Kinderclips - A kindergarten blog
by Louise
(Sydney, NSW, Australia)
Kinderclips
Hello,
Recently I have set up a Wordpress blog, http://www.eastwood.nsw.edu.au/kinderclips/
for our kindergarten grades.
Wordpress.org offers a sophisticated but easy to use platform with fantastic support and no advertisements. Each teacher/class can contribute as often as they like but I encourage them to try to post at least once or twice a week.
Our school has a very high number of ESL students and I use the blog as a means of creating dialogue between parent, child and school.
All posts are categorised so each class can view only their entries if they wish. The blogroll includes links to useful educational websites that the children know and can use at home.
There is also a link to Delicious where they will find an even more extensive list of Kinderclips links to use by children or parents at home.
I use a lot of Web2.0 applications to engage readers largely because they are children of their non English speaking parents. We encourage the students to bring in photos saved on a USB drive for news presentations.
The children use the Smartboard to display and discuss their photos and I then make a slideshow and display it on the blog using one of several Web2.0 tools.
I frequently use Slide.com,Photopeach,Picture Trail and Slideboom for embedding Powerpoints.
I also include sound clips of children reading or singing and also recordings of them speaking in their first language. This makes it possible for extended family members in other parts of the world to share in the experience as well.
The children love to see the blog and check who's been reading or writing to it. We are currently adding all the children as subscribers so they can easily leave comments.
It has so far been a great success with the children, parents and teachers and we look forward to our future journey.
