🔗 A tale of two QuickTimes a sad one at that. I love QuickTime Pro. A sort of Swiss Army knife for media. Made doing tricky wee tasks simple. And other things possible if you lack video editing software or skills.
Category Archives: enviable stuff
Life in Links: you are never on holiday edition
I’ve been on holiday for the last two weeks, the second spent unwell with a sinus infection that made me uninterested in everything bar Lemsip and a bit of netflix.
Feeling a bit better and reviewing my pinboard links. Most seem to be around poetry, maths and micro:bits in the classroom ( I need to get out more).
- New Findings on Tutoring: Four Shockers
tutoring by paraprofessionals (teaching assistants) was at least as effective as tutoring by teachers
Teaching assistants were more effective in reading with small groups than teachers. Due perhaps to being able concentrate on the job in hand without thinking too much about the rest of the class. And:
Tutoring does not work due to individualization alone. It works due to individualization plus nurturing and attention.
Also volunteers were not as effective as assistants (move on not committed in the same way). I’d say a big plus for classroom/pupil/teaching assistants.
- Misty In Roots – Peace & Love 12″ – YouTube
- Results on ReadWriteThink – ReadWriteThink poetry interactive activities, flash based, but might be useful for ideas
- Multiplication Grids One of many interactive and the like for maths on the mathbot.com site. Some Secondary but a lot look useful for primary.
- Controlling a Raspberry Pi via SSH | Rosemary Orchard One of the many links I am finding via micro.blog. This has info for controlling a pi from iOS Workflow app.
- Start Coding with the JavaScript Blocks Editor | micro:bit some microbit it activities for 8+ using the Microsoft blocks editor. looks like could be set of self directed activities. 30 minutes each.
- 5 Ways to Celebrate Poetry | Edutopia
- Teaching with ‘The Lost Words’ – Education With Espresso
The Lost Words is a beautiful book created by Robert MacFarlane and Jackie Morris. It contains not poems, but spells to conjure back certain words which have been ‘lost’.
The first thing worth noting about this spell book is how alluring it is. I felt enticed into immersing myself in the spells and illustrations immediately. You could quite easily lose yourself for days by: soaking in every inch of detail, finding the hidden meanings of the spells and decoding the kennings.
- Plotting live microbit sensor data in Mu | Blog My Wiki!
I decided this would be even neater if you could untether a microbit, so here’s a project where I send accelerometer data as a string wirelessly from one microbit to another plugged into a computer running Mu. It could be great for physics experiments.
- Parts-of-speech.Info – POS tagging online
Enter a complete sentence (no single words!) and click at “POS-tag!”. The tagging works better when grammar and orthography are correct.
Looks useful. I’ve seen a lot about the immersive reader in Word, but it is lacking in the iOS version of word (although present in OneNote). I like the simplicity of this and the warning:
Computers make mistakes too!
- p5.js | home
Hello! p5.js is a JavaScript library that starts with the original goal of Processing, to make coding accessible for artists, designers, educators, and beginners, and reinterprets this for today’s web.
- Sketch Machine Weird gif maker made with above p5.js
- OK Go Sandbox
We want to give teachers whatever tools they need to connect the joy, wonder, and fun in our videos to the underlying concepts that their students are learning.
— DAMIAN KULASH, OK GO
Or maybe we just wanted to have a ton of fun? Quite stunning videos. One Moment esp.
- Digging into the Gutenberg Editor – Jeff Everhart Jeff Everhart
Header image created with above mentioned Sketch Machine.
Virtual reality has potential as a learning tool in classrooms, but don’t rush its use until the technology has been well-tested by teachers and students.
👍 Liked this, via @Downes. We had a visit from the google VR demo team last session which was enjoyed. I think this approach will be the right one: don’t spend a pile of money yet.
When we leave the classroom, or the school, or the job and no longer are in touch with those who our words affect the most.
