Russell Street School

As one of my classmates stated, my first impression of the Russell Street School is WOW. The website is so inviting and pleasant to the eyes. It seems to be a place where students are encouraged to learn, challenged, and nurtured. The public is heavily involved and the students have a variety of recreational activities they can be involved in, from swimming to riding scooters on the scooter track. There is also an extensive host of experiences Russell Street students are offered, included but not limited to an authentic abundance of technological support, sports competitions, and personalized learning.

The User Interface (UI) is everything designed into an information device with which a person may interact, including display screens, keyboards, a mouse, and the appearance of a desktop. It is also the way through which a user interacts with an application or a website. The UI is significant in a person's interaction with information displayed before them. It looks to me as if teachers are all contributors to the school blog, but also maintain their personal class blogs. I think it's a good idea, but it is very "busy," which makes it hard to focus on specific information. Maybe a new hosting site would be better with organization and cluster of information.

Russell Street School

Looking at Russell Street School, my first impression is WOW. The website alone for the school is so professional and easy to navigate. If I were a parent, teacher, student, or any community member, I would be proud of this website and take comfort in knowing the information is so easy to access.

It seems like the school has transitioned to individual classroom blogs to a new format called School Stream. From my investigation into this school's website, it seems as though there is an app, or you can find information that has been posted on the website itself. I even found posts from today, which is awesome! Way to go Russell Street School educators in keeping your school and classrooms' blogs relevant!

I found this platform to be a great way for teachers to share information about what is taking place in the classroom. For me personally, I always take pictures of my students doing amazing things, but then never know what to do with them. I enjoyed that School Stream allowed teachers to post not only a written explanation of what students have been doing in the classroom but also pictures as well. However, this does lead me to wonder what kind of release forms the school needed in order to post the pictures of students. In other words, if I wanted to post pictures on my blog, what would I need to do in order to ensure that it was legal and professional?

The Russell Street School1929

The Seesaw Blog:

N-Zed has a bright present and future; “allowing our learners to create their own pathways”

·     “actively engaged and self-capable”

·     “a culture of innovation . . . to take creative risks”

·     “demonstrating leadership . . . through a range of contexts . . . each individual is different”

This was quite an enjoyable and heart-warming rabbit hole of learning in which to dive. The Illumin8 group in particular demonstrated a deep use of their blog. So many quality aspects of teaching and learning occur here. The teacher is placing great emphasis on thinking, creativity and accuracy. The learners are exploring in diverse ways. Outcomes drive the projects and the resulting products are documented and summarized with technology tools and the blog is the mechanism for formative assessment, feedback, reflection, metacognition, public communication, presentation, video portfolios, and display. The blog pervades the classroom and hands-on work. It serves as the glue and gallery for their learning. Even absent students are interacting with their peers while away from school. I can decipher individual stations set-up in the classroom for the technology tools used to document and share lessons and content in the blog.

·     “Our Christmas tree has people to keep it safe. We added rockets so it can fly.”

·     “Bad Jelly the witch”

·     “Benji - In math I'm really good at drawing the Graph with my data I am working on making statements about my findings.”

High art, I say. A rocket-powered Christmas tree. Prediction: these two gentlemen will be helping to colonize the Moon or Mars.

The Blog shares content between Instructor, learners, parents, the school, the community and beyond:

·     ideas

·     Legos

·     time

·     learning

·     products

·     celebrations

·     excursions

·     Interaction (including posts from outside the student group - South Korea)

·     technology

Artifacts include: photographs, video, and audio, digital graphics, storyboards, conflict mediation, performances, calendars & scheduling, Bloom’s assessment rubrics, links to cultural, activities & performance websites

A careful balance of hands-on analog and digital project and problem-based challenges pervade the instruction at the Russell Street School. A great respect for their Maori heritage proudly threads through the fabric of the learning community. The teacher uses technology to help the students to hear themselves read for accuracy. The blog offers students individual feedback that the group may benefit from as well. The technology presentation tools hold learners accountable for their learning, while contributing to their understanding of 21^stcentury tools. The blog promotes healthy communication between learners and with their instructor. Their website has an RSS feed subscription along with a comprehensive website serving learners and their parents, including apps to guide student, parent, and customer inquiry.

Russell Street School

The site that Russell Street School looks so professional!  I really like how it's one-stop shopping for families.  Everything is in one place and parents never have to question where they can find information on a particular class or even a form that they need.  Everything they need is located in one handy place.  This is very customer friendly and I'm sure their families appreciate this very much! 

Do they have a way to push their information out to parents?  Do they have an option for users to get an email/text notification each time the site is updated?  I had a website for my classroom but have stopped using it in the past few years.  I now use Remind101 for sharing information with my classroom families.  I can send the information instantly or schedule it to be sent at a later time.  I know other teacher's that use DoJo for this purpose.  This is very nice because I found with my website I was relying on parents to go and check the site.  Everyone is so busy this just simply does not happen very often and my families were not getting the information.  With Remind101 I just send the reminder to their phone as a text (or they can choose the email option) and they get the information immediately.  It also allows users to send photos and attachments if a document needs to be sent.

Impressions of the Russell Street School

If you haven't taken the opportunity already, visit the website for the Russell Street School (also look at their Google Site page) in Palmerson North, New Zealand. Spend some time looking at the blogging activities of the students. Go to the sites, scroll down and click on some of the Student Blogs and see what the students have been up to.

In looking through how this school - from teachers to students - use blogging as a part of their educational experience, what are your impressions of what you have seen?

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