Skoolbo

Skoolbo is free and runs across 4 countries

Hate the name of it. Total misrepresentation of spelling, meaning , vocabulary and the site itself. Good job word of mouth works and there appears to be a pretty impressive competition going on involving the four countries where Skoolbo is established. It appears to be for younger children and focussing on literacy and numeracy.it is designed to strongly support personal learning and  opportunities for collaboration I am not sure if language means English language skills or other languages. I’ll find out. I have a plan. I can see, that even if this is designed for younger students it would benefit students learning English and really encourage them to do well quickly. It is the last week of the school year and I have my year 9s last lesson tomorrow. We have been working on 3 visual presentations for French at all different language levels and they have been enjoying it. Those who want a bit of a break tomorrow can try out Skoolbo and I’ll have a look it at it tomorrow as well. I value their opinion. I have taught them how to look at data, online sites and information and make intelligent decisions about whether they are valuable or not. They have always been very honest and genuine in their approach but are also very good at looking at options and possibilities, so they are a good class to trial apps, software and ideas with. They love collaborating and they love creating something useful together whether it’s a product or an approach. Can’t wait to hear what they think of Skoolbo!

Building engaged teams

This slide presentation is designed for the business environment but the core ideas apply equally well to education. You read through the presentation and it arrives at the part about disengagement and isn’t that the bane of every teacher and of schools? We are always talking about engagement and how to engage students. The presentation equally reminds us we need to engage the adults in the schools too. Morale and enthusiasm go a long way in any age group. Building engaged teams has a good look at how disengagement occurs and the sorts of strategies which can be used to re-engage people. What appealed to me as a teacher was that word – explore – we need to get students exploring and we need to be able to explore as teachers as well. Technology offers so many possibilities for exploration. It’s a seemingly bottomless pit. You only have to take iPads into a language classroom and get the students to use the Puppet Pals app and suddenly everyone is switched on and engaged in a very real way. Or you take students to Voki.com and they just love it, want to use it and will work hard to make it all happen. Had it not been for technology I would not have seen this presentation and one of the real values of belonging to a networking team like SlideShare is you become engaged by interacting with others from all over the world who have considerable expertise in their chosen fields of interest. That’s motivating and creates engagement. So I offer the presentation to you so you can have your own thoughts and discussions around engagement and how you make it happen.

Educational Games

As the author of this site says, be prepared to get lost in a time hole when you browse these games! They are made by organisations like the Nobel Prize Organisation and the United Nations and focus on anything from world poverty to oil, to managing food supplies. Food Force is a complex United Nations game which I have seen students become very absorbed in. We were running games like this on our school servers so that students would engage with educational games, but you always have to be on the look out for ones which can meet the high expectation of students. I have the Free Rice game linked on the sidebar and staff and students seem to like having a go at that and it’s good for learning languages. I have blogged about the Nobel Prize Games. So take a look at the site because you could be raising goats, whacking TB, dealing with global warming or being one of the amazing food detectives!