PHOTO COMPETITION

Our school is heavily invested in the movement of Thinking Skills. We have just been accredited as the first school in South Africa by the University of Exeter. It's kind of amazing. I really like it. It allows me to do cool things and I am constantly pulling out the "but it's for thinking skills" card.

But really, it such a cool way of teaching and I am incredibly grateful that I was able to take this on so early in my career. As part of making it authentic in in our school environment I held a photo competition. It was called LOOK UP. We wanted the girls to look at our school from a different perspective and to start looking up and noticing their surroundings. I launched it at THIS ASSEMBLY (still have no clue how I made it link, but I did, woo!)

We encouraged them to use iPads or iPhones, mostly for the use of filters and emailing purposes. We didn't limit the amount of filters they could use. You can see that many took the filter thing too far. Unfortunately filtering is a life skill you have to figure out for yourself. Some never will. 

^^ Montage of the entrants 

We were blown away by some of the entrants. You must remember this is primary school level and our 3rd place winner is 8 years old! 

^^ 1st                                                           ^^2nd                                                         ^^3rd   

Tons of fun. Super easy to execute. A nice school spirit building activity. 

Happy apping! (we back on the happy again) 

IMOVIE

Last week I had the pleasure of using iMovie for my assembly. I will sing it from the rooftops I LOVE THIS APP. Really, the options are limitless and it is actually easier to use it on an iPad than the Mac. Although not educational at all, they were delivered in an educational environment and so I will put it on here because as teachers we need aaaallll the ideas we can get.

^^ Bandana day promo 

^^ My assembly on resilience 

Play around with it, the possibilities are endless!

Happy apping! 

iPAD HELP MAT

So if you, like me, are tired of answering for the 7 millionth time in one hour the password for your firewall or what Safari is exactly, then this will hopefully be useful for you. I have made a little "help mat" for each of my girls that will hopefully, by the end of a couple more lessons, enable them to start sorting out each of their own issues. This is a life skill that they will need going forward in their lives and it is a life skill I need less of in mine.

I made this in word, so if you would like a copy pop me an email and I'll send it through to you which you can edit it to suit your needs.

Happier apping!