Allanah's Appleby Showcase

A few weeks ago we went to Te Awhina Marae. We all got together to record what we did at the marae.

This week we decided who are school councillors for the next couple of terms. Summer made a great job of making a speech to encourage her classmates to vote for her. She took the Easi-speak home and after a few practice goes managed to record her speech. Well done, Summer.

My Dream

Last night I had a funny dream,
I blew up my balloon,
Then held on tight, jumped into space,
And landed on the moon.

The people there looked very strange,
Three eyes and one green nose.
They had six legs and walked like crabs,
With corks instead of toes.

They showed me all around the place,
Then gave me things to eat,
A nasty drink that looked like ink,
And funny tasting meat.

They said,"Now come and see our king,
He's grand- his nose is red."
I said, "No thanks," and shut my eyes,
And woke up home in bed.

Jeanette Lingard.

My Dream

Last night I had a funny dream,
I blew up my balloon,
Then held on tight, jumped into space,
And landed on the moon.

The people there looked very strange,
Three eyes and one green nose.
They had six legs and walked like crabs,
With corks instead of toes.

They showed me all around the place,
Then gave me things to eat,
A nasty drink that looked like ink,
And funny tasting meat.

They said,"Now come and see our king,
He's grand- his nose is red."
I said, "No thanks," and shut my eyes,
And woke up home in bed.

Jeanette Lingard.

When Mum says,
"I'll be there in a minute."
She really means,
I'll be at least another half-hour."

But when Mum says
"I want this room tidied NOW, or there'll be trouble."
She really, really means it!

A poem by Margaret Schroder

New Zealand School Journal

Here we are on another school year at Appleby School. We are concentrating on making our voices the best that we can. To do that we record ourselves, play it back and discuss how we might improve and then re-record.

Here is our first attempt for 2010. It is based on a poem, My Other Jandal' by Don Franks.

My Other Jandal by Don Fanks

Have you seen my other jandal?
I had it just before.
It shouldn’t be too hard to find-
It’s somewhere on the shore.
It disappeared all by itself
When I was in the waves,
And that’s the way my other jandal
Usually behaves.

The jandal photo was taken by Michael Fawcett

Mr Cook is Keeley's grandfather and he used to go to Appleby School 58 years ago. We interviewed him about his school days at Appleby School.

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5 minutes 11 seconds

We are learning how to interview people to find out more about them and to follow up with open ended questions. We are also learning about how schools were in days gone by. Appleby School is soon to celebrate 150 years. That is quite an achievement. 5MB 7 minutes

This week's podcast was made to describe how we made chalk. The instructions are in New Zealand School Journal Pt 2 No 4 2000. School Journals are a wonderful resource for reading for NZ children.

It was a bit of a competition between two groups to see who could manage their group better to produce a clear well constructed audio file.

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1 minute

River Bugs by Jan Trafford. Based on a NZ School Journal Story Part One, Number One, 2001. For reading this week Kakapo group made this radio play of Jan's article about a water adventure on the Buller River, near Nelson.

Kakapo group were focussed on reading with fluency, expression and clarity.

They would love some feedback on how they might improve their oral skills the next time they read aloud for a audience.

3 minutes 18 seconds

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We have been thinking about all of the wonderful ways that our mothers help us.

Mothers are such a treasure.

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3 minutes 20 seconds

We had a really busy day as we Skyped into Bangkok International School and learnt a lot about life and living in Thailand.

3 minutes 26 seconds

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Today we had fun with our first Skype call with students in other parts of the world. We talked and learned with students from Prince George, British Columbia, Canada.

We had brainstormed some questions to ask the children and they had done the same for us. It was lots of fun and we learnt from each other. We learnt that it was snowing in Canada and it was yesterday there and they have seen wild bears!!!!

4 minutes

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This week at school we have been learning about water safety in, on or around water. Because rivers are the most dangerous places for drownings in New Zealand we have been learning a whole heap of water safety rules for around rivers and lakes.

Listen carefully because one of these rules may save your life one day.

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2 minutes 7 seconds

After a year with myself on leave we are back podcasting. Just to remind myself of the process using iLfe09 I thought I would make a quick podcast.

This week is swim week and we started off the classroom component by telling stories we have had in, on and near the water. Grace told this entertaining story of an encounter with some eels.

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One minute 15 seconds

At the end of last term Discover IT Tasman teachers and principals went on tour of a few Nelson Schools. Brightwater School was the first on our list and we learnt much about the the journey taken by Brightwater School to cater for their 21st century learners from Janice Gulbranson.

