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Identity rap blog
Discussion for “Identity: sharing our stories” rap hosted by School Libraries & Information Literacy
May 18th, 2008 at 8:09 pm
Hello everyone!
My name is Ian McLean and I’m the teacher librarian at Penrith Public School. After all the fun of last term’s book rap on “Wilfrid Gordon McDonald Partridge”, I’m really looking forward to working with you all on the Identity Rap.
At my school, we have timetabled several groups of students from five Stage 3 classes, to work with me on the rap in the library – plus there’s a group of Aboriginal students working on literacy and leadership skills with our Aboriginal community liaison aide.
This Teacher’s section is a great place to ask your questions about blogs and raps. I hope I can share my experiences from last term’s book rap to make your learning curve a little easier.
Best wishes, Ian McLean
Penrith PS
May 19th, 2008 at 6:46 pm
Hello everyone!
I am Lizzie Chase and I teach at Bidwill Campus. I am one of the Rap writers and coordinators. I really look forward to hearing from everyone. The teacher page is where teachers can post their favourite activity of the week OR ask questions about anything OR ask for technical support from Ian McLean.
For the next five weeks I will check in every day to see what each school has written. Remember to choose the activities each week that appeal to you – don’t find yourself drowning in work – have fun! All we need each week is a response from each class group in this blog – you make your own choices about which activities you are doing at school. You will be welcome to send us any paintings or pictures that you make as you reflect on identity and belonging. Although our stimulus texts are Aboriginal in perspective, we want to hear from everyone – from any cultural background.
Regards, Lizzie Chase
Head Teacher Teaching and Learning
May 19th, 2008 at 5:55 pm
Je bugalgali bugalgaligan (Hi good men and good women)
My name is Maureen Wenzel and I am the Aboriginal Education Consultant in the Western Sydney Region. I am one of the Rap coordinators and writers I look forward to sharing this Rap with you all. If anyone has any questions about the Aboriginal culture, please feel free to ask.
Maureen Wenzel
Aboriginal Education Consultant WSR
May 19th, 2008 at 7:15 pm
Hello I am one of the Co-ordinators and writers of the rap, Daphne Bell. I am the Aboriginal Education Assistant at Crawford Public School. I enjoy working with the students, staff and community of our school. I like to be involved in all areas so that I can reach all students through education.
Hope you enjoy the rap
Daphne Bell
May 21st, 2008 at 5:57 pm
Hello Teacher Rappers!
Welcome to the “Identity: Sharing Our Stories” Rap! We hope you enjoy taking part in this exciting learning experience. We have found that a web log (aka “blog”) format has many advantages over a listserv, so please think of this as a learning adventure.
This Teachers’ area is to support the adult learners as we all gain more confidence with Web 2.0 facilities. You can leave messages here with questions which the coordinators, or other participants, will address. The online FAQs (Frequently Asked Questions) and “beginner’s guide” at http://www.schools.nsw.edu.au/raps/beginnersguidetoraps.htm should prove useful.
During the first week, please post a short introductory post from the class group to the Rap Blog (under the tab called “Intro”). The planning and programming material has suggestions of what information you might collate before jointly constructing a post, or the students can vote for favourite pieces from several students, and these can be combined to write the one final draft.
As you are reading other schools’ Introductions during the next week, your class may also wish to respond to aspects of the other introduction messages, and to plot the locations of other rapping schools on a Rap Map, templates of which are available on the book rap site. (Or use websiteas such as Whereis.com or Google earth).
Teachers are encouraged to visit this Teachers section regularly. We look forward to rapping with you all!
Have fun! Looking forward to reading your introductions!
Ian McLean and the Rap Coordinators
May 28th, 2008 at 10:06 pm
Hi everybody,
Joanne O’Brien, Richmond High School, here. I seem to be having trouble using two different blog names. I am actually running this course with two separate groups of students and was hoping to be able to add entries under separate blog names. I have registered two names rhsyear7 and rhsyear8 but the year 8 version will not let me add text, any reason for this?
Thanks for the help
Jo
May 30th, 2008 at 10:39 pm
Hi Jo,
It’s certainly possible to have more than one group of registered students. After you’ve entered text for the first group’s blog entry, you’ll need to Logout, and then log back in under the second user name. Above the text box, there should be small writing that reads:
“Logged in as rhsyear8. Logout »”
If you can see that line, you are correctly logged in and should be able to enter new text.
