The Race to the End of Term

I am trying to pack as much new tech stuff as I can into my last few weeks in school. The run up to Christmas is always hectic as we have embarked on, not only our Christmas production (plus rehearsals), fortunately fairly low key this year.... a brief Nativity. We are also hard at work on our Design Technology Project - 'Making Money Containers' QCA Speak - purses and wallets to those who speak plain English. This plus many other of the usual last minute things to do ( ooh must remember our Christmas Cards as well !!!).
I am determined to build in New Technology into some of our curriculum projects also, to this end I began 3 weeks ago with my class of Year 4 pupils ( aged 8-9 ) on the adventure game MYST III - ExileWe are using it as both as a way of exploring an alien environment - making class decisions about our next move. Also we are attempting to describe feelings and our emotions as we explore - the landscape is excellent for descriptive writing ( the sound and graphics - allowing full 360 degree rendering is fabulous - and one of the class bought a copy from E-Bay for £3.95 - seen in shops for £5 - a snip at that price).
Here is a taster video from the Myst people.

I teach our other Year4 class IT on a Thursday afternoon, last week we were unable to get in to use our IT Suite- so spent the session exploring the worlds of Samorost I and Samorost II - it was great fun describing the planets and the main character's space ship ( which looks suspiciously like an old tin can )We had great fun coming up with a name for the little character - we called him Ooze and his dog Oozy, it was an enjoyable session - indeed the time seemed to go so quickly as we were immersed in a strange alien landscape.
** Update - I have just been visiting Dan Plane's Blog and found a glimpse into the future of gaming and simulating worlds which is absolutely mind blowing, and, as Dan says far and away beyond what the UK QCA authorities could ever have had in mind. From the developers of Little Big Planet.....

We have been podcasting quite a bit lately and it was a really positive point for the class to see that we we were at the top of the PodOmatic K12 Education podcasts for a few weeks with the most views ( about 1000 per week) and downloads ( around 70-80 per week) - this is really cool for a school in such an out of the way place as ours in the Welsh Valleys - a big thank you to anyone who downloaded our podcasts. We are also planning to take part in the Voices of the World - December Task ( Sharon Toner's OneVoice Ning project) so ..... a quiet lead in to Christmas - ha, life is never that simple in Primary Education!
As a p.s. - our visiting Kiwi (Cuddly Kiwi) will be climbing into an envelope for his return to Moturoa Class in Nelson, New Zealand very shortly, having had a fabulous 13 months in Wales - he has been very much loved ( and probably needs the rest in the envelope to be truthful!).