MAB Blocks for your SMART Board

Download the above MAB block images to use on your SMART Board with your Notebook software,

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Choosing a blog host

Choosing an appropriate blog host is the first step in establishing your own classroom blog. There are several options which are free and some that do cost a small amount of money.
A couple of free options are Google's 'blogger' and Edublogs 'Free'. A further option is to install wordpress on your own domain.
The cheapest and most effective option for me was Edublogs Pro. Since I didn't have my own domain this was the only option available to me that would be accessible to my students at school. Due to the school internet filter all 'blogspot' blogs are blocked, where as Edublogs are not.
Edublogs was about $43 dollars Australian for a years subscription. It is a wordpress based blog. Pro enables you to remove adds from your blog. Below is a table from the Edublogs website that explains the differences between different types of blogs.

To see a table explaining the differences between the three different versions of Edublogs follow the link below...

http://edublogs.org/why-edublogs/#select

 

Mr. Baldock's Classroom Blog

mrbaldock.edublogs.org

Last week I launched my Classroom Blog for my current year 3 class. It is something I've been wanting to do for some time and I'm glad that I have. It has many positive outcomes for students already. The biggest being a motivational tool for writing and collaborating with their peers about their learning.

As a learning tool blogging is a great opportunity for the students to create content, share, reflect on their learning, extend their knowledge and collaborate with others. Students in my class will have the opportunity to post reports or reflections about their work. Using the internet students will have opportunities at school or at home (if internet access is available) to collaborate with their peers, and have opportunities to work with students from other classes, schools or even countries.

Blogging will enable students to have fun while improving their literacy, numeracy and ICT (Information Communication Technology) skills. It is also a great opportunity to establish early appropriate online behaviours.

Over the coming weeks I plan to blog about how I went about setting up my blog and the resources I use with in it.

Smart Exchange

http://exchange.smarttech.com/

This website gives you links to various downloadable resources for your Smartboard. You can search the database or look at the resources sorted by subject, grade or file type. You also have the ability to upload your own resources to make a contribution to the website. 

Sir Ken Robinson: Do schools kill creativity?

International Children's Digital Library

http://en.childrenslibrary.org/

This is a great resource to access children's books from around the world for free online. This would be a great resource to use with interactive whiteboards. There are also iPhone and  iPad apps available to bring this library to those devices.

Below is a mission statement about the intentions of this organisation.
MISSION STATEMENT

The mission of the International Children's Digital Library Foundation (ICDL Foundation) is to support the world's children in becoming effective members of the global community - who exhibit tolerance and respect for diverse cultures, languages and ideas -- by making the best in children's literature available online free of charge. The Foundation pursues its vision by building a digital library of outstanding children's books from around the world and supporting communities of children and adults in exploring and using this literature through innovative technology designed in close partnership with children for children.

The ICDL Foundation is a non-profit corporation.

Making Tracks

A Fantastic Librarian and Teacher called Sandra, put me onto this great collection of books. I've used two books already with my Year 3 class. When you have students spending their lunch time to go and borrow the books you have been reading in class, you know you are on a winner.

"Making Tracks takes young readers on a fictional journey through some fascinating

 Australian stories, inspired by objects from the National Museum of Australia's 

collection. The series is written and illustrated by leading Australian children's authors

and artists." - National Museum of Australia Website

http://www.nma.gov.au/kidz/making_tracks/