I’ve updated my Sandaig Google Maps Experiment a little this weekend, getting ready for some international co-operation this session I hope.
I added a few schools and a wee popup control to the page to point to the school chosen.
the interface I made for editing the maps proved far too clunky for children to use, so I’ve been thinking of redoing that as a step by step process.
Somewhat unbelievably, I am watching Ewan give a presentation via twitter!
He is at ULearn07 giving a Keynote.
nope commenting on Helen Baxter’s, I checked New Zealand current local time from WorldTimeServer.com (Ewan’s was yesterday)
notes from Ewan:
There’s no such thing as School 2.0
It implies this global classroom stuff, where we are all the same and facing the same challenges – what about cultures?
Careers 2.0: the global microbrand. Anyone with a blog can become an employer and entrepreneur. No cost, no risk, nothing to lose
Global Microbrands are what Career 2.0 is all about: edublogs: Global Microbrands for professionals
Career 2.0 or Exploitation 2.0: we need to educate the process, too or this happens: Ogre to Slay? Outsource It to Chinese – New York Times
Weirdest live blog I’ve ever done, maybe I do not need to leave the couch ever again. I am not sure if i know what Helen Baxter was talking about, but I got interesting stuff through Ewan‘s and Paul‘s twits, Paul seems to be linked up to some NZ twitters. Tweets keep everyting short and sweet, perfect for sound-bite nation or media snackers.
I think you could use twitter and some scripting to present, forget powerpoint, maybe filter tweets through some css to fill up a screen.
I’ve been reading some of the wordpress course over at swict.com :||: the place for help when you’re Stuck With ICT. Swict is a project by Andrew Brown.
If you want to get started blogging with wordpress this is a great place to start, especially if you are a busy teacher. All of the 18 lessons are available as pdf files and Adobe Captivate videos. The videos are between 40 seconds ans 3 minutes each, bite size for easy consumption!
Andrew has a great voice for listening too and the tutorials could not be clearer or easier to follow. As well as wordpress the growing collection covers Adobe Captivate 2 (Andrew eats his own dogfood), PowerPoint and Macromedia Breeze Presenter 5 Course all in the same style.
I run a couple of after school clubs at Sandaig, today was the primary 7 computer club. The number are limited to 12 so that we don’t have to worry about resources and help. I usually have a lovely time. The primary sevens are working on Scratch. After one of the children’s nice flash movies produced last session I was tempted to stick with Flash, but Scratch is getting a lot of coverage so I though I’d try it.
We started exploring the scratch files on the projects page and watching one of the Scratch Videos. The next week the children worked through the Getting Started pdf. We missed the week after as I was at the Scottish Learning Festival and this week the children started on the Scratch cards. They are beginning to get comfortable with the interface and are having a ton of fun. It is lovely watching them find things out for themselves, some quickly found the record sound facility and gales of laughter echoed round the school. Some children quickly wanted to leave the introductory cards and explore ideas for themselves. Quite often these ideas seem pretty advanced and are leading up blind avenues but usually making interesting discoveries along the way. The children worked in pairs and sometimes one group has a solution the others need. I’ve not really explored scratch at all by myself, the children know this which hopefully will give them s sense of pride. I do have enough basic programming concepts to be able to give some help.
I a not sure if the children will be able to progress to the levels of some Scratchers (see for example munkeeb’s Stuff) in the time available, but I am sure they will have fun. I wonder how they would get on if they had an hour or two a day working with this stuff for a couple of weeks, could that work with the curriculum for excellence?
This is just a wee test of windows live writer I am thinking of trying it out with the children, if I can get it installed on the machines at school. It looks as if there are some useful features, especially for adding and resizing images. It looks like it is going to impress me, especially the bit for wrapping images and adding a drop shadow.
Live writer also lets you preview and the preview looks great.
Apologies
for the image I am on my old Masterclass PC and had to reinstall the system, only got the sample images on it at the moment.
Oh look Virtual Earth!
As I mentioned earlier I recorded some of the presentations from TeachMeet07. I’ve turned these into a enhanced podcast. spent a bit more time in GarageBand and am beginning to understand a bit more about it and it’s relationship to the other iLife apps. As usually I made a silly mistake or two, the main one being I did not know the maximum length depended on the tempo of the Master Track. This lead me to having to change that after I had organised all the chapter marks and links, I then had to reposition these on the time line which took me most of the afternoon.
Anyway time well spent, as teachMeet07 has been one of the most exciting educational events I’ve attended for a long time. Have a listen and let me know if you agree.
