Belmore South Public School

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Today we had a visit a group of educators from the USA. The photos show how much everyone was enjoying themselves.

Our guests are members of the Board of the Association of Supervision and Curriculum Studies. They were led by their President Nancy DeFord and accompanied by Jenny Lewis who is CEO of the Australian Council for Educational Leaders.

The group came to Australia to attend a conference and visit schools to see what is happening by way of educational innovation in our country.

We had about 2 hours to show them all the things we do in our classrooms. We had  4 teachers and about 10 students to take them on a guided tour through many of our classrooms.

The Board were keen to see how the teachers embed technology into theclassroom. They saw students making games, playing games, writing and reading blogs, using web 2.0 tools creating digital storybooks, making movies, building lego land and playing junkbots, doing number games, drawing like Picasso and testing their knowledge of the eye. All these activities involved using digital technology in the form of IWB’s, computers, Cameras, and videos.

The students and the staff warmed instantly to the interested and interesting visitors. We enjoyed the day enormously and look forward to strengthening our contacts. We learned priceless snippets from talking to these wise and experienced people.

The greenback has already begun its journey!

The end of term has been a great one for two of our talented athletes . . . sorry folks no photos as this is late breaking news.Akaati has been selected to represent the Metropolitan East Sports Region in the PSSA State Cricket Championships to be played in Dubbo. Akaati is a talented all rounder, his batting and bowling figures are excellent and his fielding is outstanding. He was selected to the final 12 from a squad of 77.

Akaati’s talents have been recognised by local cricket teams. He has also been spotted as a player of the future with his selection to attend Endeavour Sports’ High School next year.

Hafiz has blitzed competitiors at the regional Athletics Carnival. He won the discus, the shotput, the long jump, the 200m, missed the high jump (arrived too late) and came 2nd in the 100m. All of these results mean that Hafiz will be representing our region at the State Athletics Carnival.

We are proud of both boys and their achievements.

On Friday 14 September we welcomed some very notable guests from the United Kingdom and Australia to our school. They wanted to see a school where Technology was part of the everyday life of most of the classrooms in the school. Interactive whiteboards were being used in all the classes the visitors went to see.

They saw Bill give a group of Stage 2 and 3 students a lesson on the IWB about the basics of using Gamemaker. They then went and had a chat with Stage 2 students who were being peer tutored in making games by some Stage 3 students. While they were in that room they saw the Brightsparks’ blog and promised they’d get students from the Uk blogging with us. We look forward to making more friends in the United Kingdom.

S2/3 P shared various projects they had been doing using: Mission maker; Scratch; Vokis and the Wii.

Down in the K to 2 building they saw: SK1 working together to make an animated story about Mr Potatohead; S1R exploring the art of Piet Mondrian and his use of primary and secondary colours; S1K playing maths games that reinforced their number learning; S1S doing reading activities that related to their investigations of the senses; and they found S1F creating Lego worlds and testing their problem solving skills by playing Lego Junkbots. 

Mr Owen Lynch, who has visited many schools and classrooms around the world, said that he had never seen the IWBs used so well as they are used in our school. He especially liked the way the students were in charge of the IWB’s. All our visitors were very impressed with the level of oral language our students used and the confidence they displayed when using technology and working in groups. 

All of our visitors were surprised to find such a warm, vibrant, exciting and fun learning environment behind the dull old buildings they first saw as they approached the school from Canterbury Road.    

We enjoyed sharing what we do in our school with Owen Lynch(consultant to the Uk Department for Children, Schools and Families, former CEO, BECTA), Jimmy Stewart (Director C2K N. Ireland), Tom McMullan (former Director C2K (N.Ireland), Gary Putland (General Manager,education.au), Greg Black (CEO, education.au) and Kellie Stephens (NSW DET Centre for Learning Innovation).

 
Today we were very honoured to have 5 guests from Singapore visit our school to see what our wonderful students and teachers have been doing in their classrooms.

The ladies and gentleman were from

Ministry of Education:  

Lim Lai Cheng, Chan Lai Peng, Vincent Lim

Infocomm Development Authority:    

YIP Yuen Fong,  Belinda CHNG

Our special guests were escorted to various classrooms around the school by Sam-James, Sharliyah, Yilmaz and Martin.

On their visit our guests saw classes doing: maths activities, blogging, playing games, making Lego worlds, solving lego problems, doing internet searches and writing. Martin and Yilmaz even showed our guests how to make a computer game.

Our guests saw the students working in groups, as individuals and as whole classes. The teachers and students were all interested and highly motivated in what they were doing using a wide variety of technology. They were using interactive whiteboards, computers and the usual pen and paper. It was not so much the technology that was important but the fact that the technology is just a natural part of our students’ and teachers’ daily lives.

In one classroom the children were working in groups and it was observed how noisy they were. When we looked about they were noisy because they were excited about the activities they were doing. Two girls we noticed were arguing but they were arguing passionately about the problem they were solving.  

In our classes it is important that the children feel comfortable to air their opinions appropriately and be heard. We believe for our children to learn most effectively they need to:

DO IT!          TALK IT!      READ IT!        WRITE IT!

We told the Singapore visitors we had given up using textbooks when the Interactive Whiteboards came into our classrooms.  Why do we need textbooks when we have masses of resources at our fingertips from all over the world and we can choose the best and most appropriate for our students needs?

Thank you for visiting we enjoyed sharing our school with you and we would like to learn more about Singapore.

The deadline for the Gamemakers to finish their games was Thursday August 2. Most of the groups had them ready by the end of that day. This was leaving it a little close as the applications for the NSW DET CLI Learning Resource Awards were due to close at 5pm on Friday August 3.

The problem was not that the game makers were being slack. It was just that they wanted to keep on refining their games. Every time they went back to look at the game they wanted to do something else to it. However; the mean old teacher just had to say that’s it!

Those who go to our school can access them through the student share folder under gamemaker games. They can also be accessed through the Eduweb Folders. We will get them onto the blog in the next little while.

Stay tuned because Stage 2 will be judging each of the games to see which is educationally best and which is the most entertaining.

Apologies to Sam-James we didn’t get a photo of you but your Maze Panic is a great game to play.
 

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The Stage 3 gamemakers have just about completed the prototypes of the games they are making for Stage 2. There has been a great deal of planning, talking, thinking, creating, playing and evaluating happening.

It is important for this group of 20 students, who have spent at least 30 hours making their games, to have others play them. They will be having a group of other Stage 3 students evaluating their work. The Gamemakers will then be putting finishing touches to their games after getting this important feedback.

If the Stage 3 Gamemakers have their games finished on time and all the requirements fulfilled they will be able to enter the Annual Learning Resources Awards. This is a Competition run by the NSW DET Centre for Learning Innovation.

The gamemakers will also be sharing their games with Stage 2 who will play the games and provide feedback and rank the games according to the negotiated criteria that the group has developed.

The games are mostly about the imminent destruction of Earth and the journey to find and then relocate on another planet.

To challenge ourselves and give our students authentic learning experiences our Stage 3 teachers have begun pilot research, in conjunction with the NSW Department of Educations Centre for Learning Innovation. This research is designed to document the impact upon students of learning to design and make their own computer games using Game Maker 6.0.