I’ve set up a blog for video content Sandaig Television using some old content from the site to test things out. using a local install of the popup2go scripts from embed the video!.

This seem to work ok from home on my mac and partially from school (we sometimes get an authentication dialog with QT content). I’ve put the videos on my dot mac account space to save a bit of bandwidth on our host’s server (the next few podcasts will go there too).

If you have a look and there are any problems please let me know.

I was hoping to use some sort of Flash player, but both YouTube and Google Video do not work on the school network.

I had a wee try at converting quicktime to flash at home but I could not manage to keep the quality up and the size down. If anyone knows a good recipe, I’d be interested.

For quicktime I am using the H.263 compression rather than H.264 as h.264 didn’t play on the school machines. I’ve figured this out by trial an error rather than any reading or actual information, so again any info appreciated.

I’ve a few small child lead video projects running at the moment but it will be a while before they are finished and added to the blog. We might do some more mini movies like Gears and Flick Flacks in the meantime if any possibilities come up.

I am looking for a wee bit of help.
Over the past year or two, I’ve installed various linux distributions, played with them briefly and uninstalled them. Usually I’ve given up at the point I’ve tried to get a wifi card to work.
A couple of months ago I had a partitioning accident on my pc laptop losing all my windows stuff. As I don’t have disks for the machine I decided to install Ubuntu and have a play. Ubuntu installed easily and picked up my wifi card straight away, I didn’t really do much except browse the web a bit and check out a few apps. Ubuntu looked as if is pretty straighforward for basic office and web tools.
A bit later when I was getting ready to go to Be Very afraid I though it might be a good idea to have a second laptop in case the iBook had a problem. In the event it would have been helpful to have another machine with us.
So I dug out the pc and set about installing Audacity. I’ve installed Audacity a few times on macs and pcs and never had any bother. At the time it wasn’t available in the Add/Remove programs list in ubuntu so I downloaded a package and tried to install that. This told me that various files were needed and not on the machine so it was off to google to download some more stuff. eventually I got audacity installed and plugged in my mic for a quick test: nothing. A quick trip to the sound control panel didn’t make much sense to me.
Googling lead me to this sort of thing and this: USB mic on Linux – Audacity Wiki.
Not the most user friendly of instructions for those of us shy of shell commands.
A month later and I am trying again, updateed ubuntuOne suggestion was to download the latest version of audacity and build it. I’ve done this a few times on my mac from the commandline without bother, but attempting this in ubuntu lead to messages about not finding a compiler…
For this to work for busy teachers it has got to be a bit easier. Having said that I’d like to use the pc, and a lot of ubuntu looks nice, so if anyone knows of a simple way to get a usb mike working let me know. I can manage a few shell commands on my mac, but no more than a few at one time.

Via OK, Let?s Knock martinlutherking.org Down a Few Pegs, Shall We? seems like a good idea (pass it on).

Martin Luther King Jr.

Martin Luther King Jr.

Martin Luther King Jr.

Martin Luther King Jr.

Martin Luther King Jr.

Martin Luther King Jr.

Martin Luther King Jr.

Martin Luther King Jr.

Martin Luther King Jr.

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In the last entry I said I was going to post about trying to decide how to set up a set of individual blogs for my class but I ran out of time.

I got a ton of advice on both wordpress MU, with a complete setup guide from David and on lyceum from one of the programmers.

Eventually I decided to stick to what I am most familiar with Pivot. Originally I was considering having blogs for all of the p6 & 7 children (90), but I need to figure out if the idea is worthwhile before I ask my colleagues to try this.

Setting up a 20 user pivot blog wasn’t all that hard, I could edit the config files directly to add 20 users and 20 categories (I for each sub-weblog) using my old favourite Supecard to format the data and create and encrypt the password. SC fired out 20 stylesheets from a template too.

Setting up the 20 sub-weblogs was beyond my abilities to edit the config file directly, so I did that by hand and I quickly exported some random header images from fireworks.

So I now have 20 weblogs and an associated class blog. We have only made a couple of posts so far but it seems to be going ok technically. I’ve used a new beta of pivot which has added comment moderation and I am trying that out. I’ve also use a theme for the admin section of the new blog so that it looks different from the admin section of the main school blogs which should help to avoid confusion.

The next step is to arrange for time for all of the children to post regularly and to let them design their own header graphics. The first will hopefully be solved by weekly visits to the media room and I hope the posting rate will increase as the children’s typing improves. The second might be more difficult as we don’t have any more interesting image software on the pcs than microsoft photo editor or paint. I am thinking of combining text and images in word, pasting into paint and exporting as a jpeg. (any easier ways?)

My only worry is time, the first couple of posts pretty much took up an hour of media room time and there are a lot of other things we want to do as well. (nearly all my worries on this blog are to do with time, must be an age thing).

The children are quite excited about having their own webspace, but are thinking of it as a activity for a specific time at the moment, I hope I can change this.

A while back I wrote about blogging in our new media room and about trying to decide how to set up a set of individual blogs for my class. Since then we have had a couple of weeks of 4 classes, 2 children for each trying to post daily and I’ve set up blog for my class.

