A Great Term!

Thanks everyone for taking part in Kidsedchatnz this term, you make Kidsedchatnz what it is... AWESOME!

Yesterday we had 1,878 tweets recorded in one hour, which is an awesome effort!

Finally, this was my favourite tweet from yesterday, I think it sums up Kidsedchatnz perfectly! I look forward to seeing everyone next term!

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!

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!

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's 1st Birthday Party

Wow! Kidsedchatnz is turning one! Pascal Dresse started Kidsedchatnz in 2012 and a year later it's still going strong!

To celebrate we are going to have a special Kidsedchatnz birthday party on Wednesday 13th November at 2-3pm! The topic is going to be based on Kidsedchatnz and feature a mixture of questions.

We want to make this a special Kidsedchatnz session so clear your diaries everyone and make sure your class takes part

A New Craze Is Sweeping The Nation!

Check out this amazing video made by Steph Campbell and her fantastic class @room72013.

They made the video to let their school know all about Kidsedchatnz and showed it at their school assembly.

All I can say is what a great job! A new craze is sweeping the nation!

Kidsedchatnz Mascot

The Kidsedchatnz mascot has been hanging out with @PalmyKids in Palmerston North over the last weeks. It had a fab time but unfortunately we had to send it out into the big wide world!

Where did it go next? Well it has just arrived in Henderson, Auckland and will be staying with @Rm1HNS.

While it was in Palmy the kids came up with a name for it. So what is it's name? Well Aye came up with the name 'Follow'! We thought this was a great name as Kidsedchatnz is all about following each other on Twitter!

Here's a few photos of 'Follow' on his journey!

Topic and Questions

This term I thought I would try something new with Kidsedchatnz. What is it you ask? Well I thought I would give some classes a chance to pick the weekly topic and also generate the questions.

I thought by doing this it would help get the classes/students involved and help give them some real ownership to the Kidsedchatnz sessions.

So what they have to do is think of a suitable topic and make a list of 5 questions to talk about during the session. 

They need to pick a topic that hasn't been used before and something that is going to appeal to all ages. Topics used so far are: Books, Teachers, Maths, Science, Writing, Reading, Term Reflections, Homework, Sports, Modern Learning Environments, Technology, Learning Styles, Fun at School and Connected Learners.

Once they have made up their topic and questions they can e-mail it to me (stephen@russellst.school.nz) and I will put it up on the Kidsedchatnz blog. I will still put up the questions on Wednesday's and moderate the sessions.

So who is going to be the first class to generate a topic and make up the questions? Well VardonRoom7 have kindly offered to be the first! This is great as they are one of our regular classes that take part and they definitely know how Kidsedchatnz works!

So what do you think of my new idea? Do you think it will work? Would you like to have your class generate the topic/questions for a Kidsedchatnz session?

Let me know if you have any other ideas for Kidsedchatnz. We are always looking to improve the concept!

Interface Magazine Awards

Wow, I just found out that Kidsedchatnz has made it into the finals of the Interface Magazine Awards for Best Teaching with ICT! How cool is that!

A big thank you must go out to Pascal (Founder of Kidsedchatnz) and all the classes that support Kidsedchatnz (especially our regular classes @Rm1HNS, @VardonRoom7, @LittleGiants7, @PalmyKids, @Room2Smarties and @MKKRm2). Without you guys Kidsedchatnz would not work!

If you want to check out all the finalists just click here. 

Also you get to have a say in who wins through a voting process. All you need to do is click on the picture below and it will take you to the voting page. Kidsedchatnz would love your vote!

Voting closes on Wednesday 6th November and the results are announced in the next episode of the Interface Magazine! Fingers crossed!

Kidsedchatnz Posters

Check out these posters that were made by PalmyKids for their Hands-on Homework task! Pretty Cool!

Interface Magazine

It was great to see Kidsedchatnz featured as a lesson plan idea in today's Interface Magazine. Thanks Pascal for starting it up and a big thanks to everyone who has been taking part and supporting it!

