Steps in Teaching and Learning

Using technology to enhance teaching and learning in the classroom

Archive for category lesson ideas

Creative writing with Epic Citadel

Sep 5

Posted by kvnmcl in Resources in the classroom, learning, lesson ideas, tools | View Comments

Earlier this morning I came across Epic Citadel for the iPad and was blown away by its possible uses for creative writing, boy’s writing in particular. Watch the video to get a taste of what the app is about.

Possible teaching and learning ideas
-to explore the citadel with a small group, engaging them with questions about what they see and hear
-to describe the setting and buildings in the citadel
-to create a character that might have lived in the citadel and what he/she might have done there
-record voice overs to advertise the game
-record voice overs from a citizen’s point of view

If you have any other ideas please leave them in a comment.
For a further in depth look at Epic Citadel Tim Rylands has a great blogpost here

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Posterous – A blog can be for a week

Jul 5

Posted by kvnmcl in Resources in the classroom, learning, lesson ideas, raves | View Comments

Perfect for Primary classrooms

There are plenty of blogging platforms available that will almost certainly meet the requirements of any blogger. I use wordpress for this website and I am very happy with it but, it just doesn’t do it for Primary school age blogging. I needed a platform that would allow children between the ages of 7 and 9 to blog about their work, quickly and easily. That’s why I chose Posterous.

International Week on Posterous

Posterous allows anyone to post whatever they wish (photos, videos, mp3′s, files and of course text) by email and posterous will take care of the rest. But, set up an account and you can take advantage of so much more. During this week my school is using the theme of ‘International Week’ to promote cultural awareness and our place in the world. I set up internatweek on Posterous as a blogging platform that could be used quickly and easily by the children in my class. The children are using it to blog about their learning, post photos with my iPhone using the brilliant PicPosterous app, record interviews with each other using Easi Speak mics and upload them to the site and embed a Google Earth Map showing where we come from.

Posterous is the perfect blogging platform for Primary classrooms. It’s simple to set up, easy to use and within minutes you are blogging to the world. And it’s perfect for short term projects such as our week long activity.

Blogs don’t have to be for life, they can be for a week. (Thanks to @johnjohston for that)


View Where in the World in a larger map

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Creative writing with Zooburst

Jun 19

Posted by kvnmcl in Resources in the classroom, learning, lesson ideas, teachmeet, tools | View Comments

#tmeast

This is my presentation for TeachMeet East demonstrating how to use ZooBurst for Creative writing opportunities.

This presentation is also available as a screencast

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How to use wallwisher with mapmsg

Jun 13

Posted by kvnmcl in Resources in the classroom, learning, lesson ideas, tools | View Comments

My class are currently looking at ‘Persuasive writing’ in our Literacy unit of work and to bring some life to it I thought of how to combine some web 2.0 tools at my disposal so as to create a fun and creative environment for class. That’s when I decided to bring together wallwisher and mapmsg. Wallwisher lets you post stickies that contain text, images, audio, videos and links. Mapmsg mashes up google maps with smoke messages. The following video demonstrates how to do it.

I posted this idea to twitter and as you can see from the wall below many teachers have responded.

I hope the idea will be of use to you and if it is, please let me know in the comments. How do you use wallwisher with your class? Have you used mapmsg before and if so, in what way?

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