Well worth sharing.

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8 minutes 55 seconds

After spending time learning about pre-European settlement in the Appleby are Moutere classroom have built their own Maori legend by combining their knowledge of legends and creating one that fits well with the local area which was well known for kumara growing. Kumara are like a sweet potato. Very yummy.

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Miriam has gained the confidence now to sing for the whole school. It is great to see how Miriam's voice is developing.

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As part of Spanish Language Learning at Upper Moutere we called Chrissy H who is in Argentina with a Language Immersion Award.
We used Skype and Apple’s Call Recorder to record our conversation and edited it in iMovie...

It is a great part of my new job to facilitate engaging learning experiences like these.

7.4MB 5 minutes 6 seconds

Today I got a quick Skype call from Sheryl Nussbaum-Beach who was talking to teachers in Buffalo about the sorts of things you can do with Web 2.0 technologies and I thought I would share the call with you as I haven't made a podcast in a while.

Here is a link to the wiki we were talking about.

Comparing Hemispheres Wiki

We are at the end of the 2007 school year at Appleby School and what better place to review some of the projects we have undertaken over the year.

This movie was compiled by Raewyn, Moutere's classroom teacher.

4.7MB 3 minutes 16 seconds

This week Moturoa class went on camp to the Abel Tasman National Park staying in tents at Bethany Park camping ground and exploring Kaiteriteri Beach.

We also got to take the launch out into the Abel Tasman National Park and walk back to Marahau.

It was a fabulous experience enjoyed by all and well supported by parent helpers.

These excursions help broaden the children’s experiences and hopefully help them treasure New Zealand’s beautiful national treasures.

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Kieran, Zach and Josh got together to create this podcast about Shaun Tan's book, The Lost Thing.

You can hear how much they enjoyed the graphics and storyline.

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Today while the Year Five children were at Inter-school Athletic Sports the Year Fours made a few podcasts.

In this one Georgina, Miriam and Amberley chose to share Roald Dahl's Revolting Rhymes with you.

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We are learning about people's occupations and we thought we would interview Grant, our school bus driver.

Grant is a great bus driver who helps us get to and from school safely.

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This week Waimea, the New Entrant class, shares their animation based on the Maori legend 'How Maui Found His Mother'.

Maui's mother wrapped him in her topknot because she thought he was dead. He was taken to the beach but his uncle found him and taught him many tricks. When he was older he went back to the beach and met with his mother and brothers.

Maui and his brothers went on to do many wonderful things like fish up the North Island of Aotearoa, New Zealand and slow down the sun because it was travelling across the sky too fast.

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This week's homework focus was music- making it, listening to it or performing it. Lots of children had great things to contribute.

I was amazed particularly by Miriam- who sings 'Johnny One Note'. We knew she went to singing lessons but we didn't realise that she has such a great singing talent until she brought along the CD she had recorded with her singing teacher. She is only nine years old and has such a strong voice. Thank you for sharing with us, Miriam.

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After reading the School Journal story, 'Who Gets Tiger?" we decided to record the story and take photos of our classroom fish to illustrate it. We found out that taking photos of fish is really hard. That's why lots of the photos are a bit blurry!

Our classroom fish are pretty special- one was named by us, one was named by children at Cefn Fforest School in Wales and one was named by children at Binghamton Elementary School in New York.

Here is our post about it.

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Stickers are the latest fashion at Appleby School. All the girls are spending their playtimes and lunchtimes swapping and trading stickers. Everyone has their favourites.

Which are yours?

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This Friday Appleby School showed all of Nelson their wonderful masks as part of the Nelson Arts Festival. Families, groups and schools all worked to create masks and join in the fun of the parade through the streets of Nelson. The theme this year was 'Sparkling, Sustainable Future'.

Our theme was 'When the wind changed'- you can see the wind coming through our ranks. Children really enjoyed themselves and worked together to create a masterpiece of music, art and creativity.

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Georgina composed this music by herself using the Apple application Garageband. I never taught her how to do this- she taught herself.

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I made this podcast to accompany my Bling4yrblog blog post trying to explain how to embed your Podomatic podcasts into your Blogger blog directly rather than using a link to it.

People at my workshop on podcasting were finding it difficult to understand so I thought a podcast that you can watch a couple of times after you have subscribed in iTunes would be useful as a reference if they get stuck again.

To subscribe to this podcast in iTunes just click on the iTunes logo on the right hand side of this podcast page.

To get the code I am talking about go to the blog post I have linked above and download the pdf so you can just copy it!

