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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Bumping

I’ve just organised (in a loose sense) an iPod touch pilot at Glencairn Primary School. At the North Lanarkshire ICT & Technical Services Centre we have an an ICT Box Scheme – Hi-Tech Kit on Short Term Loan and had originally got 22 iPod touches as part of the scheme. Although schools regularly borrow the other kit on the page no one had asked for the touches, so we decide to do a slightly more formal pilot and asked for classes to volunteer. We wanted a primary class with ? 20 pupils so that the children could feel some sort of ownership for the devices. We had a few volunteers and drew Glencairn out of the hat. The pilot will run from now until Summer.

Last week I spent a couple of days trying to choose some apps, and ended up with 50 odd and a pile of podcasts. Here are the apps: 3D Brain, Angle, Art Envi, Basic Math, Brain Toot Lite, Brain Tuner, Brain Tutor, Bump, CM_, ColorTalk Free,Comic Touch Lite, CountriesLE, Dictionary, Documents, EU, EuropeanCapitals, EuroTalk, FlagsWorld, Flickr, FlingFree, FlipBook Lite, Fliq Notes, French LITE, Google Earth, HistoryMaps, Hubble, iBearFlagsEU, Icon Memos, iSpy, iTalk Lite, iThesaurus, Kaloki Free, Martian, MATHO, Maths, miTables Lite, Muscle Head and Neck, NASA, Newbie Lt, Pix Remix Lt, PopMath Lite, Quick Graph, SculptMaster D FREE, SimpleDraw, Skeleton Head and Neck, Sketch Pad, Sketchmania, Slideshow, Stars, TCT Lite, TimesTables Free, touchPhysics Lite, UpThere, Whiteboard & Wikipanion. I just copied the file names from the finder and remove the file extension and version numbers so the names may not be exactly the same as the app names.

The podcasts:

The ipods all sync onto one mac and the idea is that we will not add any more apps and the children will not be able to update the ipods, they will be able to transfer images to classroom computers. I was surprised that this allows you to buy apps and add them to all of the ipods.

On Friday I visited the school and handed over the touches to the pupils. I was surprised at how many of them had touches at home, over half a dozen out of 19. We went through some stuff to introduce the children to the the basics. I used a document camera to project one touch to the class smartboard and that seemed to work fine. After we let the pupils explore the ipods and play with a couple of games we introduced some apps. We typed a sentence into the notes app and figured out how to copy and paste. Next we checked out the Calculator and Dictionaries. Then we created Martians with the Make a Martian app and use Bump to share them between phones.

The classroom has an airport base station (one of the older grey ones) and I was please at how quickly the children could exchange images using bump over wifi. I hope this can become the basis for some collaborative work, groups collecting images or screenshots annotating them with Comic Touch Lite and bumping them. eventually they may be able to use some sort of slideshow app to put the images together.

The possibilities for using the touches seem endless and we explained to the children that they were more likely to see how to use the touches to help their learning as we were.

The hour and a bit I had in the class went by far to quickly and i feel a wee bit of jealousy for Ms Moonie.

We have started a blog Glencairn iPod for the class to report their adventures and assess the devices and I’ll have to go back in a couple of weeks to explain how that will work (that is my excuse anyway).

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SconicPics is an iPhone/ipod touch application that allows you to create custom slideshow movies. The movies are made from still photos which you can add from the photo library or take with the iPhone’s camera. You can then narrate a voice over and create and enhanced m4v video with chapters.

In this example I’ve just used some pictures from classrooms I’ve been teaching in recently. It only took a few minutes to create and I am sure taking a little more time would have produced a more professional result and few plosives. I exported the 4v to reduce the size which removed the chapters too.

This looks like it could be a useful app in a classroom equipped with iphones or iPod touches. With touches pupils could use images downloaded from webpages or screenshots.

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A couple of days ago I had to cancel my intended trip to BETT. I’ve not been since the famous Glasgow Jumbo junket, as the papers called it, when to celebrate the new city wide network glasgow flew (not in jumbos as it happens) its ICT coordinators down to BETT. Needless to say I do not regard BETT as a junket, but an cpd opportunity. The CPD quotient of conferences and trade shows, has to my mind, increase a lot over the last few years, mainly due to TeachMeet and other self organised meetings of partitioners. I think you gain more for a coffee with an enthusiastic teacher than many a seminar.

