The 2007 miniLegends will now be located at
http://alupton.edublogs.org/

The SA Preschools Network I have been co-creating is at
http://hayki.edublogs.org/

My ongoing eteacher event is called ‘create, connect - blog’
and can be found at
http://connect.edublogs.org/

create - 
A class blog (online shared website) is created
- student and teacher collaboration leads to how it will be used.

connect -
Classes interact through each others’ blogs for combined friendship and learning.

blog -
Starter and extension activities are suggested to begin this ongoing journey.

My educational dialogue blog (when/if I get to it is located at
http://ccclearning.edublogs.org/

Cheers, Al

Hi miniLegends

thank you so much for all the fun, understanding and learning opportunities you have given to me this year.  

It is both sad to see  our 2006 blog coming to a close but also VERY exciting to think about the blogging (and everything else!) to come in the future.

Please leave any comments you want here.

Cheers, Al

 This is my favourite photo of you all together.

Writer check it out

test font size - test test test

12345678910111213141516custom colour
regular italic bold bold italic

1. one
2. two
3. three

• dot 1
• dot 2

And you can use quotations marks

link to ‘create, connect - blog’

spell check to check my spelling —- spell chek to chekk mi spellin

** Font size doesn’t work but do the Headings? NB you need to press Enter (to miss a space) not Shift+Enter
Most of these features are available in edublogs.org but some eg headings are not yet in wordpress.com

Heading 1

Heading 2

Heading 3

Heading 4

Heading 5

Heading 6

Paragraph (which i think is about font size 11) test of the all important smilies

Plenty of other features and you can compose offline then post (or draft) to your blog online
Very user friendly.

Writer check it out

Our previous experimentation on this blog

Despite Writer saving some online time (and expense), it will be better to get used to edublogs.org/learnerblogs.org online first. Then I think there is a place for experimentation with the advantages of an offline desktop application. We’ll see. I don’t want to confuse things either - remember ‘connectness, convenience, contact’. Besides after publishing with Writer, you have to edit the post then save it and then smiley faces work

insert map ‘Windows Live Map’ - road view includes the marina and the international airport at the top

Here’s our beach.
Jetty Road is the main road of Glenelg. can you see the jetty?
Glenelg School is at the bottom right corner.

Insert a link Virtual Earth - try VE 3D - the ‘Glenelg, Adelaide, South Australia’ search

Insert a picture
Extra editing can happen online eg insert a picture

or even
click to animate - source unkown (any ideas?)

These computer games are similar but they also are different in many ways.

Explain the games to others who might not have played them.

What game do you prefer? Why?

What makes a good game?

  Mono 

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mono_(game)

  Lock On 

http://gamemaker.nl/games_exe.html
Our Game Maker pages

This post is linked to the eTeacher event
‘create, connect - blog’ - connecting students locally and globally
Go to http://connect.edublogs.org/ for more - especially try this post.

Our plan is to invite people in to listen to our questions (maybe leave a comment on our project pages) and share our learning.
Here is the original post where we decided what we would do this term.

The name link  goes to the student’s project page (not much has been added here)
- the ‘podcasts’ can be found there as well.
The topic question link * will play the audio file - they are very short questions. Some students had already found out the answers from their research others were still ‘wondering’

Annabel - Rainforests *

Brayden - Deserts * 

Brock - Climate Change *

Caitlin - Popular Musicians *

Caleb - Video Games *

Cameron - African Animals *

Campbell - Roller Coasters *

Chris - Buildings *

Claire - Time *

Connor - Commonwealth Games *

Corey - Colour *

Danni - Cheetahs *

Tyson - Vampires *

Finn - Pocket Rockets *

Grace - Meerkats *

Jordana - Butterflies *

Josh - Windpower *

Kate - Solar System *

Luke - Universe *

Mikaela - Japan *

Nat - Illusions *

Nika - African Animals *

Patrick - Sea Creatures *

Roisin - Antartica *

Sarah - Bears *

Tony - Rhinos *

Tylah - Outback *

Vika - African Buildings *

NB to listen to these files you will need to be registered and logged in to the
‘create, connect - blog’ eTeacher event. Please remember to include the number of students who will also be involved - eg your class number.
*** There is also a guest login if you’d rather just look and listen
The questions are also
at  http://connect.edublogs.org/2006/11/08/hello-world/ 

http://alupton.wordpress.com/learning/our-masks/

You can see that this is a subpage in our ‘learning’ page

Everyone’s mask designs and masks are all pasted next to each other to make a really exciting new art work.

Please comment on each other’s masks as well as what they all look like together!