Acknowledgment must go to Jing for the free Mac and PC download that allows video screen captures and to Audio Hijack that allows some tricky audio capture but mostly to Chris Betcher in Sydney that tried to help me with some even trickier swf file conversion.

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Each year we bring together a group of keen, talented students to be in our school band. They practice one afternoon a week at school and go on tour around some local schools to show what they have been learning.

This year's group is called Blue Moon and we filmed this at Moturoa (Rabbit Island) which is about a five minute drive from our school.

Aren't they very cool!

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It has been two years to the day that we made this video- I publish it for the first time in memorium to those lost their lives in Hurricane Katrina.

We spent one school day preparing and filming the video. We based the day around Bloom's Taxonomy with the class gathering content through the discussion of photographs I had found on the internet the night before.

We then divided into teams and each prepared a section, tying it all together by making a news report. We started to run out of time as the three o'clock bell came so we had to film some of the rain sequence inside as we didn't have time to go outside to film!

Because of the tight time frame we had little time for rehearsal and the children had total control over what they wanted to say. I edited that night in iMovie and was pretty pleased with the result- both with the children's learning & engagement and technically with the production.

It is good that we can publish our work to a wider audience for the first time since Hurricane Katrina hit.

I do apologise to those for whom the video took a longer time to download but did not want to miss anything from what the children had done.

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Every second year the whole school learns more about Keeping Ourselves Safe. The programme is supported by parents, police and a variety of videos as children are helped to understand more about being safe and getting help.

The Year Five and Six class prepared this animation using the Apple application I Can Animate. The animation script follows closely one of the support videos 'Home Alone'- what to do if you find yourself arriving home and your parents aren't home yet.

Everyone in class had some role in the production- script, set,animation, filming or production.

It was a great effort- deserving of a wider audience.

12.7MB 3 minutes 5 seconds

New Zealand is heading for a win at the Rugby World Cup. To celebrate that fact I thought I would publish this video that we made a few years back. The Daniel that we refer to is of course our hero, Daniel Carter. The video was played on nationwide TV in the afternoon kids' programmes. It was the first time we had been published.

I had written the movie to DVD and long ago deleted the source files. Thanks to our podcasting buddies at Cefn Fforest School, Wales we were able to use the cross platform download Handbrake to turn that DVD into a file ready for podcasting. It was all so easy.

8.6 MB 56 seconds

Towards the end of last term I gave children free reign to create podcasts of their choice and create music with Garageband. Jordan chose to make this podcast using the memorised template that we often use to scaffold our podcasts.

She had previously taken home my camera to take photos of her family's newest arrival, baby Luke. Luke is really a child of the 21st century- his first podcast!

The photo was composed using Scrapblog and captured using the wonderful new tool, Skitch

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In New Zealand if you need to call the police, ambulance or fire-brigade you call 111 on the phone.

Zach made this animation to help people know what to do in an emergency- he made it using Quicktime Pro. To make it you take all your photos and then go FILE- Open Image Sequence- find the first photo of your animation, choose how many frames per second you want and Quicktime will do the rest. How cool is that!

We used Audacity to record Zach’s narration. Then I put them both together in iMovie.

1.8MB 46 seconds

Last year I posted a video podcast of our school band and thought I should do so again with this year's band as last year's bad got really good reviews.

From Moturoa classroom you will see Tegen singing, Tyler on drums, Elliott on keyboard and Kieran on guitar.

Our band is very good and we like to listen to them play at assembly.

6MB 1 minute

In the last week of our school holidays Jason Hando from Macarthur Anglican School in north Sydney put out a call for educators from around the globe to discuss their experiences with Web2.0 tools.

The call was taken up by Sheryl Nussbaum-Beach, Jen Wagner and my good self. I was aware I was boxing above my weight but am always up for new learning with others around the globe. These opportunities always present opportunities for me to learn as well as share.

Jason made a wiki to co-ordinate the venture. The concept was a fun one- that of speed dating!!! The idea was that participants would have 15 minutes to speak with each of the experts via Skype and then move on. Sheryl, Jen and Jen's cat, Mac were on one computer and I had to hold the fort on the other.Scary stuff. I can really recommend you listen to Sheryl and Jen's podcast which is much more eloquent that mine!

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I am starting to feel a bit better after the dreadful cold I had the other week and we are keen to share a couple of new podcasts with you. Thank you to those kind people who emailed, blogged or left me comments about my attempt at podcasting from home last week.

Today was a first for us, Elliott, Nicole and Zach were chosen to go to a Lead Children's Day with our ICT cluster at which they were able to use Quicktime Pro to make short animations on our safety theme.