Alternatively, if you are working with another teacher, having a different email address for each group of registered students can be useful for keeping things separate. It could be there was a problem confirming your creation of that second group with Edublogs?
Regards, Ian McLean
Penrith PS
June 4th, 2008 at 12:41 am
Hi all!
What a fun session yesterday with Class 6B English compiling our rap response to Rap Point 1.
I can highly recommend Circle Time as a successful strategy for scribing the students’ fresh, unassuming responses to the stimulus material. They were delivering their grandparents’ sayings with such seriousness. (I was inwardly in hysterics by the spontaneity and honesty of their oral replies, and it was all I could do to hold the pencil steady as I scribed their warmly humorous answers.)
I have an article about Circle Time in a recent issue of Scan. If you’re interested in following it up, the details are:
‘Circle time: maximising opportunities for talking and listening at Penrith Public School’in Scan 26(4) November 2007, pp 4-7.
Have fun with your rap responses this week!
By the way, if you’ve uploaded a new blog avatar but it’s not appearing beside your group’s posts, don’t forget to clear the cache on your browser.
Regards, Ian McLean,
Penrith PS
June 6th, 2008 at 1:06 pm
Hello Teacher rappers,
We hope you are finding the online resources helpful when jointly constructing your texts for each rap blog post. Please don’t feel that you must complete everything in the programming and planning. Pick and choose activities that are achievable in the time allowed.
At Ian McLean’s school, Penrith PS, they have six different student groups working on the Identity Rap, and each group comes to the library for one session a week. The students discuss their ideas orally, and a teacher scribes the group response. Some student editing is then possible before the response is submitted to the blog.
In other schools, only one group of students might be participating, but if they meet several times a week there will be more time to fill in rap sheets, share ideas orally, draft and edit a blog entry, mark up “rap maps”, read other schools’ (and the coordinators’) posts and replies, and ask questions about Aboriginal culture of Maureen and Daphne.
You can also promote the rap blog’s URL – http://rapblog2.edublogs.org/ – in your school newsletter so that families with home Internet access can read (and reread) the class responses.
There is no one “right” way to be a part of the rap. Do what is doable – and have fun!
Best wishes,
The Rap Coordinators.
June 13th, 2008 at 9:27 am
Hi Lizzie,
Thanks for giving Class SCHC here at Penrith the “heads up” (in Rap Point 1) on Miimali. We hadn’t heard of this Aboriginal youth service before, but now we’ve investigated the website and like what we see!
The boys are highly motivated about “Identity” and would be very interested in what the yoputh workers may be able to offer us, and having already read Steve’s interview in “My People, my place”, we might be onto something there! We have a big NAIDOC-themed school assembly coming up, so a visit from someone at Miimali in the near future might prove to be an excellent idea.
Many thanks!
Ian McLean,
Teacher librarian @ Penrith PS
June 15th, 2008 at 11:30 pm
Dear Kerrie at Glenhaven PS,
Thank you for sending the great mindmap your students made for Rap Point 1. I’ve posted the jpeg image to the site at:
http://rapblog2.edublogs.org/
Just remember to scroll down, and then please click on the small image to see a larger size. I much appreciate the ingenuity of using the white backing paper while three storeys up! Well done!
Regards, Mr McLean
Penrith PS
June 16th, 2008 at 5:07 pm
Dear Teachers,
We would be so happy for you to send in any pictures or symbols that your groups make about identity and belonging as the rap progresses. Send your images to Ian McLean and he will place them in the gallery!
Regards, Lizzie Chase
Rap Coordinator
June 24th, 2008 at 11:59 am
Dear teachers,
It’s great to see all the contributions coming in reflecting some hard work in class. If you have anything you’d like to add to the Gallery please send it through to Ian McLean. If you would like to share some of the ways you feel your class is benefiting from the rap using the blog, some of the exciting or challenging moments, please feel free to share it with other Teachers on this page.
All the best,
The Rap Coordinators
June 24th, 2008 at 9:22 pm
Dear all,
Uploading of posts seems to be proving tricky this week. Although I’ve been able to post as the Rap Coordinator, my student-level username ends up getting an error page. It may be a temporary problem that will clear itself. I decided to email home my students’ messages from yesterday and today, and uploaded them successfully to the blog from there. It certainly pays to “Control C” (Copy) your message before posting it because, if you end up with an error page, you still have a copy of the post in your clipboard, and can then “Control V” (Paste) it into a Word document or an email.
