Please check out the raps next year. The November issue of Scan will have an update.

I hope to chat with you again.

Cheers, Cath Keane

Blogging is so much better than emailing for the participants’ access to other schools’ ideas.

Regards,
Valerie

On Friday, I selected a variety of extracts from my groups’ rap responses (sports articles, a few photos, a wrap rap up message) and combined them as a mini-newspaper (double-sided A4, folding down to make a simple four-paged booklet of The Shaggy Penrith Times), which will slip inside our school newsletter tomorrow. Price = three carrots.

The back cover of the booklet explains the educational parameters of this rap, shows a frame grab from the blog, and gives URLs for both the NSW DET rap blog site, and our own Penrith PS Library wiki pages, encouraging our parents and caregivers to look at the students’ work online.

It didn’t take me very long – but a wombat probably could have done it faster. An efficient way of communicating with the parents, and giving them access to further information!

A brochure that came out to promote “National Reading Day – 3 September 2008″ suggested doing something similar online, or in hardcopy, and that was always in the back of my mind as we added things to the school wiki pages, but it’s only now the rap is over I found time to dig back through the archives. Of course, schools needed to have registered between 3rd and 7th September, when we were all deep into the rap! Maybe next year?

Regards,

Ian McLean
Penrith PS

Wrapping up is upon us. I have enjoyed the journey and reflect on how we can improve our learning next time – there’s always something new to try, although there is a part of me that wonders if the investigation, new learning and discussion is even more important than the technology.

As a communication tool, blogs are great. I’m wondering how wikis could be used more efectively as it makes sense to create a page and build the shared knowledge. The students would be amazed by their ability to create an information resource and realise that other people’s opinions are also valid. It would open up discussions about ownership, copyright, and authenticity of sources… real learning in a real world. It’s probably too late, but a wiki about healthy lifestyles probably would have worked! Any suggestions?

It would be great to get some feedback for planning future raps and rapblogs. Any or all reflection sheets can be emailed or posted to me. cath.keane@det.nsw.edu.au or School Libraries and Information Literacy Unit, Curriculum K-12, 3A Smalls Road, Ryde NSW 2112 will find me.

Keep posting… there’s still time for more conversation.

Cheers,
Cath Keane, Rapcoordinator

I’ve added a few new items to the Gallery.

There is some brief movie footage, a “.mov” file, which plays correctly both on our various PCs here at school and my iMac at home – although, on the school PCs, I did get an automated request box asking me to allow MIME files to be used with a different program than the one with which they are usually associated. Whatever that means.

I guess we needed to have a microphone plugged into the digital camera we used, but it was a good way to test our capabilities. We also made a mini movie of the whole car rally launch. It needs editing, and then I’ll try to upload it, too.

We have many more of our newspaper articles presented, in a finished format via the amazing Newspaper Clipping Generator website, on our school library’s wiki pages. Note that those pages cannot be viewed under student usernames and passwords. Teacher level does work, though.

I really like the concept of the Newspaper Clipping Generator website, at http://www.fodey.com/generators/newspaper/ and can see a wealth of possibilities for the resources available there.

Regards,
Ian McLean,
Penrith PS

I guess your next trick is to present the completed rap blog site (and the links to the online programming, planning and worksheets) to a staff or grade meeting, and win over some other teachers. Also, photocopy and distribute some pages from “Scan” articles that discuss past book rap success stories.

Team teaching situations are ideal, but you can still achieve lots of positive results by adapting the rap to suit your students’ needs and your unique school situation. (As you can see by your students’ posts to this rap.)

You’ll find that any students who did the rap this year will be your biggest advocates to try it again next year. Let the students’ enthusiam and results sway those teachers who seem to prefer to do their own programming for literacy. Remind them that the rap support material is already done for them (and you), has been developed with input from NSW DET curriculum experts, and incorporates ICT as an intrinsic part of pedagogy.

Best wishes,
Ian McLean, Penrith PS

NB: Edublogs had a message up on Friday that everything should be okay re passwords now. They were upgrading something again and required them to be reset.

Cheers
Susan
John Palmer PS

Sorry just saw your message.

Our address here is Lagoon Rd Lord Howe Island 2898. I’m not sure if you’ll see us on Street View but give it a go. If you can’t see us on that we are on Google Earth next to the bowling club.

Cheers
Morry, LHICS

This is a really brief post because I’m checking to see if the system is working.

Cath Keane Rap Coordinator