The Aggregated Primaries in UK has been updated.
found out via The Blogface Neil Jones’ site which aim to cross-reference and collaborate on developing with weblogging and responsible use of ICT with young children.
BubbleShare: Lewis Art Work
Tim Lauer has created a bubbleshare piece of BubbleShare: Lewis Art Work
to show off BubbleShare‘s new zoom feature.
Bubbleshare has a nice export from iPhoto plug-in, so I made up a little slide show with some images of art work from around the school so I can play a bit with the new zoom feature…
I am jealous of his ability to use both iPhoto and BubbleShare in school, but I have another idea for my flash image thingy.
Tim’s blog saves hours of browsing as he picks some of the most exciting stuff for school web sites all the time.
I got the 
tool from his blog last week and added it to our front page and the blogs, a fascinating free tool.
Flash Display 2
I’ve made a slightly improved version of the image scroll display, this one loads a long wall display, grab to scroll and a slider to scale. I will be trying to improve this over the spring/easter holidays, when i can spend a whole day playing with it. Plans so far, some sort of note facility perhaps linked to areas and a thumbnail view, any other ideas welcome.
Displays – flash
After the last entry I finally got round to finishing a small flash project: All our bodies which displays three very big wall pictures in a flash file. I’ve not used flash for a while except with the Computer Club and my scripting is not very good, but I’ve managed to make a simple google earth sort of display where you can zoom and scroll the children’s art work.
Classroom Displays
Classroom Displays a blog about Classroom Displays, links to a Slide show of the Classroom Displays Group on Flickr.
What a great use of a blog and flickr, I just wish we could see flickr in school, Education blogs are sometimes only of interest to other blogger/techy teacher but every primary teacher I’ve met would love this one.
I found it when Linda commented on the Twin Castles entry, I think the primary 4ms are going to be pretty excited by all the attention there first blog entry is getting.
One of the most powerful things about using blogs/web galleries in school is that they act as a wordwide wall display. It seems to have worked for Primary 4 this week.
blogvangelists
Peter Ford, who I am looking forward to meeting at Communicate.06, has an interesting post Why I am not a blogvangelist? talking about Terry Freedman’s post Blogvangelism, podvangelism and wikivangelism: why?
The blogvangelist preaches his or her blogging Sermon on the Mount, inspiring great faith for educational revival but quickly moving on to the next group of willing listeners.
? And the teacher is left with a blog or two, a few reams of digital paper and a digital pen – the educational equivalent of a few loaves and fishes – and is expected to improve the lot of the audience-starved masses in the classroom. Unfortunately blogs are just tools and have no transforming power in themselves.
and
I don?t think the term ?blogvangelism? adequately reflects the creative slog that is required from teachers to make blogs an effective tool in schools.
As a teacher I have to agree with that one. I especially like slog.
I’d used blogs ( johnjohnston.pitas.com and Bad Poet) for a while before I used blogs in the classroom. When I started teaching with blogs I was fairly confident in using the system, posting, creating templates etc. I could talk pupils through the process without having to think and fix things without worry.
For a lot of teachers blogs (if they have heard of them) are just one more thing, there has been a huge number of initiatives in teaching in the last few years all proclaiming great things. Blogs are also one more ICT thing, there has probably been more progress in teacher’s ict skills than many other areas of teaching, but quite a few folk are ready for a wee ict rest rather than a further effort.
One more thing becomes particularly stressful when it is delivered for an evangelist, especially one who quickly moving on.
IMO we need extended support for introducing new tech (or new anything), we need time and time costs money. We could probably do with a little more flexibility in the curriculum to allow us to relax and have fun as we learn too.
Maybe if teacher’s had a bit more playtime they would not need to be evangelised?
Communicate.06: Comments and communication
Ewan has invited me to be part of the Communicate.06 ICT organised by Scottish CILT, in Stirling. I am going to be talking about podcasting and blogging with a bunch of other folk I am very keen to meet.