  Here’s  the basic mask + Al’s Scotch Brite hat.

Check out
http://alupton.wordpress.com/learning/our-masks/ 
and hover the mouse to see who made it + click each mask for a closer look

This post connects to our first investigations - Lizard Science
http://alupton.wordpress.com/2006/11/08/lizard-science/  

Please comment using the numbers and the language we looked at

• observation
• test
• hypothesis … prediction
• educated guess

1.      2.     
3.      4.     
5.

then (after 5 days)

6.       7.

so we …

8.      9.

and began a new test

10.  [check out the slime!]

Writer is a free tool that can be downloaded to your desktop to help post to your blog.
I’ve been searching for increased convenience. Flock is part of that search.
“Now you don’t have to waste time going through the process of publishing, refreshing, previewing, and tweaking your post to get it looking the way you want. It’s all right there in Writer as you create your post.”
Writer is a Windows application still in beta (testing stage)
http://windowslivewriter.spaces.live.com/blog/cns!…   this link has automatically been made shorter

Test picture - this pic has not been uploaded in the usual way - only through Writer
 
 

This is our lizard after 2 days in the water. BTW You can add some great basic effects to graphics in Writer. I tried some but it ‘timed out’ uploading this post with effects - timed out with dialup so that’s understandable! Here is the original pic. 
Pics can have ‘dropshadow’, ‘photopaper’ or ‘Inherit from Weblog’ (I chose this one)

Test editing
Our observations and predictions include: the lizard has grown, it has expanded, the rubber (molecules) has got looser 

- added and extra easy colour, underline in the WYSIWYG editor. Still no font size

Crtl + S = save. It’s good to get a post together without having to do it all online esp with dialup!
keywords (tags?) and trackbacks to selected urls easy. Simple to go from ‘normal’/web layout/web preview/html code
shortcut on keyboards eg shift+F7= check spelling

*** It is convenient in manner ways and I’ll check it out more. THe usual pros and cons exist. It wasn’t very easy to create a new blog account (all this is free) with edublogs

Another handy app
Visual task Tips
http://www.visualtasktips.com/

“Visual Task Tips is a lightweight shell enhancement utility. It provides thumbnail preview image for each task in the Windows Taskbar, as seen in the upcoming Microsoft Windows Vista.

NOTE: Windows XP is required to run Visual Task Tips.” - also free

Before I would have a lot of websites open and despite Alt+Tab it got confusing. By hovering over any website in the task bar, the thumbnail visulaly lets me know which one it is - pretty cool.

Al brought back a lizard from Cairns so we used it for science.

We made observations
- (check out the comments)
-

We designed a test.

We ran the test.

“Today’s test: See if it can float

 
Observation: At 12pm 8/11/06 it … (click pictures to enlarge)“

We made an educated guess about what would happen next
- “My hypothesis (prediction) is that the lizard will …

Please comment - include your observations and predictions about what will happen next. Don’t forget to talk about time if you think there will be any changes

Click here for the next ‘Lizard Science’ post
http://alupton.wordpress.com/2006/11/13/our-submerged-lizard/

*[Unfortunately the next link/blog is probably filtered at school But if you can,
check out this post - minis I'll show you a copy I've saved and put it up on your computers.]

It’s a reclining chair who makes toilet water blue.
Well at first that’s the way it looks but ’Jason’ (the reclining chair) makes some great points.

• why do marketers (people who promote or sell goods and services) get 3 times more than school teachers?
• we use blogs as part of our learning and value systems …  “soon this method of learning will be the rule, not the exception.”
  -> most classes will be doing it?? (miniLegends, do you agree?)
• “So what happens?
  - students connect with each other
  - they share learnings and knowledge
  - they’re making it ‘personal’ “
• Today’s kids are tomorrows big spenders
• Today’s kids are todays big spenders (of their folks money)
• brands and companies that co-create goods, services and experiences ”will win”
• kids need and want to share ‘personal’ experiences and learning
• tomorrows big spenders (and marketers) are already collaborating in an online environment where public ‘give and take’ is part of daily behaviour

*** This all means a lot to the kids/learners, their teachers and those out in the real business world right now. In class, we’ll use this opportunity to talk about it more as we continue our explorations into ‘future perspectives’.

Feel free to leave a comment.

Today (Friday afternoon) we used Audacity and recorded some questions that related to our final term’s projects.