The main blog effort on Sandaig Otters has a pair of children from each of our two primary sixes and two primary seven classes being appointed bloggers for a day, they come to the media room from 9-9:30 am the next day to blog. The idea being to give all children in these classes regular (every 2 or 3 weeks) opportunity to blog, report and reflect on their learning. I am in the media room to supervise.
So far we have manage a fair posting rate, but a few issues and points of interest are coming up.

• The children are encouraged to take photos to illustrate their posts, often this means that they turn up in the morning to look at the photos and figure out what to write about, this takes time and in some cases has meant that children have been turning up to finish writing for a couple of extra mornings. This obviously has a knock on effect on the rest of their classwork and on their teacher.
• Also taking time is the fact that with only 2 pcs in the class in previous years quite a few children are very slow keyboarders.
• As the children are not all in my class the blogging/photo editing instruction is on the hoof, I guess it will take longer than I anticipated to have them blogging without thinking of the mechanics.
• We also need to find time to talk to the children about refining their post, more ‘what we learnt’ as opposed to what is exciting.
• Talking to my colleagues some note that the children are reluctant to post about everyday things: maths and language. Again we need to explain that it is valuable to give details of learning rather than just go for something photogenic.
• I will only be able to look at so many photos of children bent over books and jotters, we need to develop ways of picturing learning (I’ve not got many ideas about that one, ideas welcome, post a comment).

I’ve now given each class a reporters pad to write notes as well as take photos and hope that may encourage some though before arrival in front of a screen. I’ll add pointers and starters to the inside covers of these when I collect some (ideas welcome, post a comment). I’ll also try and knockout some posters about blogging for the classrooms at the weekend.

I was going to write about the new blogs I’ve set up for my class, but that will keep. Primary Six SJ – Blogs.

We have just pretty much finished a project in school which turned out to be (in my opinion) a good use of a weblog.
This session our school role went from about 200 to about 300 hundred when the school across the road closed.
To help to keep our sense of community it was decided to do a whole school project focused on shared values. This started as a discussion of values, the primary sixes and sevens then were grouped to create snakes and ladders boards reflecting these values. The 6s & 7s then lead groups of younger children to create more boards, 100 boards being made altogether.
Finally a life-sized board was made and we had a whole school house competition.
The project was wrapped in a story told my storyteller Michael Kerins who often visits the school.
I took the opportunity to organise a wee group of bloggers, who followed the project taking photos and updating the weblog pretty much as it happened.
The project lasted 2 and a half months. We had a core group of 6 bloggers (not from my class) that was augmented by more photographers on an ad-hoc basis. You can have a look at the weblog: Snakes and Ladders Weblog and the Snakes and Ladders Photo Gallery.

The children in an after-school club will also be putting together a video of the project but that will probably take a few weeks to edit.

I am beginning to think that short term project based blogs have some advantages over class and individual blogs.

• There are easier to manage. providing a way to dip your toe in the blog water without getting into a log term commitment.
• They keep focused and don’t loose traction.
• They provide a good experience for the bloggers and a useful resource for the rest of the school/class, everyone is involved in the same way as everyone is involved in an assembly according to there needs and abilities.
• If you are trying to evangelise blogging in your school/ authority this may be a way to start blogging, you are not asking colleagues to commit children’s valuable time on a long term basis.

This session, I have increased the number of children involved in our main blog from mainly one class to mainly four classes, interesting teething troubles are arising which I hope to report on later (when I’ve solved them), this one off project blogging has been a much smoother (if hectic) experience.

Digitalkatie is describing Lesson planning and planning and planning and some of the reasons things can go astray in ICT. Some great plans thwarted.

In the last couple of weeks working in our new media room I’ve had this pleasure, old machines in a new room mean I’ve been reporting a few faults. One of the most interesting has been the refusal of a few machines to show thumbnails of jpeg files. This is a bit of a show stopper for children trying to figure out which of the cryptically named files from the digital camera they took the day before. We watched as a remote technician tried for a morning to get it working (time for some bad teacher halloween jokes). In the end another tech had to visit and replace the hard drive.

I’ve been reading Jonesieblog the Blog of Robert Jones for a while now and always find interesting things there.

His subheading changes regularly, probably one of those fortune cookie plugins, but todays gave me a smile:

One of may favourite words after serendipity. Fair cheered me up after a day at work.

Our ICT Suite now called the Media Room was open for business this week. So we have stepped up the blogging. In our 2 primary seven and 2 primary sixes classes we have set up a rota where 2 children in each class are the blog team for the day. during he day they are supposed to decide what is interesting and blog-worthy, take photos and note. At the end of the day I pull the photos off the cameras and put them on the computers. The next morning from 9:00 -9:30 they come to the Media Room crop and resize the photos and blog. This way we should get every child in 4 classes blogging every 2 or 3 weeks and fill up Sandaig Otters. It might be time for a little blog reorganisation. Children are chosen pretty much at random with the idea that the less able writes will have peer support. The idea is that missing the first half and hour of normal curriculum will not be too detremental. At the moment 30 minutes is a bit tight, but should improve as the children’s typing speed improves. Hopefully after a few weeks they might be blogging from their classroom computers too.