Time of your life

Today was an emotional one as Amy had her graduation assembly from Primary School this morning. It’s hard to believe it’s been almost eight years since she started her formal education as a shy, quiet four year old.  Now, in front of me, I see a quietly confident young girl ready for the move to secondary school.

It was lovely to be invited in to the school today, to be part of the celebrations as Amy and her friends looked backed on their years together, through the lovely version of the ‘You’re going to miss us when we’re gone’ song they performed and the fantastic slideshow their teacher put together of the happy times they’d shared.

Emotions were running high in the girls, their mums and their teachers as they bade farewell to their time in Primary.

For me, today was also about saying goodbye to this fantastic group of girls I’ve gotten to know over the years, through my visits to their class to help them to use technology.  In the first few years our times together involved using content that had already been created by others, but over the years this developed into us creating our own content through applications such as Animoto, Glogster, Scratch, HTML and so much more. I was so delighted to have some of the girls over for the ICT in Education conference back in April. The played a blinder as expected and really seemed to take to the task of showcasing their work.

My wish for the girls, as they go their separate ways, is that the strong bonds of friendship that have been forged over the past eight years will stand the test of time …

Junior Entrepreneur Programme in the Convent Primary Nenagh

My daughter is in 6th class at the moment and seems to be really enjoying her last year in Primary School.  This is in no small part due to the many projects her class are undertaking under the guidance of her teacher.  They’ve undertaken a variety of research projects as well as the Intel Mini Scientist Programme and more recently the Junior Entrepreneur Programme (JEP).  I was lucky enough to make it in to the school for the JEP showcase the week before last and I’m so glad that I did.  What greeted me was a class of 29 girls eager to share their ideas, evidence of their hard work and most of all their enthusiasm.

The programme started back around Christmas time when the girls were asked to each come up with an idea that they could produce as part of the programme.  They then worked in small groups and each group chose one idea to bring forward.  Some of the ideas included customised hoodies, smartphone speakers, bracelets and more …

Over the course of the programme the girls learned more about business and were visited by a local entrepreneur.  Each team then worked on their idea before presenting it at a Dragon’s Den in the school.  After the Dragons’s Den one idea was chosen for the entire class to progress with and another iteration of the process began.  The class were divided into teams including :  StoryTelling, Finance, Sales, Design & Production and Marketing.  Each team had an area to work on and got to work.  What blew me away at the showcase was that as soon as you stepped in to the hall, the girls were full of chat to tell you all about what they had done.   The teams showed articles from the local paper,  their ideas of the qualities an entrepreneur should have

their surveys

their fab logo

their flyer

and last but by no means least their fab bracelets

Check out the class blog post where you can find their PowerPoint of their JEP Story. One of the girls also created a website for the product based on the HTML she learned at CoderDojo Nenagh.

I’ve been going in to the girls showing them some IT concepts since they were in senior infants so it’s been lovely to see them grow into the confident young girls they have become.

Scratch with Silvermines NS

For the past four weeks I’ve been working with the 4th class pupils in Silvermines National School. We’ve been using Scratch and it’s been great fun for all of us 🙂 The class are in a mixed class with 5th and 6th so it was lovely for me to have a small group to work with.  We only had an hour a week but we’ve covered a lot.

The first week was taken up with showing the basics of Scratch and getting comfortable with how to get things done. Some of that morning was spent training their robots (i.e myself and their teacher).  What was lovely to see was that they had already played this game as Gaeilge over the previous couple of weeks so they had already begun to think algorithmically without even being aware of it.

Week 2 saw us working on a basic Scratch game involving a shark, a fish, some basic movement and changing costumes.  This game helped to introduce topics like collision detection, scores, broadcasting to trigger an event and many other game related concepts.  Weeks 3 and 4 then saw the group working in pairs to create their own games and animations.  I really enjoyed seeing what they came up with and seeing how getting something working really spurred them on to improve their game.

