Posted on
by
Chenrezig, the compassionate one
© Gerry McCann. Licensor www.scran.ac.uk.

I’ve just got my self a blog at Scran Scribble weblog service.

I finally got hold of my GTC number and joined Scran as a teacher so that I can access all those amazing images at home as well as in school. Scran recently (I think) changed their copyright to allow blogging of their thumbnail images ( an example use on Nicole’s blog ) making this resource even better. I just need the time to dig in and exploit it for my class.

The images on Scran now have a Share link which opens a window and lets you post to a blog, at the moment it only handles scribble and eduspaces blogs automatically but other systems are to follow. The pic on the right is one from Scran following a search for happiness.

Scran blog tool

The great advantage of Scran as an image provider is that it should be accessible in any Scottish school and I can’t imagine it being blocked by any school in the world. The only dissadvantage at the moment is that is is a wee bit tricky for primary pupils to blog images and get the copyright etc right. When we did the children downloaded the images and uploaded them to the Sandaig blog. Scran are working on this, personally I’d like a flickr-like snippet:

The blogs at Scran are elgg powered and it looks like there is a nice community in the making I’ve joined the Blogging for Education and Using Technology in Education groups.

I’ve looked at Scran on and off for a few years now, used it occasionally but this time I am really going to make a big effort to use this wonderful resource that is on my doorstep.

Posted on
by

Netherlands 2007 6 -12 May 2007

The time for the trip to Holland is getting closer. On the previous trip we posted pictures and text from holland on a day-to-day basis on the Netherlands 2005 weblog, allowing parents and friends to follow our progress and leave comments for the children.

We hope to do the same this year, but it may be a little more difficult as the hotel we are staying in does not have an internet connection. We will try to work round this by grabbing wifi or popping into internet cafes when we can and posting from De Rank Primary when we visit them.

There is more information on the Netherlands 2007 about the trip and how to post comments to the blog.

Posted on
by

Note our LG Shine sitting on the macbook.

Our network is not really functioning in school at the moment as it is migrated from Mitel to Dell.

Despite this we managed to get some blogging done today. Using bluetooth and a mobile to connect to the internet was surprisingly easy after reading GSM Phone as Mac OS X Modem.

I am now wondering if i can get this to work on our Netherlands 2007 trip. I wonder if I could buy a dutch sim to use on the trip.

As an aside it is a pretty good job to work with folk who smile like this.

Posted on
by

Back in October I blogged about a visit to Be Very Afraid one of the highlights of the session for me.

I just noticed that the Be Very Afraid 3 website has been updated with video and pictures from the event. Well worth waiting for, the quality of the video is great (and loads quickly) and it brought back a lot of memories and ideas.

The Musical montage video gives a good idea of how exciting the event was, and we feature in the Sandaig Primary School section and most of the photos of the Sandaig team are in Photo Gallery 5.

Posted on
by

The Sandaig Otters and other school blogs have been quiet since our return to school on Monday.

Glasgow’s managed service for primary schools switched from Mitel to Dell and there seems to be a few issues to clear up. We did manage to get one pc logged on and connected to the net today and a couple of children posted, but most of the other machines either cannot be logon to or cannot connect to the internet.

I really hope the network is fixed by Friday as we are planning a lot of blogging activity for our Eco Otter Action Day with text, pictures, audio and perhaps some video. My fingers are crossed.

Posted on
by

Over 10 years ago before I was interested in Web 2.0 technologies into the classroom, before we had the internet in our classrooms, when our school had 3 apple macs and a few bbcs, I was introduced to computers by my HT making me take one home for the summer. I found HyperCard and was hooked. I set about happily making toys for the children and tools for myself.

At some point ( ’96 or ’97) it was suggested that I could make some money selling these tools and toys and I set about sending A4 catalogues round all the primary schools in Scotland. If you were in a primary then you may have seen one of these ugly sheets (’98 example) I also had a website.

I never made my fortune, or even much more than my hosting costs, the site grew to be more of a SuperCard resource site, the range of software was reduced, the quality improved (I hope) and I added some freeware. Interestingly the only title that paid for the hosting was a worksheet maker (I can’t imagine why anyone would want such a thing now).

My favourite Rommy Robot never really was as popular as I expected. I have kept developing Rommy as I occasionally get an email asking me for an update. Today he reached version 3.0 beta 7 and became free.Here is my blurb:Rommy Robot is a child friendly screen programmable robot.

Rommy Robot is useful for teaching Shape, Position and Movement in primary mathematics and is a way of introducing young children to control technology.

This Beta will not time out, is universal and is no longer shareware, rommy is now free (donations accepted), no registration required. My idea for Rommy was originally as a replacement for our Rommar Robots which always had flat batteries when I went for them. I had not even heard of logo at the time! The application grew ( a bit as it is pretty simple) but the idea was it was like logo but slower. Slower so that children can see what was going on. The main game is a simple grid map where children can create mazes and run the robot through them. There is a simple interface for building commands without typing.

I’ve since made a flash version of the simplest game: Rommy Robot which some folk find useful or at least you can see what I am talking about.

I’ve now come to terms with not making my fortune, or even having the time to develop software and my interests are more to do with children publishing and creating. I’ve not even used rommy in my own class this session (I am not teaching maths). But I hope I have learned something form the process. In looking back at my old catalogue I noticed the blurb:

Software for Primary Education.

Designed, Built and Tested by Primary Teachers and Children.

Which I think is a pretty good premiss for using ict in schools and unfortunately teachers and children are the last folk to get there hands on educational ict tools.

What has be interesting in the growth of Web2 in schools (blogging,podcasting, wikis etc) is that is has come from the bottom up started in real classrooms around the country before any encouragement and direction from above. The community of practice that has developed is largely a grassroots movement. I wonder how the bloggers would have felt if they had been instructed by Heads, authorities or nationally to start blogging?

Posted on
by

(apologies of the uninspired title)

I said it here but this is much better (via Anarchaia) as is: A Simple Code – Web Karma, Distilled.

Kurt Vonnegut Is Dead at 84

Two of my must reads Tom Hoffman and Daring Fireball point to uncov: uncov / Meebo is What’s Wrong With Web 2.0 (meebo) which is interesting & provocative Tom Hoffman’s take is

Realistically, cheap laptops for kids will need the efficiency of free desktop applications, not web apps uber alles.

uncov, uncovering web2 say they are

uncov is a new blog that is focused squarely on internet startups and web2. We plan on digging deeper than most web2 review sites and finding out what is really going on behind the scenes.

Tom’s post reminds me of Beyond the Browser (a oldie but goodie).

Posted on
by

Upcoming.org: Creative ICT Innovations Conference at Chorlton Park Primary School (Saturday, April 21, 2007)

Free conference for educators interested in innovative developments in ICT.

I saw this one a while back on Creative ICT News and even check the train times and prices. Great looking lineup. I wish I could manage the trip but finances and timetables will not allow. Maybe some of the presentations will be online Hint to John;-)).