Category Archives: wwwd

Posted on
by
Listened #1 - How it got its name and if I ruled the world from podcasts.apple.com()
Join us, Richard, Elaine and Chris, our brand new podcast and our first ever episode, as we share our desert island apps, our favourite iOS features,  our best bit of recent CPD and why we should  rule the world! Before, we answer the big question, which is and will always be... How is learning be…

I was delighted to hear my name mention on this new educational podcast coming from a trio of Glasgow teachers. A life time ago I used to work beside Richard. Very much iPad focused but lots applicable elsewhere. I’ve subbed and look forward to hearing more episodes. There was some discussion about pupils as leaders of learning and I hope this might be a theme I can find out more about.

Hearing from very Apple focused teachers will be interesting for me. Although I’ve been Mac for all of my technical life and 1–2–1 iPads in my class for a good few years my tech interests/obsessions are not iPad centred so this should be CPD for me. Apple pencils seem to be transformative in Glasgow, I’ve never even picked one up.

The podcast is of a reasonable length and is split up nicly into sections, one of which was the teams favourite iOS thing. I’d agree with AirDrop, which I’ve hammered in class for the last 8 years. Unfortunately it has stopped working for us in school at the moment, not sure why?

It is nice to hear some Scottish educators voices. There was mention of podcasting in one of the presenter’s classrooms. I am looking forward to listening to that too. I still find it puzzling that podcasting does not happen more often with learners. It has amazing potential. The fact you don’t need much in the way of hardware and in Scotland Glow Blogs can provide the hosting for free for pupils make it to me compelling.

Nice name & logo.

N.B. the link is to apple podcasts, I can’t find a generic page.

Posted on
by
Montage of screenshots of some webpages discussed in article

School

Magic Tools – MagicSchool.ai

MagicSchool is your AI assistant for all things teaching. We think #TeachersAreMagic – and we are on a mission to fight teacher burnout with Artificial Intelligence.

Limitations
May occasionally produce biased or inaccurate information
Only has knowledge up to the year 2021
Cannot search the internet or produce images (yet)

A large set of AI tools for teachers, I’ve only tried one so far. I wonder how they will make money. Sign up for fee is the only thing I can see. I’ve used ChatGPT is a fairly casual way, making crosswords questions and cloze procedures for H2P.

Kevin’s Meandering Mind | Generative AI and the Writing Classroom: WMWP Workshop

Overall, our intentional message was not “the world is ending so ban AI” but more, “this is our new reality, so how can we start to think of AI as a partner to help us as teachers and maybe help our students as writers?” and I think that theme really resonated with the educators who joined us last night.

Also from Kevin, Write Out: Gathering Sensory Details for Haiku which if the weather permits and we can get to the woods I’ll try next week.

Holiday rabbit hole

This

02 Mississippi River Sheet 15 Landscape

from Tom Woodward

lead to a collection of links including: Dan Coe Carto – The Community Library 2023—Rivers Revealed

Lidar (light detection and ranging) is a technology that uses laser light pulses to create intricate three-dimensional models of the earth’s surface. These models can be used to create stunningly detailed images of rivers and floodplains. These depictions often reveal previously unseen channels where rivers have flowed in the past and invite viewers to visually meander along these pathways through both space and time.

And some local data Scottish Remote Sensing Portal makes me wonder how difficult this would be, it would be nice to do from places I know.

Glow Blogs

I also spent a fair bit of time in the wet weather on Glow Blogs help. Although the classic editor is default on Glow Blogs, we are getting ready for using Blocks. I’ve been updating information and using the blocks editor to do so. I’ve tried all the blocks and am now a lot happier using it.

Featured image: a montage of screenshots of some of the lined pages, my previous script had a few problems with cookie banners, so this one used Safari & takes screenshots. Not as elegant and I think there are a few daft decisions, but it works.

Posted on
by
Listened Radio #EDUtalk 5-12-12: Dylan Wiliam by David Noble from edutalk.info
Dylan Wiliam, Emeritus Professor at the Institute of Education: Assessment for Learning in the Classroom, and From Teachers to Schools: Scaling Up Professional Development for Formative Assessment. Dylan Wiliam (@dylanwiliam) on Twitter Welcome to…

I was thinking of Dylan Williams the other day and remembered David Noble, my partner in Edutalk partner had interviewed him back in 2012. This was the second round of AIFL in Scotland.