We exported them to mp3 files (use the LAME MP3 encoder - set it up once then it’s automatic) so we could upload them to our www.box.net 1 Gigabyte free storage site.
NB The purists amongst us would say that uploading a file to link to and hear is not really a podcast (no RSS feeds etc) - I don’t care but I am concerned that www.box.net IS FILTERED!!! I’ll try to make easy to use real podcasts that have a use right now in DECS schools while we continue to battle this issue.

We/I uploaded them by ‘dragging and dropping’ them onto our box site.
Then we made these files public and linked to words on our blog.

*** Here is a test and the format we chose. It was fun and easy 
Al Children question
The name link  goes to the student’s project page
- the podcast can be found here as well.
The topic question link goes directly to the podcast - they are very short questions.

Our plan is to invite people in to listen to our questions and maybe leave a comment on our project page and help us with our learning.
Here is the original post where we decided what we would do this term.

:arrow:  Annabel Rainforest        Brayden Deserts       
Brock Climate Change     Caitlin Musicians        Caleb Football        
Cameron African Animals    Campbell Roller Coasters        
Chris Buildings        Claire Time        Connor Commonwealth Games       
Corey Colour       Danni Cheetahs        Tyson Vampires       
Finn Pocket Rockets       Grace Meerkats       Jordana Butterflies       
Josh Windpower        Kate Solar System        Luke Universe       
Mikaela Japan        Nat Illusions        Nika African Animals       
Patrick Sea Creatures        Roisin Antartica     Sarah Bears       
Tony Rhinos        Tylah Outback        Vika African Buildings 

NB if you’re in another state, country or sector in South Australia you might be able to hear our questions

I have a podomatic account and want to explore a Garageband (Mac only) equivalent and Gcast more.
Judy O’Connell demonstrates excellent use of these tools in her sharing and contributions …
http://heyjude.podomatic.com/?badge=1

Test: Audio I uploaded to Gcast. “Why Web2 is important to educators” - more on this in a post soon. This is what the html code pasted into WordPress looks like
Subscribe Free
Add to my Page

podOmatic test podcast

Click here to get your own player.

*** after uploading your mp3 file to podOmatic, right click the Permalick …
‘Copy Shortcut’ and directly paste (as below) or create a hyperlink as in woof

http://alupton.podOmatic.com/entry/2006-11-06T13_15_09-08_00
Why is Web2 Important to educators 

woof 

This is a test video link IE it will go to the site where the video is rather than upload the video on the blog. It is pasted in HTML - I got the code from http://www.zippyvideos.com/ where ‘anonymous’ has uploaded it for free viewing and sharing. Zippy Videos are filtered in DECS schools.
 
[A single image link won't dramatically increase the home page loading time.]

Some quick tests to see if these sites are filtered at school. To embed videos in your blog.
http://blip.tv/ NOT Filtered in DECS schools
http://www.blip.tv/file/59463  meerkats

http://www.youtube.com/ Youtube FILTERED!
https://faq.wordpress.com/2006/07/29/how-do-i-post-a-youtube-video/ WordPress

http://video.google.com/ Google Video FILTERED!
http://faq.wordpress.com/2006/07/29/how-do-i-post-a-google-video/ on WordPress -Test to see if videos can be embedded at home then viewed at school, but a bit of mucking around to get the html code and insert it correctly.

http://grouper.com/ Grouper - looks easy, couple of clicks, “post to blog” feature
http://wordpress.com/blog/2006/06/30/post-videos-from-grouper/
FILTERED!
So test to see if they can be created at home then viewed at school …
http://dylanb.wordpress.com/2006/08/26/bellagio-water-feature/#comments

You can see the title of this post - here is the body/message/content Do you have any questions or comments? *** 

  I put this smiley here to get your attention. With everything else going on in our class and on our blog, I find this to be one of the most exciting posts we have had for a long time … more on this soon. ***

It wasn’t all work in Sydney
Here are three photos to try to give you an idea of my view from the hotel.

I really should get a new camera. The one in my phone is a bit weak.
Here’s a couple of other photos.

 Sydney Aquarium         
                                                                     Glenelg Esplanade

 Sydney Luna Park                        ?              
                                                                     Glenelg Beach House

If you want this end of year celebration, you had better start planning now

We combined these two thoughts into one activity.

** What are multi touch screens? - thanks to Lindy McKeown for this link
(Lindy posted that great comment for our famous Leeroy Jenkins post)
http://cs.nyu.edu/~jhan/ftirtouch/index.html check out the video
How could we use these screens in our learning?

     
      
The video is also available on ‘YouTube’ (which is filtered at school)
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zp-y3ZNaCqs

What might be ‘old school’ in 25 years time?
Are interactive whiteboards nearly old school now??

