| Digital - teacher | Education in a technological world

A question to think about

I was showing  some of my work to some teachers the other day, as well as talking about New Media Writing in general.
I did the usual thing of explaining how the internet can be used to create work that would be impossible using paper (branching stories / interaction / submitting writing to a site for inclusion / etc) and then showed them Dragonsville, Adventure Island and The Village.
They were all interested in the whole idea of New Media Projects for their schools, and they all asked the same question that I have been asking the last few months;

Why is no one else doing this?

Answers anyone, please, by email.

Christmas Spirit

Well here I am this year with no school website to update with images of the Christmas Play, or the online advent calendar to set up again. What can I do with myself this year I thought, so I began messing around with Flash, and made this - just a quick activity you can do with your pupils. Get them to think about what each person would be thinking as they approached the stable, and then see all take place!

Far far beyond

Well I've finished judging the entries from the New Zealand school, and they have their own page within the Naming Pool where they are all displayed.

I really liked being a 'dragon' and writing the replies for each child who sent in a description.

The class teacher who organised this activity wrote to Kids on the Net and said;

"I will be using a data projector to demonstrate the exercise to the whole school including parents, showing the web pages involved and how everything happened online. I will then present the prize of a book of dragon poems to the winner, and so Dragonsville will be famous in Pirongia"

How nice it is that there are people being enthused by it.

Different World

Since September I've been doing the odd bit of supply work. It's a different world out there at various schools! I can actually go into a school with the sole purpose of teaching children, and not sitting for hours before and after school filling in forms and unneccessary paperwork.

Is this a post?

Blimey, has it really been over a month since I last wrote something in this blog?
Since then I have been ticking along with all sorts of different activities to keep me busy.
Apart from the business studies course, and the occasional day of supply work - remind me to post something about that later, I'm also working virtually with a school in New Zealand.
They've been busy sending in submissions to their own 'puddle' within the Naming Pool page of Dragonsville, and now I get to decide on the most original submission.
Apparently I am the 'Dragonmaster' to them.
This quote came from their teacher regarding the 'confirmation of work submitted' page;

They were so thrilled to each get a personal reply with their name in it from Emerald.

All that took was a simple piece of code to pull the name from the submission form onto the webpage, and the effect on children is magical!
Cold Fusion and databases. So much more use than just keeping customer accounts!!