We also had fun with a Makey Makey apple piano …

… before bringing a human version back in to show the rest of their class 🙂

This week I’m loving … Google+ hangouts

Last Thursday I was lucky enough to be involved in a Google+ hangout between my sister’s 1st class group (6/7 year olds) in Tipperary and Michael Thornton’s kindergarten group (5 year olds) in Charlottesville in Virginia.   This was our second hangout – we’d had a previous one in November that also included Mary Jo Bell’s senior infants group (5/6 year olds) in Dublin. In both of the hangouts we had great fun chatting about school start and end times and uniforms or lack of them among other things.

The Irish classes taught the class in the US some Irish sayings and in the hangout last Thursday we say songs and danced.  The singing was completely out of sync as the classes on both sides of the Atlantic gave their all as we sang ‘Jingle Bells’ 🙂  We finished the hangout with the class in the US teaching us their morning dance.  Seeing them all dancing together was an image that I held on to as I heard of the horror that had taken place in Newtown in Connecticut on Friday.

It’s really difficult to do justice to how much the classes enjoy the 15-20 minute conversations over a Google+ hangout. It’s such an easy way to connect classes across the globe or even just up the road.  As a way of continuing the relationship we are looking at other ways to connect in between hangouts.  We’ve begun this process by making Pixengo’s in Tipperary of Irish expressions which we’ve shared. We have another hangout planned for after the holidays and I for one am really looking forward to it 🙂

This week I’m loving … Pixengo

 ” Take a picture, record a voice message and share it together as a ‘pixengo’ in seconds… right from your iphone or ipod.” ref: http://pixengo.com/

A couple of weeks ago I saw a tweet from Paul O’Mahony in which he mentioned an app called Pixengo, which is a free app for the iPhone, iPad and iPod.  I liked the look of the example Pixengo that Paul included in his tweet so I thought I’d give it a try.  The idea is to take a picture and then add audio of up to 30 seconds so I thought it would be perfect for the group in the advanced Scratch room at the Limerick Coder Dojo.  I got a chance to try it out last Saturday and it worked a treat.   Once the app is downloaded you can create pixengos using either the camera or a picture from the camera roll.  There is a photo editor which I haven’t used yet, which allows you to apply effects, change the orientation etc.  Once you’re happy with the picture you can then record the audio, which can be rerecorded if necessary.

So on Saturday I spent a while taking photos of the children’s screens, showing their Scratch games, and getting them to tell me what their games were about.  You can share the Pixengos using email, Facebook or Twitter.  I decided to create a list on list.ly with links to the pixengos and so far the list has had almost 200 views.  Have a look at the list here.

I think Pixengo would be a very useful app in a school to get children to talk about their art or some photos from a school tour and this is something I’m hoping to try out next week with my sister and her first class group.

School Celebrations

I was lucky enough to be at celebrations in three different schools over the past few weeksand I was really struck with how important these celebrations are to a school and the amount of work that goes into having them run smoothly.

The celebrations started in the Convent Primary School Nenagh where the cause of the celebrations was 25 years of the school band.  Sr. Stephanie, founder of the school band was the guest of honour.  The highlight of the celebration took place outside, where the band performed Sr. Stephanie’s suite, music which was composed by the girls specially for the occasion.

Later that same day I went along to the official opening of Silvermines National School.  After more than 10 years of planning and preparation the new school was finally started this time last year and was completed in March.  Then came time for the celebrations when the community came together for the official opening.  We were blessed with a beautiful evening in the middle of a typical wet summer in Ireland!  What really came through from the people who spoke on the night was how important the support of the local community for the school has been.  That support was very visible again on the night as people came together to celebrate the beautiful new school.

The final celebration was my son’s graduation mass to mark the end of his time in primary school.  My previous post on this momentous occasion can be found here.

The common denominators for all of these school celebrations were the input of the children and the links between a local school and the community in which it finds itself.