** We celebrate our 125th school birthday this Sunday. In another 25 years time we can all get back together to celebrate 150 years in 2031!
What could we put into our time capsule that
a) tells something of our present and past
b) tells something of how we think the future might be in 2031

Please share your thoughts by adding a comment here.
If you want to list your ideas that’s cool otherwise use sentences please.

Well here we are - day two together this term. What a cool group of kids you are - all those comments and links to what we talked about yesterday! It really looks like you can find out much more about your interests and have excellent ways to share them. Thanks.
Please try to remember sentences, capitals and fullstops. More on this later when we look at the AUDIENCE.

Today’s lesson (due to technology not working the way we wanted was very special.
I’m not even sure how it started or whose idea it came from but we ended up comparing
Animal Classification with Student Learner Classification
In between all that we decided it would also be interesting to look at the
Lifecycle of the Student Learner

Here is a photo of our brainstorming on the whiteboard.
Of course there is so much more but I think it’s brilliant for mostly Year 3’s, some Year 4s and only one quick lesson.
Anyone, please feel free to leave a comment and any extra ideas you have.
[Mini's we could even use this approach to make some short podcasts talking about our learning]
Well done everyone - 2 blitz points towards ‘Beach House Day’

Hi, Well it’s week 2 and it’s great to be back from Cairns and Sydney. I have really talked and thought about learning a lot and am  keen to see what term 4 and beyond brings.

This morning in class we spoke about

• taking more control of our learning and helping each other.
  Our learning will be more student directed
• using a couple of websites as springboards to our learning

  Check out this excellent site by Jackie Miers
  http://www.teachers.ash.org.au/jmresources/
  and the equally wonderful one by Sue Lemmer
  http://www.teachers.ash.org.au/suel/
  [Both of these ladies are LTI coaches with TSoF]
  Another coach, Colin Luscombe, has reminded me of his excellent springboard
  http://www.colgrdnsps.sa.edu.au/web_resources/resources.htm
  This will be wonderful for added sources of information
  http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Main_Page  - and don’t forget to search Wikipedia
  ***  remember links lead to other links which might not be appropriate.
  If you feel uncomfortable or think you shouldn’t be looking at the page,
  Alt+Tab, tell an adult or close the window ***

• we wanted to use our blog to explore animations, video and audio
• we will be creating something we will remember because we were/are so
  proud of it
• we will include oral reports this term and look at what criteria would lead to a good presentation eg more than one way to present, more than one source of information
• we will be returning to the word AUDIENCE a lot
• we want to share our learning with another class overseas. I already know of classes in Scotland, the United States, Canada and New Zealand who might be interested
• We will make sure we keep up with our roles and routines, 125th birthday celebration and other learning as well

 Thanks for getting this much together so far, so quickly - Al

*** Please leave a comment below (INCLUDING A WEBSITE LINK/S) about what you would like research and share in your presentation - I am encouraging individual work ***
I recommend you use your own blogs to develop and store your learning.
This unit of work is open to negotiation.
You have until Wednesday the 25th October to decide your theme or topic.

Global Summit at http://ccclearning.edublogs.org/
(this is my educational dialogue blog)

This is where I will have all my Global Summit related posts etc.
Go there to learn about tags such as GlobalSummit06, live blogging and a bit of an update of the summit as it happens etc cheers, Al

Technorati Tags: GlobalSummit06

Well many of you have asked how to do this.
I’ve started looking into this but it is still a bit of a challenge. *
Any help is appreciated.

I got this from
http://faq.wordpress.com/2006/06/12/can-i-change-my-font-font-size/
 

It is possible

I had turned off the Visual Rich Editor (Users>Your Profile>Personal Settings)
[and I can always turn it back on afterwards]
In the HTML tab, I typed
<font size=”8″ color=”#0023ff” face=”comic sans ms”>It is possible</font>

Go here for colours http://www.colorschemer.com/online.html

Go here for html  http://faq.wordpress.com/2006/06/08/allowed-html-tags/
and if you’re really keen - what they do
http://www.w3schools.com/tags/default.asp

For  a different font, you might like to try … face=”georgia”
Please do not use anything bigger than … <font size=”8″

* Currently when the Visual Rich Editor is turned on, at least I can see the larger size and different font as well as the change of colour.
 (click to enlarge)
However it doesn’t show in the Post Preview or published post - the colour does.
Persist Al persist

Thanks Josh for putting your mind to this

It is possible  … ok it didn’t work but don’t you love the positiveness and self belief the phrase conveys?

