Liebster Blog Awards

Last week I was nominated for a LIEBSTER blog award. My good friend Pam O Brien was kind enough to consider nominating me and I'm beyond flattered. I met Pam this time last year on Twitter and within a few tweets we were good friends. We meet up every few weeks for a chat and spend hours chatting every week. Pam is an amazing friend and teacher both online at her blog pamobriensblog.wordpress.com and in person. I'm very lucky to know her.

In accepting the Liebster Blog Award you agree to:
1. Thank the person who gave you the award
2. Link back to their blog
3. Copy and Paste the Liebster Award to your profile
4. Pick 5 blogs that you feel deserve to be in the spotlight (must have under 200 followers)
5. Blog about it and leave a comment for your nominations to let them know you've chosen their blogs

So while I'm not normally one to go nominating blogs and people, purely cause I read so many blogs that it's hard to pick them, I am going to choose 5 today. I'm going to try and choose ones that I really love and think are worth sharing. While obviously I think all the blogs I read are amazing I'm going to try and go for different ones that maybe aren't all education related! I like that these awards are about supporting bloggers and their work rather then the actual award for the mantle. So I'm going to go for it! And sorry in advance if I haven't nominated you!

Firstly I'm nominating my bestie Joy and her blog, Joyfullantidotes http://joyfullantidotes.wordpress.com/ Joy posts about her life in Berlin and how to be Irish in another country. She covers all sorts of topics from reviews to politics and food.

Next up I'm cheating a bit and nominating Chantelle Wallace  who has 2 blogs.... Project Chantelle http://projectchantelle.blogspot.com/ and The Life and Time of Chantelle http://thelifeandtimesofchantelle.blogspot.com/ I love reading Chantelle's work. She's such an honest and amazing writer that I've a lot to live up to here!

Thirdly I'm nominating Skinny Doll and her blog The Skinny Dolls Journey http://theskinnydollsjourney.blogspot.com/ which is all about her loves in life including weight watchers, something I've a huge interest in as well! Nothing like a bit of extra support!

I'm nominating Siobhán next and her blog Carnsoreboxer http://carnsoreboxer.wordpress.com/ Siobhán is one in a million, very brave and a real true friend. I'm very lucky to have gotten to know her on twitter this last year and love her honest accounts of life on her blog,

And last but not least I'm nominating Ruth Crean and her Blog Nice Day Designs http://www.nicedaydesigns.org/ Ruth is a crafter who's blog has inspired me to try out some of my own crafting ideas. Ruth runs her own crafts stall at the Milk Market here in Limerick and has some fantastic ideas to share on her blog.

So there you have it, my 5 non educational blog nominations! All amazing writers and all loved for different reasons, check out their blogs and I'm sure you'll agree. Meanwhile, why not consider doing your own nominations?

Wise words today? Nominate your fav blog reads! It's easy and such a nice feeling :)

#CESI12 Resources

Over the two days of CESI12 I kept a list of all the websites mentioned that I liked and thought would be useful for school and teachers. So being the sweet caring person that I am I've decided to share them here with you here. If you have more to add to the list please feel free to add them in the comments or mail me and I'll add them to the list here.

www.classtools.net
Mags get that fruit machine that we all love from here, there's loads of other wonderful tools hidden in there too so have a look see!
www.chessossity.com
Chess lessons for class and teacher
www.nyphillkids.org
Music site that needs flash but otherwise has loads of great resources
www.isfeidirliom.ie
Irish resources, needs flash again so no good for ipad etc but has loads to help the irish teacher
www.slideshare.net
Name says it all, a place to share powerpoint displays.
www.clicnews.ie
Online newspaper by second level students for primary schools, very useful for current affairs
www.appmakr.com
Online tool to create your own app for school or blog or website
www.cbiproject.com
IWB resources
www.twidda.com
IWB resources for the ipad
www.board800.com
More IWB stuff
www.etwinning.net
Community of schools to share in projects
www.animoto.com
Upload pics to create videos with sound as well
www.glogster.com
Online tool to create old skool posters, great for presenting work and displays
edu.glogster.com
Educational Glogster, different options
www.prezi.com
Replacement for powerpoints, new presentation tool
www.voicethread.com
Voice conversations with options to respond in a variety of ways

Would love to see more of the sites I missed at CESI12, add them below! What ones did you love?

Wise words today? Try out some of the resources above, they might change your life in achool!

CESI Conference 2012

CESIMEET is followed by the CESI conference on Saturday. CESIMEET is a hard act to follow but the CESI Confernce managed it.
Saturday started off very early when I met Pam and Mary Jo for breakfast in the hotel. We packed up and checked out to go to the school. Arriving at the school and the carpark was jointed. We finally found spaces and went in to register and get ourselves sorted. Mary Jo and I called to the Foras na Gaeilge stand and were treated to a lot of lovely freebies like CDs, rulers, pens and folders. With our hands full we had to dash out to pop all our goodies into the car.


