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I now have a map that anyone can add points to and they are saved. Once this is password protected and can make new maps it might just make it out of the idle curiosities category.

Testing in school yesterday I had trouble with some of the satellite images not working. I have no idea if this was a temporary google problem or something to do with the firewall or cache on the network (or something else completely).

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I was so busy messing about yesterday that I didn’t really think about David‘s comment enough.

Although designed for using with flickr it could be used to provide maps for blog posts. Nice interface produces this:

Click here to see where this photo was taken. By courtesy of BeeLoop SL (the Mapware & Mobility Solutions Company).

I think my children could use this to tag posts about trips etc.

I’ll probably keep messing about for a wee while more.

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I’ve added a new section to the site:

Sandaig Classroom Displays, this will allow visitors to the site to see some of the same things as visitors to the school. I am using the same image scroll flash file I posted about a while back with some simple php.

There is a wee upload page which should allow me to upload photos from school which will be added to the display. www.SandaigPrimary.co.uk is becoming a series of confusing but simple content management systems micro experiments.

Viewing the pictures requires the Flash player.

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Ewan’s post on Google Maps for all of Europe sent me back to the Google Maps API.

I’ve already wasted quite a bit of time here here and there finding out a lack of javascript hinders the use of the API.

But today I managed to embed a simple map in the Sandaig – De Rank blog via an iFrame: De Rank map which should hopefully help me do a wee bit more. I guess if I knew more about php, and javascript it would be possible to add an extension to a blog to popup a window get a longitude and latitude and build a link into a post to show a particular location.

I guess this comes under what Terry Freedman calls idle curiosities

Later-some experiments :sandaig and de rank schools. (click on the push pins.)

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Terry Freedman has put together a pdf: Coming of Age: An introduction to the NEW worldwide web which looks like it will be a great read. via Perter Ford.

It consists of a series of articles from key web 2.0 educators, many of who have never met. Read more here: Collaborating on the Web 2.0 booklet “Coming of Age: an Introduction to the New Worldwide Web”

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In a great post The age of unreason? Terry Freedman writes about the difference between teachers and technologists, and on the usefulness of all the cool web 2.0 stuff that the technologists write about in practice. He talks about benefits versus costs saying

Nowhere in such outpourings do I find any educational evaluation, be it in terms of pedagogy or, more mundanely perhaps, teacher workload.

I think this is a real frustration for teachers, not only in the web 2.0 world, being told what to do, by folk who are not in the classroom every day eating their own dog food.

I have an ambivalent feeling towards educationalists (sometimes earning more in an afternoon that a class teacher does in a month): thanks for the ideas mixed with a wee bit of envy.

Terry writes of his own frustration with Superglu:

Now, there are a number of issues with this. Firstly, from a purely practical point of view, I cannot fathom out why the content from my own web page’s RSS feed doesn’t update itself automatically on the Superglu page — and I don’t have time to find out. OK, I’ve probably not done something simple and trivial, and were I a teacher I’d (hopefully) have someone who could do all the technical stuff for me.

which gave me a chuckle, especially the hopefully bit.

Peter Ford posted a response: The Age of Unreason:

The real antidote to falling into the ?trap? that Terry outlines is to ensure that teachers are at the heart of grassroots innovation rather than always being the recipients of top-down advice in a sort of web 2.0 deficiency model.

which works for me, and there is some nice comments. I am not sure if I’d agree with this one

I think most teachers have plenty of occasional ideas but there is no mechanism to develop them.

strikethrough, First Thought, Best Thought Peter;-)

There are quite a few educationalist, including Peter and Ewan, who teach regularly and are therefore more believable (although Ewan is a bit too active for most to try and emulate;-)), but I have this idea of a teacher/web 2.0 job which consists of a five day week:

  • 1 day research/playing with the toys.
  • 1 day implementation in someone else’s classroom co-operatively teaching.
  • 3 days teaching as a job share, trying to incorporate some of this stuff in the real world, with national tests, lost homework and late-comings to deal with.

Of course if someone offered me something like this I’d be flexible about the 3 days, I’d be ok with 2;-) I’ve almost got that this session, as I am released from class on a Friday to work in other classes with ict, I just need a bit more discipline on Saturday which seems to be my research/play time.

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Podcasting

I am talking about and running a workshop about podcasting at the Scottish Naace CPD Event: ICT Clicks in 2006 tomorrow.

My presentation and workshop notes from a previous Naace event which I’ll be pretty much following.

Here is the briefest overview of how to podcast, from start to finish, the links are the thing.

  1. Record with Audacity: Free Audio Editor and Recorder windows, mac and linux versions available.
  2. Add podsafe background music from: Magnatune: MP3 music and music licensing (royalty free music and license music)., CC Mixter, Open Source Audio or mix your own online with Audio Mixer (looks like fun for children, websense prevents you joining and therefore getting mp3s you create saved in Glasgow schools.)
  3. Export to MP3, Audacity needs the LameLib Windows version from: LAME Mirrors Mac version: Download LameLib for Mac
  4. Upload to some webspace, if you do not have any you can upload to the Internet Archive( you need to join first).
  5. List a link to you podcasts in a blog, free educational blogs from http://edublogs.org/ (for Educators) or http://learnerblogs.org/ (for children and learners). A brief guide to How do you post a podcast with edublogs.org?
  6. Copy your RSS feed from your blog and run it through FeedBurner which will produce a good feed for submision to itunes

There are good handouts on the basics of using Audacity at Joe Freidhoff’s Tech Handouts