I enjoyed this. When I left the classroom I was pretty determined to keep in mind what it is ‘really like’ when giving advice. Coming back to teaching I find that I had managed that less well than I had hoped for. The biggest difference in being out of the classroom is the blue sky thinking time that can permeate your day. I keep that for commuting nowadays.
After years of letting algorithms make up our minds for us, the time is right to go back to basics.
👍 Another good sign. I’ve been using inoreader for a couple of years, really like it, have a paid account although free would do.
ViperCard is an open source rewrite of 1987’s HyperCard.
Hmm HyperCard plus gifs, unbeatable technology 👍
A Saturday in Tabs
The tabs left open from yesterday. The internet is a more fascinating place that I’ve got time for.
- The Archive (macOS) • Zettelkasten Method Looks like an interesting application for organising text. I keep a lot of stuff in txt files which very badly organised (I use search). This might be helpful. I am using the 60 day trial at the moment.
- PressED – A WordPress and Education, Pedagogy and Research Conference on Twitter I am taking part in this on Thursday this week.
- Little grebe – Wikipedia Enjoying watching these on the Victoria Park pond at the moment.
- I am the Weekend – Beta Teacher Not read this yet.
- Doc Searls Weblog · Facebook’s Cambridge Analytica problems are nothing compared to what’s coming for all of online publishing
- The science of revision: nine ways pupils can revise for exams more effectively | Teacher Network | The Guardian
- John Sexton on Twitter: “is it just me – why are schools/teachers giving instruction to pupils via twitter? Many primary school – no one under 13 should be on twitter? Better ways to engage with pupils on line – I am sure Or am I missing something here???????” Nearly a month since John tweeted this. Still thinking about it.
- Read Write Respond – Read is to write, write is to respond. I find my self on Aaron Davis’ blog a lot these days. He is doing what I’d like to do if I could squeeze a few more hours into a day exploring the IndieWeb. Great to see a edublogger diving deep into this stuff.
- Ep. 74 Damien Williams “We Built It From Us” – Team Human A lin from Arron, I’ve bookmarked this podcast as it links with John’s tweet above.
- Creating a Deliberate Social Media Space for Students in School – Read Write Respond Another one from Arron, even more on social media in schools.
- A Walk In The Park | Checking out a couple of photos I posted to my blog with sunlit, just checking how they come through.
- AlphaSmart Neo2 | Jack Baty | Flickr I remember getting some of these in school years ago.
- FILM — Erland Cooper The first is beautiful movie “Solan Goose” (there turn out to be gannets), The music sounds good, I hope to watch/listen to the rest later.
- The people owned the web, tech giants stole it. This is how we take it back | Jonathan Freedland | Opinion | The Guardian this is linked everywhere, not too much on how we take it back but the Indieweb points the way.
Worth mentioning that a lot of these links are coming from micro.blog as well as my RSS reader.
This is the strip of code characters that appeared in the Shooting Code Across the Void photo next in this photostream. NB: I had difficulty uploading it, probably due to the aspect ratio (10000 x 300 pixels), it didn't "look like a valid photo". Tried resizing it, and it finally worked if I made it taller (10000 x 1000), but I didn't like the looks. However, when I used the "replace" function from the image page, flickr allowed me to upload my original long photo. Lesson learned: try all available methods until one works!
👍 Lesson learned: try all available methods until one works!
Let me answer that question for you: For MOST* of us, audience DOESN’T matter. Stop talking about it. Period. End of conversation.
👍 Audience Doesn’t Matter, I lost this link and was reminded by @mrkrndvs
Many things that get labelled as “fads” might work for an individual teacher (although many things might work better) but they only become fads when divorced from their original meaning and then are spread around and are imposed on other teachers.
I’ve always been interested in the idea that changing almost anything in the classroom will lead to improvement. This post digs around the territory. We probably teach at our best when we are enthused and the beginning of a fad is enthusiasm.