I gave it a listen on the way to work this morning. It is a great interview. Dylan is very positive about teaching, makes some great points and David asks great questions. I think it is still relevant 11 years later!

Well, I think that Scotland did a very good job of kicking off this process right at the end of the 1990s, the early 2000s.
So I think that the original focus was very welcome, the idea of assessment is for learning. I think people got slightly seduced by the tips and techniques rather than thinking about this as being a vehicle for teacher learning. So I think it got rather, and this may be inevitable for any innovation, it got rather packaged as being a thing that schools could do. And many schools think they’ve done assessment is for learning, and so they’re moving on to the next thing.

“inevitable for any innovation” – My emphasis.

Aiko

After listening to this I though I might like to grab some quotes so remembered I’d downloaded the free app Aiko, which is an AI-powered audio transcription, and ran the audio through it. After a hiccup when the app though the language was Welsh it seemed to do a great job. I’ve added it to the original post. David & I alway regretted not being able to provide accessible transcriptions of our broadcasts/podcasts. I am wondering about picking out some other episodes to transcribe. The audio is not attributed to the two different speakers, but I think it is easy enough to understand.

Radio Edutalk

Radio Edutalk is a project I am extremely please to have been part of. We were a bit ahead of the podcast curve, but it gave me an amazing opportunity to talk to all sort of amazing educators. It ran from 2009 till 2019 starting as an open to any contributor, mobile podcast and developing to include regular internet radio broadcasts which were archived as podcasts. About EDUtalk has a bit more information.

Posted on
by

I really like the iOS micro:bit app as do my class. I was intrigued by the data feature when it came out but had not used it. Delighted to see this:

Fetch MY_DATA

Selecting this option lets you retrieve data that has been logged during a data-logging session with the micro:bit.  This is only available with Version 2 micro:bits.

iOS App – Summary of changes in August 2023 update : Help & Support

Posted on
by

Some links and interesting things I’ve noticed over the last couple of weeks

Cardboard

I like using cardboard in school, some inspiration.

2023 C.A.M.P.The Cardboard CollectiveThe Warehouse

As a working artist, I engage with kids as co-creators, seeking to share knowledge and expertise in context as ideas unfold and discoveries are made. I also share the art research processes and methods I use in my own art practice, as we take on projects big and small.

Amber Dohrenwend, Artist – Cool Tools

Amber Dohrenwend is an American artist based in Marquette, Michigan. She constructs post-consumer cardboard sculptures, costuming and installations.

Blog | MQTCompass.com

Amber Dohrenwend build an art installation out of locally recycled cardboard strips.

Tech

FFmpeg Explorer!

A tool to help you explore FFmpeg filters.

My use of ffmpeg is very basic indeed, mostly taking images and making video from them. This is much more advanced. I remember trying to make a video grid. Altough that post claims a quick try it took me a while and gave me a real headach trying to expand the grid. FFmpeg Explorer has an example that shows you how with a click. (can’t recall where I got this one, but thanks)

TiddlyPWA — TiddlyWiki Storage & Sync Solution

Have you ever wanted to combine the power and customizability of TiddlyWiki and the convenience of a modern offline-friendly, encrypted, synced notes app? Now you can! With…

HT Joe I use TW a bit at a beginners level. This looks nice and the syncing is interesting.

Media

Take to The Streets | Eparapo

My daughter sent me this, nice.

Rear Window Timelapse – Jeff Desom

Meticulously assembled using After Effects and Photoshop, Rear Window Loop is a large scale projection that shows Alfred Hitchcock’s 1954 masterpiece as a never before seen panorama.

We were watching a tv show about Hitchcock, reminded me of this video.

Worrying

Daring Fireball: Twitter/X’s Descent Into an Antisemitic Cesspool

Antisemitism is more than just a form of bigotry and hatred, it’s a millennia-old conspiratorial crackpot worldview. And Elon Musk is seemingly sinking into it.

Still the social network of choice by schools in Scotland.

‘Life or Death:’ AI-Generated Mushroom Foraging Books Are All Over Amazon Don’t trust AI

The featured images is a montage of screenshots of some of the links. I’ve done that twice, so made an AppleScript.

