Hello, my name is John from Heathfield CPS & I’m telling you why I enjoyed our journey through the Germany blog.
I liked the part were we maded our player profiles, I liked it because we coud find out infomation useing Computers (Laptops).
The highlight of my journey through the Germany blog it has to be, the graphs on Purple Mash on the Germany players age and amount of caps they’ve had.
How we could make it better, could be by putting a Football game on the blog, were one person is one player for example – Me (John) = Phillip Lahm.
The strangest place we’ve had a visitor from for me has to be the person from Macedonia.
The most visits to our blog are from UK,USA,Germany.
I am Thomas and I’m from Heathfield. This is what I have done. We have had live sesions, from home. I like it because can chat, using texts. I also like the: wall wisher, Photo peach, Purple mash and Voice thread.
I have enjoyed doing the posts. the things that made it good was the wall wisher
I think it could of been better by a number of points: there could of been a live game, there could of been a stop motion animation on football.
by my name is thomas and that is what I have done.
..And what a 28 days it has been We have seen 100 countries visit in this time and from some countries that I never knew existed! Here is the flag counter from the blog:
As you will know form my previous posts, HeathfieldCPS have been involved in a Blogging project called ‘Blog The World Cup’
HeathfieldCPS were given the Germany team to blog about, please see the blog here: Germany Blog Our Year 6′s as you may probably be aware have taken to blogging like @Dughall and @Joga5 have taken to presenting! They have produced a sensational blog this year. I left working with Year 6 after SATs and began to work with our Future Year 6′s. I wanted to get the Year 5 pupils really enthused with blogging and then this project appeared!
From a teacher’s perspective, I took a risk, a big risk! I scrapped all my final half term planning 24 hours before the term began and decided to throw myself and my pupils into the project. If everything flopped then I knew I would have my original planning to go back to. I have also been empowered by my Headteacher to take risks!
So, the process began of linking Numeracy areas/topics and Literacy genres to Germany and the World Cup. This was really fun, I felt like the chains were off! From this moment, I embarked on the best 4 weeks of teaching and learning in my career!
Highlights
There have been many highlights in this 4 weeks and here are some of them:
We had 2 visits from the German Embassy in London. Cord Meier-Klodt left two messages for our pupils and what comments they were too! 1st comment 2nd comment
We used Wallwisher twice, once at the start of the project to allow people to tell us where they had been to Germany:
The 2nd time to gauge people’s reactions to Germany’s thrilling victory over Argentina:
We used Voicethread 5 times, this one was used to collect people’s thoughts and feelings after Germany beat England:
This Voicethread is still work in progress and is currently being used to reflect over the whole topic:
We have used Coveritlive twice during Germany football games to enable the children to chat to each other and help them write their match reports:
Germany v Ghana:
Germany v Spain:
We have used Photopeach to display various pieces of work:
We used PrimaryPad to write a collaborative non-chronological report on Germany:
Overall, this has been a Web2.0 extravaganza and the learning has been just great! I can’t think of a better project that could have prepared our Year 5s for their blogging journey in Year 6!
Here at Porchester Junior School we have had a great time creating the Italy blog. We wanted to find out all about the country, as well as the football team, and the children had an absolute blast with finding out all sorts of information.
Making use of a wallwisher allowed us to receive ideas and suggestions, as well as useful links, from lots of people. These were great starting points for the children to them go and explore suitable websites and create their own blog posts.
Logging into, and creating their own blog posts was very easy. My class are used to using Typepad as a blogging platform, but quickly got to grips with the simple WordPress interface, and were posting articles left, right and centre.
We were able to add lots of interesting content to our posts – Wordles, YouTube videos, Animoto slideshows, and Zooburst Augmented Reality presentations. As well as add our own extras, we saw some fantastic new resources used on other blogs too – Voicethread, Spot the Ball, Dipity, and many shape collages.
Aside from creating content, we liked looking at what other schools had added to their blogs. The social aspect of the project, where children could “friend” each other was a brilliant addition too, and I hope that those children in my class who have really used this social feature continue to talk to the children in other schools that they have friended. The same goes for staff involved in the project, I hope we keep in touch and continue to discuss, create, and share more great resources.
I have placed an icon at the foot of every page on our school website, as well as a banner at the top of the main page, that link to our Italy blog, to show parents and friends of the school the excellent work we have created. I am hoping that Ofsted call soon, so that I can show them just how we have made use of technology to collaborate with other schools on an international project. This is something that the children will remember throughout their school lives.
Finally, I’d like to say a big thank you to John Sutton and Peter Ford who put this whole project together, and worked hard behind the scenes to get everything working smoothly. Thanks Guys - you did a great job.
PS. I wrote an article for my own blog shortly after we started the project, and another as we approached the end of it. Both of them contain more thoughts about blogtheworldcup.
The World Cup is over, and with it, the Blogtheworldcup project draws to a close. The site will remain accessible for the foreseeable, so you’ll be able to round off any work that is still ongoing.
I’d really appreciate it if you took a little time to write a blogpost about your school’s experience of the project. I’m writing an article for an educational mag about it and I’d like to quote as many of you as I possibly could; without your input, the project would not have been the great success it has.
Questions I’m particularly interested in are:
How easy did the children find the site to use?
How much enjoyment/motivation did the children get from the social aspects of the site?
Do you think the social aspects of the site taught anything about the safe use of social networking sites such as Facebook?
Did you have to spend much time teaching children about the mechanics of the site?
How could you make the site more collaborative?
I’d also love some quotes and feedback from children that used the site.
Thanks again for taking part in what has been a fantastic showcase for educational blogging. Blogtheolympics.net has been purchased, so watch this space!
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