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
Some links and interesting things I’ve noticed over the last couple of weeks
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.
Amber Dohrenwend build an art installation out of locally recycled cardboard strips.
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.
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.
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.
The featured images is a montage of screenshots of some of the links. I’ve done that twice, so made an AppleScript.
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:
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!
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.
Nostalgia. Recently I’ve seen teacher’s “apps” created with PowerPoint or Keynote I wonder what we could do with HyperTalk in Keynote?
Bookmarked Degenerative AI in education by .
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
I’ve not posted links for a while, these are some of the things I’ve found interesting in the last couple of weeks.
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
We have improved the embedding of thinklink, content on Glow Blogs. I’ve a simple example and more details on the embeds blog. Pasting an embed code now is converted to a shortcode, with any setting included.
A small example of the H5P Find Multiple Hotspots content type in Glow Blogs.
I was intrigued how these wee chicks survived given the number of dogs walked along this shore in addition to plenty of gulls & crows who I would expect to enjoy a plover chick dinner. Even the adults are quite hard to spot.
I am building a collection of H5P examples on Glow Blogs. I’ve also been using it to make some spelling crosswords, word-searches and cloze procedures for my class using the North Lanarkshire spelling word list.
BBC Radio 4 – Word of Mouth, Chatbots 1
Like lots of other folk I’ve been reading plenty about Large Language Models, AI & Chatbots and playing with some of the toys.
I really liked Professor Bender’s approach and method. I also found this a very easy listen. My mind has tended to wander off when reading blogs post about AI. Very clear on the “not intelligent” and the risks associated with chatbots trained on large piles of language.
And specifically the things that they’re predicting is what would be a plausible next word given all the preceding words here and then again and then again and again.
…
And so that’s linguistically interesting that once you get to billions of words of text, there’s enough information in there just in the distribution of words to stick with things that are both grammatical and seemingly coherent.
…
So that’s a cool observation and it’s dangerous because we tend to react to grammatical, fluent, coherent, seeming text as authoritative and reliable and valuable.
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So instead of talking about automatic speech recognition, I prefer to talk about automatic transcription because that describes what we’re using it for and doesn’t attribute any cognition to the system that is doing the task for us.2
