Category Archives: wwwd

Mostly stuff to do with the classroom & Teaching and learning. Posts that fit with the site’s description: “Teaching, ict, and suchlike”

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Bookmarked Nothing Fails Like Success by Aaron DavisAaron Davis (Read Write Collect)
Jeffery Zeldman argues that in being unable to pay mortgage associated with the web, we have become indebted to the mob that is platform capitalism. This has led us into the money trap, which demands unrealistic rewards that care more about clicks than community. Zeldman’s suggestion on how to fix...

Aaron points to Nothing Fails Like Success (A List Apart).  

Aaron links to several fellow travellers reactions that make great reading too.

Aaron’s own blogging has gone a long way along the IndieWeb path and is a excellent one to follow.

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I’ve found Office Lens useful over the last few year in class. It is a good way to get some text into a document for editing. The workflow for me is a wee bit clunky, snap on phone, open app, upload. Then either open in word or switch to desktop and open from OneDrive there when it syncs.

Today I found OCR.space a free online service. I gave it a quick try on my phone.

The first attempt failed, I had to edit the photo to B&W and brighten it a little (as per screenshots above), but the results were impressively quick. There was no swapping back and forward between apps.

I’ve tried a multi-column image too using the same image I used back in 2015 with office lens. The results are just as good and fit my preference for text I can copy as opposed to a document I need to open.

Here is the docx Office Lens converted, and here is the OCR.space one, from This image, I had to shrink it a bit to get under 5mb for ocr.space, I don’t think Id need to do that iif I was going straight from the phone when the image would be a smaller png.

I hope to give ocr.space a test in the real world next term.

I’ve also found dictation on my phone a great way to get documents into text. Reading someone elses words seems to work better for me that thinking up my own as I go.

I found ocr.space via OCR Shortcut : shortcuts on reddit, butI’ve not tried the shortcut, the webpages seems quick enough.

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audio-hijack-edutalk.png

Finally used Audio Hijack for a broadcast last night instead of Nicecast. All I needed to do was check the session templates as opposed to my previous just click things approach. Audio hijack’s interface is nice.

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Gif showing the mixedd up sentence maker in action.

A few children in my class need a bit of extra support in literacy. On a course at the NLC literacy base I was shown the idea of scribing sentences and then cutting them up. The result could be given to pupils to sort out on a wee board with slots and then optionally copied into a jotter.

Given my poor handwriting (unless I really slow down), difficulty in keeping resources organised and liking for digital I had a go at making a virtual version.

The first iteration just presents a field, typing a sentence and hitting return produces mixed up words to drag around. I’ve been using that for a couple of months.

I’ve then improved things a little by making a system to create links to that page that will have a particular sentence already created. Example

I’ve been sending these links out via Airdrop either directly on a few together in a note. I though I might make the page creation a little easier and also add a QR code creator: Mix Up Maker – Make a Cutup sentence or story..

I can then add the QR Codes to my pupils programs. These pupils have daily task sheets put in their jotter.

I am depending on the QR code API and the TinyURL.com API.

As usual the code in there is a bit of a mess. I always think I’ll tidy these things up, but rarely do. I need more time than I seem to have to really learn JavaScript so I continue to type and test.

The gifs above are made with LICEcap which does a great job of creating short gif ‘screencasts’.

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Audio from my conversation with Dr. Ian Guest, (@IaninSheffield), yesterday evening is now on Radio Edutalk:

Radio Edutalk 13-03-19 Ian Guest “Exploring teachers’ professional development with Twitter”.

Ian’s approach to research is really interesting and he makes you think more than once about things you take for granted. #EDUtalk.

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Big Flickr Announcement: All CC-licensed images will be protected – Creative Commons

I’m happy to share Flickr’s announcement today that all CC-licensed and public domain images on the platform will be protected and exempted from upload limits. This includes images uploaded in the past, as well as those yet to be shared. In effect, this means that CC-licensed images and public domain works will always be free on Flickr for any users to upload and share.

Via @clhendricksbc

This is really great news. From a selfish point of view it means my Flickr Stampr will still make it easy for my class to attribute images in their school work.

From a wider perspective the Creative Commons post above expands on both the benefits and costs of Flickr taking this step. As explained the cost for this huge archive of photos will have to be covered by the pro accounts and Flickr’s income. Personally I am delighted to pay for this. I am not a pro photographer but I get a lot of goodness from Flickr. The least of these is probably the storage of my photos. Access to a goldmine of Creative Commons images and an API that is not to complicated for an amateur to play with are the major benefits for me.

This model of providing a free service is hopefully a much better than the free services that lead to shut down that we see so often.

Featured image a screenshot of Random Flickr Blendr using:
Puy Mary, Cantal, France | Pom’ | Flickr (CC_BY license) and
Vergului | youtu.be/rTnXnib2iEA George Enescu – Romanian Poe… | Flickr (attribution license)

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“BEST. PD. EVER!” Some teachers make bold claims for the way that Twitter supports their professional development, yet research into this area is rather limited. This study sought to gain a better understanding of the practices involved and the part that Twitter plays. It uses a sociomaterial sensibility informed by actor-network theory (ANT) to unravel the complex webs of relations which form, break apart and reform when knowledge practices are enacted in the mediated arena of Twitter.
To explore this rich but messy environment, I evoke the spirit of the Parisian flâneur to develop an ethnographic approach I refer to as ‘flânography.’

from: Exploring teachers’ professional development with Twitter: A sociomaterial analysis – Sheffield Hallam University Research Archive

Ian Guest’s phd should make for fascinating reading. I’ve followed along on his blog as best I could. The idea of twitter as CPD is a popular one that needs the sort of examination that Ian carried out.

We have interviewed Ian on Radio Edutalk about his phd back in 2016 and I am looking forward to talking to him again soon. He also published audio of some of his research interviews on Edutalk: CPDin140.