They will be able to show us how it was done.

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I have been at home this week with a nasty cough and cold and tomorrow I need to set a new homework task so to help get my message across I thought I would send my class a podcast explaining what I want.

Each week we have a homework Bubble Map that we have brainstormed of activities we can do to support that week's target. Over the year the grid has built up over time so much of the grid just ticks along and children record what they have done in each of the grid boxes as they complete it.

This week I want the children to think about something they can teach the rest of the class. This task needs to be ready for us to hear about next Thursday!

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Rob Waddell won an Olympic Gold Medal for rowing the single scull at the 2000 Olympics in Sydney. Now he is grinder for the Team Emirates New Zealand yacht to help us to win back the America's Cup in Valencia, Spain.

Following from our contact with Zoe's parents in Valencia we were able to talk to Rob and ask him questions about his work.

This was our most ambitious podcasting project yet as TVNZ, our national television network, got wind of the story and sent one camera crew around to film us at Appleby and another to Zoe's parent's flat to film Rob. We are going to be on TV!!!!!!

Rob Waddell was a fabulous person to talk with, his sense of humour and warmth came across so well to all of us assembled at 7pm back at school on a cold winter's night. Thanks for your time, Rob- it was great to be able to talk with you.

I am sorry that I had to edit out some of the interview as it was just too big a file but we will enjoy watching the full movie played back at school.

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Today we had a sharing day showing other classes at Appleby School some of our learning about our 'Destination' studies. You may have seen our sharing video about our Destination- New York, in last week's podcast.

The New Entrant classroom, Waimea, learnt about life in Tonga. We had a shared umu lunch for the whole school. Waimea also made this video about how to get coconut cream from a coconut.

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We are coming to a close with our learning topic, Destination-New York and one of our homework tasks was to present a talk about something we had found out. We made a short movie but when it was finished it came to 21MB which was probably a bit much so I uploaded it to Teacher Tube so it could stream and be less of a problem to those on slower connections.

If you would like a look please click on this link to our class blog so you can see the movie.

Our Class Blog

What an awesome week we had with linking across the globe!

On Wednesday Lauren spoke to some students in Outram School, Dunedin who have been learning Spanish. Lauren spent last year in Chile so is a fluent Spanish speaker.

On Thursday Moutere classroom spoke to Zoe, whose family is in Valencia, Spain, as part of the New Zealand contingent to help us win back the America's Cup. Watch this space for a further podcast with crew from Team Emirates New Zealand. Listen to our first podcast in this series

On Friday my class came back to school on Friday night to catch up with Dino who is spending the morning with Cefn Fforest School who we link with in Wales. He was able to meet in person his on-line buddy, Harry.

It was awesome also that, because it was night-time many mums and dads, grandmas and grandads, were able to come down to school and see how the children were linking with each other and better understand what we are doing.

These opportunities for learning and communicating are so rich, real and relevant. An awesome and exciting time for us all. Thanks for the team from Skype who offer us these Web2.0 tools for free!

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Ryan impressed us with his go-karting trophies that he brought to school to how us for news time. Appleby School is lucky to have a go-kart track really close to it. Dino and Ryan travel all over New Zealand to go to go-kart meetings.

Ryan, Elliott and Kieran recorded this podcast.

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We are learning about living in America and our friends in Binghamton, New York, are helping us answer some of our questions. They sung us some songs and said the Pledge of Allegiance for us. We tried to say it with an American accent but are not too sure how it will sound to American ears. We also learnt God Bless America which we sing with much enthusiasm.

Then we thought we would sing New Zealand's National Anthem in Maori and English.

Lastly it was my birthday last weekend and our friends in Wales sung Happy Birthday to me in Welsh and English which was lovely and well worth sharing.

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This week Nicole, Tegen and Shania chose, prepared, photographed, recorded and edited this podcast all on their own. Other children helped them with the bee drawings.

It is great how children are getting more and more confident at using the technology and speaking clearly for an audience. A few children are even making podcasts just for fun before school!

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ANZAC Poem

They shall not grow old
As we who are left grow old.
Age shall not weary them,
Nor the years condemn.
At the going down of the sun
And in the morning,
WE WILL REMEMBER THEM

Shania, Tyler and Elliott put together this podcast about their attendance at New Zealand's ANZAC day dawn parade. ANZAC stands for Australia & New Zealand Army Corps- a grouping of our soldiers who fought and died on the battlifields of Gallipoli in the Great War. It was on 25 April 1915 that some say New Zealand was born as a nation, through the sacrifice of our soldiers on foreign soils.

