Anecdotes

=__Students becoming digital citizens__= So wonderful to have a special needs child Y6 communicate during the holidays via the class wiki. She posted a message that she had fallen off her bike. She sends messages to her SLST and we are seeing a difference in her messages making better sense and more accurate with spelling. We have also seen success for Maori students. They have used the town library in Morrinsville during the holiday break to use the class wiki. Big shift here! This is bridging the barrier to a household that has no computer; never has.

-Rob (Tahuna) = = =__Role Modelling__= A situation occurred in the senior room whereby the children challenged Donna as to why she was using her full name when signing in online. They have a heightening awareness of how personal information is to be kept protected where possible. Another situation arose form a Year 3 student who posted on the class wiki which e-mailed everyone in the room that they could come to her birthday party. She didn't realise she had sent it to everyone! What a suprise for her folks! The situation was worked through and used as a learning example for others.

-Rob (Tahuna)

=__Problem Solving Year 7 & 8's__= We had a problem with our movie docs. They kept coming out as Audio. A group of students went online and found a website that converted our audio to the necesary video. This allowed us to complete the movie we were trying to create. The group involved did this voluntarily and within their own time. Just another example of our students becoming more responsible for their own learning, - so great to see them using their initiative and collaboratively problem solving !

Brent Harper (Whitikahu)

=__**Solving Access Issues**__= Students were undertaking a task in which they were given the freedom to present in anyway they wanted. One group wanted to use the Web 2.0 tool Xtra Normal. They quickly discovered that the tool kept crashing at school and it became increasingly frustrating for them to use. On their own initiative, they met outside of school and completed the task using a home computer. The finished piece still would not play at school so the boys revisited the site, got the embeded code and embeded their animation into the class blog. [|www.room11morrinsvilleint.blogspot.com]

Aloma Williams begin_of_the_skype_highlighting end_of_the_skype_highlighting (Morrinsville Intermediate)


 * __Peer Support__**

Each week the Year 5-6 class at our school supports our New Entrant class for half an hour, working one on one and helping junior students to use different ICT tools such as the Paint programme, Mathletics or specific tasks on our KnowledgeNet LMS. We also have a spare classroom each Friday until lunchtime when our senior class is away at Technology at Morrinsville Intermediate - this is great as our junior classes can utilise the 8 PCs and interactive whiteboard at this time, as well as their own class computers. The remaining senior class is available in the school, to support during this time when needed.

Dee (Orini)

__**Sharing Expertise and Ideas**__ The senior class @ Tahuna utilise the scrap blog tool to design their own book covers for their personalised stationery. The middle and junior school saw the impact of these and wanted to be part of this. The seniors buddied up and worked with the juniors to "assist" the use of this tool and enable the juniors to use it as well.

Rob (Tahuna)