Update September 2024 blog seems to have gone Archive.org Link
What I quickly found out was that NOTHING has made a greater impact on my students than the short notes that I’ve been writing them.
Tag: classroom
“Key tips on mobile film making, in #DIYFimSchool Part II - consider lighting and audio, and be prepared. Plus, use apps. Hat tip to @lee_ballantyne for sharing the full resource
The linked guide looks useful and simple enough for primary school: DIY Film School
On Switching from iPad to Chromebook in School
Fraser ran the first whole-school 1:1 iPad deployment and the whole post has me thinking.
A couple of sections stood out for me:
When we started with iPad in 2010, I suppose I thought that we were heading into a new era in education with creativity at the forefront. Particularly, I thought that Scotland’s Curriculum for Excellence was going to usher that in. We were led to believe that all different kinds of assessment materials would be considered appropriate for submission to our exam board. None of that happened, and we seem to be moving away from that idea at a steady clip.
Are we moving away from creativity is Scotland? Just for exams or across the board? Are iPadds more suited to creativity than chromebooks.
And:
It seems to me that, for a school, the choice is whether you’re a GSuite school or an Office 365 school and everything flows from that decision. It’s quite difficult to transition from one productivity cloud to another and nobody will do that without a compelling reason. Google and Microsoft are matching each other blow-for-blow in cloud features, partly for each to make sure that the other never develops such a compelling advantage.
I wonder how Fraser choose between 0365 & GSuite?
Personally last session I’ve moved away from the cloud in class for pupil use. I found OneNotes and OneDrive to be a bit unreliable, lost pupils work and sometime time. I suspect this is due to our rather slow internet connection. I do depend on OneDrive and iCloud for taking work home. OneDrive is pretty much where I keep any curricular material now.
I now put up with the poorer organisation of Apple Notes and use Airdrop because it is some much faster and reliable than the cloud for me. Given there have been a huge number of updates to the O365 suite on iOS. I’ll kick the tyres again in the coming session.
I’d like to have the network that would speed things up and the opportunity to try GSuite. Although the cloud may be future, it is not yet evenly distributed.
It was gratifying to see Apple put serious effort into getting the desktop version of Google Docs working in iPadOS 13. However, it’s too little too late for us at this stage in our development. We might come back to iPad in years to come but, for the next four years at least, we’re going to see what GSuite and Chromebooks can do for us.
It is going to be fascinating reading the next chapter.
Not content with being an already great free service, Unsplash now has collections for education.
Not content with being an already great free service, Unsplash now has collections for education.
@matthewlang on micro.blog reminds me of unsplash, I must add to list of photo sources for my class.
“Now this is very interesting, and I don't think at all obvious. Reading challenging texts aloud, and at a fast pace, improved the reading comprehension of all students, but for the lowest achievers, the gains were almost twice as great: https://t.co/TxJ1MZPI4X.”
I’ve noticed I do this less and less as there seems to be more and more you have to do each day. Need to make more time for reading to class next session.
micro:bit iOS app: much improved
Since returning to the classroom I’ve been using micro:bits with my class of 8-11 year olds. We have had a deal of fun with them, some of this is on the class blog.
We normally use pc laptops and chrome to access the MakeCode editor. In the second year I tried using the iOS app but out of a class only one or two children managed to get their micro:bits connected. At the time I put this down to multiple micro:bits and iPads in close proximity.
I have occasionally tested new versions of the app and the most recent one seemed a lot better. It displayed the webpage code editor in app and flashing seemed simpler. Today wanting to move our micro:bit guitar project on when the PCs were in use elsewhere in the school I decided to give the app another run. I am very glad I did. Everything about the app seemed to be better. I think that coding and flashing to the micro:bit for an iPad is simpler than using a pc. We had no problems in getting code written and flashed to the micro:bits.
I’d highly recommend the app if you have both iPads and micro:bits in your classroom.
I’d also recommend the Microsoft MakeCode Guitar project. I’ve been working with a mixed age group class and the mix of tech and ‘art’ fits very well. Some of the younger children are getting their first experience with coding and the art and construction can keep them motivated when the coding concepts get tough.
The May is Out
A test of snapthread which has been updated to version 2. When I tried the 1.8.1 version I rather liked it. It was then an app to stitch live photos into wee videos on iOS. Version 2 adds a lot more features. I still like it.
