Now here's a way to supplement your puzzles without clobbering the budget! a range of sites have puzzles where you can choose images and select levels of difficulty... a nice way to show a bit of progression. This is Jig Zone - but there are others. Be aware of being on line - policy dictates we don't leave children on line unsupervised and sometimes this sort of site has add pop ups that will take you away from where you meant to be....

Transitioning...

Transitions in and out of Kindergarten are something we are all continually grappling with. A few of our project Kindergartens have been chatting about the role of ICT to assist transitions into Kindergarten- with a view to maximising child wellbeing, family reassurance and buy in. Here's a link to a site that discusses Trengrove Kindergarten's work with transitioning children into the Kindergarten sending digital cameras with new children to get pictures they could talk about together. They were particularly interested in the resulting positive impact for ESL families. They often made photostories with the pics alongside the children. Magic! have a look at what they did and the identified learning outcomes...

The curriculum document for ICT

Foundations for Discovery Here is the ICT curriculum framework that we were all issued several years ago and is generally on our yearly administration checklist to find. In case you have mislaid your copy I have uploaded it for you. Its a fairly easy to read comprehensive outline of the Ministries vision and expectation of ICT in ECE. There is a longer version too if you are feeling particularly energetic in this field!

skyping with ipads.

this is a wee bit long winded- but a key message I noted was that ICT can give the children a wider audience for their work - and a reason for doing it....

a little light reading.....

Prensky - Digital Natives, Digital Immigrants - Part1 This article is old now... .but the sentiments are still current ( mostly). a more recent view might realise that lots of immigrants over come their accents and adapt to their new environments!

Multiple ways of knowing....

I had occasion to hear Julia at an Auckland Conference a few years ago- she delivered a full day programme that was truly inspirational and has a lot to say about leadership. Here she has a lot to share about learning being trans-formative for teachers and children if they own it. This is of particular significance for us in our project - if there is only one or two teachers leading anything (ICT included)then the potential for it to fall over is significant. Team approaches rule! I also like her thoughts about ICT adding another way of knowing...... children express their interests and investigations in many ways if they can if our learning environment and routines timetable is conducive..

Kindergarten 'skypers"

animated drawing...

With the keen emphasis on revisiting learning and the opportunity to share what you were thinking about and how you might have achieved this.... we could consider animated drawing sites. SItes such as art.com allow children to create art work with the added bonus of an 'undo' and 'do over'. it also allows them to replay how the painting was constructed. You can email the finished painting to anyone... home or the office for keeping. I am not great at drawing with a mouse... I like using my pen tablet for this ( or I bet it's great on an interactive whiteboard). art tools not as great as art rage... .but the replay advantage could be great. try out tate paint,slimber, or art pad. ( there are others too ) This sample is from artpad take a peek....