Time to say goodbye …

image from http://godzgurlz.com/content/time-say-goodbye

Today was my 12 year old’s last day in Primary school.  The occasion was marked with a graduation mass which gave us parents a last chance to go into the school.  As I looked at my son and his friends I was reminded of the first time we went in to school for their nativity play in Junior Infants.  There was great excitement as little boys sought out their mammies and daddies and settled once they saw them.  There wasn’t the same need for reassurance today but I still got the thumbs up just to let me know that my presence was noted 🙂

It’s hard to believe that 8 years have passed since he first started in school, and yet, now here we are, finished and facing a whole new world of secondary school.  Today was an emotional day for many parents, this one included, and when one of the boys sang ‘Time to Say Goodbye’ there was a tear or two shed.

Following this with a rendition of ‘The Graduation Song’ sung by all the boys was enough to send us all searching for the tissues!!

There is a real sense of anticipation in the boys.  They’re ready to move on and yet there is a hesitance in saying goodbye.  Most of them have been together all the way through primary school and they have become a very tightly knit group.  Next year will bring changes in that dynamic as they end up in different schools and different classes within the same school.  My wish for them all, as they move into the next phase, is that the strong friendships that they have forged will withstand the changes.

My trip to Dualla National School

I was lucky enough to go to Dualla NS with Pam Moran and Ira Socol as part of their preparations for the ICT in Education conference last weekend.  The plan was that I would go for about half an hour and then return to Thurles to continue the last minute preparations, leaving Pam and Ira to complete the visit, and meander around nearby Cashel, before returning to the college for the CESI Meet, that would kick off the conference.  That plan went out the window once we got to Dualla.  It’s hard to put my finger on what entranced me about the visit and what kept me there for an hour longer than intended but that’s exactly what happened.  Dualla is a 2 teacher school and because of our timing we only got to see the senior room which houses the children from 2^nd to 6^th class.  What really struck me about the class is the sense of fun, of trust (between teacher and pupils and vice versa) and the ease with which technology has been woven into what is done in the classroom.

This is not a school with a state of the art computer room, yet technology is an integral part of the classroom.  The technology consisted of an interactive whiteboard, a couple of laptops and an iPhone with a broken screen.  During our visit we heard about the history of the school and the history of hurling in Tipperary, the children sang songs, taught Pam how to dance and how to hurl, and all the while pictures were captured using the iPhone with the broken screen, to preserve the memories, and to be used in the blog post that was put up before the visitors left .  We checked where Pam and Ira were from in the US and saw Animoto videos that the children had prepared and all of this interspersed with the more traditional forms of display.  The children were delighted to show us the school crest on the floor in the hallway (which had been designed by a pupil of the school), their projects about the Titanic on the walls and so much more.

One of the very strong feelings I got from the visit was the protectiveness that the older children had for the younger ones.  As one of seven children it reminded of that sense of protectiveness that often exists within families juxtaposed with how well each knows the other.  To my shame I had been a bit ambivalent towards small schools in rural Ireland and to be honest I had been dismissive at times, despite being educated in a four teacher school, but my trip to Dualla showed the beauty of small rural schools in all their glory.

My lasting memory of the trip was seeing Pam getting stuck in to a game of hurling with the children, after a very brief introduction to the mechanics of hurling.  Once she hit the ball the induction was complete and the game called.  To say that neither the children nor Pam held back is an understatement and I’m sure that I heard Pam mention a sore leg at some stage over the next 48 hours! Unfortunately on this occasion Ira had to watch from the sidelines due to the small matter of a knee operation only 2 months previously.  I have no doubt that a return trip will result in a re-match with Ira in the thick of it all 🙂

A brief induction to hurling for Pam

The game

An iPhone and a bit of imagination ….

