Testing Makewav.es

In recent sessions, we have been looking at a new type of software that was mentioned on the Mozilla Trip some of us attended last year-Mavewav.es. It's a very interesting site which allows you to obtain online badges for your efforts and achievements. This site could benefit us as Digital Leaders and is very fun to explore; at the moment, we are looking at creating stories on our own individual Makewav.es accounts. New member Josh has been promoted to 'Senior Reporter' on the site, and we will take a look at the new responsibilities that come with this role.

Today's Meeting

First session back since half term-in today's meeting, we will be updating the main blog, looking at gaming and software reviews, completing a PowerPoint on our plans for the school link in Sri Lanka and also taking part in a chat with Riddlesdown School in London.

Links To Sri Lanka

Miss O'Grady, a Geography teacher in our school, is setting up links to a school in Kandy, Sri Lanka. Some Digital Leaders are working on a PowerPoint to send to people at the school talking about Arden's e-Safety assemblies and what we do to promote e-Safety in and outside of school.

Welcome back to another year of Digital Leaders! We’ve had a nice Summer break, but now it’s back down to business. Today was our first proper meeting back; we meet briefly last week to organise who the Chair and Vice Chair of Digital Leaders were going to be. We decided that Will D is to be Chair of Digital Leaders and Will G is to be Vice Chair. Last year, different Digital Leader’s were assigned different departments in the school and this year, depending what departments each of us have been assigned to, we will be assisting these. We also have some E-Safety assemblies to devise and present over the next few weeks. App of the week is running again this year, so look out for updates in the following weeks. We have briefly tested the new Frog OS software, which was very interesting. We will exploring that further in the next few sessions.

New Yr 8 Digital Leaders

A fair while has passed since we first started digital leaders here at Arden, and we are pleased to announce that we have now recruited 6 digital leaders from year 8. They are:

• Isla
• Megan
• Lewis
• Shirin
• Lucy
• Will

We are looking forward to starting work with them, and their photos will be uploaded to the "Meet the DLs" page soon. We have already linked their blogs so have a look!

BT Digital Champions

Megan and Sophie are leading on the BT Digital Champions project. Everyone is registered  on the site and we are all going to try to teach people in our community diiferent softwares and how to use different technology. Everyone is going to try to log at least one activity.

"The Art of Being Brilliant" Seminar

On Wednesday 1st May 2013 our school hosted the "The Art of Being Brilliant" and because we are Digital Leaders we were identified as leaders in the school and selected to take part in the seminar.
Andy Cope who was leading the event has been doing these seminars in schools across the country and to big companies as well, such as Ikea, and Toshiba.
Throughout the day we learnt about how to think positively and how to use our happiness to influence othere people, and make them feel the same way. It was a great day and we all learnt a lot about how to be more positive and happy. We are all trying to put what we learnt into practise now, and give the Arden Digital Leaders a good image.

On Tuesday in the last week of April Will Davison and Matt Best visited Miss Brennon to teach her about Prezi. She strugled at first to understand but caught on very quickly. A follow-up will be aranged soon.

We are recruiting...

 

 

Year 8 Applications need to be emailed to the Digital Leaders email
address on the poster above by Monday 13/5/13

E Safety Assemblies

Our E Safety assemblies went really well! We presented to every year in school. We made some videos to back up our presentations; the links are at the bottom of this post. On Monday, we gave our first presentation to the Sixth Formers. We were nervous at first, because we didn't know how they would receive our presentation, but they laughed at the jokes and seemed to be interested in what we had to say. It went well, and we were proud of our efforts. The next day, Tuesday, we were presenting to the Year 10's and 11's. We were particularly nervous, as it was the first time we would be presenting with our script. I think it went well, and the videos played seemed to have the desired effect. The last assembly, on the Wednesday morning, was to the Year 7's, 8's and fellow Year 9's! The previous assemblies had been in the school hall, but for this special assembly involving 3 years, we presented in the larger sports hall. This time, Megan introduced the assembly and we all stood up and said our pieces. At the end, I was so relieved it had been done, but I was glad I'd done it. We all really enjoyed the experience and it helped build up our leadership skills. It was a chance to show the school how proud we felt to be Digital Leaders and to show them the skills we were building up by being one.

By Daisy Brown



Assembly E Safety DL's April 2013- www.youtube.com/watch?v=GWoAcARKVDw

Arden's E Safety Assembly (Movie Maker)- www.youtube.com/watch?v=UCFo_No9hds

Arden E Safety Assembly (iMovie)- www.youtube.com/watch?v=W9|Dzitilll

New E-Safety Tips Poster - for ICT rooms at Arden

This was made using the Grafio app on the iPad and will be displayed

all classrooms with PCs or Macs.

