ANZAC - Our First Trans-Tasman Chat!!

This week we're excited to announce that it will be our first trans-Tasman chat. The topic this week is Anzac, which is fitting as it's very important to both Australia and New Zealand. 

Here are the questions for this week:

Q1. How does your country/school/family celebrate ANZAC Day?

Q2. What does ANZAC day mean to you personally?

Q3. Do you have any extended family that fought in Gallipoli? What stories can you tell us?

Q4. Do you have any extended family that have fought in any other conflicts?

Q5. Do you think ANZAC day is important? Should we celebrate the day? How else could ANZAC Day be celebrated?

Q6. During Gallipoli, Australia and NZ fought side by side. Do you think the relationship between the 2 countries is important?

Q7. Why are poppies sold before and on Anzac Day? Why was the poppy chosen and what does it represent?

Q8. How did the Anzac biscuit originate? Do you have a favourite Anzac biscuit recipe that you would like to share?

Q9. Have you ever been to an ANZAC Day celebration? What happened and how did it make you feel?

Please make sure that you have joined the Kidsedchatnz list, prior to Thursday if you are wanting to participate in our first trans-Tasman chat. More info can be found on the blog, including a step-by-step video. 

Sports: The Courage to Try

What a fantastic afternoon sharing ideas. A spectacular effort! There were over 700 tweets recorded. It's great to see that we have had so many new classes join us. 

It's always SO difficult to make a decision on the tweet of the week, and today was no exception! The calibre of everyone's tweeting was very high. Seeing your original ideas makes us all smile. It was also fantastic to see all the conversations happening between classes. We hope that you've made some new friends.

Look who favourited a couple of the Kidsedchat tweets today! 

And here it is: Tweet of the Week 

Congratulations to Room 6 from St Peter's School in Beckenham, Christchurch.

Week 8: The Courage to Continue

This week we are focusing on Sport. We have a flipped lesson incorporated into this week's chat. Here is a a clip for you to watch together with your class and discuss. There is a lot of courage involved in sport.

Mahora School's Room 13 and Room 15 have created these great questions for you to talk through and chew over. You might like to follow these cool classes. Their Twitter handles are @MahoraRm15 and @rm13dreamteam. We are excited about sharing the questions that we have come up with. We are looking forward to seeing your answers on Thursday.

Have fun! Juliet Revell

"Have the courage to try, that's how great things happen!"

Question 1:

What sports are offered at your school?

Question 2:

What makes a great sportsman?

Question 3:

Who is your favourite sporting hero? What attributes of theirs standout?

Question 4:

Why is it important to be involved a sport?

Question 5:

What sport do you need the most skill to play?  Persuade the rest of us (try and start a conversation with another class)!

Question 6:

How have you displayed courage while playing a sport?

Question 7:

If you could take 3 sportsmen out for dinner who would they be?

Tweet of the Week

What a a fantastic kidsedchatnz we had today, with about 786 Tweets recorded from schools around New Zealand! Thank you to everyone who participated in our chat today. It was great to learn more about your schools and how you learn.

Tweet of the Week goes to:

Congratulations Vaish!

Kidsedchatnz - Thinklink

Do you want to know a little bit more about Kidsedchatnz? Well now you can!

Check out this fabulous interactive image made by Kidsedchatnz co-organiser Reid Walker (@ReidHns1). 

The image is made using the website Thinklink and Reid is going to use it to support his up-coming presentation about Kidsedchatnz.

What do you think? Is Thinklink a worthwhile on-line tool? Hit the comment button and let us know what you think!

Week 7: General stuff about school

Click to see a Geo message from @LittleGiants7

This week our topic is "general stuff about school".

Questions on Thursday will be:

1. What do you like about your school / What makes your school special?
2. Does your school have any special physical features? Describe its layout and physical features.
3. Where exactly is your school and how many students and teachers does your school have?
4. Describe your classroom. What does it look like? 
5. How would you like your learning to happen in the classroom?
6. Is there anything you would like to change at your school/in class? What is it?
7. Do you think it is good to have your own blog? Why?
8. What other technologies are you using in your learning? Tell us why you are you using them.
9. What fun things do you like to do when it is raining during lunch time?
10. Tell us what you liked about school today.

Tweet of the week

Tremendous effort this week everyone! 

There were heaps of tweets sent today, 15 classes took part in today's session and its really positive to see that several schools now have more than 1 class taking part.

I was really impressed by the quality of tweets this week and noticed many conversations happening between the tweeters. There were a number of students who were tweeting some great ideas and it was fantastic to see that so many of you take your online safety seriously.

