Engaging students

This week (as a follow up to an initial ppt presentation on Assembly) I have been visiting classrooms to inform and encourage students K to 9 to take on the Premier's Reading Challenge, for the first year in our school. In the first primary and secondary classrooms (year 2 and year 9) I spoke and used the data projector to demonstrate logging on to the website and looking up Booklists, etc. Subsequently, the kindy teacher, who is fairly tech. literate, showed me how to use the interactive whiteboard software to create a wmv? file - a recording of everything that happens on the screen while I do the searching, logging on, etc. So I made the recording - alternately typing, searching, logging on, etc. I have now used it with years 7, 8, 9 and stage 3. I can pause the movie and answer questions and the kids love it. They all watch intently while it plays (I made a couple of spelling corrections within the recording and that really caught their attention!). I am very pleased with the way the kids got really involved with the presentation.