Week 4 of Google Apps for Education |
Assessment week notwithstanding, this week has been PACKED with learning skills, hangout preps, fab news on new partners through our rainforest questionnaire and lots more besides!
Learning Skills
Our learning skills display |
Google Hangout - Chong Ming Elementary School, Taiwan
Chong Ming Elementary School, Taiwan |
Pupils there have completed our rainforest survey and we're having a planning session in class tomorrow to get the most from the hangout. It'll be an early start for Year 4 - the hangout starts at 8:00am Tuesday!
Google Translate and a truly amazing offer from ActionAid Brazil
ActionAid, Brazil |
Brazil - earthobservatory.nasa |
Celia has offered to pass our survey on to teachers and children in the region to complete next month. This is truly an amazing offer considering the work that this will involve. Says Celia, 'Our children do not speak or read English and also the majority of teachers in the remote areas of Brazil cannot speak any other language but Portuguese.'
Fortunately, with Google translate, this won't be a problem - I've already received translations from several pupils, completed and sent to me this weekend! Watch this space!
Google Search - Fab Research Sidebar!
On Tuesday I heard the great news about the new research sidebar available in Google docs. YES!!!! I thought. And what SUPERB timing! Children could use these for their key questions. So, all fired up, I demoed how to use the tool, pointing out useful features like the citation button but when the children logged on it wasn't there! After some tooing and frooing I discovered that we're on scheduled releases in GApps - so I've reset that now to instant release. I'll need to wait until tomorrow to see whether the tool is also blocked by the LA filters.
Questions & Bloom's Taxonomy (image tedcurran.net) |
Letter writing
This has taken a little longer than I expected. Second drafts were completed on Friday and children have been sending these to me throughout the weekend. Here's one to the Malaysian Government from our Rainforest Tribe Kidz team who, as their name implies, are trying to help tribespeople affected by deforestation. And here's another to Coca-Cola about aluminium cans.
Our playground sculpture |
Last year they helped to arc weld the large metal anchor they made in the playground too! If you're at a school in the Midlands and you want to give children an amazing learning experience that'll stay with them forever, give Luke a call!