At this stage it was time to head to the Keynote speak. Thanks to twitter we all know that Steve Wheeler, of @timbuckteeth fame, was delayed due to fog. We were lucky that Steven Howell could step in and have us raring to go after an invigorating talk about Scratch and Kinect. Great start to the morning. Steven is an amazing speaker and you cant help but enjoy his sense of humour and obvious love of what he does.



The choice of workshops and presentations was overwhelming again this year. So hard to choose what ones to go to. In the end I choose to start my morning off with a workshop with Anne McMorrow about using iPod touches in the classroom. Anne had the use of 30 iPods from Sep to Dec last year and was nice enough to show us some of the apps she used with her 6th class during the iPod project. All their work looked amazing. Adrienne was there as well and she told us a bit about how her secondary school is using the iPods around the school and how the kids all want to see the subject teachers bringing them to class. After the talk we were given the iPods for a while to play with and check out some of the apps.

After all that excitement it was time for lunch. The wonderful part of the CESI Conference is that there's loads of time to talk to other teachers and find out about the workshops they've been to. Of course following them on Twitter is a huge help too. During lunch I ran into a girl I'd met at last years conference, Diana and we had a right ole giggle about my new obsession with apps, considering last year I wouldn't have gone near them! With full bellies we headed off to the next workshop!

Mary Jo and I went to a workshop with Pam at the helm to tell us about some very simple and effective web tools she uses in her daughters classroom to help out the class teacher. First of all we played with Animoto, a photo display tool complete with sound effects and very cute back-rounds. Pam showed us an Animoto she did with her daughters class of their school play and the ease of use really sold it to us all as something to used in class for all sorts of events. Next up we had a look at Glogster, a poster creator. These posters are old school and very cool. A fantastic way to present work such as projects or information sheets. Last of all we had a quick look at VoiceThread, almost like a podcasting tool. I can see the uses here but so far I'm liking Animoto a lot more. Maybe I just need to play around with it a little more!

More coffee and chance for more chatting with teachers. I love getting to hear about the workshops I couldn't go to. There just aren't enough hours in the day at CESI!

The final workshop I went to was with Simon Lewis on How to build an App. As much as I loved seeing the process of making an app I'm not sure it's something I'll ever be doing. Yes parts of it are complicated but the idea is pretty straight forward and in theory it's easy. What really scares me about it isn't the work involved it's the cost involved. Apple aren't exactly budget friendly when it comes to app development.

Steven Howell was to be the capstone speaker but due to Steve Wheelers fog issues they swapped and we ended the day on a complete high hearing Steve talk about the idea of our futures. Maybe we can't predict the future but we can certainly see patterns in how technology has developed over the past few years and with experience try to work out where our future technologies will bring us. Who knows maybe the new instant messages will be sent by brain power alone.

CESI is one of the highlights of the year for any techie teachers. It's a chance for teachers to learn from teachers. As educators we encourage peer tutoring and learning every step of the way and CESI helps us to do the same. Next up is the ICT EDU conference in LIT Tipp on the 19th of May. The call for presenters is coming up soon, keep an eye on twitter and the website for more details.

Wise words today? Don't knock it til you try it, if you've never been to a CESI conference make sure you don't miss out next year!

CESIMEET 2012

Here's the first of the CESI 2012 posts. I've so much to say that I've had to do two separate posts to cover everything! There was just that much going on and I don't want to leave anything out.
So my arrival to The Heritage Hotel was great, I'd arranged to meet up with Mary Jo Bell to do some knitting and chatting. There is nothing I love more then catching up with a good friend like Mary Jo. So after we got something to eat in the bar we went to the conference room and sat with friends like Nigel Lane of ITB Fame, Sabine McKenna, and Humphrey Jones of The Frog Blog, there's nothing like it.
So the CESIMEET, there were about twenty of us asked to present a mini topic for 7 mins or less. All our names were put into the fruit machine by Mags and we were randomly called up to talk. I was luck enough to be one of the first up to discuss a handful of apps that I've been using on the iPad lately. There were all sorts of talks. Brendan Buckley showed us Chessossity, a lesson plan site for learning/teaching chess, Humphrey told us about the idea of an EdHack day to help solve the problems in the education world, Jullian from sccEnglish showed us the ShowMe app that he uses in his English classes, Nigel filled us in on the whys and hows that he created the Irish Teachers Blog network to curate the blog posts written by teachers and keep them in one place so we don't miss any. David Mitchell told us about how Quad Blogging came about and how he's behind the feb29th.net project for blogging. It's coming close so don't forget to get writing. Sabine talked about survey monkey and it's uses in class while Mary Jo showed us her tweeting junior infants, who tweet as MrsBellsClass  and show us some of their work during the day. Pam  explained CoderDojo to us and how much she enjoys it.