I had hoped to do a little bit of evangelising for EDUtalk at BETT and join in TeachMeet Takeover to do so. Unfortunately I can’t do that.

I mailed Tom Barret to let him know that I would not be speaking and he offered me the opportunity to gust blog on his site. This is a really generous offer give the size of Tom’s network and following. In the unlikely event that you have not read Tom’s blog I suggest that you head over there as soon as possible. Tom produces a stream of detailed posts of how he introduces new tech and ideas to his primary classroom.

Anyway I blogged EDUtalk at BETT 2010 on Tom’s blog on Monday and put out an EDUtalk phlog today EDUtalk365 #13 – EDUtalk @BETT calling for contributions to our ‘open mic‘ podcast over the next couple of days. I look forward to hearing some interesting audio. If your are going to BETT please pick up your phone.

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I usually (well for the past 3 years) do an end of year post reviewing the year. This year I have been looking back over the last 10 years of using technology in education. I spent the first 9 of those years at Sandaig Primary in Glasgow.

Hcicon

At the start of this decade I had only been using computers in the classroom for 5 years. Most of my ict interests centred round HyperCard. We had as far as remember 3-4 apple macs in school, a couple of LCs a LC 475 and a color classic (the HT’s). My interest in HyperCard had lead me to the HyperCard mailing list which was the first example of online sharing of information I became involved in. I was lucky the HC list was a very friendly place for all levels of user.

Making worksheets, due to my appalling handwriting and spelling along with the instant facination with HyperCard were the reasons I bough my first computer in the mid nineties.

2000

By 2000 I had explored using HyperCard to create a few applications for teaching and learning, including maths worksheet maker and a logo type application where the pupils steered a robot round a maze they had designed. Unfortunately I was not aware of all the work in Scottish education already done with HC and mostly ploughed my own furrow. At this time I was mostly interested in producing games and quizzes for pupils rather than encouraging them to produce their own material . We did however make an interactive HyperCard tour of the school in 1998:

Sandaig Hctour

The pupils taking photos with our QuickTake camera and adding them to the HyperCard stack along with text.I remember being really excited with the QuickTake and its 640 x 480 pixel photos!

2001

Littlefish icon

By 2001 HyperCard lead me to try to sell shareware and learn a bit of html: LittleFish Software (courtesy of web.archive.org 2001) I never did make much money but I had a lot of fun and though a lot about pupils using computers.

I also had learnt that the best way to teach children how to use computers was often to teach one or two and let them cascade to the rest of the class.

I had also started teaching primary 6 to use Flash: example of bats we had a page on AOL where children’s work was displayed (2m limit) very few of the children had access to the web at home but it seemed like a good idea to share some work. I had not discovered blogging but had made some simple SuperCard projects that the pupils used to produce webpages mixing pictures and photos for example: weetom@Sandaig

2002

masterclass logo

In 2002 I was lucky enough to join the Masterclass project. This was run by LTS and tool 600 teachers from across Scotland gave them laptops and a week residential training in ICT. There was further support online and funding via the local authorities.

Masterclass turned out to be one the the best things I’ve ever done CPD wise, not so much from the content of the courses (though there was nothing wrong with them) but the chance to meet and network with teachers making links that have lasted. In addition to the laptop LTS distributed funds to Local Authorities, Glasgow gave me a Digital video Camera and, more importantly, some training. I was still using the camera with pupils when I left Sandaig. We were also allowed to bid for funds from the local masterClass pot, I got some to cover a video project and bought an iBook which again did a power of work over the years. Later on I also got a IP video conferencing unit which allowed us to video conference with local schools and our Dutch Partner school in Holland.

scflashblog200

2002 marked my entry into the blogosphere first with pitas and then pivot: Bad Poet On the pitas blog I mention NetNewsWire lite, so I must have been reading RSS by then. I also made an attempt at making my own blog software a combination of SuperCard on the desktop and flash on the web, screenshot so i must have been quite excited about blogging.

2003

Onthebeach 240

In 2003 (or 4 memory is not to good) I (or rather my pupils ) made their first stop motion animation (with the masterclass video camera): On The Beach, I love the warning i wrote then: On The Beach 320×240 3.2MB you need Broadband or a lot of patience for this one.

We continued using Flash in the classroom and over the years with after school clubs.

I am still convinced that children working together with simple (stop motion) or complex (Flash) tools is a valuable activity, not just for the fun and end result but more importantly for the communal problems solving.