Posted on
by

I’ve been lucky, imo, to have been using an old 27 inch iMac as my computer in school since I started 8 years ago. Despite its age it has been a wonderful machine for me. Returning to my classroom last week I found it will no longer start up at all. No response to the power button. This was my Mac when I worked at the Education Computer Centre before being redeployed to the classroom.

Apart from my familiarity with Macs (going back to system 7) a Mac fits really well with a class all using iPads. The ease of sharing via Airdrop is probably the biggest advantage. It’s simplicity and the way it doesn’t depend on the cloud make it useable even if our internet connection is slow or down. I can quickly collect the pupils work via AirDrop and manipulate (print, combine, resize, assess, organise etc) it on my Mac.

I also prefer using the Apple productivity apps on an iPad but like creating & editing them even more on a Mac.

Large screen computers are rare in primary schools but I have been spoiled. We mostly use quite small laptops. I find these quite difficult to work on. If I use a trackpad for more than a few minutes I get pain in my shoulder and a couple of fingers go numb.

As we now only buy Windows machines in my L.A., I have access to a Windows laptop. However, my old fingers are Apple-trained. I am currently using a rather old MacBook Pro. I have the keyboard from the iMac plugged in, along with the mouse. I think I might just buy a cheap screen and add that as well. I can bring it home and make my Mac mini a dual-screen setup when the laptop follows the iMac.

Having used the MacBook for 4 days I realise how many think I’d added to the iMac (and have at home) that make my life easier. I am going to have to spend some time adjusting the MacBook to my habits. The ones l’ve particularly missed so far are:

  • FastScripts and the AppleScripts I run from it. These are pretty simple: resizing images, collections URLS from tabs to a list and the like.
  • HyperKey, that lets me run said scripts from the keyboard.
  • Various shell scripts, mostly for montage and combining images.
  • Alfred, as a launcher and clipboard manager.
  • I’d miss Rectangle if my screen was bigger.

All small things that I use without thinking and make my life simpler.

This week has certainly made me appreciate the technology I’ve been taking for granted. I also need to remind myself that in my time of teaching, I’ve gone from a couple of computers in a whole school without a network, to 1-2-1 iPads in my class today. Can’t complain!

Posted on
by

Replied to Replied to Behind a login on LinkedIn

For the last several years it has increasingly worried me that schools (governments & others institutions) used Twitter as their main publishing system. A system not designed for users but for advertisers and owners and more evidently recently their owner’s unsavoury ideas. We seem in some instances to be encouraging pupils to look at services they are legally too young for.

My use of Twitter dwindled and as far as possible I used it as a distribution system for content I own. I now hardly bother with that.

The decline of Instagram from a timeline based service to an advert filled algorithmic stream doesn’t fill me with confidence for threads. Similarly LinkedIn and other silos.

What all these systems bring is ease of use and this bring piles of pals. The onboarding to threads was almost invisible.

Unfortunately the ethically cleaner alternatives like mastodon or a combination of RSS & blogs have more friction. So far they have not had the huge influx of users that allows folk to build up a pile of pals. It would be useful, I think for someone to start an instance on mastodon for say Scot’s educators and then do some propaganda to get folk from twitter to move over.

I also really rate the micro.blog approach, which could be used as a model for educators.

I’ve PESOSed this post here.

Posted on
by

Bookmarked Degenerative AI in education by Ben Williamson.

But what if, instead of being generative of educational transformations, AI in education proves to be degenerative—deteriorating rather than improving classroom practices, educational relations and wider systems of schooling?

I’ve read this a couple of time, and probably need a couple more.

I guess, like other technologies that have entered the classroom, we are very much in the hands of the powerful. We get the technology we are given. Usually at a low cost, but perhaps at a high price?

As a side note, Jetpack now offers to change the tone of what I write with AI. Here is the humorous rewrite of the previous paragraph:

Continue reading →

Posted on
by
Winding Chain - Triple Square Link with Wooden Spacers, 5½-inch Pitch, Wrought Iron, 1850s-1870s

I’ve not posted links for a while, these are some of the things I’ve found interesting in the last couple of weeks.

Technology

Education

Sounds

Nature

Featured image found with Openverse, attribution copied from the caption. Winding Chain – Triple Square Link with Wooden Spacers, 5½-inch Pitch, Wrought Iron, 1850s-1870s by Photographer: David Thompson is licensed under CC-BY 4.0