Yesterday we worked with Primary 3&4 in order to teach them how to blog. We had to log them them into Glow, and this caused a bit of a problem because all the passwords needed to be changed. Maisie said she had problems because her partner was newer to the school and didn’t know her account. Ciara said sometimes typing passwords was tricky, but pressing the show password button helped.
Next we had to show them where to find the blog on their class Glow page. Alicia said once they were 
on the dashboard some got stuck on what to write about. Elizabeth was impressed with how good some people were at typing. A really top tip our class passed on was to copy the blog before you publish because sometimes the system times out, and you would have to start again if you didn’t copy it first. When P34 were doing the blogs Danni was impressed with how much they wrote and their spelling. In order to teach skills to others, Annie said you need to be good at explaining things and Abbie said you must be patient, as people can take a long time to type. Oliver noticed you need to give people lots of thinking time.
Some of P45 are having problems getting on to their own blogs in school. Mrs Clark will investigate!
As part of our technologies project we decided to produce calendars for the school fair using Adobe Photoshop. This program not only will edit photos and backgrounds for interesting effects, but will also allow you to put them in a format like a calendar.
Initially we learned how calendars are set up in maths, then used our knowledge to create our own calendar month. To do this we had to learn how to create tables in Word, and used Wolfram Alpha, a computational search engine, to tell us on which day our month started next year. Those doing February had to remember next year is a leap year. Some clever person in the class had the idea of making the calendars bilingual, so we then found the Gaelic and used it in our tables.
The artwork required backgrounds for each month, designed and drawn by the children, then photographed. We took advantage of costumes from the panto to dress up and act out scenes for our backgrounds against a white board, taking photos.
After preparing the photos they were imported into Adobe Photoshop, where they were used to create layers. The magic wand tool was then used to remove the white background from the photos of the children and put them against their hand drawn backdrops. Text was added, and the calendar put together and printed. The result was fabulous and sold really well at the Christmas Fair.
Port Ellen Science club kicked off this term with a building session using Knex, Lego and Quad
ro to build a vehicle of some type. Great designs, and an opportunity to see how different materials require different approaches.
Next a collective decision was made to try the Crest science activities from Einsteins Birthday Party Pack, a trial set from the British Science Association. These were great, and involved lots of balloon based experiments, Ewan’s group managed to put a pin in a balloon without bursting it and Anwen was able to use a balloon to move water without touching it.
Next week groups worked in teams to make a balloon powered rocket to carry an item across the room. There were some difficulties with friction and direction though!
Finally we had a science quiz to test the teams knowledge of all aspects of science, the chemists were the winners by a narrow margin.
We have been busy in P45 improving our ICT skills through a process of shared skills peer learning, research and direct teaching. I am very impressed with how quickly most children pick up skills that took me ages to refine, and some of the best teaching in my class recently has been by the children passing on skills to each other, embedding and refining the skills as they progress. Talking about and reflecting on learning is a major part of this topic; we have found ICT skills are tools to help learning about anything, but how we use them helps us understand how we learn.
In order to track our skills development we have the web. The web uses Blooms Taxonomy of digital skills so the children can track their skills development and ensure they are getting a breadth of experience. Using spiders to chase skills ‘flies’, they note skills achieved on a ladder, earning a sticker if they successfully teach to someone else. I worry for my job with the speed and success of these teaching sessions! They record their learning in a plan do review format that requires evaluation of the learning process as well as their success at acquiring the skill.
Recently acquired skills include bullet pointing, making tables, transferring information onto a memory card, printing, taking and editing photos, down loading music and pod-casts, deleting files and creating their own blogs on Glow. Children have chosen how they demonstrate these skills initially, but eventually we hope to create an online space for recording a potted history of Port Ellen from local residents whilst teaching them internet and ICT skills they may find useful, applying their skills in a real life context.
We are Primary 4&5 at Port Ellen Primary School on the Isle of Islay. There are 14 children in our class, and we all love science and technology. That makes us geeks! This Blog is about technology and science that we have learned about and want to show you. We have decided to do a blog because Alicia thinks it is easier than having to write everything down in her jotter! Maisie thinks a blog is a good way because everyone around the world can see and comment on what we are doing. David says paper and pens are not technology, and Emily reminds us that paper and pens use resources like trees and oil, while writing a blog does not. Also Oliver likes spell checking because he likes to use big science words that he can’t always spell. Jodie likes being able to design using a blog. Mrs Clark likes that everyone in the class is really excited and engaged and will learn lots of technology skills using the blog. So, we hope you will join us in our enthusiastic discoveries of all things scientific and technological.
P45
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