It was quite hard picking a 'Tweet of the Week' so I think that these ones demonstrate just how switched on you all were this week. Congratulations to all who took part.

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Week 6 Topic: Digital Safety

The questions for Thursday's topic are all based around Digital Safety or staying safe online. It is sometimes called being a good digital citizen or cybersafety.

Before taking part in this weeks topic please try to watch the following video.

 Digital Safety Video

When we learn about a topic before the lesson we call this a Flipped Lesson.

The questions for Thursday's topic are as follows:

1. How can you be safe on the internet? How can you keep your computer safe?
2. Who teaches you about staying safe online? What are the best ways for learning about online safety?
3. What is a digital footprint and why are they important?
4. What are some important things to consider when taking part in Kidsedchatnz?
5. Should school’s be using social media in the classroom and why?
6. How do we know which websites and people to trust on-line?
7. What should you do if your personal information is hacked?
8. Does anyone know any website/resources or Apps to share about Cyber safety?

If you have enjoyed this weeks Kidsedchatnz topic and want to learn more you could visit the Privacy Pirates to play a game about staying safe online.

Hope you all enjoy Kidsedchatnz this week.

Tweet of the Week

Who won Tweet of the Week? Well I was so impressed with today's fantastic tweets that I decided to choose more than 1 Tweet of the Week! Here are the winning tweets!

Great Kidsedchatnz Session!

Today was a great Kidsedchatnz session with over 20 classes recording 817 tweets! The timeline was working over time! 

Well done everyone, the quality of tweets were excellent and everyone looked to be having a fantastic time! Here are some photos of the classes taking part!

Week 5 - Topic: Learning

This week's Kidsedchatnz is based all around learning! Here are the questions!

Q1. What is learning and why is it important?

Q2. What skills/things do you think you should learn and why?

Q3. Who are the people that are responsible for your learning and why are they important?

Q4. What are the things that drive/help your learning and why are they effective?

Q5. What are the things that block/stop your learning and what can you do to prevent them from happening?

Q6. Why is it important to share your learning with others? What is your favourite ways to share your learning?

Q7. I am proud that I learnt how to___________because……... 

Q8. What are some of your favourite learning activities/games/sites that you use in your class?

Back to School kidschatnz

A BIG thank you to all the classes who took part in today's kidsedchatnz! We had approximately 650 tweets today!

Here is a snapshot of some of the amazing tweets and the tweet of the week!

All of your tweets were AMAZING so thank you for taking part today! 


Kidsedchatnz - slideshow

First kidschat of the year!

Welcome back to kidsedchatnz!

We hope you had a wonderful summer holiday and have had a fantastic few weeks back at school!

Our first kidschat is about being back at school... "A New Year, A New Start"

Here are the questions:

Question 1. What was the highlight of your summer holiday and why?

Question 2. What are you looking forward to most this year and why?

Question 3. What rules do you think are important in your class?

Question 4. Our classroom should be ______ every day. (What word should fill the gap?)

Question 5. What qualities do you bring to your classroom?

Question 6. What is one thing you will do to make this year great?

See you on Thursday 27th of February 2-3pm!

Tweet of the week....

Thanks everyone for a great kidsedchatnz today! There were so many great tweets!

It was so hard to choose. Here are a few tweets ...

And the tweet of the week goes to.....

Well done Room 9 at Hannah at Maungaraki School!

Can we answer her question? What languages do you want to learn? Write a comment below!

Week 8 - 2013 Reflection

Wow! 2013 has been a fantastic year!

This week kidsedchatnz is all about Reflecting on 2013! This is our last kidschat for the year so we are looking forward to having everyone join us!

The children from Room 7 at Vardon School (@Vardonroom7) wrote the questions for this week's chat.

Take the time to reflect on 2013.... Here are our reflection questions for you to answer on Wednesday. 

Question 1:
What was your most favourite part of this year and why?

Question 2:
What are some of the things you have learnt this year that you have really enjoyed? Why did you enjoy learning about these things?

Question 3:
What have been some of the challenges you have faced this year?

Question 4:
What do you want to do better next year?

Question 5:
What do you want to learn next year?

Question 6:
Where are you going for the summer holidays?

Question 7:
If you could describe 2013 in one word, what word would you choose?

See you on Wednesday! From Room 7 and Mrs Natusch

PS: Have a wonderful Christmas and a great summer holiday!

