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Tuesday 11 August:

Hi ALL, I can't believe it but this is the night before our e-learning meeting and I've looked at our wiki for the first time. I know that school for me has been seriously busy and I'm sure that, that's the same for each of us.

However, I feel that I have picked the knowledge from the e-learning days to help me move forward, and move forward I have in huge, gigantic leaps. From not seriously having taken part in a wiki last year as part of a MoE contract for languages to finally having set up a wiki for my class to use as an electronic portfolio - wonders never cease!!!!!

Teaching values is an important part of our school culture and I am using glogster as a means for my students to show / display / create / etc.... their knowledge about for example respect. On their Respect page they are able to make links, make connections. Each of the values will have their own page.

When inserting the glogster pages, the code has to be altered so that their is a best fit for the page. I also have to alter the navigation bar to make the links to all the values related pages. That will be another trial and error effort. But, I am loving the challenges.

As an e-portfolio who knows - this is trial and error at its best!!! My team and I are giving it a go. For our Year one teacher, once she saw that I had sort of an idea she was keen to move forward so we are learning together.

The class love it because they can add colour, give the wiki their own flavour and I am happy for them to experiment with colour and choose their own templates.

I have been able to copy and paste from word. However I found that using the table on the Editor bar above can be nervey!!!! Sometimes it worked and sometimes it didn't, and it was a tad frustrating.

My next skill is to have my students add a podcast or voice thread so that they can record themselves reading a story. So there are lots of ideas out there to continue to learn from. Our e-learning wiki has a template on how to use voice thread.

Finally my class has a blog. What was difficult was finding the time for the class to write their blogs. Then the light was switched on and my team has changed its timetable to have literacy for the first block each day and this now provides a regular routine for students to write and post their blog. Once we have that in hand, we will start on the next part of the blog and thats posting comments and that will be another lesson for us as ,my students need a scaffold and to be able to share and discuss what they would expect to see in a comment on their page - set some protocols. I have learnt how to upload photos, make a slide using bubbleshare, add a powerpoint using fliggo and images using photobucket. These are all names that I couldn't relate to prior to e-learning.

New software: : I discovered a Web2.0 tool Buzzword. Its a free download from Acrobate.com. What does it do? There are 3 of us in our team, 2 live in Rotorua and I in Papamoa, this makes planning difficult. Buzzword means we have an internet based document, shared by 3 people and we can each add to the document, having only one document that we adapt and work together on. To print, export to word first, then print. There is also another function, that we have yet to trial and it's connect pro, using your laptop camera, like skype and you can connect and discuss planning etc...

Where to next? I fail horribly when it comes to the collaboration / sharing part of the scenario. This is what I want to work on between now and the final session, next term.. KInd thoughts Waiki.