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One of the families from Appleby School has recently left to go to Valencia, Spain for a few months to be involved in the America's Cup. Zoe's Dad, Rod, is helping install animation software designed by New Zealanders that will help people all over the world get more enjoyment of the America's Cup because they will be able to see in 3D where the yachts are up to.

Rod came to school and spoke to our senior classes about what he is going to do and then we each took a photo and spoke about it so you would know more too. The beginning sound bite is of when the New Zealand yacht 'Black Magic' won the America's Cup in 1995.

We hope to hear more from Rod while he is in Valencia.

Wouldn't it be great if we brought the America's Cup back to New Zeland.

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The New Entrant class at Appleby School have prepared a co-operative digital story constructed with iPhoto describing the things they like best about being at school.

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Ko Waimea te awa. Waimea is our river.

We care about it and want to be healthy. This week we had the opprtunity to go to the river and test it for clarity, conductivity, acidity, flow, temperature and to see how many animals were present in the water. It was exciting because the water level kept on rising because of the extra big high tides that we have been having were pushing the fresh water back up the river! After all those tests we decided that our river was healthy and we pleased about that.

The sound volume is not great in places but it was recorded on the move.

This week Brittany, Amberley and Miriam prepared our podcast.

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Today before school I had the privelege of chatting with new on-line friends, Mrs Sullivan and her class of Year Five students from ,Horace Mann Elementary School Binghamton School District in New York, USA. We have been chatting through Skype for a week or two and a preparing a collaboration between out two classes that will foster links between our schools and help us to learn more about each other.

It was close to their school home time and things were totally unprepared but the young voices from America sounded full of excitement at the prospect of making a new link with us.

We look forward to further links in the future.

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We were lucky enough to be able to talk with Dr Barrie Frost from Ottawa, Canada, who is a very clever neuro-scientist. One of his research projects is to study the migratory paths of monarch butterflies. He showed us some incredible photographs that took our breath away. We learnt some really interesting facts about these incredible butterflies.

Here Dr Frost tells us some of the wonderful things that the monarch butterfly can do.

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This is our first truly mobile podcast recorded on location at our Wakefield School Swimming Carnival with the iTalk attached to my iPod. It was lovely to be able to capture the candid reflections on the day's events as they happened. It was a great morning, very well supported by the parent community.

I was able to speak with children, parents, organisers and friends of Appleby School.

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Jessica Ahlberg came to visit us in our classroom today. She is an excellent artist who has illustrated three children's books. We enjoyed asking her questions about what she does. She liked being with us as well and came to watch us swim.

Jessica is just visiting New Zealand and is going to fly out to Los Angeles on Wednesday. We wish her all the best with her work. We really enjoyed having her with us and we learnt a lot from her.

The skish, skish noise in the background is the sound of the cicadas in the trees calling for each other. A cicada is a flying insect thing that sheds its skin as it grows. Children like to collect the shells at playtime.

Elliott composed the theme music for this podcast.

5.2 MB 8 minutes and 43 seconds

Technorati Profile

We started our new school year this week in the sweltering New Zealand sunshine.

We used my new 80GB video iPod and iTalk attachment to record our holiday introductions. I was really pleased with the ease of use of the iTalk so you can look forward to further podcasts out in the field rather than being tied to the computer or traditional microphone. A very cool first attempt.

We got some encouraging feedback on our podcast from another school I taught at many summers ago, Coley Street, in Foxton which was nice. Welcome to the podcasting world, Coley Street. We look forward to hearing from you.

Children have been enjoying listening to last year's podcasts on my 'old' iPod Nano. Most had never used one before and quickly caught on to the click wheel controls.

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This is the last of our poems for the summer.

School starts again at Appleby on 7 February and we will start podcasting again as a fresh group of students learn the art of podcasting.

This poem is written by Dianna Noonan, a well known NZ poet. The poem mentions a pukeko feather. Pukeko are a beautiful native bird of New Zealand with feathers the colour of paua.

Pukeko Web Site

The poem was cleverly presented by Gloria, Emily, Georgia, Ruby.

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The school holidays are nearly over. Our northern hemisphere listeners may think it strange to have our long summer holidays over Christmas but we go back to school for the new school year on 7 February.

The photos were gathered from Flickr. I recently got into using Flickr because I have added an uploader from iPhoto directly. You may like to look at our Flickr photos of Tiny Ted, our geocache bear's, travels. I have added a link from our podcast's main page.

