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Showing posts from September, 2013

Inspiring locational writing using Google Street View

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As with most recent posts I must start by recommending the great "Apps gone free," app for inspiring this post. This app has been a god send for schools working on a budget to find apps that for a limited time have gone free. A couple of weeks ago an app caught my eye which looked like it could be very useful as a stimulus for writing. Panorama 360 cities (£1.49)  allows users to upload their own panorama photos of places all over the world. Within the app, children can bring up these beautiful images and explore every inch and angle of a particular setting. Here is an example: High tide mark. Gili Trawangan in Indonesia Children can also create their own panorama style photos but I think the real potential for using this app in the classroom would be as a visual stimulus to inspire locational writing. While this is a great app for free, I do believe it has now returned to full price. So an equally enjoyable and useful resource to use would be Google Stre

Starting our blogging with a BANG!

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So a new school year and while I have started my very exciting venture as a part time consultant, I have also started back at school! Even though I am only working in school for 3 days a week I want to make the most of the time I have with the children. This year, I really want to focus on embedding blogging alongside learning in the classroom especially with using iPads. Blogging is the perfect platform to showcase work produced in the classroom, in particular work produced on iPads (animations, podcasts, films etc.) Last year, I saw snippets of how effective blogging can be and the impact this can have on children's learning. Some examples of this can be found here and here . For information on how blogging has impacted on writing follow  @DeputyMitchell . In my quest to find a topic that I want to ignite the children's passion to write and share work through the school blog, I watched a very moving and interesting film over the summer called  Blackfish . The documentary e