Miriam Sings for Assembly

Appleby School has just re-published their website and had a Golden Mouse Awards afternoon to celebrate. Miriam sung for assembly. Isn't she great.

Kieran's Boat

Kieran has recently blogged about his new boat that he built. He made it out of wood, fishing line, Coke bottles, corks, fabric and string. Very cool Kieran.

Marvin

While I was up in Auckland earlier this term at the Learnng At School conference in Rotorua I was given a trial version of this Marvin software by Micosoft. You get to make avatars that you can animate and make speak. I think it is very cool. What do you think?

It is taking ages to upload as I have used all of my 10GB of broadband allowance for the month so I am on dial-up speeds.

Miss K

Introducing Kyle- a new Moturoa blogger

Kyle has always been a keen blogger and now he has his own blog using Blogspot. I have put a link to Kyle's blog in the side bar . I am sure he would like lots of welcoming comments .I now have my own blog thanks to Miss K.
This is an old photo of my caterpillars and seeing as I have my own blog I thought you would like to see it. I now have more caterpillars on my swan plant and I also have more in cocoons.

By Kyle

Kieran's Hunting and Fishing

"I've got one. I've got one. YAHOO! Whoa that thing can pull." We went fishing a couple of months ago. Boy it was fun. Look at this snapper! Do you know how much it weighs. It said 17 pounds. A lot, eh?

AND we got up to a little bit of hunting as well. We caught 3 BOARS. I don't know how much but I think around 1oo pounds but the pig that is only a head was only about 50.

Braden Blogs On

It is great to see Braden still blogging on our Blogmeister blog- Braden has great computer skills and is a wonderful teacher on how to podcast. He is also a great rugby player.

Miss K

Keep on trucking guys!

This is a picture of my dad's new truck. It is one day old. This is its first load. It is very mod and has lots of gadgets in it.

By Nathan

50 Fun Learning Activities

I just found these rather cool activities with a heap of schooly type games at Computer Lab Favourites. Take your pick and let me know your favourites.

My travel to work each day

I thought you might be interested to know where I go to work each day so I made you this map that shows you where the schools are that I visit.


You can zoom in and out by clicking on the key on the left hand side of the map.

Very cool.

Miss K

World Maths Day

World Maths Day is 7 March but you can register now and practise your maths skills- lots of fun and good learning- you get to play against other children of your same age. Click on the photo, register and you are all set to go!

Miss K

Lincoln Elementary School Voicethread

Children from Lincoln Elementary School in California invited us to be part of their Mathlinks Voicethread about their 100 mile diet to find out more about food grown locally around their school. Seeing I didn't have a class ready to work with them I recorded some of the food produced around the Nelson area. To hear and see their comments push the play button and have the sound turned up! To see the big version- click here.



Miss K

Tiny Ted is going to Arizona, USA

We haven't heard from Tiny Ted in a while but he is now off on a new adventure to Arizona, USA He is going to have a visit with the Post Master in Trussville before beginning the journey to Dr. Alice Christie at Arizona Sate University. She teaches geocaching to teachers around the US and has volunteered to help Tiny Ted find a good home in Arizona.

Thank you for letting Tiny Ted visit Alabama. We will miss him greatly!

Mrs C, Birmingham, Alabama, USA

We Won!!!!!!!

Remember at the end of last term we made a wiki with a class in New York on hemispheres.

Here is a link to the winning wiki in case you missed it. Click here to view the wiki.

Well Ms P, their teacher, entered it in a competition where you get $1000US, free entry to this Teaching and Learning educational conference held in the Hilton Hotel in March in New York, with guest speakers, Dr Jane Goodall and Jean-Michel Cousteau.

She won the competition so will get to go to the conference- if I lived a bit closer to New York I could go to but it is a long way away from Nelson!

A New Challenge for 2008

I have just had a exciting new job offer to work as an ICT facilitator helping teachers teach Information Communication Technology in schools in the Tasman district for one year.

So to do that I have taken leave from Appleby for the 2008 school year. I know I will miss the daily interactions with children, parents and staff at Appleby but I know I will enjoy the new challenges of teaching teachers about all the exciting things we have been doing in our classroom- all about blogging, podcasting and learning with other classes of children around the world.. I will pass by Appleby School on my way to work so will be sure to drop in and see how you are all going.

I intend to keep adding interesting links to this blog from time to time to keep it ticking over but in the meantime do check out our fantastic student bloggers who have been adding content to their blogs over the holidays- Oscar, Kieran, Nathan, Miriam, Nicole and Kyle in Blogmeister.

Take care for 2008 and I will be back at Appleby in 2009.

Miss K

We Made Number One At Last

Today I was working with Podomatic, the host for our podcasts, and saw that we were number one!!! We have been hovering around there for a while but this is the first time we are the most popular in the K12 section. It is called K12 because it is grouped with American schooling system of Kindergarten to Year 12.

Thank you to all our listeners and to all the children who have contributed over the last year and a bit! What a great effort! Woot!

What a great start to the new year.

Miss K

Mini-Dylan Tours the North Island

Instead of stowing away in my handbag this time I thought I would take Mini-Dylan on holiday with me to Wellington and Whanganui. Our first visit was to Parliament Buildings in our capital city, Wellington.
I asked him to pose in front of the statue of one of our past Prime Ministers- Richard Seddon. Parliament Buildings are very impressive!
We then headed up the Whanganui River for an exciting ride in a jetboat!
After that we had a short visit at another of Whanganui's beautiful marae, Maranganui II, at Pungarehu. Can you see Mini-Dylan sitting on the paepae at the front of the wharenui.
Whanganui is a very beautiful and peaceful place.

Here is a little video of the exciting jet boat ride- it is 18 seconds long.


Miss K

Look what's happening on Oscar's Blog

Oscar has been blogging a lot over the holidays. Look what has happened to his swan plant! Here is what he wrote...

My plant is gone, the caterpillars have eaten all the leaves of my plant, now they are going to turn into butterflies.

One caterpillar has turned into a cocoon already.

New Blogmeister Blog for 2008

Mrs P has asked me to help her set up a new Blogmeister blog for 2008. So I have moved all of the children who are going to be in Moturoa in 2008 onto her blog.

The people who are moving on can stay in the same place- if that makes sense!!!

Here is the new blog address if you want to blog or check that your name is there.

Hasn't Kyle been doing well over the holidays with his blogging in Blogmeister!

Our other Blogger bloggers have been adding to their blogs as well over the summer sun. Do visit, check them out and leave an encouraging comment.

Miss K

ERO Visit

In week three of of the new year ERO, NZ's Education Review Office are sending three reviewers to Appleby School to look at all the wonderful ICT we have been doing.

They want some data about how using computers has improved our learning. If you are one of our 14,100 blog viewers could you please leave a comment on this post on how you think viewing our blog, wiki or podcast has improved our learning.

I would like to impress ERO with the number of comments so please take a moment to write what you think- I would love comments from children and adults from New Zealand and overseas.

Thank you

Miss K

Last day of school for 2007

On the last day of school the whole school was invited to a nearby boysenberry farm for a half hour of 'all you can eat' boysenberry picking and a yummy real fruit ice-cream.
For our overseas viewers here is what boysenberries look like on the vine.
The darker the boysenberry the yummier they taste!
Some of us sensibly dressed in red so that the people couldn't tell we had made a bit of a mess of ourselves.