Today's Kidsedchatnz Session

Thank you everyone who took part in today's Kidsedchatnz session! There were over 350 tweets recorded between 6 classes! 

The session ran smooth and it was great to see everyone using the Kidsedchatnz list instead of the Hashtag. 

Here are a few pictures of the classes taking part!

Kidsedchatnz Classes

Last week Kidsedchatnz was so popular that we started trending on twitter. Usually this would be great news but unfortunately all it did was attract the spammers and trolls to hit the #kidsedchatnz hashtag with 100's of inappropriate tweets.

Children safety and security it very important to us so obviously this can not happen again. 

So what are we going to do about it? Well firstly we are no longer going to use the #kidsedchatnz hashtag. Instead I have set up a twitter list of classes that take part and we want everyone to subscribe to that list. That way you can just watch the list on twitter instead of watching the hashtag.

A twitter list is just a group of twitter users put all in one place. It's actually very similar to a hashtag but a lot more private.

To subscribe to the list just click here and hit the subscribe button on the top left hand corner.

If you want to take part in kidsedchatnz you need to get your name on the list. So if you aren't on it just send me a tweet (@kidsedchatnz) and I will put it on straight away.

The list can still be used on tweetdeck and it's easy to add as a column. So on Wednesday instead of following the #kidsedchatnz hashtag you need to load the Kidsedchatnz list and follow that.

I hope all this makes sense, we look forward to seeing you on Wednesday!

Winning Logo

Thanks to everyone who entered the Kidsedchatnz Logo Competition, your entries were fantastic!

So who came out on top? Well congratulation goes to Rosalind from Russell Street School for the winning entry!

Rosalind's Logo was chosen from a number of entries and the judges loved the way she featured the title, twitter bird and kids chatting all on a laptop!

Check out the winning entry below!

Today's #kidsedchatnz Session

Today's #kidsedchatnz session was on fire! 500 tweets between 16 classes is not a bad effort! Check out some of the classes involved, this is what I call engagement!

#kidsedchatnz Touchcast

Check out this Touchcast that one of the kids in R5, Russell Street School made about #kidsedchatnz! I think they did a great job!

Today's #kidsedchat Session

Today's #kidsedchatnz session was going off! 340 tweets between 10 classes is not a bad effort! Check out R2 at Maraekakaho School and R5 at Russell Street. This is what I call engagement!

Topic - Writing

Today was a great turn out for #kidsedchatnz with well over 300 tweets posted in 1 hour! Check out this Storify of all the tweets #kidsedchatnz!

Welcome To #kidsedchatnz

Welcome to the home of Kidsedchatnz! Kidsedchatnz is a New Zealand school's twitter chat that takes part every Wednesday between 2-3pm.

The aim of Kidsedchatnz is to motivate kids to be active, engaged and connected learners.

Kidsedchatnz was created in 2012 and is currently co-organised by Pascal Dresse, Stephen Baker, Reid Walker, Simone Gentil, Juliet Revell, Marnel van der Spuy and Marcelle Natusch.

To take part in Kidsedchatnz you need to first create a class twitter account. This is free and can be done by clicking here!

Once you have done this you need to get your twitter name added to the Kidsedchatnz twitter list. To do this you need to send a tweet to @kidsedchatnz and I will add you straight away.

You need to get your name on the Kidsedchatnz Twitter list as it allows all the classes taking part to see your tweets.

Once you are on the Kidsedchatnz Twitter list you need to subscribe and follow the list during the session. You can subscribe to the list by clicking here. Here's a video that will help you do this!

An easy way to follow the Kidsedchatnz Twitter list tweets is to use Tweetdeck. Here is a video that explains how to use it.

If you have any questions or concerns please contact me by e-mail at stephen@russellst.school.nz

I hope all this makes sense and we look forward to seeing your class at the next Kidsedchatnz session!