Thanks to Wara for his post on this ninja generated text
[just type in your text and copy the generated html into your blog post]

Perhaps your comment  could be Why?
And by that I mean How could we use this?

Today was Jordan’s last day with us because he is moving to Perth with his family.
All the best and have fun Jordan. Thanks for everything. You will always be a miniLegend.

We can use this post, Jordan’s page and Jordan’s blog to keep in touch.
[right-click these links to copy the shortcut]

 (click to enlarge) We can add in the other pictures later

test - paste in this HTML

 <!– technorati tags begin –><p
style=”font-size:10px;text-align:right;”>technorati tags:<a
href=”http://technorati.com/tag/acec06” rel=”tag”>acec06</a></p><!–
technorati tags end –>

technorati tags:acec06

I have a problem with technorati only recognising my last posts 53 days ago on my blog. I have even deleted the blog and claimed it anew adding in the tag acec06. 

 Who is this with the pinata?

On Thursday we Had a Class Sleepover at the School Because if we get 108 BLITZ points we could have the Reward wich is the Sleepover!The Sleepover was on Thursday and our little Buddies stayed for Dinner and Games! When the Bell went we all got our bags and headed down to the Hall and we met our Buddies down there. First we all put our bag down on the wall 1 side for girls other for boys and the buddies bags down near the door. When Mr Upton went up to get the Food at our Classroom he picked 3 people to help Caitlin, (Thats Me) and the others I forgot the others names though. When we were up there they were playing Blue Earth Games with the buddies and Mini Legends with the girl Teacher Like Hospitals, Duck Duck Goose, Rabbits and Foxes and others and than we played some realay games We played 2 one was Egg on the Spoon blowing the ball on the line they were Fun. Than we had Dinner we Had Hot Dogs, Chicken Wings, Pizza, Ham, Cheese and more and the Drinks we had  were Water,Pepsi,Cordial ,Lemonade,Apple Juice,Orange Juise and we had lemingtons and cake, lollies and other things too.

 In the Jaws of the Shark (click to enlarge)

Post on your own blogs and include links in your comments here.
Include pictures on your own blog.
What were the highlights of the excursion?
Let people who didn’t go know what we did and saw.

A test post to start networking      acec06

The program Oct 2nd - 4th

I’ll be part of the team for the Pre-conference fullday workshop
- Games scripting and programming Oct 1st

My Blogging Workshop
Collaborative Web Spaces - Create Your Own Blog
Blogs, wikis, podcasts, social technologies, Web 2.0, all feature in this workshop which has both primary and secondary relevance. Definitions and understandings are shared, trends are explored, and the changing role of technology in education is examined. With an awareness that the very nature of learning is being questioned what is the relevance of all this to us as educators now? How can we utilise and develop our early understandings of these emerging technologies in a way that doesn’t intrude on existing commitments? In the hands-on component of this workshop participants will create and develop a blog (a collaborative webspace) that will encourage students to connect with their learning in a new way. This session provides ‘just-in time’ learning and self developed resources for ‘tomorrows lesson’ as well as an experience of what soon will be.
Participants are encouraged to bring class lists, a memory stick plus some pictures and urls (web addresses) they are happy to share. Make them relevant and fun – it’s more relevant and fun that way!

Test begins here Thanks to Brett Moller for setting up hitchhikr using the tag acec06

http://hitchhikr.com/index.php?conf_id=38&tag_focus=acec06

When there click [Make A Tag Code] ’Submit’ then copy the code (below) into your post using HTML

Technorati Tags: <a href=”http://technorati.com/tag/acec06” rel=”tag”>acec06</a>

It should look like this
Technorati Tags: acec06  

Publish your post then at the bottom of http://hitchhikr.com/make_tags.php ’Ping’ Technorati

I’ve heard it helps signing up to Technorati - I’ve been a member for a while now

[I also added tags to del.icio.us but that didn't appear on the hitchhikr page above.]

Test Results? my blog post doesn’t appear in hitchhikr ….. help!!

Thanks Brett for this code …  see what happens

<!– technorati tags begin –><p
style=”font-size:10px;text-align:right;”>technorati tags:<a
href=”http://technorati.com/tag/acec06” rel=”tag”>acec06</a></p><!–
technorati tags end –>

And it looks like …

technorati tags:acec06

http://alupton.wordpress.com/resources/web2-showcase/ 

Here is a game we learnt with Aaron from Blue Earth.

See if you can work out how to play it from our pictures.

It is kept on Al’s other blog http://ccclearning.edublogs.org/

Click here to see the slide show.
http://ccclearning.edublogs.org/2006/09/19/warriors-warlocks-and-elves/