I had a bit of bother with this one. I’ve not used keynote much, but it was very easy to create a presentation with. While playing about with it I noticed you could record an audio soundtrack very easily and though I’d do that, export to quicktime or even youtube to let folk see what I’ve been talking about (and to play with the toys). Recording was easy enough, but when I came to export I got errors every time. A quick google fould more folk with the same problem and fixes for keynote 3 & 3, unfortunately I was using keynote 4 and the fixes didn’t work for me. I am guessing the problem has something to do with combining a recorded audio with movies and audio in the presentation. So what should have been a few minutes work turned into a few hours! I exported the presentation to jpgs, then I dug into the presentation package and found the narration audio. Next I imported the into GarageBand and one by one placed the images on the podcast track, adding urls as I went.
Next I exported the podcast to iWeb and published it, the first time I had used iWeb and again it seems easy enough to use without having to read a manual.
anyway here is a version of the presentation as an enhanced podcast.
As a by-product I now have a Podcast. I will not be adding to it very often, but I’ve got some audio from TeachMeet07 which I’ll publish soon. I didn’t manage to record all the presentations, but I’ve got some.
I had a great day yesterday. I stared off blogging Ewan‘s We’re Adopting! An Adoption Strategy for Social Media in Education which I really enjoyed, it is very tempting to move to east Lothian for the support of David Gilmore and the great blogging community they have put together.
After that I chatted to a few folk and walked around nervously before my spot. I accually sort of enjoyed my self and the audience seemed happy enough, I posted a few links and hope I’ll put the presentation up at the weekend.
After that I tried to blog both In the Wild (Glasgow) and Stephen Heppell
I didn’t do a very good job of it so didn’t post anything, both INW and Mr Heppell were really interesting, but I didn’t type anything worth posting, David was typing away and I guess he will have done the job when they arrive on Connected Blog
At 6:00pm we dashed back across to the science centre for TeachMeet07. Previous events have been describes as “My best continuing professional development” by no less than Ollie Bray, who is often described as one of the best cpd providers so a lot to live upto.
This time we had a huge space in the science center and the biggest ever crowd, hopefully someone else will estimate, but 200 bottles of beer didn’t last long.
About 25 people had volunteered to present, most offering seven minute micropresentations and some two minute nano-presentations. This time Ewan had organised a virtual lottery to choose the next presenter and explained that folk should fell free to chat if the presentations did not interest them (it is an un-conference). He had also organised some excellent audio so even in the huge space everyone was clearly heard.
I was delighted to be pulled out the virtual hat first and raced through a quick intro and guide to scotedublogs.org.uk, trying both to explain what it is good for and to get the bloggers in the room to link to scotedublogs.org.uk (this might mean you). It seemed to go down well, the audience was very friendly and encouraging. Maybe because I only took five of my seven minutes.
After that it really was the best cpd in the world, speaker after speaker produced wonderful ideas, the audience cheered and wooted and before you knew it it was 8:30. One or two folk did not get to present, but we managed to here most of the list. I could not pick out anyone particular, but was sorry Ian Stuart and Theo Kuechel were not heard. I had an idea about what they would be talking about and it sounded great.
The atmosphere in the room was amazing, teachers are not always the most cheerful of folk when they are getting after hours training. I do not think I have been in such an open and friendly crowd.
After that it was off to Khublai Khan’s for some food and more excellent cpd. A vote of thanks to Softease who sponsored the weird and wonderful menu.
I probably got more ict teaching tips and great links and ideas than in the rest of my years cpd put together.
I have no idea how this event could have been improved but I am really looking forward to the next one.
I am typing this as I wait to do my turn. For what it is worth I hope to have the slides up over the weekend, I’ve nearly finished recording the audio in keynote.
Here are the web pages that I refer to in my presentation.
UpdateI posted these links and they were all broken, I’ve fixed them now.Sandaig Otters – The Weblog of Sandaig Primary School in Glasgow
Sandaig Otters » Primary 6 Bio poems
Sandaig Poets – Poems from Sandaig Primary School
» Our Bio Poems – Thanks Sandaig Primary 🙂 Primary 7v Class Blog
Sandaig Television – A Video blog from Sandaig Primary in Scotland
Netherlands 2007 – Sandaig Primary Visit the Netherlands 2007
Eco Otters – The Weblog of the Sandaig Eco committee
Snakes and Ladders
Sandaig Otters » Twin Castles
Sandaig Otters » our record
Sandaig Otters » P6 TO P7
Sandaig Otters » First Circut Movie
Sandaig Otters » Flick Flacks
Sandaig Otters » Gears
Sandaig Otters » Dancing
Sandaig Otters » Name Art
Sandaig Poets » bio poem by Kimberley-Jayne
Nicole – Sandaig Primary 6 SJ
Tasks – Blogging Tasks For Primary Six
Radio Sandaig
John @ Sandaig Primary – mostly what we are doing with ict in class and some links
John @ Sandaig Primary » Starting Blogging in the Classroom