Interface Awards

Last week we found out that Kidsechatnz won the Interface Awards for Best Teaching with ICT. 

Wow, how cool is that! It's great to get that exposure and recognition for a fantastic concept! The Manawatu Standard Newspaper also ran an article about our success.

Anyway a big thank you must go out to everyone who voted for us and all those fantastic classes that take part in Kidsedchatnz every week. We appreciate your support!

Edublog Awards

Wow, I just found out that Kidsedchatnz made it into the Finals of the Edublog Awards for Best Educational Use of a Social Network! How cool is that! The Edublog Awards has been running for 10 years and is a great way to celebrate all the fantastic things that are happening in ICT around the world.The winners of the Edublog Awards are decided by votes from any person around the world - so we need your votes!It is a live voting process so you can go to this website and vote and watch in real time.Thank you for supporting Kidsedchatnz, we really appreciate it!

Our Flipped Chat - 4 December 2013

What a fantastic afternoon of sharing! There were so many wonderful messages from everyone. We were so inspired. Here are a few of magnificent tweets that were shared.

The Tweet of the Week:

Great thinking Jedd. Congratulations. 

See you next week, everyone! Thanks for joining us.

Miss Revell 

Dec 4 - Topic: Flipping our Chat

This week's chat on Wednesday 4 December will be a flipped chat. Flipped learning is when you watch material that you would usually watch during the class time BEFORE the lesson. There are some great benefits:

• You can watch the content as many times as you like.
• You can pause the material, and discuss it.
• More time is available to for thinking and learning about the content during lesson time. 

 Watch this 60 second explanation:

 

We will be discussing a clip from the Soul Pancake channel on You Tube.

Kid President's 20 Things We Should Say More Often

Question 1:
Which is your favourite of the "20 things that we should say more often." Why?

Question 2:
Create your own phrase to add to this list. Why do you think we should say this more often?

Question 3:
Do you agree with Kid President when he says it's okay to disagree? Why?

Question 4: 
Robbie Novak, the Kid President has an illness called Osteogenesis imperfecta. He shows great resilience. 

What was has been the toughest thing that has happened to you? How did you bounce back?

Question 5.
Do you think the Kid President is awesome? Why?

Question 6. 
How many Kid President You Tube clips have you watched? Which one is your favourite and why?

Question 7.
What will you do to make the world more awesome? 
See you on Wednesday, Marvin's iKids and Miss Revell.

Tweet of the Week

This week the tweet of the week goes to @LadbrooksKiwi. Great idea Millie!! A big thank you to everyone who participated in Kidsedchatnz today. What an amazing bunch of tweeters we have. 

Topic for Week 7: ICT

This week the topic for kidsedchatnz is all about technology e.g. iPads, iPods, tablets, computers etc. Check out the questions below. 

1. What technology do you use in your classroom and why?
2. What is your favourite app or programme? 
3. How do you use your favourite app or programme in your classroom? 
4. Can technology improve your learning? Why or why not?
5. What piece of technology, app or programme would you like to use in your classroom and why? 
6. What technology do you think there will be in ten years time, that we don't have now? 
7. If you could design an iPad app what would your app be called and how would it help children with their learning? 
8. How can we make sensible choices when we are posting comments online? 
9. What can other children learn from joining in with Kidsedchatnz?

We can't wait to hear all your answers. From Room 2 Morningside School.

A visit from Follow

@LittleGiants7 were delighted to have had Follow visiting them.  They even took him on their trip to the Ohaaki Wetland.

They were having a lot of fun with him at our school, but Follow had to be on the move again, to find some new adventures at another school.

Tweet of the Week - Culture

Topic for Week 6 (20th November)

We have lots of cultures at our school and we would like to know what cultures you have at your school and learn more about culture.

Here are our questions for Kidsedchatnz this week:

1. What is your culture? What languages do you speak at home?
2. What cultures or languages do you learn about at school? What do you do?
3. What cultural groups activities do you do at your school? (Kapa Haka, Pasifika groups, Fia Fia celebration)
4. What are your favourite traditions from your culture? Do you celebrate these at school? (festivals, holidays, clothes, food, music, dance etc)
5. What cultural sports and games do you do at school?
6. What culture would you want to be and why? 
7. What language would you like to learn and why?
8. Do you know any apps or websites that you use to help learn about culture?

See you there.

Jin, Kauri, Renitta, Pare, Elijah, Mehaka & Mr Walker.

Tweet of the Week

Who won Tweet of the Week at today's Kidsedchatnz birthday celebration? Watch the video to find out!