Clozecredits

2003 also marked my only foray into the world of paid for flash development, I created a cloze procedure creation and quiz system for Lanoweb which is still on the web at LanguagePlanet.Net.

2004

Sandaigottersbb

2004 was the year we started blogging at Sandaig Otters, I’d been using blogging tools myself since 2002 and at the start of 2004 I though it might be an idea to try out blogging without out much of a plan Sandaig Otters » Welcome to our weblog:

A weblog can be all sorts of things, this one is going to start as a diary and link list by staff and pupils of Sandaig Primary. We will find out what to put on it as we go along.

Looking back at the first few months on the blog I am struck by the small size and lack of images (due to bandwidth concerns) and by the fact by the time I finished at Sandaig we were still finding out what to put on it as we go along.

2004 was also the year we started podcasting I just covered that in my previous post: TeachMeet Mobile – Classroom Podcasting, I also posted my first photos to flickr which involved one of our first Video conferences in class.

By halfway though the decade I think we had come a long way, from making worksheets and drill and practise application in isolation to being part of a community, and having pupils publish digital media straight to the web, these two themes developed exponentially in the rest of the decade which I’ll cover in the next post.

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&channelIn

Having just read Joe Dale’s Integrating ICT into the MFL classroom:: Discovering the power of RSS at TM Mobile the text version of his audio at TeachMeet Mobile I though it might be worth adding links to the notes for my audio:

Joe does a great job filling in the background to TeachMeet mobile so I’ll not give much background except to say that I was surprised at how well the event went, ipadio‘s audio coming over loud and clear after I switched from Safari to firefox.When David had told me about it I wondered if it would really work, would enough folk signup in the short timeframe and would folk listen if the technology worked. For twitter there seem to be a far number following live. We had a wee problem with some of the prerecorded audio and one was posted to EDtalk.cc: EDUtalk365 #1 – A G Pate (University of Glasgow) and it had 70 views within an hour (nearly 300 now)

At the start of the noughties I was teaching at Sandaig Primary in Glasgow.
By then. even as a late starter I had been using computers for 5 years. We had 4 or 5 apple macs in school and a few old BBCs. I never did get a BBC to work.

By the year 2000 I was creating ict tools, mostly with the wonderful HyperCard, games for kids, worksheet makers for teachers and planning tool for myself. At that time my focus was for making simple and engaging activities for children this included a fair bit of drill and practise.

Even then I had always enjoyed getting my classes to produce newspaper and the like, trying in a simple way to make some of their work ‘real’ and purposeful.

Over the next couple of years I started a school website to show off my pupils work. I was trying to fill up 2mb of AOL space with stories, pictures and some flash animation. About 6 pupils in my class had an internet connection, dialup of course. I hoped that publishing on the web would be motivation for the children and started to build simple tools to help them publish word and pictures.

By 2004 we had out own domain and started to produce a weblog, I was not really aware of the blogging that was going on in education but though it followed on motivationally from other things we were doing. by this time the school had a network with 2pcs in the class, our old macs, now including a couple of iMacs were not allowed on the network.

At the Scottish learning festival in 2004 I saw radiowaves and was very impressed with this online collection of class and school radio stations, unfortunately I could not afford this so started thinking about publishing audio on our website. This was 1st recorded on the windows voice recorder which seemed to be limited to 1 minute recordings. i had a lot of fun figuring out how to get my truly horrible flash ‘radio station’ to work. It was obvious from the start, even with terrible quality and background noise that the pupils could produce compelling and powerful audio and enjoyed doing it

.

According to wikipedia The term “podcasting” was first mentioned by Ben Hammersley in The Guardian newspaper in a February 2004 article. But I did not heard of it.

As we continued to make more recordings, of music, french and writing, in early 2005 I was hearing about podcasting but though it a flash in the pan! By Easter I realised that it was the way to go and added a handmade RSS feed to our Radio Sandaig webpage. The main focus for the podcast shifted to a child lead magazine style ‘chat show’. This continued till 2008 with occasional curricular or project based episodes.

I found podcasting to be a wonderful tool. Extremely motivating , children would happily work on scripts in their own time it particularly good for encouraging collaborative working.

For a while the children were unaware that they were involved in talking, listening, reading and writing as they assumed they were doing ict. As the shows went by it was obvious that individuals were improving their confidence and talking skills especially and that the groups of children were working hard helping each other improve their presentation.