This poem was read by Jessica, Jordan I, Raven and Brittany.

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This poem is a poem dedicated to all the grandfathers in the world who love and care for their grandchildren.

It was ably read by Susa, Maddison and Jillian.

The photographs were gathered from the internet.

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Here is another poem written by Philippa Werry.

The photos were taken on one of our school camps. Every year I take the class somewhere. This time it was to the Abel Tasman National Park, We stay in tents at a camping ground and go out on the launch along the coastline and walk back through native bush.

Class Blog about our camp

Abel Tasman National Park

The poem was read by Sam P and Tyler

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'Write a Poem' was written by Desna Wallace in the Part 2 Number 2 2001 NZ School Journal. Multiple copies of school journals are a wonderful free resource given to all NZ primary schools to support the teaching of literacy. There are four general levels of journal published four times a year. I only have good things to say about these journals.

Seeing advertising is now visible on Podomatic here is a link to a reading resource you can buy. Allanah's Book. I get a grand total of $1.32 per book sold from which I have to pay tax and Accident Insurance (ACC). Paper cuts can be hell. Yippee! I'm a millionaire!

It was ably presented by Sam J, Fynn and Jackson P and Dino.

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In celebratrion of the New Year Jordy, Jackson P, Braden and Nathan recorded this poem by New Zealand poet, Philippa Werry.

They cleverly decided to add their own sound effects.

The video was recorded by myself at the 200th anniversary of the Battle of Trafalgar which was celebrated in Nelson, NZ in 2005. They had anchored a barge out in Nelson harbour which is overlooked by the Port Hills. Everyone got an excellent viewpoint and the fireworks looked spectacular reflected in the water.

Well done guys.

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On the last day of school for 2006 we recorded some of our favourite poems that we had learnt over the past year.

Our plan is to publish a new poem each week over the holidays so you wouldn't forget about us. We know that a lot of people listen to our podcast in the northern hemisphere and your school only takes a short break over Christmas. We go back to school in February- that is a long time to take a break.

Check out our blog to keep in touch.

1.4MB 1 minute 18 seconds

Tonight was Appleby School's Year Six Leaver's Assembly. We sat in the evening under the canvas eaves of the ampitheatre to listen to Metamorphic, the school band, play a set.

Then we had some interesting speeches and all the leaving children got an Appleby School leaver's badge. Chanelle stood and gave a lovely speech on behalf of the children, we sang a couple of Christmassy songs and then had a family supper before going home to bed.

We only have one half day of school left before we break for Christmas but we are going to record some poems tomorrow so we have some podcasts to go on with over the holiday break.

4MB 48 seconds - short and sweet

We have just returned from an outdoor education experience at Bridge Valley in the hills near Nelson.

We had a wonderful recipe for success- warm weather, happy children, great parent support and a challenging range of facilities.

This video gives you an idea of some of the highlights.

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One of the features of Appleby School is its wonderful yearly Pet Show Day. This year's one was really great with lots of entries in all the events. What a great day we had.

Through our podcasting we have found kindred spirits in linking with Cefn Fforest School in Wales. We have exchanged letters, emails, photos, blog posts, gifts and a very small geocaching bear which is travelling about in Nelson having a wonderful time. Look for photos on our Moturoa Blog of his travels.

After a couple of practice runs, Cefn Fforest School teacher, Paul H and I arranged to record a Skype conversation this morning. Children in my class decided on a question they would like to ask Paul and we started chatting.

It was a great experience for the children. I was really pleased with their new confidence in speaking. I am sure their podcasting experiences over the last six months have really improved their oral literacy and confidence.

We have come such a long way in those six months. My digital natives take it easily in their stride and think of it all as unexceptional. I have learnt a great deal and feel at home with the technology. Podcasting has given me a greater audience also which I am appreciative of.

Nelson, NZ is at the bottom of the globe but we are still 'connected'.

Please leave a comment. We love feedback and you get a pin on our classroom wall map if we know what part of the world you are listening to us from.

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I am trying to see what kind of podcast you can get just with Podomatic's recording.

As I see it the downside will be that you only get one shot of making the recording. If you muck it up you can't edit it, add or delete. It all has to be done in one go. It is a really quick way of doing the business though if you know what you want to say.

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I am exploring all of the different ways I can think of to make a podcast or vodcast. For this one the basis was a Powerpoint presentation I had made some time ago for my class on composing photos using the rule of thirds.

To turn the Powerpoint into a podcast I saved it as a movie then dragged that movie into iMovie to add the voice track.