I asked about preparing and Ewan told me just to post stuff here instead of making a preparation. I must admit this made me worry a bit. I like making presentations distracting myself from the problem of what to say by messing with the tech (I use SuperCard, flash or html rather than powerpoint so that I can get maximum distraction). This is a bit like using podcasting as stealth education the children do not realise that they are doing language work, they are having too much fun.
Anyway this is the first post for Communicate.06.
At School on Friday’s I am released from my class to do ICT stuff around the school, podcasting, digital video, blogging. This is a wonderful opportunity. I usually do a class blog entry from a couple of classes, using a whiteboard and treating it as a bit of shared writing. The idea being to slowly introduce children and staff to blogging. Already one members of staff is posting with her class independently.
Today I was blogging for the first time with one of our primary fours.
We started with some of the children taking photos of some art work on the wall in there classroom choosing one on the white board and cropping it a bit. (I don’t expect 8 years olds to pick this up too quickly but, it is more fun and cpd for the class teacher.)
We uploaded the picture to the blog, had a quick word about passwords and the responsibility of representing their school worldwide and did a bit of shared writing: Twin Castles.
So far so good, the children enjoyed themselves, were introduced to digital cameras, blogs and there was lots of participation in the writing.
At the end of the day I was in primary five: blogging about ‘How to write a setting’.
At about 2 minutes to home-time we finished and posted the entry. A new comment caught my eye, Anita from Slovenia had commented on the Twin Castles entry.
We had a quick read, got quite excited, and I popped over to primary four to share with them; they were nearly as excited as me
Half an hour after school I opened the entry again, to print a copy, and Stephanie from Primary four had posted a thank you comment to Anita.
Some thoughts:
- Stephanie has really got the idea about blogging and she is eight.
- The echos from this, finding Slovenia on the map, increasing the children’s sense of their location and place in the world and connection to the rest of it, the pleasure and pride of a teacher from another country asking if she can use the children’s idea.
- Anita wrote to primary 4, giving them the ownership and connection.
I am not saying that blogging is the be-all and end-all of teaching and learning, but the ripples set up by one half hour present a lot of opportunities.
feedpile
feedpile.com/johnjohnston a rather nice rss aggregator what seems to my hurried test to be better at keeping things in order than my suprglu where I seem to get multiple copies of the same entry.
Dutch Podcast Out
I have published the podcast recorded in De Rank on the Radio Sandaig page.
That pretty much wraps up the trip. We had a great time and I think I learned a lot about a whole range of things.
- Recording with my new Logitech® USB Mic straight into Audacity is, as I expected, a lot more efficient than using the iPod. The sound quality seems fine too. I am going to use this more for the regular Radio Sandaig podcasts.
- It is nice to be connected, I blogs from the airport, the two schools and the hotel we stayed in, the iBook really shines for this, I never had to touch a setting except to put in wireless network wep passwords.
- There can be a real connection using Video conferencing. This is the first time I’ve conference with people (my own school) who I know well. Although there was no obvious educational content in the conference, mostly “hello” & “this is what we are doing in De Rank”, it will hopefully help to build links between our schools. I am also aware of the difficulty the Dutch children have in understanding the Sandaig Children’s accents. I will be thinking of how to communicate on a visual rather than verbal level in the future.
- I also really like the muli layered communication that we were trying, blogs, video conference, just posting image galleries and the podcast. I am very optimistic that his will really help with building friendship across the North Sea.
- Comic life, what a wonderful application for Education, children just love it.
busy two days
I’ve been busy blogging on the Sandaig De Rank Blog for the last two days, we had a wonderful time, blogging, making comics, podcasting and video conferencing.
The podcast should be ready by Sunday, and hopefully I’ll have time to gather my thoughs and put them here. In the meantime please check the Sandaig De Rank Blog and the links there to photo galleries and Comic Life strips.
Update (Saturday 18 February):
A quick links list in addition to the posts on Sandaig – De Rank
Podcast coming tomorrow. A comic life trip of our trip is in the works too.