The other idea that Greg had was relating to students' goals. I really believe that students should set their own goals and reflect on them throughout the the year. Greg suggested recording videos of the students talking about their goals and reflections rather than just writing about them. This is something I hadn't thought about before, but is something I think I will utilise in my own classroom.
This week we looked at different websites that we can use to make simple animations and stories. One of those was http://www.dfilm.com/, however this one is not suitable for children to use. Below is the short animation I made. Enjoy :P
In case the video doesn't play (seems to have issues in Internet Explorer) follow this link to see the video. http://www.dvolver.com/live/movies-465659
We then looked at another website that can be used to make animations. This one is much more student friendly. http://www.zimmertwins.com/ It is very easy to use. You can change the characters, scenes, what they are doing and holding. I can see great potential for students to use this website to repesent their ideas on a variety of different topics. Below are screen shots of the animation I created.

Following this we looked at http://www.reasonablyclever.com/, where you can build different lego characters by chaging the different parts of their bodies. This could be used to get students to create different characters for a story, play, or to get ideas for their own animations. Below is a screen shot of the character I made.
Following this we looked at introducing typed dictations into classrooms. We all performed the dictations that Greg read out. It was interesting to see the differences in the spelling of words between our typing and the poem Greg had read out. He used the poem Ode to the Spell Checker. One such version of this can be found at http://forum.wordreference.com/showthread.php?t=34076. I think this sort of dictation could be very useful in the classroom for students to practice not only there typing skills, as well as grammar
and punctuation understandings, but could also inspire great discussions about homonyms and how easily different words can be confused for one another.
After this we looked at Rebus writing, which is where some words or objects in the writing are replaced by pictures. This has applications for a variety of different year levels, and would be especially helpful for ESL students. Often students know what they want to write or say but lack the ability or confidence to actually complete the task. This form of writing could very well help them to develop this confidence. It was really good to hear about how to save files that contain gif images so that they still move. Greg suggested that if students save their writing as a webpage instead of simply a Word document, this will ensure the images still move. A screen shot of an example of this can be found below.
Another great suggestion was that students could start writing a story on their computer and then move on to someone else's story and continue writing. This would be repeated a number of times and then each student would return to their own story and finish it, taking into account the changes that other students have made to their story. This sounds like an excellent idea and reminds me of the stories my friends and I used to write at school on paper and folded it down and passed it on. It would be interesting to see how different students would react and adapt to changes in their own writing made by other students.