Letter to Our KS3 ICT Parents

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Dear Parents,

 It was great to speak to many of you both this week and last and in doing so discuss the progress your children have made in ICT during the first half of the school year. These were both very busy parent evenings and unfortunately we didn't get to speak to everyone. This letter will serve as a general update on the experiences your children have engaged in so far this school year, as well as an explanation of the feedback we are sending home, for those parents we haven't yet spoken to.

 In ICT lessons we teach your children vital skills and concepts which they will across their subjects throughout their school years, into the university and in their personal lives.
As you will know we do not assign an academic grade to ICT at the KS3. We do assign a Work Skills grade each CAL and assess student progress throughout the school year.  This school year we are piloting a tick list system for providing parents with much needed feedback about their children's progress. There is one tick list per grade, each of which contains references to the main areas covered so far this school year.

Ticks are good, they mean the child understands and is able to demonstrate their understanding in those areas. Crosses are good in their own way, as they flag up areas in need of improvement, or in the case of a project, areas omitted. Some areas are annotated with a number from 1-3. This is usually the case for quiz results or areas in which the children have excelled outside of any group activity. The range is 1-3, 3 being excellent, 2 very good and 1 in need of improvement.

We have also begun the implementation of a badge system. Students who excel in certain areas will receive a badge sheet with star stamps indicating their areas of achievement. It is important to note that a star indicates excellence, and lack of a star indicates areas the student is still improving in. Links to examples of the badge sheets and descriptions of each badge can be found at the top of our ICT teaching website. http://abcict.wikispaces.com. Links to all of our online lessons and tutorials can be found on this same site in the online lessons section. This site also contains the galleries of student work. We hope you find this information useful.

The tick lists (annotated examples can be found throughout this post.),will be sent home glued to the front pages in your child's planner, next week. Please Please do take a look at these and discuss them with your child. Please remember that this is a pilot system. We think it is important that you have better information on your child's progress ICT, and are going to continue working to hone this into the most efficient system we can. If you have any questions of a general nature you can post them here. If they are of a more personal nature, please contact your children's ICT teachers.

 Mrs Garcia                              
jennifergarcia@abc-net.edu.sv

Mr. Alfaro
rodrigoalfaro@abc-net.edu.sv

Game Development in 8th Grade

The 8th grade students have been working on game development during CAL 1. The purpose of this project was to create learning games for Prepa and 1st grade students using Scratch programming language. The 8th grade students interviewed and observed the younger students and their teachers and took notes on what they found out. They then planned and developed their learning games. We will be sharing them with their end users, the younger students and their teachers, in the new year. Here are two examples of games the students have developed. You can check out more examples of their work in our Scratch Studio.

Fernando Argumedo and Anaik Chacon


 and

Irma Choto and Daniela Castillo

 

CrazyTalk Rappers

This is our 4th year running the A Better World Project, and it is ageing very well. We have come a long way from that first year. When we first started out we were using Blabberize to produce rapping images, then we introduced student performances. Eventually with the arrival of our first set of iPads, we began creating characters with even more movement using Morfo.

This year the project has taken yet another turn. We have pretty much removed student performances. We thought in retrospect,  that while some were very good, others really took away from the focus of the rap video. We also worried that some may have been misconstrued as being insensitive to the topic.We have left performance work as an extension option this year, meaning that only the high fliers will be doing this.

We had intended to run the project exclusively on iPads this year, working with Google Drive for collaborative lyric writing, Garageband for music production, Morfo for digital rappers and iMovie for the final video production, however that too has changed.

We purchased Crazy Talk this school year for 13 of our computers and it has really revolutionised the project. Using Crazy Talk our kids are able to creating digitalised rappers from almost any digital image. These rappers are capable of a great deal and really come alive for the students.

So we are back on the Macs, using Google Drive, Garageband, iMovie, Crazy Talk and Wikispaces.  The kids are loving it and so are we.

I have included a video example from one of our recent projects below. You can access all the projects from this year as they are posted and from prior years on the project wiki.

Author Visit-Janine Kimmel

Award winning author Janine Kimmel visited us recently during her whirlwind book tour of El Salvador. Janine is the author of The Magic Gown and the Yawning Rabbit River Chronicles. We were fortunate in that this dynamic author, artist and speaker was able to devote 6 sessions on the art of storytelling and illustration, to our 5th and 6th grade students.

During the sessions Janine shared several scrolls and numerous prints of the artwork from her books. The kids were thrilled to find out that many of these paintings were her own.  Janine explained how the paintings played an important role as the first step in her book writing journey.

Our students were blown away by Janine's description of her work, and the writing process she went through when writing her novels.

Our staff and students would like to thank Janine for taking the time to work with our students and for inspiring many of our aspiring authors and artists at the ABC.

If you would like to see more pictures from these book talks, you can do so at the LRC Facebook or LRC Flickr pages.