I had found another open-source music website and couldn't get the music track I wanted to download so played it through the laptop speakers and recorded it with Audacity. The result doesn't have the same sound quality as a downloaded MP3 version but it is OK.

I hope the topic of the Powerpoint is useful to you.

9MB 3 minutes 38 seconds

This week was a very busy one for us at Appleby School. Our senior classes performed on stage with Suzanne Prentice who is a famous New Zealand entertainer.

She has been awarded a Queen's Honour for her music services.

The sound tracks on this podcast are of Moturoa class singing a couple of Suzanne's Christmas themed songs. We recorded this part back in the classroom.

Our performance was 'wicked'.

By Braden (Year Four)

1.6MB 3 minutes 7 seconds

Each year Pete leads a school band at Appleby School. The popularity of the band is evidenced by the growing number of instrumuments and children that are keen to have a go.

Today they are getting ready to go on tour around some of the local schools. We were their practice audience. The band's name is Metamorphic. See how far they have come on their journey to musical stardom!

Aren't they a talented group.

13MB 2 minutes 16 seconds

For some unknown reason some of our laptop animations in Kid Pix ceased to work.

After a little web browsing I found a fix and a reason why!

After updating Quicktime the newer version allows for Flash animations to be turned off or on. It defaults to off. You need to go to Quicktime and switch them back on again.

This podcast will show you how to do that. Hope it will be useful.

I got the idea into my head about a week ago that I would like to be able to do a 'How To' podcast using moving graphics capture from my computer screen. I had seen a couple of other people do it and don't like to feel like I am missing out. LOL. Tonight, Greg, our ICTPD national facilitator, gave me a link to TILT TV for educators. This was 'just-in-time' learning.

From TILT TV http://tilttv.blogspot.com/ I got a couple of links and I even fired up my PC to see if I could do a screen capture from there but it was all too difficult so I gave up.

Then I tried the Apple version using SnapzProX2. Great. Nice and simple and the video was saved as a Quicktime which was quickly imported into iMovie to add a voice track and music from Freeplay.

I am really pleased with how it turned out although I would suggest that a viewing in iTunes would be clearer as the screen view will be bigger than viewing in podomatic.

Enjoy! I am quite proud of this little effort.

Cefn Fforest SChool in Wales has inspired us to have a go at a live vodcast with real people. We had a great opportunity to do this as the Year Fives were away today at the Inter-School Athletic Sports so we only had a small class of 18 Year Fours.

We looked at some of the things we like at Appleby School. The vodcast was put together quickly with the minimum of editing but was lots of fun to have a go at!

It is 10MB big so if you have a slow connection you may like to have a cuppa and do a couple of other things while you wait.

We look forward to being on the Loop with a 36,000k modem next year!!!

By accident really we found that we could upgrade Kid Pix 3 to allow us to make a podcast using Kid Pix instead of our usual Garageband. Once we got the hang of it it was a piece of cake. You just make a picture that has sound recorded on to it and then make a slideshow of those files and then export the whole lot to Ipod.

We can't edit our sound bytes like we can in Garageband but the end result is great with more of the children's creativity expressed in their own art work taken with a background of iconic Nelson photographs.

It does sound soft to start with but it gets stronger later in the podcast.

Cool transitions, eh???

Our podcast is getting itself noticed by other educational podcasters around the globe. It makes the world seem like a smaller, more connected place!

This week we changed the format of the podcast a little and had more of a conversation about Jane Evans' art. Jane is a famous Nelson artist who is known for using bold colours to express emotions and feelings in her art work.

We had a class trip to the art gallery to learn about her art works last week.

In this podcast Jackson C, Elliott and Jillian all make a contribution.

We have been learning about logos and how they help to sell a place or product. We are looking to changing our school logo in the future as well.

We used very advanced technology this time because we interviewed Teri, a student from nearby Brightwater School, using Skype, the free internet telephone application. We never actually left our classroom.

Teri explained about her school's logo very well. Thank you Teri. What a cool way to interview people who are in far off places.

One more thing of note! A clever techie kind of thing! When the podcast is playing if you click on where it says Brightwater School at the bottom of the photo you will stop the podcast and be taken to Brightwater's web site! I bet you didn't know that!!!!!!!

Nikki's New Entrant class have been learning about the Lynley Dodd's books. Lynley Dodd is a very well known New Zealand author.

Slinky Malinki is a cheeky and friendly cat by day and master stealer by night.

Each child drew a picture of Slinky Malinki in Kid Pix and then recorded a rich caption to go with it. Nikki put it all together into a slideshow & movie and I turned it into a podcast. Quite a collaborative effort.