I could talk all night about the presentations but I won't go on. After the presentations it was time to mingle. Mingling is such fun. We had finger food and yummy chocolate cake (kinda sorry I didn't go mad and have more of that if I'm honest!) I had to chat with Stephan Howell  about scratch and kinect, and my obsessive tweeting (no comment hehe). It was great to see people I haven't seen in a while like Simon and Rozz Lewis. It was a late night up chatting with Pam, Mary Jo, Enda, Evelyn and Mary.

The CESI execs did a great job getting the night the together, Ban, John, Anne, Enda and Mags all did fantastic work getting the night together for us and showing us all a great time. These people are amazing teachers, their students are very lucky to have them teaching them.

I can't stress enough how much I loved the CESIMEET this year, not that I didn't love it last year but this year topped last year, something I didn't think possible but then again a few years ago did we think that smartphones would be how we'd access the internet the most?

Wise words today? Anything is possible....

Winners

I've finally got the winners of the Rory's Story Cubes competition First prize is 2 boxes of the cubes Second prize is a box of story cubes I've also got some story cubes cartoon stripes to email to anyone who wants them! So drum roll please!! In first place we have Mrs Bells class!! Each group entered a story and it was impossible to choose just one they re all so amazing! Well done everyone in junior infants! In second place we have Belindas story! Made me grin like a crazy lady so well done! And well done everyone else who entered, it was very hard to choose the winners! Please get in touch if you want a copy of the cartoon strips for school or home! Thanks for entering everyone :)

Read the winning entries here!

1. Blue group. Mrs Bells Class

   Once upon a time I was playing in my room when a big monster came in the window. He started to chase me around the house. I shot arrows at him but he ran out of the house and went to the forest where he lit a huge fire.
   
   I left the house and walked over the bridge. I reached the castle and went inside. I climbed the stairs and looked out over the top of the castle. I saw the monster still in the forest. I left the castle and saw beautiful flowers and apple trees growing in the garden. I ate one of the apples.
   
   I saw a magic fountain and made a wish that the monster would be gone. Suddenly there was a storm and the lightning killed the monster.
   I was very happy and went back home to play.
2. 
   Green Group. Mrs Bells Class.

   One day Rosie and her pet monster went to visit the castle. The King was there and he told Rosie to sweep the floor. When she had finished Rosie went outside and picked a flower in the garden. She threw the flower into the fountain and wished for some toys.
   
   She didn't get toys, instead the flower came out of the water again and she knew then that it was a magic flower.
   The weather got cold. A storm came and lightening flashed in the sky. The magic flower lit a fire to keep Rosie warm.
   
   She search for the way home and saw an arrow pointing towards her house. She crossed the bridge and reached her house safely. She went inside and ate an apple for her lunch.
3. 
   Yellow Group. Mrs Bells Class.

   Long ago there was a very old bridge. A big scary monster lived under the bridge. One day he thought there was a goat crossing the bridge but it was actually his friend, Pinky.
   
   He said hello to Pinky and then the two of them walked towards the castle. They saw lots of flowers in the castle garden. Then they saw some apple trees. They were feeling hungry and picked an apple each to eat.
   
   Then they saw a fountain in the garden and dropped some money into it.
   Oh no! Lightning flashed and they were frightened. They were lost and didn't know where to go. Suddenly they saw an arrow pointing towards the bridge. They followed the path and lit a fire under the bridge to keep warm.
4. 
   Red Group. Mrs Bells Class.

   One day I woke up and jumped out of bed. I decided to walk to the bridge, but a big storm came and lightning flashed.
   I ran further on and saw a castle. I didn't want to go in and was happy when I saw an arrow pointing towards home.
   When I got home, there was a big monster in my house. He was a kind monster and he helped me to light a fire to get dry and warm.
   We felt hungry so we opened the fridge door and took out two apples to eat. Then we went outside.
   The storm was gone so we went to the park. We saw lots of flowers and splashed in the fountain.
   Then we went home and lived happily ever after.

   ReplyDelete
5. 
   Belinda Wanda

   That time of the year again - Valentine’s Day. Alone again she thought. She decided to spend the day wandering around the grounds of the local castle. Bad idea. As she crossed the bridge it began to lash rain. There was a sudden flash of lightening above the castle which lit it up as if it was on fire. She ran past the fountain in search of shelter.
   Drat! Amongst the trees was the same foolish monster who had been following her around for the last year, waiting every day for her at the entrance to her work with a single flower. Of all the things to happen, she had been avoiding him for ages and now she was finally trapped. As she contemplated if one can ignore someone without being rude, she felt the strangest sensation in her chest, almost as if it was in her heart. Bewildered she sank to the wet ground were beside her was an arrow.
   Who had shot that arrow? She never knew. All she knew was from that Valentine’s day on she never minded the same foolish monster and in fact in time she surprised herself by coming to quite enjoy pairing up his socks and putting an apple in his lunchbox before kissing him as he set off to work.