Happy Birthday Kidsedchatnz!

Thank you everyone who turned out today to celebrate Kidsedchatnz's first birthday party! It was great to see lots of classes celebrating and enjoying the occasion!

Overall it was an excellent session with 750 tweets recorded between 22 classes! That's not bad going considering all the party activities (cakes, balloons, poppers etc) going on!

Anyway thanks again everyone, we are very proud of what Kidsedchatnz has become and we look forward to lots of brilliant sessions in the future!

Wednesday 13th November - Topic: Kidsedchatnz Birthday

This week's topic for Kidsedchatnz is based around Kidsedchatnz's one year Birthday. Check out the questions!

Q1. Today is Kidsedchatnz 1st birthday party, could you please leave Kidsedchatnz a birthday message?

Q2. How are you celebrating Kidsedchatnz's birthday? Can you tweet a picture of your party?

Q3. Today we are celebrating Kidsedchatnz's birthday, why do you think it is important to celebrate birthdays?

Q4. How old did you turn on your last birthday? What did you do to celebrate it? 

Q5. What was your favourite birthday present/party? Why was it special?

Q6. Kidsedchatnz has been going for 1 year, how long have you been taking part in it? Tell us about your experience?

Q7. Do you enjoy taking part in Kidsedchatnz? Why do you like it?

Q8. Is there anything you would like to change about Kidsedchatnz? What topics would you like to have in the future?

Tweet of the Week

This week's Tweet of the Week goes to....

The Changing Face of Kidsedchatnz

Breaking news! Kidsedchatnz organisation structure has changed big time! It no longer has one organiser but now has 7! Wow, how cool is that!

In August this year Pascal Dresse, founder of Kidsedchatnz left for Australia and passed the Kidsedchatnz organisation on to me. 

I have thoroughly enjoyed taking over Kidsedchatnz and during that time I have tried to grow the concept. Some of the initiatives I have introduced have been:

- Making Kidsedchatnz weekly.
- Increasing Kidsedchatnz from 30 minutes to 1 hour.
- Creating a new Kidsedchatnz blog.
- Introducing Tweet of the Week for the best tweet during the Kidsedchatnz session.
- Introducing a Kidsedchatnz Mascot and badges.
- Changing Kidsedchatnz from a Hashtag twitter chat to List twitter chat.
- Creating how to join Kidsedchatnz videos
- Running a 'Create a Kidsedchatnz Logo competition' and choosing a Kidsedchatnz logo.
- Entering Kidsedchatnz in the Interface Awards which we are a finalist.

Wow, I have been busy! 

Anyway I thought it was time Kidsedchatnz had a change and I was preparing to step aside and let someone else take up the reigns.

After a lot of thought I came to the conclusion that I love Kidsedchatnz and still wanted to be involved but maybe just not running everything. 

Solution? Co-organisers! A time share based model! Kidsedchatnz has always been a team effort with lots of fantastic classes supporting it every week. This was the perfect solution!

The idea was for everyone to run the ship for 1 week at a time. For that week you would have to get your class to make the topic/questions, promote it, moderate, choose tweet of the week and put posts on the blog. Then the next week someone else would have a turn.

So I jumped on twitter and sent out a few Direct Messages to the core/regular Kidsedchatnz teachers who take part. 

After sending out the messages I left my phone at home and went into town to get lunch. While away I was thinking, "I wonder if anyone will be keen?" 

What did I find on my phone when I returned? 21 direct tweets, 15 direct messages and numerous e-mails! BOOM! Everyone was keen! The Super 7 co-organisers were born!

So who are the Super7? Well they are Pascal Dresse - @PascalDresse, Reid Walker - @ReidHns1, Marcelle Natusch - @MNatusch, Marnel van der Spuy - @1MvdS, Simone Gentil - @simone015, Juliet Revell - @Juliet_Revell and me, Stephen Baker - @PalmyTeacher

Wow, what a fantastic team! We all actually know each other reasonable well from our years of collaborating and connecting on twitter.

Our goal is to grow the concept and keep it going as a great learning vehicle for the kids! What do you think? Is it going to work?

 

Kidsedchatnz Mascot on the Move!

Over the last few weeks 'Follow' the Kidsedchatnz mascot has been visiting Henderson School in Auckland. He has had an awesome time exploring their school and has made lots of new friends!

Anyway his trip has come to an end and tomorrow he is heading off to the @LittleGiants7 at Broadlands School, near Taupo. 

Here are a few photos from his time in Auckland!