Well done Waimea class.

Pete's Year Five and Six class have been working extensively creating music with Garageband. William and Josh have created this jingle that will be played on a local radio station.

I have been asked to do a couple of PD sessions with local teachers on what a podcast is and how to create one. Some of the teachers at the meeting will not have Apple computers so this becomes a bit of a problem. So I set out to create a podcast on my PC. I used Audacity to record audio and then imported it in to Movie Maker for adding the graphics.

I have republished this podcast at a higher bit rate (whatever that is) in order to hopefully have the thing play completley when it subscribes into iTunes. Fingers crossed!

After a few wrong turns I got thing working. Thanks for the techie tips from Paul at Cefn Fforest School in South Wales.

Ruby and Lara did such a good job on this digital poetry production that they deserve a wider audience. Their voices have wonderful expression and are nice & clear. The music is from

http://freeplaymusic.com/

and is copyright free. Freeplay music is an excellent resource of quality music.

Mrs Pritchard does always come back for more.

Jamie and Sam J worked on this podcast about Pete. All of the teachers were very co-operative in letting us come and photograph them while they were working.

To change a Quicktime movie into one that is OK for podcasting you need to export it for IPod settings. One day I will get a video IPod nano!

Jessica and Emily collaborated to make this vidcast. Notice how they used the Ken Burns effect to make the photos appear as though they are moving. Ken Burns was given the job of making a movie about the American Civil War but he only had still photos to work with so he gradually zoomed in on them to make them look more interesting and to focus more on the subject.

Mrs Pritchard was a great subject of the vidcast.

We have been doing some great digital poetry. Digital poetry is when you write a poem and then take photos to illustrate your poem. We would have like to make the photos move but some of the laptops were playing up. Gloria and Georgia did a great job of this poem about all the wonderful things Mrs Murphy does to help us around the school.

We had the pleasure of being able to interview Dean Schneider, a New Zealand nature photographer, who had come to visit with us for an afternoon to learn more about the sorts of things we are doing with computers in our classroom. We were surprised to learn that Dean had taken the photographs for the school reader 'Helping the Hoiho' which was Dillon's favourite when he was younger. I think all NZ children would recognise that book.

We have been busy exploring websites that support our learning. This website is a really good one with lots of maths resources that can be used in a variety of ways.

Note that this is a vodcast in that it is more than a series of photos to illustrate the oral text. At one stage it zooms in in a similar way to the ULearn vodcast. Another thing to note is the soundtrack. I made this by using an audio hijacking programme to record the Firefox sounds I made by running the mouse over link boxes on the US Public Broadcasting Kids website!

Instead of the usual story of, "What we did in the holidays," we made a podcast instead. A much more fun exercise in that everyone had a turn in front of the microphone. It took lots of practise to get our voices sounding nice and clear and with plenty of expression.

I am trying a new something that I have never tried before- making a video podcast about my trip to the Ulearn Conference in Christchurch in the September school holidays. It worked!!! I am so proud of myself!!!! It is 10MB so you lot on dial-up will be sad. But hey!! Pretty clever stuff- what do you think!
Thanks for the encouraging comments from you good folks but I had delete them when I re-did the podcast with the copyright free music track. Jack Johnson had to go in order that I set a good example!

The file is a biggie but I suggest you subscribe with ITunes by clicking on the iTunes logo and then you can watch it over and over without having to stream it each time!

Jamie, Sam J and Ruby made this podcast about our wonderful three dimensional art work.

When you are finished listening click on the Appleby School link to send us some feedback.

Enjoy the holidays.

Moturoa

There is a new look for iTunes v7 on Apple. Very cool.

With Point England School's podcast as a model I think we managed a higher quality podcast this week. This week's crew spent a couple of sessions listening to Point England's quality podcasts a bit like an exemplar really. After that they were given a bit of a template on which to scaffold their discussion. After that groundwork the track was laid with very few edits needed. Previous edits had got up to about 40 this time only about ten. Children have more expression and are more confident and strong in what they wanted to say.

After a whole heap of revisions I eventually got ITunes to convert Garageband to an mp3. And then with a bit of help from my friends I got it to work with photos as well. As usual the solution was incredibly simple once you managed to work out the menu trail. Tip to self- export from GB to desktop m4a format in Mozilla. This podcast reflects on our trip to Point England School in Auckland. Apart from my learning directly about podcasting I felt the trip validated some of the progress we have made over the last twelve months as part of the Waimea-South ICTPD cluster.