This video should not be used to judge the quality of the output, I used CloudConvert to squash the 38MB 1440 × 1080 mp4 down to 4.5MB 1.
My class used the free version, limited to 30 seconds of video, last session a bit, we had a few crashes, but I think it is a promising app. Ease of use, limited time of the free version and lack of stickers, for now 2, are useful for the classroom. My class use iMovie and Clips too, but sometimes we might not want the greater complexity of iMovie or the wacky possibilities of clips.
Unfortunately CloudConvert doesn’t work for me on the school network, I’ve tried a few apps that convert and squash video but no really found a good one for pupils to use. I would like my pupils to be able to do that, to save space on their blogs and to speed up uploading. I am not sure on the official line on posting to silos in North Lanarkshire. Social media, especially twitter, is very popular. That is staff rather than pupil posting, I’d like my pupils to be involved in the uploading of video to their e-Portfolios and the class blog without my interference.
For Glow Blogs, I’d also like the app to change the file type to mp4 or m4v as .MOV files, that are apples favourite, don’t play nicely with all browsers. We made a change to standard WordPress functionality to accept .MOV files as video, but some browsers don’t play them. Strangely, just editing the file extension, from .MOV to .m4v works, at least for Chrome. I can’t find a way to change extensions on iOS but I’ve tested on the desktop.
FWIIW Snapthread’s videos are .MP4 when exported to the camera roll, so only need squashed for my needs.
- Thanks to Martin Coutts for the pointer to CloudConvert ↩
- Snapthreads developer has a really interesting post about the development of the app: Journey to 2.0: Market Appeal | Becky Hansmeyer
Watched: Crow Moon
I’ve watched this with my class several times now and a few more myself as prep. It is a lovely animation and a really good film to discuss the elements of film. Especially sound and music. Crows and a Raven, what is not to like! I’d highly recommend it if you are looking for a short, 5 minute, film to watch in upper primary during literacy lessons.
OCR again
I’ve found Office Lens useful over the last few year in class. It is a good way to get some text into a document for editing. The workflow for me is a wee bit clunky, snap on phone, open app, upload. Then either open in word or switch to desktop and open from OneDrive there when it syncs.
Today I found OCR.space a free online service. I gave it a quick try on my phone.
The first attempt failed, I had to edit the photo to B&W and brighten it a little (as per screenshots above), but the results were impressively quick. There was no swapping back and forward between apps.
I’ve tried a multi-column image too using the same image I used back in 2015 with office lens. The results are just as good and fit my preference for text I can copy as opposed to a document I need to open.
Here is the docx Office Lens converted, and here is the OCR.space one, from This image, I had to shrink it a bit to get under 5mb for ocr.space, I don’t think Id need to do that iif I was going straight from the phone when the image would be a smaller png.
I hope to give ocr.space a test in the real world next term.
I’ve also found dictation on my phone a great way to get documents into text. Reading someone elses words seems to work better for me that thinking up my own as I go.
I found ocr.space via OCR Shortcut : shortcuts on reddit, butI’ve not tried the shortcut, the webpages seems quick enough.
Cut Up Sentences
A few children in my class need a bit of extra support in literacy. On a course at the NLC literacy base I was shown the idea of scribing sentences and then cutting them up. The result could be given to pupils to sort out on a wee board with slots and then optionally copied into a jotter.
Given my poor handwriting (unless I really slow down), difficulty in keeping resources organised and liking for digital I had a go at making a virtual version.
The first iteration just presents a field, typing a sentence and hitting return produces mixed up words to drag around. I’ve been using that for a couple of months.
I’ve then improved things a little by making a system to create links to that page that will have a particular sentence already created. Example
I’ve been sending these links out via Airdrop either directly on a few together in a note. I though I might make the page creation a little easier and also add a QR code creator: Mix Up Maker – Make a Cutup sentence or story..
I can then add the QR Codes to my pupils programs. These pupils have daily task sheets put in their jotter.
I am depending on the QR code API and the TinyURL.com API.
As usual the code in there is a bit of a mess. I always think I’ll tidy these things up, but rarely do. I need more time than I seem to have to really learn JavaScript so I continue to type and test.
The gifs above are made with LICEcap which does a great job of creating short gif ‘screencasts’.