We’ll keep you posted re our ongoing troubleshooting attempts.
Meanwhile, I’ve just posted some jpeg images of our school’s Stage 3 students’ “Identity” artwork, which they’ve prepared for our annual K-6 NAIDOC art exhibition. After the students run a NAIDOC assembly, the whole school goes on a walk, from classroom to classroom, to enjoy and critique each class exhibit. It’s always a great day. This year, the Identity rappers will share snippets of their favourite rap responses during the assembly.
Click here to view our new gallery.
Just remember to scroll down, and then click on the small images to see larger versions.
Regards, Mr McLean
Penrith PS
June 26th, 2008 at 9:08 am
Hi all,
Everything seems to be working again here at Penrith PS.
July 2nd, 2008 at 1:32 pm
Hi everyone,
I’ve been tardy with my introduction, sorry.
I’m Judy Okunev, Teacher Librarian at Wollumbin High School at Murwillumbah. I’ve been advocating book raps to teachers in recent years but unsuccessfully, as the timing didn’t fit and/or it seemed like extra work, so this time I thought I’d get some kids interested and try it outside classes, to see how the kids react & get something to show teachers.
It’s been a bit of a struggle, as it has meant the kids coming in their recess or lunch breaks & getting follow-up ideas on paper, hence different kids for different rap points. Janette Saunders, our Indigenous Mentor, has also been involved, and together we have discussed the rap points with the kids and helped them develop responses. They have been really pleased to see their ideas on the net and to get your responses.
Ian, I’m having difficulty getting the school logo set as an avatar. All I’ve managed to do is turn the blog image black, even though the logo appears as my avatar at EduBlogs on my profile. What do you think I’m getting wrong?
Regards
Judy
July 2nd, 2008 at 3:16 pm
Hi Judy!
Thanks for introducing yourself!
You’ve hit on the keys to rapping success. Do what is achievable for your situation! Share your successes! Let the students’ enthusiasm carry the work to new audiences, until everyone is wanting to try it out. Here at Penrith, we are constantly amazed with the pearls of wisdom our young people pop out during their negotiated preparation of rap responses, and it’s so good that it all gets recorded for posterity.
Your avatar is working perfectly for me! What seems to happen with Edublogs is that images from the blog get stored in your browser’s cache (or sometimes stuck somewhere in the NSW DET intranet, perhaps), and these original images can continue to appear – even after you try refreshing the page.
Clear the cache and try again, or check out the blog on a computer you’ve not used for blogging before. The new avatar should show up. Sometimes an avatar will be incompatible with certain browsers. Last rap, on one computer I could see a beautiful lyrebird logo belonging to one school, but on another computer it was always a black square.
This computer I’m using today refuses to show me the Rap Cordinator’s “pen” avatar and we get the generic bald person’s head/shoulders shot. At home the pen is always presented.
Regards, Ian
July 2nd, 2008 at 3:41 pm
Hi everyone!
Term 2 is almost at an end, and we have heard that some schools are stuggling to complete their responses to the last few rap points and the Rap Wrap Up.
There’s no reason why new messages can’t be added to the blog after the advertised date of the rap finishing up. If you’re running behind at your school, please feel free to keep posting early next term!
Regards,
Ian McLean and the Coordinators
July 3rd, 2008 at 10:01 am
Thanks Ian,
Now I can see it too. and it will be easier for the kids and their families too.
To recognise the kids’ “extra” efforts, we are preparing Quality Portfolio documentation & special awards for Assembly Presentation first thing next term, so it will be lovely to include grabs of their entries with the logo too.
Thanks Co-ordinators for your support,
happy holidays
Judy
July 4th, 2008 at 2:19 pm
Hi Maureen, Lizzie and Ian,
Thanks so much for organising and maintaining this wonderful expereince for the students. Year 7 and 8 at Richmond High have not completed all blog points due to time restraints but have definitely gained insight into their culture, their strengths, their individual and group identity all students have responded positively to all lessons.
Thank you all again for the time and energy gone into developing and maintaining this project. Look forward to the next rap.
Joanne O’Brien and Kathie Heather
Richmond High School