Last year: I am now more than one term into what looks like being my final year as a full time teacher. I got OAP status earlier this year, but aim to wait till I am a year older, before I take my pensions. I’ve had an idea that I’d write something about this. But strangely nothing coalesces.
Category Archives: wwwd
Life in Links 59
Tech
OSXPhotos
What is OSXPhotos?
OSXPhotos provides both the ability to interact with and query Apple’s Photos.app library on macOS directly from your python code as well as a very flexible command line interface (CLI) app for exporting photos. You can query the Photos library database – for example, file name, file path, and metadata such as keywords/tags, persons/faces, albums, etc. You can also easily export both the original and edited photos. OSXPhotos – osxphotos 0.68.6 documentation
This command will search for photos that are missing location data and look for the nearest neighbor photo within a given window of time that contains location information. If a photo is found within the window of time, the location of the nearest neighbor will be used to update the location of the photo. OSXPhotos Command Line Interface (CLI) – osxphotos 0.68.6 documentation
Forever
Forever ✱ Notes is not an app, but a simple framework and scalable digital note-taking method for Apple Notes. It’s free and created to last—forever. Forever ✱ Notes – A free framework for Apple Notes
Bellingcat Geolocation
This is your place to discover tools! Our toolkit includes satellite and mapping services, tools for verifying photos and videos, websites to archive web pages, and much more. Most of the tools that we include can be used for free. Geolocation | bcattools
Master Block Themes in 3 Steps!
WordPress Basics for Beginners: Master Block Themes in 3 Steps!
Food for Glow Blog’s Help. WordPress Block Themes Simplified: A Must-Watch Guide for Beginners! – YouTube
Between
The blog’s form is practically made for active learning, for sharing thoughts and updates over a span of time. The secret power of a blog – Tracy Durnell’s Mind Garden
Teaching & Learning
Pause & Think Online (UK)
Digital Citizenship UK_Year 1-13 Progression 2023 – Google Docs
This document outlines a mapping of Common Sense Education’s Digital Citizenship Lessons by topic, year and term.
Bonus Content Science Fix
My book Science Fix: Science Made Easy for Primary Teachers was released Oct 2024. There was a lot of content that I included in the early drafts that has had to be cut to make the book more manageable. from: Bonus Content – Danny Nics Science Fix
Tax Facts free resources for teachers and parents
Tax Facts is HM Revenue and Customs’ free tax education programme for primary and secondary school students. It has resources to help children and young people learn about the UK tax system, from lesson plans to videos. from: Tax Facts – free resources for teachers and parents – GOV.UK
things to consider
Listened to WordPress in Education
Listened to Episode 85: WordPress in Education – WordPress News on the WordPress Briefing.
This episode covers some suggested uses of WordPress in Education. I was please to hear it was not concentrating on tertiary education. The host Josepha Haden Chomphosy (Executive Director of the WordPress project!) gave some good reasons for using WordPress in schools. She also talked about the learning resources in WordPress. I am certainly starting to link to and embed these more in the help for Glow Blogs.
The show notes point to the Uganda Website Projects Competition 2024 – Problem Solving with WordPress. I feel a little bit jealous. I wonder if something of the sort could be done in Scotland?
I, obviously, believe the blogs & WordPress have a lot of offer education. There are three main components of Glow, Google Workspaces, MS 365 & Glow Blogs. Google & MS have a lot of onboarding and help aimed at schools. I wonder if a project of this sort could exemplify the use of WordPress.
Bookmarked: How France Adopts An Open Source-Based Education Strategy
Kauffmann said that France has never officially embraced big tech in schools, which makes the project easier, and that the public generally is skeptic towards monopolies and the abuse of private data. The country is thus undergoing a cultural shift in the digital education sector, promoting the use of free, open, and interoperable code, data, and content, referred to as “digital commons”. This approach encompasses not only free licenses but also community involvement and governance.
How France Adopts An Open Source-Based Education Strategy – Free of Big Tech · Dataetisk Tænkehandletank
Found via a boost from @FourthWorld@mastodon.online might be an exciting move from France. Back in 2014-15 when I was working with Ian Stuart on the Glow Scotland reboot, we talked a lot about OpenSource and, AFAIR, talked to someone who came over from Paris to show us an open source solution they were using there at the time.
Keynote Scavenger Hunt
My last day of term plan yesterday was a scavenger hunt, Capture the Flag and tidy our MakerSpace.
The scavenger hunt was made in Keynote, a slide for each challenge.
I’ve recently read Digital Scavenger Hunts – DigiLearnFalk which shows how to make really attractive one-slide digital hunts in keynote. Using place holders. They have even some nice templates to use.
My own approach is much less attractive. I wanted quite a long list of ‘things’ to find and wanted to add audio to the video/photo mix. The result is much uglier, but only takes a couple of minutes to make.
I write (or copy from a list or lists found online ) & edit the list in a text editor. Then copy it.
- Open Keynote & make a new Presentation.
- Create a title slide.
- Make a new slide and set the from a to section heading
- Change the view to outline and paste in my list. This makes a slide for each line.
- Select all the new slides and choose Reapply Layout to Slide from the Format menu.
- Edit the Slide Layout and move the section heading to the top.
I use Keynote every day in my class. Perhaps unfortunately for my class, I spend very little time designing slides. I mainly choose the default black on white theme. I try to follow the advice of Robert Macmillan and keep my slides simple.