Mega Weeding Rampage!

Every year we weed old, out of date, musty, dusty books out of the collections. Let's face it they are not being read for a reason. Depleting the shelves in this way sounds harsh but removing books that are no longer relevant or in conditions to be read without rubber gloves, is good practice for a school library. It makes room for new, interesting titles but also makes it easier for students to identify the hidden gems, as they are no longer buried away on the shelves. It gives the library staff a chance to refocus book purchases and build important, relevant collections for the community, some of which will be in print, others digital. 

This week we have been on a mega weeding rampage and spending a great many hours amidst the dusty yellowed pages. We have now completed our mission and successfully removed many hundreds of out of date, non fiction books from the shelves. 

Yes our shelves are a lot emptier, but they now contain relevant, up to date dust free non fiction editions. We can now begin the job of restocking with relevant titles, that meet the needs of our students and teachers. 

Not everything is going out the door. While weeding the shelves we discovered a few very interesting titles that will remain in the library as examples of very old literature. These titles date back to the late 1800s and early 1900s.  They will go on display. We have also pulled a great many "cool" non fiction books that have been ordered in over the last few years, these are the gems that were hidden away and are now out in the open. They are going into a special "Cool Non Fiction" Display for students, which we hope will promote them and get them into the students' hands.

Here are some pictures of our piles of discards.

Library 2.0

On October 19th our wonderful Librarians and Library Assistant took the plunge and presented at the Library 2.0 Conference. They did a fantastic job both in preparing for and presenting at their first online conference.

During the presentation which focussed on our Learning Resources Centre, they shared  information about and images of the physical LRC, the different events and activities that take place here as well as the various displays and clubs that are run out of the LRC.  They also shared the virtual LRC, our centre's webpage and all of the resources within, including the online catalogue, The Shelfari Arrival Shelves, requests for resources and much more.


In addition to this they featured ABCICT, our teaching wiki, which is used on a daily basis by ICT Classes in the LRC, parents interested in internet safety resources, homework and areas of study, and teachers from around the world.

Another important area of focus during this presentation was the many applications that enable librarians and teachers to network, share ideas and resources, and learn from each other on a daily basis.



They also discussed the ways in which our Learning Resources Centre and its members of staff use web applications to maintain ever important channels of communication with the community and the world.  A few of the starring applications  that took centre stage in this section of the presentation were, Blogger, Twitter, Diigo, Facebook and Pinterest.

If you are interested in finding out more, do take a moment to check out the recording here.

Peace One Day at the LRC

One person can make a huge difference and Peace One Day's founder, Jeremy Gilley is living proof of that. Every September 21st, since it's foundation in 1999, Peace One Day has promoted peace around the world, through campaigns in the arts, sports, online and in Education.

The idea that "No matter how small, everyday acts of kindness can help make peace a reality..." (http://peaceoneday.org/)  is a power concept. If each of us can make a difference through our daily interactions with others, just imagine the change that can be brought about through slightly grander initiatives.

This year, the LRC did it's part for peace, on the educational front. Our ICT team, the LRC staff members and a member of the English team continued our work with a very special group of teachers from certain public schools in the San Vicente area. This work is strictly voluntary and run in conjunction with a small group of Canadian fundraisers who have made it their goal to do make a difference in the lives of young people, their families and education in El Salvador.

A year ago we embarked on a journey, in which we targeted a talented group of ICT teachers from the San Vicente area. The project involves working with the group on a wide variety of learning activities, exemplifying current methodology in teaching and learning with technology. The sessions are intense, packed with fun, exploration and reflection. The hub for this learning is the LRC's ABC Inset page in which resources are accessible to participants 24/7.

Today's session was the 5th of 6 in total, which will be held at the LRC. The focus was online gaming in education and online learning projects. Two special guest speakers, from our 8th and 9th grades , gave the teachers a first hand look at the potential that Minecraft and World of Warcraft offer for learning. The teachers, all of whom were excited by these ideas, ended up spending over an hour busily building and working together on our school Minecraft server.

During the second half of the day, the focus moved to planning an online project. In doing so, participants had to reflect on the different learning experiences they had been involved in over the past year. There were no limits imposed. The projects could have been large, small, done individually or in groups.  The teachers were responsible for identifying the age levels and skills, they wanted to target. Their choice of tools reflected each individual teacher's  situation, teaching groups and school settings.The planning was done using a shared template in Google Docs.

The range of projects that they came up with are varied and interesting: social networking using a Facebook page, an arts and culture blog for the community, using social networks to focus on reading, production and editing of videos, audio and images and  Geography and tourism through images and videos.

This phase of the project is coming to a close. It will end on December 7th of this year. This doesn't mean it is over however. The journey will continue. The learning will continue, through the collaborative efforts of those involved. The learning will happen at their schools, online, and as part of the learning community they have become.

Happy Peace One Day 2013!
Who will you make peace with today and every day?