Live Blog with Padlet

As part of our computing lessons this year, we wanted to be able to live blog some events in our classrooms. We currently do not have class blogs and were wondering how our goal of Live Blogging could be met. 

We decided Padlet would be a good platform, that the children are familiar with, to give Live Blogging a go. 

So, we set up a Padlet page. We stuck a large QR Code linking to the page on the wall of the classroom. First thing in the morning, we handed the first child in the register an iPad device and gave them an instruction of, "Scan that code and in the next twenty minutes, write about what you do. After that, pass on the iPad device to the next person in the register."

It worked very well. Using one Padlet wall allowed the day's event to all be in one place. The children's familiarity with QR Codes, iPad devices and Padlet allowed them to blog unaided. The results were good and we even got some comments from those who came across our Live Blog. The posts to the page were moderated by the class teacher.

Here's Year Five's day from 18/05/15:

Created with Padlet

One class, who came across our Live Blog, also chose to carry out their own a few days later and that can be seen here. 

If you give it a go, we'd love to see the outcome. 

Follow our live blog http://t.co/shcRColVeL thanks @ThisIsLiamM for the idea.

— Robin Smith (@RAS1975) May 20, 2015

Create Your Own Interactive Resources

So, the curriculum's changing. Lots has been said, lots has been discussed. Some like; others don't like. Maybe you're a teacher very able when it comes to computational thinking, however you may be less au fait with this aspect of primary education.

We've both got an interest in computing. In recent years, we've run a Code Club and also ensured the coverage of computing in our junior school. 

Our latest development is to begin creating our own games and activities in Scratch to use in our classrooms and others across the school. Creating the resources yourself means they can the tailored to your own needs. Also, if you've got to teach and support children in computational thinking, it's a good idea to develop your own skills. Whilst developing those skills, create something that's useful to you!

Image credit: scratch.mit.edu

We're using Scratch because it's a reasonably easy place to start, projects and easily shared online and others can 'remix' the project to adapt it for their needs or wants. Other languages can of course be used too.

We began by creating this project to support this blog post. This uses Alan Peat resources and if you're using them too, why not remix the project to show the sentences you're wokring on?

Next, we created this project to accompany this blog post.

We're sure they'll be more to come from us. Our Scratch projects can all be found here: http://scratch.mit.edu/users/primaryideas.