Happy Christmas

We wish you all a very happy Christmas and hope you get the break you need and deserve at this time of the year.

PD for for 2009

Letters have been sent to all centres and organisations who applied to the University of Auckland for Kei Tua o te Pae Professional Learning programmes for 2009.

As usual we recieved far more applications than we had places for. This has meant that some of you will have been disappointed. We regret that even prioritising centres without prior Ktotp Professional Development did not mean that everyone who needed this was able to find a place.

We will be advertising in Term 1 for our one day seminar which is always a popular option.

Although 2009 is the last year for the Kei Tua o te Pae professional Development contract, we are certain that some form of support around assessment and planning will still exist in 2010 and beyond.

We look forward to another year of challenge and innovation as we all continue on our assessment journeys. (There's that 'J' word again!)

from

Maureen

ECE Update

The ECE update is now published in the Education Gazette.

The latest online copy has a number of questions and answers about the delay of the new licensing criteria as well as several other interesting articles and links and is at

http://203.96.53.45/articles.php?action=view&id=7747

Kei Tua o te Pae "new" books

The next set of booklets in the Kei Tua o te Pae series will be available probably from February 2009.

These will look at assessment through the lenses of literacy, mathematics, ICT and art.

National government changes to Regulations

Here is the link to the press release.

The new criteria, as previously promised, are to be delayed for six months.

http://www.beehive.govt.nz/release/new+early+childhood+regulations+be+delayed

Changes

I have set up links to other blogs that belong to our team.

There is now a separate place to put info relating to ICT.
That should make this blog more specifically about our Assessment PD work.

I have my own which I will play with but you will notice it has been a lower priority as it is hardly begun yet Barbara has begun a blog where she will be documenting her Dec/Jan trip to India with her husband. A link will go up soon.

I was so excited when I found out how to add a counter to the blog so i can see how many visitors I have had..until my children said how unimpressed they were by the total so far.

from MAureen

Street View

Another cool application from Google!


I wonder how many uses we can come up with...

-Virtual tours of scenic spots
-virtual trips to the airport or zoo before the real trip
- preview a walk with children beforehand
- get more visual instructions on how to get to those well hidden ece centres
- look up and wander the street or neighbourhood where you are thinking of buying a house

What else?

A link has been added to the links list.

tag galaxy

This is one of the coolest things ever!!!

Especially if you have used Flikr for your photos.

You dont need to sign up, just go the the web and follow the prompts. When hte planets show up, click on them or the sun and watch what happens!

Applications - gee I dont know. But the children will love it as much as I do. Its magical. I dont have any photos on Flikr but am working at home today so will put some up via my home computer, making sure to add tags that this site could find.

http://taggalaxy.de/

I tried Auckland, education, (assessment and Kei tua o te Pae dont work as tags) and Whedon (being a Joss Whedon fan).

Shame my allotted breakfast playtime is over. Cant wait to get back to this maybe tonight!
Have fun

Maureen

A good explanation of blogs

The interactive table

For those who I know were really excited about the table we saw a video of

inspiration

I got inspired yesterday to get back to trying to understand better how to manage the blog I was playing with a few months ago.

Thanks to Core ED team for their PD day. Really great day.