Sustained Silent Drawing 2016!

How silent and sustained the sketching when learners can choose their own drawing lessons from Youtube! Room 10 students are loving sketching various animals in different styles this week.  I think there is even more focus than at SSR time!

Training with Yayleen - by Alexandra

Yesterday my mum came to do training with Yayleen. She had to listen to instructions. Now I can take my Chromebook home from Monday to Thursday. My mum is the first parent in the school to do training with Yayleen. It was exciting taking my Chromebook home last night and it will be cool taking it home every day except Friday and in the weekend.

Reading at home

Now that everyone is able to take their Chromebook home, we are able to do different activities when we are learning at home. Here Julianne reads the story "Mele's Money Dance" to show that she is practising her reading at home.

A blogging challenge!

A special visitor, Rachel Williams from the University of Auckland, came to Room 10 yesterday to tell us all about an online holiday blogging programme she is running during the holidays - from Saturday 9th July until Sunday 24th July. She has created all sorts of writing activities to do with the Olympic Games in Rio.

If we decide to take up her blogging challenge, there are different activities to be completed every day about the Olympic Games. Each time we blog about an activity, we are given points! Certificates for everyone who blogs! Prizes for the most active bloggers with the most points!

A Celebration For Parents - by Robati

After school I went to the road and I saw my mum. She was waiting in the car for me to go home. When I came to her, I told her to come and visit my class to get my new chromebook so she followed me.

When we arrived at my class, I showed her my google drive, class site, class blog and one of my favourite pieces of writing. She read my writing and she was laughing. 

I showed her a form with some questions that she had to do on my chromebook. When she had done it, I could take it home after she had signed a form for Mrs Buchanan.  I showed her why I wanted to take my chromebook home in a video. Fiona, Yayleen and my mum were laughing when they saw the video.  I had to show them what I had to do so she knows what I am learning. Also she could even learn from me what I have done.

I enjoyed eating the snacks with cheese and crackers. The cheese was tasty with the crackers.

Henry's tips about taking your Chromebook home

An invitation to whānau

Parents, family and whānau, we would love to welcome you into Room 10 on Thursday afternoon as we prepare to bring our Chromebooks home.

The Times They Are A-Changin'

What excitement! Mary, Kuini, Henry and Saluselo rolled out their new Chromebooks today while the rest of Room 10 used more traditional ways to record their learning.  Henry was amazed by the number of emails that had arrived in his inbox since December.  Kuini enjoyed browsing through our blog at her own pace, thinking about some of the things we experienced last year.

Thank you, Mrs Grant!

While it seems like only yesterday that Rooms 9 and 10 began a digital learning journey, we are nearing the end of our first year as Smart Learners. It is remarkable how much we have learnt: from logging in and typing a capital letter to our kawa of care, digital footprint and generally being Cybersmart. None of this would have been possible without Mrs Grant! Thank you, Mrs Grant, for setting us up for success on our incredible learning adventure!

Let's work together!

Yesterday Room 9 and Room 10 worked together to learn how to create a screencast using Snagit. Every Room 9 learner buddied up with a Room 10 learner to talk about and reflect on the favourite movies (so far) from Film Festival 2015. This talking and thinking was to be shared as a screencast. Miss Ginders and Mrs Buchanan were so proud of everyone learning together so successfully at this even though there were some challenges with the internet. When the final versions are ready, students will share these screencasts on individual blogs.   

My comic collage - by Jessie

When we were making a comic collage, we had to take photos of us doing these four steps. The reason why we had to do a comic collage was to make sure we will look after our chromebook safely. When we were finished our comic collage, we all had a look at them as a class and there were mainly photos of Malae!

Going to save the world! by Zion

This is one of the first Digital Learning Objects that we created and it was quite tricky.  I chose somewhere in the world I would like to visit one day.  Then I found an image of it on Google images.  Next, I cut around a photograph of my head using Pixlr so I could put  myself in that place.  Maybe I will travel there in the future in real life.

5, 4, 3, 2, 1, Blast Off!

Today we each launched our personal blog. Mission accomplished!  We were excited and proud to publish our first post, a blog profile. This writing lets us share a little about ourselves and our goals. It also makes us think about how much we have learnt about the Chromebook and being Cybersmart with Mrs Grant so far this year. 

Sadly, Mrs Krausse spent her final session with Mrs Grant in Room 10 today, although she will be able to check in with us digitally in future.  Our next step on our Cybersmart journey is learning how to make quality blog comments.  We look forward to sharing this learning here and in our personal blogs during Term 4.

A picture of kind words

How do we make it easier to learn with others when we're part of a group?

We created word pictures of our ideas and discussions.

A smart footprint

Now that we can use the Chromebooks more quickly and have learnt some tips and tricks to create a strong password as part of being Cybersmart, we are finding out what types of information learners can share on blogs.  Here is an example of an infographic that Katrina has created to share what she has discovered.  She has thought carefully about her layout and when choosing colours so that it is easy to read the information.

How secure is my password?

There are some important things to think about when choosing and creating a password: how do we create a strong, secure and unique password?  Here are some things Mrs Grant has asked us to think about.  We will share some more of our ideas as we complete our posters!

Our Top Tips!

We have been learning lots of shortcuts so that we can work efficiently
on the Chromebooks.  Here are our Top Tips!

Smart Footprints

It was wonderful to welcome Mrs Grant back to Room 10 today so we could begin the next stage of our digital learning journey: how to create a positive digital footprint.  We explored different personal and class blogs to see what information Manaiakalani learners share with others.  We enjoyed discussing what we found with our visitor, Mrs Krausse, as well as with Mrs Grant and Mrs Buchanan.

Sharing our Term 2 Learning

Kawa of care

We were reminding ourselves about how we look after our Chromebooks today. This is our Kawa of Care. We had a visitor in Room 10, as well as Mrs Grant, supporting us to create a comic collage using Google Drawings.  Miss Campbell was visiting from Greymouth (on the west coast of the South Island) to find out about our Manaiakalani digital learning journey.