Whole school assemblies

We have planned and made resources for whole school assemblies

Monday 22/4/13 Year 12/13
Tuesday 23/4/13 Year 10/11
Wednesday 24/4/13 Year 7/8/9

The assemblies will focus on E-Safety and Digital Citizenship

Safe use of the internet, impact of what you post online and cyberbullying...

Quadblogging

We have enjoyed Quadblogging with the 3 schools in America.
It is now coming to an end, but we hope to do some more Quadblogging in the future.

Video for #TMBrum2

Here is the video we made using iMovie for a meeting of teacher on 20th March 2013. The meeting was about 'Student Led Learning' and we were asked to explain what we do as DLs at Arden. We did a Prezi and also showed this video (unfortunately You Tube stopped working after a minute).

Blog Update

I've updated my blog and mentioned all the different things we are doing.

- Daisy

DL Updates

A few teachers have asked for assistance in different areas of technology such as blogs, Movie Maker and Wikis. Megan and Sophie will help with the blogs, Lochie and Matt will help with Movie Maker and Charlotte and Daisy will sort out the Wikis. Some DL's are going to a TeachMeet next Wednesday and will make a presentation about how Digital Leaders works and what it involves. Our video will also be shown during this meeting.

Here is our video about Arden Digital Leaders

 

Mrs Allton asked us to make this short video - just 2 minutes, but we are now working on a longer version which explains more of the many things we have done, are currently working on or have planned for the future.

Digital Leaders Video

Today, the Arden Digital Leaders were asked to make a video which will be shown at an upcoming 'Teach Meet' and will be shown to 350 teachers up and down the country! In the video, we include exactly why we became Digital Leaders, what we have done and what we are going to do! We used MovieMaker, which Megan used for a piece of homework a couple of weeks ago; check her blog out to see more! We edited the video ourselves and filmed it ourselves; it was really fun!! The video will be up on the blog a bit later.

Quadblogging Week 7

This week we are looking at the Blog from Luella Middle School, USA.

Link here: http://kidblog.org/LMS_Theodocion/

Make sure you read and comment where possible... what has been added since last time we looked? Have they replyed to your comments?

Mrs Allton

Have you looked at our individual blogs recently?

Sophie has updated hers, as have others...

Coaching teachers

Teachers, Would you like some help with ICT or New Technology to use in school?
Email us at: digitalleaders@arden.solihull.sch.uk

We will arrange a break or lunchtime to see you and show you software or apps.
If we don't know how to do use anything you want to know about we will try it out and work it out before we see you.

So far we have helped teachers with Office 2010, Twitter, Using tinyurl.com, Prezi and Adobe Photoshop...

Quadblogging

Hello America!
Thanks for visiting our blog again...
We would also like you to read and comment on this main blog as this is mostly written by the Digital Leaders about what they have been doing.
Any questions about what we are doing - please ask!
Thanks, Arden DLs

The presentation from the Prezi demonstration is below:

 http://prezi.com/x9chnlooya_7/untitled-prezi/?auth_key=d7d3227a59140e5733e8c422df956ec35cc22c80&kw=view-x9chnlooya_7&rc=ref-30713541

Coaching the teachers... Prezi

We have invited teachers to come to a lunch time teaching session tomorrow (Thursday).
We are going to show them how to use Prezi.com

Matt and Megan are going to lead the session, but everyone will be helping out.

Week 4 of Quadblogging

This week we are looking at student blogs from Williston Central School, USA.
There are student blogs to view and comment on via both of these links:
http://kidblog.org/Harbour7
http://kidblog.org/Harbour8

Next week will be back to the other schools looking at this blog and our individual ones!

Safer Internet Day 2013 - 5th February 2013

It is 'Safer Internet Day 2013' this Tuesday and Lochie from the Digital Leaders has designed a poster to be displayed in all of the form rooms at Arden:

We are on the school website...

We are on the school website - see the latest news : http://www.arden.solihull.sch.uk/ad/home

Quadblogging... week 3

Hi DLs

This week we need to look at the Blog from Luella Middle School, USA.

Link here: http://kidblog.org/LMS_Theodocion/

Make sure you read and comment where possible...

Don't forget to check your own blogs and see reply to any comments you have had. Also you should be updating your blog and this blog as much as possible (at least once a week).

It will soon be our turn again and we need to make sure that people can see the difference...

Mrs A x

Our Wordcloud!

