Days+with+Stuart+Hale+2012

We were lucky enough to have 2 days software skill building with Stuart Hale Please reflect on your sessions with Stuart below.


 * Maryn || I found the sessions we had with Stuart very useful. It is great to know all the tools that you can use for different things, but now that I know how to do a few things on keynote, pages and kidpix I can actually use these tool. I would love to have more of those session, because it allows you the time to explore. I have used the sorting activity with brainfood we made as a template with Stuart. I am also using some of the kidpix skills he taught us, but feels that I need to learn some more about kidpix. I definitely think that the skill building that Stuart offers is excellent. ||
 * Melissa || I found it really useful lots of new skills and tricks to use with the juniors which is useful as it can be over the top for them and it was good to see templates that they can use. I also like the kid pix making recreating a story which I have already done with my class and they really enjoyed it and loved watching it. I should probably also print this and make it into a story in the library corner. The second day was good as well we covered some more things and even got an extra session in. Really helpful for skill building. ||
 * Amanda T || It was incredibly useful to find out new ways to do things that I had previously been taking the looong road to complete. Stuart made me aware that I need to really think about and focus on what is important for the students to be learning and make the ICT the focus of that, rather than getting them to do all of the nitty gritty of it at their age. He taught me a number of 'shortcuts' to make ICT learning more motivating for the kids and I have already used two of these ideas in class - templates and kidpix slideshow. ||
 * Linda || It has been really great to learn new things about applications that I have been using for so long. I have learnt an exciting way to use kidpix to make a story book. Rather than allowing the children to use it to play when they have finished their work. Using text boxes as drop boxes in pages is also a new thing for me which I will be using to make my assessment tools. ||
 * Amanda J || I found it really useful as their were things he showed us that I had no idea about. I really liked the kidpix session especially as this is a program used a lot in my class and one that the children enjoy. I agree with the other comments that it wasn't very Inquiry focussed and our team didn't get time to plan together for this in the sessions but I did find what he showed us could be useful to present Inquiry ideas etc. It was good to develop my ICT skills further as ICT is an area that I enjoy and want to grow in. ||
 * Nicola || I found it really useful learning how KN could be used. I really liked seeing what we could possibly do to create interesting books with pictures that included children as part of the story. Would like more time on this sort of thing as I feel a lot of the programmes I ave on my computer are being under utilised. ||
 * Elaine || I found the session with Stuart really helpful. Stuart help me to think outside the box and I use the template we made about brainfood with my children and they love it. Stuart showed me how to break things down and use a range of tools. Not Inquiry focused but still can be linked to it. ||
 * Johan ||  ||
 * Kate || Many of the things we learnt with Stuart I already knew, this is why I only attended the first round of sessions. I found the first session with him useful as a leader of ICT as it allowed me to see the enthusiasm with which the teachers enjoyed the sessions and showed me that Reremoana teachers would like more skill building, both with software that is already on our machines and with other tools. I think the second sessions (although I did not attend one) would have followed on well from the first and provided teachers with skills that they were eager to get going with. Overall the feedback that I've had from teachers was positive and they enjoyed their time with Stuart - both from a learning perspective and a personal one. ||
 * Brett || I found it useful. It was good to have a meeting that I went away from actually getting out stuff I could use. I liked the hands on approach where we could learn and give things a go at the same time. I have used some of the tips in class already. ||
 * Rochelle || I found the first day very helpful in terms of learning how to use a range of tools more effectively. (Numbers, Comic Life, Keynote). I had probably been using about 5% of what they are capable of being used for. It was very enlightening. As Michelle has said it wasn't very Inquiry focussed, but I think Stuart was able to spot quite quickly that for our team learning what he taught us was going to be pretty useful. I found the second session repetitive. Although for the other teachers that attended the second session with me, it was all new material. ||
 * Michelle || I found the first day about Inquiry with Stuart quite useful. He was able to show a lot of little tips and tricks with ICT which was great. However I did find the session a bit frustrating when it was meant to be around Inquiry and we started with the 'pretty presenting' of ideas. I don't agree that this is what Inquiry is about. I filtered the information I received and am able to use some of the tips in the classroom with my students. I found that I already knew a lot of the things that Stuart showed on the second day on iMovie using footage. I find that Stuart is very knowledgeable and great to build skills for teachers and some of my team found him extremely helpful. I would love to pick his brain on software I haven't used much such as Garageband. ||
 * Mel || I enjoyed seeing how to use the Numbers program in ICT presenting or making signs and labels for the classroom. Stuart also helped me with understanding how to load my videos into my blog in a simple way. I learnt how to add files from iPhoto to other programs which I will endeavor to use. ||
 * Elyse || I found both sessions very worthwhile It was great to find out about all the useful tools available that you wouldn't otherwise know about unless you were an expert. It was really great to learn about the possibilities of learning opportunities for each program. The second session was also very interesting and stuart did a great job at catering for the different levels of understanding in our group. I really liked the idea of using the green screen to generate ideas for reading and writing and this is a tool I look forward to using In my classroom. After this session I set up a template using the skills and was able to use the template for Celebration ! ||
 * Rachel || I found Stuart really helpful with breaking down the steps to use a range of tools.He showed us how to use the numbers programme in a way I never thought to use it before ( never really paid much attention to that programme before). I really liked learning about how to hyperlink slides in keynote to make interactive activities. The second session I knew a lot of what was taught, however I found how to edit music and speech in Imovie interesting. ||