Tuesday, May 5, 2009

Late entry from Anne

Sorry for this late entry - I have the first three weeks of this term as 'blog monitor' and I have only just managed to get where I should be.
I seem to have a problem with reading the screen and remembering passwords. I have saved my various passwords in two places [an email folder and a word document] but I think I may resort to pen and paper and keep it handy. I would actually like to use one password for everything but I am sure there are good reasons for not doing this.
Here at GSNS we have action plans in all directions - it will be great to share the super things that are happening. Personally I am trialling a software throughout the school called "Lexia". It promises great things in supporting children experiencing difficulty in reading or who are new speakers of English. It has been a bit of a marathon getting everything set up - [I don't know how I could get it ready without using a technician!] but now children are beginning to work with it. It is not cheap but if it delivers half what it promises it might be money well spent.

4 comments:

  1. Hay Anne,
    a busy time for you :-). I have one username (Gregc5) for everything and also gregc5nz if I need to have more characters than that. I also have the same password. Makes it SO much easier as you say.
    The other thing I have is a spiral bound notebook that I keep all the stuff I can't manage like business cards, notes ideas, my doodlings etc that are just too inconvenient to have electronically.
    I find it is a system that works well.
    cheers
    Greg

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  2. Hi Anne,
    I just thought I would add the link to Lexia to your blog post. Hope you don't mind.

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  3. Hi Anne, I'm the same as Greg ... I have a notebook that has all that stuff in that I got sick of carrying around in my head, I generally have two user names, bilinda and bilindao, depending on characters and availability and have 3 different passwords, one is super secret, one is averagely secret, and the other is one I use for school stuff that its ok to share. My problem is I forget what I have signed up for - go to sign up or join something, and find I already have!!oops

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  4. Anne again ... First of all thanks for the advice about logins. I have a couple that have been given to me like 'fasthat' and while they are unique I do not find a logical connection for my memory cells - on with the notebook.

    I had an interesting day on Thursday at the NZCER conference in Chch [also caught up with Jane Nicholls]. Five schools presenting about their journey with NZC. We were given a website called www.shiftingthinking.org by Rosemary Hipkins that sounds interesting.
    I liked some of the ideas about community consultation - some ideas new to me included:
    Asking parents for questions and having a question addressed each week in a newsletter.
    Coffee discussions following assemblies;
    Cottage meetings - I think these are small group meetings in homes??
    Information a little and often - updates given whenever the school community gathers;

    Another idea that was interesting :- One school gave each teacher a release day at the start of the year to have time to have a quality conversation with each child in their class!

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