Zon

Today I made a search for online Mandarin games for learners. What I found was a game called Zon. This site is still in Beta but it looks really interesting. Click here to go to the site ZON

Zon is an interactive massively multiplayer online role playing game for learning Mandarin Chinese. We are currently trialing it for use with Mandarin classes in our school.

In Zon, a new player assumes an avatar who arrives as a tourist in Customs at the Beijing Airport. With little more than some traveler’s checks, a passport, a backpack, and the clothes on their back, the player must first pass through Customs, then navigate the Airport on the way to their Hotel. Throughout each new scene, players are presented with various learning tasks and ongoing assessments that teach them about specific Chinese language concepts and cultural information about the context of the scene.

A new player begins as a Tourist, and can progress to Resident and Citizen levels by accomplishing various tasks in the environment.

What's My Lunch Today - Part 2

Today in Grade 1 the students continued with their Keynote presentations about the food that they eat for lunch.

To make their presentations even more interesting the students made video clips using the Macbook webcams about their lunch.










After the students had finished this task we went to Playnormous.com and played Lunch Crunch http://www.playnormous.com/gameplay_lunchcrunch.cfm
What a fun game! It is important that children learn about healthy eating so that they can make better food choices. Playnormous is a great site with lots of games and class activities that support the games on the site.

Voicethread - Creating and Sustaining Online Communities

I made this presentation as a part of a joint paper that I wrote with these other people from my recent Masters in Education (Ed Tech). This was a wonderful learning experience in which I learned so much about online communities. Please take a look and leave a comment if you like.

Storybird for Story Creation

Today via Twitter, I found a wonderful site called Storybird


It is a lovely site for children wanting to write their own stories. Storybird is a safe site as all stories are approved by the site before being made public. There are beautiful illustrations to choose from made by professional artists.
Here is an example book http://storybird.com/books/seeing-things/

How to Download Videos using a Firefox Add-on

Transportation in Chinese

Today in Grade 7 the students learned about different types of transportation. First the students wrote down all the different kinds of transportation that they had ever traveled on.
There were plenty of unusual ones like metro mini, flying fox, helicopter, skateboard and even an elephant!

The students were then asked to make a Keynote slideshow with photos and the words in pinyin.
For example

火 车 －huo che - train



Teachable moment!
Just as this lesson was in progress a helicopter landed in the field beside our school. Of course we took advantage and got all the students to take a look and learn the words for helicopter:

直升机 － zhi sheng ji - helicopter

Tari Bondan Javanese Dance Performance From Open Day.

Top 10 ICT Tools That Have Changed Our Lives

The Guardian has listed the top 10 tools that have had the most impact on our lives. This blog post was inspired by a Twitter contact skambalu and this tweet "Updated my blog Ten ICT changes in the last decade‏: There is a very interesting article in the G.. http://bit.ly/1NCcPQ"

Here is that list of top 10 tools by The Guardian:

1 Google
2 Wikipedia
3 Twitter
4 Comment Is Free
5 BBC iPlayer
6 iPhone
7 Craigslist
8 Facebook
9 iTunes U
10 Spotify

I would like to write my personal top ten list:
1. Blogs - I started blogging with a Grade 3 class back in 2006 about 4 years ago. It changed my whole perspective on teaching and learning in the digital age.
2. Macbook Pro - I bought my first Macbook 2 years ago and after only a few weeks wondered why it took me so long to convert to Mac. Needless to say I am now an Apple Distinguished Educator.
3. Facebook - this enables me to connect with childhood friends, friends who have moved overseas, family, colleagues, past students and even present students. It is the ultimate social site.
4. iPhone - it is always in my hand. To have a phone that is so tactile, carries my music, my email, my photos, my videos, connects me to the world and helps me to get to my next destination - what can I say? I love my iPhone 
5. Twitter - awesome, my lifeline, my professional link to the ICT world.
6. iTunes Online Store - it's so easy and fast. Access to music, videos, podcasts and apps.
7. You Tube - I love to check out You Tube. I learn so much from how to use new software, to what's new, to something creative. Love it!
8. Google - a constant source of information - anywhere, anytime.
9. Canon Ixus - always in my handbag, ready to take any picture or video (that happens a lot!) with a sharp image result.
10. Email - I have taken this one for granted - it has almost become a 'hidden' technology.

21st Century Shopping

Today in Grade 3 the students editing a movie clip using iMovie. The current UOI is all about money systems. The video clip is one that was taken of my father shopping at the supermarket in Australia using the new self service cashier. In the previous lesson the students watched the full video clip and made their own scripts. In the lesson today the students imported the whole clip into iMovie so that they can choose one minute of footage that matches with their script. Next lesson they will add a voice over, titles and transitions.

Mr Bean Speaks Chinese!

Today in Chinese Mandarin classes for Grade 8, the students learned to voice over a video. Their teacher was looking for a way to get the students more enthusiastic about learning new words and phrases. The students will also learn to add titles and subtitles in Pinyin (Chinese characters). Take a look at the screen capture.