2019 - Ashdale PS / Winthrop Australia Ongoing Professional Development Programme

Book Creator allows for text to be converted into a link - a page or website. Keynote also enables text to be converted to a link - a slide or website. The students in Mrs Brackenreg's, Mrs Francis' and Mrs Johnston's class learned to create a Choose Your Own Adventure (CYOA) style narrative using Book Creator (on the iPads) and Keynote (on the MacBooks). After deciding on a genre to focus their CYOA story all students learned to apply relevant design aspects such as a colour scheme informed by the colour wheel/spectrum, font and text size. Then they learned to create links to other pages within their eBook or Keynote via the text editor on both apps. Next, the students will use Popplet app ( Popplet Lite being the free version) to brainstorm and create a branching plan for the pathways of their CYOA. This will provide a great way for the students to integrate some computational thinking with their stories.

Padlet provides a safe online platform to get students communicating in an online space. Padlet now enables approvals for posts, a useful setting to guide students beginning their online communication journey. The students in Mrs Allam's and Mrs Sampson's class learned to use their iPads safely and appropriately to log in to their class padlet wall ( www.padlet.com ) specifically for the purpose of developing an Online Communication Guideline. This 10 point guideline will be an agreement that is binding on all class members when communicating in online spaces for school. To do this the students logged in to the padlet by scanning a QR code for it with Camera app on the iPad (web URL address for MacBooks). Once logged in all students learned how to post a sentence to the wall (one of ten guidelines) and to always list their name on their post so everyone can be identify who they are communicating with. In small groups, the class then matched confirming questi...

This blog provides a window on the ongoing Professional Development programme with Winthrop Australia being conducted in 2019. The focus of this blog will be on digital products and processes developed by students that integrate Educational Technology with the curriculum of the learning areas at Ashdale PS. Please feel free to share any element of your own journey integrating Ed. Tech. or seek further ideas from others via the blog.