Today I was the final Keynote speaker for the Associate Teacher Symposium at Unitech's Carrington Campus. This an annual symposium, providing Professional Development, organised by 5 of the training providers based in Auckland, and is a great learning opportunity for teachers.
I had spent time creating my presentation on my laptop using the Mac software 'Keynote' and including lots of video to illustrate the learning happening with our children. Unfortunately I was not able to hook up to the AV system provided and I wound up exporting my presentation to Power Point. Sadly, the videos I had included did not transfer over, and only the slides of still photos were able to be viewed. Lesson learnt, ensure that future presentations are available on both platforms before entering the presentation theater!! So, I am attaching some of the videos here so participants can view them.
Firstly,
children really enjoy exploring the creative possibilities
of Kidpix on our computers. Here are some of our three year olds using it last week, sharing and exploring together.
We use an 'AKAI Professional' MIDI keyboard with the children, attached to either of the desktop computers or one of the teacher's laptops. This boy is also 3 and is experimenting with the piano setting on Garageband. The children can record their music on the computer and it can then be burned to CD to take home.
Our children use cameras to record their work at Kindergarten and on excursions we appoint 'Official Photographers' to help record what was experienced from the child's perspective. We always find it interesting to see what they found of interest and add their photos to our records of the trip in the books and slideshows that we create, to allow revisiting the experience with the children.
I have managed to find a copy of the movie about a four year old sharing how to use Comic Life made by my colleague Chris Lovelock (Dowdell). Apologies for the picture quality in this - it is several years old and technology has moved on!
The children enjoy working together on the Ipads, sharing their learning and skills. Here is an autistic child enjoying interacting and sharing with his peers, forming positive relationships and enjoying being the mentor and peer tutor in the process.
Finally a group of children share their pleasure in the robots they have created, having worked as a team and created models that move depending on the message that the software they have programmed sends. The final set of models, kicking the 'ball' through the goal utilises two laptops as the models are sent their instructions separately and this cannot be down on one machine.
I am currently working with the children on reviewing a variety of apps and will post their favourites and their comments soon.
