welker explained will be my first lesson plan with the students. If you can think of ways to embrace or already have some neat lesson plans or ideas we could collaborate on, let’s hook up, I’ll fly by your city and take a look…virtually of course, the price of real Jet fuel is way too expensive!
Tags: GELessons, Google Earth, Jason Welker, Jeff Utecht, Kimbra Power
Posted in Uncategorized | Comments (1)
It’s a new dawn! Welcome
June 6th, 2008After lots of soul searching and working out the best method and design for this blog I am finally going live! This school year the blog became an anchor for students…a place they could come to download, discuss, link, inform. The first port of call for them in Humanities at SAS. With the servers being moved to China, addresses had to change thus, Theswivelchair.com was born.
My job has also change and next school year I will be the Technology Integration Specialist for grades 4 & 5 at Shanghai American School, a job with incredible potential, a job I am very excited about! However the
focus of the blog will also change from a resource that students were the main beneficiaries to now….faculty. This excites me even more as I know the ideas and the connections already made around the world will turn this into a resource centre, where I can place informative tutorials, ideas, events etc for the world to see. Trust me on this….you will not be disappointed. So bookmark, RSS, make sure you return as the wild ride begins!!
Posted in Uncategorized | Comments (4)
Using Transitions when writing
May 26th, 2008Now that our Introduction has been written and a strong thesis statement has been
included the sorting and placing of all your research must take place. Some of you heeded advice and wrote complete paragraphs from your notes, others still have to convert your notes into paragraphs…..but how do we join all of it together? The answer………Transitions! Explore this site to give you a better understanding of what I am on about.
To successfully join all your writing together and improve your wordsmithing it is important not to become repetitive, repetitive, repetitive….(sorry bad joke!) and to switch it up a gear
Look in the left column of the table for the kind of logical relationship you are trying to express. Then look in the right column of the table for examples of words or phrases that express this logical relationship. Be creative.
| LOGICAL RELATIONSHIP | TRANSITIONAL EXPRESSION |
| Similarity | also, in the same way, just as … so too, likewise, similarly |
| Exception/Contrast | but, however, in spite of, on the one hand … on the other hand, nevertheless, nonetheless, notwithstanding, in contrast, on the contrary, still, yet |
| Sequence/Order | first, second, third, … next, then, finally |
| Time | after, afterward, at last, before, currently, during, earlier, immediately, later, meanwhile, now, recently, simultaneously, subsequently, then |
| Example | for example, for instance, namely, specifically, to illustrate |
| Emphasis | even, indeed, in fact, of course, truly |
| Place/Position | above, adjacent, below, beyond, here, in front, in back, nearby, there |
| Cause and Effect | accordingly, consequently, hence, so, therefore, thus |
| Additional Support or Evidence | additionally, again, also, and, as well, besides, equally important, further, furthermore, in addition, moreover, then |
| Conclusion/Summary | finally, in a word, in brief, in conclusion, in the end, in the final analysis, on the whole, thus, to conclude, to summarize, in sum, in summary |
I find it much easier writing fast and furiously then reworking a paragraph underlining “ugly” words and getting rid of repetition. Much like the approach to our ERB’s.
Give it a go….I dare you!
Posted in Humanities | Comments (2)
Where have I been?
May 20th, 2008
It has been too long between posts and I have lots of excuses. The best one is of course our amazing trip to Beijing. I am sure we all had reservations about visiting Beijing as it is one of the few places most students will journey to with their families…..but the friends you get to travel with makes for a completely different feeling. Everyone enjoyed the trip. The frustrating thing was paying for internet access and my room not working. …..my goal of uploading to Picasa every night just didn’t happened….that’s OK though it left more time one evening for an amazing foot massage!!!!!!
From Kung Fu performances to sight seeing to shopping to eating it was a fantastic trip!
Check out my Picasa photos. It really is crunch time here with the portfolio for our trip due Friday and our resaearch note cards completed by Monday.
Only 12 days of school left…..let’s not let our guard down on the home stretch. 
Posted in Humanities | Comments (3)
Google Trends and researching your issue
May 8th, 2008Oh my stars!!!!!
Whilst stumbling I just came across Google Trends. An amazing information tool that will allow you to see where and when your issue hit its peak or peaks. Not only does it tell you that but also continues by telling you which region and even which city had the most hits. I typed in Whaling and came up with the following…..
Not only does it show when and where it was figuring in the news it also gives you news items showing you the year and a link to that item……WOW!!!
Hopefully some of you will be able to use this to further research and find articles related to your topic.
We are off on China Alive next week but will be frantically completing our project the following week….get ahead of the game and complete a few more research note cards!
HAve a great weekend and see you at the Airport Monday morning
Posted in Humanities, Information | Comments (7)
Reading online
May 2nd, 2008For so long now National Geographic has been a favorite of mine. The beautiful pictures and the amazing articles. Richly described
and written in such an eloquent way at times.
This month the National Geographic has a feature on China. Amazing pictures and extremely thought provoking articles. Check it out.
Posted in Humanities | Comments (3)
© 2012 The Swivel Chair | Design by DemusDesign | Choice theme by Theme Lab and Linux Web Hosting. Powered by WordPress