Word Clouds

Wordclouds are a unique and professional way of presenting words or phrases in a shape of just random orders. The way in which the different websites make the clouds is different, with some of them putting the words in a shape and others putting them in a random bunch on a page. Some of the websites are blocked in our school, however others are not, and the best thing about it is that they are free!

         

Video Of Digital Leaders Trip - Open Badges

Video of Digital Leaders discussing Open Badges on 17th January. Includes Megan and Daisy from Arden Digital Leaders!

Click here to watch the video:

https://www.makewav.es/story/461933/title/whatisanopenbadge

What shall we do for safer internet day 2013

When is Safer Internet Day?
5th February 2013

Have a look at the website here:
http://www.saferinternetday.org/web/guest/sid-2013

What should we do at Arden? Write your ideas on this post...

Quadblogging week beginning 21st January 2013

Hi All

This week we need to have a look science blogs from Chimacum Middle School, USA

Their main blog can be found here:

http://classblogmeister.com/blog.php?blogger_id=4771

There are loads of student blogs (links down the right hand side of their blog) to look at so read the really useful instructions from Mr Gonzalez first and then get started.

Don't forget when you comment on anything add your name and Arden in brackets so everyone can see which students and schools are viewing.
Like this:  .... Mrs Allton (Arden)

P.S. Don't forget to reply to the comments that you have had on your blogs this week as well as keep updating your blogs as often as possible.

Trip to Mozilla HQ London for Open Badges

Hi all!

Yesterday, we went to Mozilla in London along with some DLs from John Henry Newman Catholic Collage (there were other schools when we got there though) to help design a scheme called Open Badges.

At Ickenham Train Station waiting to get the train to Mozilla London HQ

It was an early start for us; we had to get into school for around 7:00am! After a 2-3 hour journey, we arrived and were welcomed by some of the staff that worked there.

The first activity we did was called “Strong Wind Blows” which was essentially a brain storming activity where we had to give ideas for badges. It was a bit like musical chairs, but without the music – the person without a chair had to give an idea.

Then we had a small break, after which we went into groups and expanded on these ideas – name, what it looks like, who could award it etc. Some of the ideas were screen capture/other forms of digital tutorials, teaching teachers and doing presentations in front of large groups of people.

Testing Mozilla software

After lunch, we continued building up our ideas, and had a think about what motivation people would have to get the badge. Also, we discussed how would people feel about having a digital/online badge instead of a physical one that you could wear – what do you think?

Finally, some of the groups, presented their badge and we got a chance to ask questions about it. A group of primary school DLs presented their badges – I couldn’t have stood and presented in front of all those people when I was 7!

Megan being interviewed about Open Badges #DLBadges

Heading home after a great day - thanks to JHNCC for taking us in the minibus!

Around 4:00pm, we set off on the journey home and arrived back about 6:30pm. It was a fantastic day and we all had great fun – thanks to everyone that was involved!
By Will D

Logo design poll has finished

Thanks for voting on our logo poll - it is now closed.

Well done Megan!

I've made a new post on my blog about some of my DL work and fun Apps people can check out in their free time. Just click on 'Daisy' in the 'Individual DL Blogs' box on the left.

-Daisy

Arden Digital Leaders Logo

Hello all visitors to this page...

Before Christmas we had a vote for which logo to use and it was a draw between Will and Megan's designs.

Please vote on the new poll (on the right hand side) of this page before Thursday 17th January to help us choose which one to use.

You can see the designs by scrolling to the original vote post and looking for Will and Megan's logos.

Student Digital Leaders Badgeathon

We are going to a badgeathon on 17th January 2013 in London

http://lanyrd.com/2013/student-digital-leaders-badgeathon-south/

We will be learning about this digital reward system and will be getting the chance to design 'badges' for the scheme http://openbadges.org/en-US/

Quadblogging... going global!

Getting a global audience...
This blog is going to be part of Quadblogging http://quadblogging.net/
Schools sign up to work in a team to look at each others blogs and add comments/feedback.

We are leading the group and have been put in a quad with three schools in America.

Each week for January, February and March all students will look and feedback on the blog from the timetabled school.
Here is the timetable and we will be the first blog that the other three schools will look at.

Week beginning:

14/1/13 - Arden, UK

21/1/13 - Chimacum Middle School, USA

28/1/13 - Luella Middle School, USA

4/2/13 - Williston Central School, USA

11/2/13 - Arden, UK

18/2/13 - Chimacum Middle School, USA

25/2/13 - Luella Middle School, USA

4/3/13 - Williston Central School, USA

11/3/13 - Arden, UK

18/3/13 - Chimacum Middle School, USA

25/3/13 - Luella Middle School, USA & Williston Central School, USA