For the past month the girls in my daughters class have been practicising their play “The Snow Queen”. Last Friday saw the girls parents and grandparents come in to the ‘halla’, to finally see what the girls had been so excited about. My daughter wouldn’t generally be the best to share what she is doing in school but this has really grabbed her attention. The first I heard about it was when the scripts came home to practice for the auditions. She really wanted to get the part of ‘Junior Crow’ and so she was thrilled to get the part that she wanted. There then followed weeks of learning the script and lots of practising in school, with a few dry runs along the way, to prepare for the day when the girls parents came in to see what they had been working so hard on. Posters and invitations were made by the girls and by Friday the excitement was at an all time high 🙂 1.30 was the appointed time so by that time mammies, daddies, grannies and grandads were all assembled and seated ready for the performance.

I got there early enough to get front row seats so I was perfectly placed to take some photos and get the full effect of the performance. I had spoken to Fiona Murnane (the girls teacher) before Friday and had offered to go in to do an Animoto greeting with the girls so that they would have a reminder of their show. I took loads of photos and even recorded some of the songs as I thought it would be nice to use the girls singing as the background to the Animoto. I’m sure most people there thought I was a very proud Mum who probably went a little bit overboard taking photos etc. of her darling daughter. What they didn’t realise was that I was taking photos etc. of all of their darling daughters 🙂  I had planned to record the girls singing on another day but decided to give Voice Memos on the iPhone a go to see what the quality would be like. It may not be perfect but it’s certainly good enough for me to use.

Yesterday, I went in to the girls to produce the Animoto. They were still so excited about the show and it was lovely to be a part of that excitement.  I played back the recordings of the songs and showed them the photos.  Like typical 8-9 year old girls there was much giggling and embarrassment listening to themselves and seeing the photos.  We had to make sure that everyone was included and that we chose the best song.  Throughout the hour that I spent in the class the girls continually burst into song.  It was so clear to see that the show had been a really positive experience for them all and that they really enjoyed it.  As a parent watching the show, and as someone who has been in and out of their classroom over the past years and months, it was lovely to see them helping each other out with a nudge or the start of the next line etc. on the day of the show.  Have a look at the Animoto created by the girls as a momento of their play “The Snow Queen”.

http://animoto.com/play/bOODFlha8J1AQxPWw7jHfQ#

Animoto

As regular readers of this blog will know I’ve been involved in the connected classrooms project #ccGlobal for the past few months (http://connectedclassrooms.wordpress.com/). Towards the end of November it was decided to connect the classrooms by sending holiday greetings around the globe. The plan was to create electronic greetings, create a QR code to connect to the greeting and then sent the QR code in a physical card to other classrooms participating in the project. It wasn’t prescribed how to produce the electronic greeting but Animoto was suggested as a possible tool. Animoto is a web tool that allows you to create you to create video greetings (http://animoto.com/). I’d never used Animoto before but agreed to help out with producing the greeting for my daughter’s class. We took some photos to be used in the greeting, both of the girls and of their artwork. I created an account on Animoto (this isn’t strictly necessary) and got started. With the free standard account you can create 30 second videos. Creating a video with Animoto involves just a few simple steps :

1. select a style
2. upload pictures or videos
3. choose music
4. add text

There are various styles to choose from and we chose ‘pop-up pandemonium’ which had a Christmas feel about it. Next you can upload pictures – between 10 – 15 pictures for a greeting (some styles can take more pictures and some less). You can also choose the music you want to attach to your greeting – either from the list of music pre-loaded on Animoto or you can upload your own music. Finally you can add some text which can be interspersed among the pictures. Once you have gone through all of the steps you then produce the video which can be shared. What I loved most about using Animoto was how much the girls loved their greeting – they watched their greeting every morning before they started class and were very excited to see the number of views for the greeting as it was sent around the world. Have a look at the greeting we made http://animoto.com/play/zGDxG6dcj2xr9yLzc0BD0Q. We also included their greetings on a post on the school blog which we wrote in the week before Christmas (http://conventprimarynenagh.scoilnet.ie/blog/2011/12/21/christmas-in-miss-murnanes-3rd-class/). Animoto is a great web tool which is very easy to use and produces great results.