Over the 2nd half of the decade podcasting has become mainstream and is a lot easier to do. Over the time we moved through audacity to GarageBand and tools to create & publish podcasts are easy to find. I think of classroom podcasting as a low cost activity as you only really need one computer, and perhaps a microphone. most of the activity for the children is in the planning and preparation.

Tools like posterous or podcast producer make the technical side of podcasting invisible and will allow learners to concentrate on the content and presentation. and I’ll be interested in seeing how this develop.

As the decade finishes we are seeing a lot more mobile podcasting possibilities; ipadio, audoBoo and posterous. These will hopefully be exploited for mobile podcasting away from the classroom, a different sort of podcast, less planning and presentation more capturing experience and evidence. I occasionally. with much footering, tried mobile podcasting but now we have the tools at hand and in a lot of pockets. I remember fantasising back in the middle of the decade about some sort of podcast which could be made on the same device as it was listened to. Podcast and comments would become some sort of tree structure with listeners being able to listen and join in to different nodes in the conversation. I hope to see something of that sort appear in the next decade.

Finally a podcast that made a big impact on me in the early days was an audio-manifesto produced on idlewords, there is a text copy at:www.idlewords.com/audio-manifesto.txt. Basically the writer was proving that reading was better than listening, faster less linear and that is much easier to provide links in hypertext than audio. I am still convinced by this, but there are two thing that make podcasts stand out, one you can listen while doing something else, try reading a blog while doing the dishes or driving, the second is the extra communication provided by the human voice, time and again comments on the children’s podcast showed that this was much appreciated by their audience.

I don’t think that is going to go away and podcasting of some sort will still be a great classroom activity in 10 years time, I just hope it is used in more of them.

All of the presentations from TeachMeet Mobile will be posted on EduTalk over the next few days as part of the EDUtalk365 project.

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A while back I made a simple flickr search tool this is not as slick as some of the beautiful search tools out there but it was designed for pupils to use to get images to embed into their blogs and to create the attribution, clicking on a thumbnail gives this:

Flickr Ccstamp

Which has a text box with the html code to embed the image and attribution, you can choose to align left of right and to use small or medium images.

The tool if far from perfect an needs quite a lot of work but it has proved useful to quite a few folk and I believe used in glow training by LTS. Recently at the suggestion of a fellow ADE I added a more somber style to the rather bright colours I had used (a link at the top right of the page toggles the styles and sets a cookie to remeber your preferences).

At the Scottish Learning festival I was delighted to see Neil Winton‘s pupils using my tool and working with the images. This gave rise to the thought that it might be useful to create images that could be used without the embed code that show attribution. I’ve added a feature, above you can see stamp medium and stamp original links. Clicking on these will produce an image with the attribution stamped on.

Stamped by flickr cc
my crop

So I am wondering would this be useful in your class and two, is this legal (stamping a No Derivs photo? ) and is the wording (Flickr photo by name – license) and I would appreciate your comments on both of these questions.

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I’ve had this installed for a few days now, but the flurry of snow tweets (the #uksnow Map 2.0 is looking great) reminded me to try the live streaming from my iPhone to USTREAM.

I must say I was surprised at how well it went. This was using a wireless connection and a G3 not G3s iPhone. I think the quality is not too bad especially after I turned the phone the right way up. A stand would have helped rather than a pile of videos(sic), dvds and books. The twitter integration is good too.

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Twitter Hacked, Defaced By “Iranian Cyber Army”

We’ve received multiple tips right around 10 pm that Twitter was hacked and defaced with the message below. The site is currently offline. We’re looking into this and waiting on a response from Twitter.

Woke up early this morning, very strange…

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The wee project David Noble and I set up for the Scottish Learning Festival, SLFtalk – Audio publishing by attendees at the Scottish Learning Festival, received a Edublog Awards nomination in the ‘Best educational use of audio’ category.

David posted this on SLFtalk

John and I are passionate about podcasting and digital audio; we feel that the range of technology used by contributors to SLFtalk ‘lowers the bar’ to publishing a variety of audio online and we hope that others experiment with these ways of gathering voices (John calls it “guerrilla podcasting”!).

which sums up the idea.

We have extended the idea with EDUtalk using the same technology and opening the scope out.

Fell free to give us your vote for ‘Best educational use of audio’ it is really a vote for all the contributors to the post cast over the 2 days at SLF and look out for some EDUtalk news soon.

Feel free too to contribute audio on any educational topic to EDUtalk.