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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!

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Google apps in Elementary

September 14th, 2008

As our school rolls out gmail accounts for all students, I am impressed daily with what can be done with google apps. Everytime I head to my account I am trying some of the products on offer. Let’s start with the products that will help staff…. The calendar goes without saying, but as students start using the applications and if we can get all staff using it….wow! At the moment I rally can’t live without the calendar. Not only does it provide for me at school, running our self contained accommodation back in Australia and being able to communicate with our manager Moira and the cleaner by all of us viewing each others entries is powerful. To have grade levels synced this way is top of my priority list.

Next Picassa3, and the ease at which you can manage your photo albums then send to the web….THEN….create slideshows for your blog, and have parents download what they want???!!!! Wow. So often amazing photos are taken only to be treated the same way I treat my freezer…..throw food in there and never get it out. This way staff upload photos and parents have a home to go to…somewhere to visit regularly to find that perfect snap of their child. Flicker was good but as a tool in the classroom Picassa wins hands down….not to mention geotagging and sending your images to google Earth. staff such as Todd Denton, Kimbra Power, Sarah Toa, and our principal….with a little help….Mr Dennis Bissmeyer are all using Picasa.

Google docs and the collaborative nature of this application will no doubt become a staple in middle and high school, especially with the teacher having the ability to set groups, track changes and contributions made, then add comments on the document for all members of the group to see!!! I love it.

I see knols, perhaps being used in Elementary especially for science and social classes.

I am trying to love Google reader but it just doesn’t do it for me…Tim Munnerlyn swears by it, but I am a netvibes person through and through…I am trying though!

With wikis and chat search engines for every topic you can think of it really is your one stop shop…..I can hear the grumblings of…not another sign up form…..but that won’t last long as we roll out Picasa then google docs……So sign up for an account if you don’t have one………and then as google says….Try something new. As a man I used to know would say……I’m excited!

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