The class didn’t have time on Wednesday to do more than make the slides and then we reviewed them together. Given more time, it could have been a fun task for the pupils to make the slides look good.
Re: Big Tech & Digital literacy
I just saw What is Digital Literacy? A guest blog from Andy McLaughlin, University of Aberdeen – DigiLearn and a pointer to the discussion on LinkedIn.
But what do we do there – if we go open source or other methods are we giving our young people the skills to enter the workplace .
Ian Gibson
Ian and John, I’d love to hear your take on the idea that Big Tech’s “efficiency agenda” has been the biggest hindrance to digital skill development.
Andy McLaughlin
There is a lot of interesting ideas popping up in the conversation. I joined in, although I don’t really have a clear idea as to where I stand. Quite quickly I reached LinkedIn’s maximum character limit, so though I’d post here and link in there, POSSE style. Here are the rather ragged thoughts I wanted to post:
Of course in Scotland we have access to an Open Source product in the form of WordPress 😉 But I doubt there is much awareness of Open Source generally among my colleagues. As a primary teacher, I need to get my head round hundreds of experiences and outcomes, leaving little time for the reading, never mind the thinking needed in this area.
Open Source is involved in many work places. Some even owned by ‘Big Tech’. Unfortunately Open Source and open technologies (RSS for example) do not have an army of paid and unpaid evangelists in the same way as ‘Big Tech’.
I am not suggesting we should abandon Big Tech, but we should be able to think about the implication
I recently quoted this:
warning parents that although they think they are giving their children access to the internet, they are really giving the internet access to their children.
BBC World Service – The Documentary Podcast, Assignment: Ireland’s phone-free town
Could we replace parents by educators, children by pupils and internet by ‘Big Tech’.
Not sure I fully grok Big Tech’s “efficiency agenda” but to my mind it might be jumping into using tech too far from the base metal? Just a few (20) years ago, I’d start teaching pupils some basic text editing, a wee bit about the difference between bitmap and vector image software before moving on to more complex tools. I think I’d rather see a pupil ‘misusing’ powerPoint or Keynote to make their own creative images than cycling through possibilities in a more sophisticated tool.
I am also open to the idea that a bit of friction in your toolkit might mean to spending a bit more time thinking.
warning parents that although they think they are giving their children access to the internet, they are really giving the internet access to their children.
I’ve not listened to this yet but this jumped out at me.
When learning about nature and wildlife, experiential outdoor sessions need to happen. We need children to play and to practice key skills so that observing and understanding birds is a key focus of our time. Over the decades , a number of outdoor educators such as Joseph Cornell, Steve Van Matre, T...
micro:bit fun and a bug
I just found this post in my drafts, last edit September 2023, the bug mentioned is still there and I think it is worth remembering the creativity shown by my class.
For the past couple of weeks, we have been working on a micro:bit project in class. One of the interesting aspects of working with a diverse group is the need to introduce new ideas and topics to the class, especially when some students already have experience in the area. This year, my class is Primary 5, 6, and 7. The Primary 7s have already had some exposure to micro:bit and other block coding environments.
I decided to focus on the virtual pets project from the makecode site for our first project. In my classroom, we use the micro:bit app on our iPads for coding, and it and the micro:bits has had a couple of useful improvements. Since the last session, the ability to download data to the iPad has been introduced, although we haven’t explored it yet, but I hope to do so soon. Another improvement is a simpler method for resetting the micro:bit when connecting via Bluetooth, making it more accessible for smaller fingers.
I introduced the topic by discussing Tamagotchi pets, which I remember being popular in my class over two decades ago. The virtual pet project is a lot simpler in comparison, with just two features: when a pet is stroked, it smiles, and when it’s shaken, it frowns.
The limited functionality left plenty of room for exploration for the 5 primary 7s with experience. Leaving plenty of time for me to make sure the others managed the basics, linking to. Micro:bit flashing code etc. I did drop the words food and health into the conversation but didn’t go any further.
We ended up having three sessions with the micro:bits and I was delighted with the results. Between them the sevens recalled variables from last year and were off. We ended up with pets needing fed to avoid death, being sick if fed too much and getting annoyed if they were petted too much. The younger pupils managed the basics and extended them in simpler ways, animating chewing and drinking or reacting to different buttons.
One primary six who had previous experience did just as well as the primary sevens, his pet had these features:
micro pets on the Banton Biggies
- Sleep
- Be happy if stroked (press logo)
- Be sad if shaken
- Die (wait long enough and don’t feed it)
- Be sick if fed to much(can be cured using b)
- Be scared (by making a noise/blowing/filling the red bar 180+)
- Be fed (using A)
- Get a health check (A+B)
The first three were part of the class instructions, taken from the make code site, the rest were pupil ideas.
Of course lots of mistakes were made along the way, but it was great to see solutions worked out, shared with neighbours and lights go on. Quite a few pupils used wee bits of free time to explore and test ideas completely independently.
On Friday we went to post on our e-portfolios about the work and embed your pets in the blogs. Editing the shortcode to do this is a bit tricky and we also ran into a problem with the simulator not embedding properly. Half the micro:bits were hidden. At first I thought this would be a problem with Glow Blogs, but later investigation showed it to be a problem with the makecode code. We workaround it by embedding the editor rather than the simulator. I do hope the makecode folk sort this out. Since it affects their documentation too I expect they will.
I continue to be a micro:bit fan and will be using them throughout the year, hopefully incorporating it into our makerspace projects too.