Tag: links

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David Baugh points to Pinnacle studio iPad video editor.

I was delighted to find a more feature rich video editor for free in Pinnacle Studio and even better – for now it is free.

from: Learning in Touch » Blog Archive » Free Video Editing iPad App from Pinnacle Studio with multi layer video David has a great Digital Storytelling page too.

I’ve mostly though about MOOCs as cpd , but…

So, what does this have to do with K-12? Everything. Or at least a lot. If this is the wave or a wave of the future of learning and teaching then this is something that we need to pay attention to. If the job of parents, K-12 educators and the public school system is to prepare students for the environments they will be expected to work and learn in, then we ought to pay very close attention.

from: What is a MOOC? The Canadian Connection.

This and the others in the Honest Logos set made me laugh, but perhaps an interesting take on the design a logo activity?

Mcdiabetes

image Creative Commons — Attribution-NonCommercial 3.0 Unported — CC BY-NC 3.0
from: Honest logos on the Behance Network

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Classroom ideas

I want all the children I teach to develop a love of learning, not for ticks, badges or scores, but for the buzz of learning.

from: Robert Drummond » Blog Archive » 20% time Robert is giving his pupils free learning time in the same way Google developers get to follow their own interests, I am looking forward to see how this goes.

Here is the exam. Write your own questions. Write your own answers.

from: Seth’s Blog » Blog Archive » Tyler Cowen’s Unusual Final Exam I guess it would take a bit of work to get this going in class, but echo the 20% for me.

When you click on ‘Sign in with Glow’ you will be taken to the Glow login page. Here you can login to Glow using your usual username and password. At Glew we won’t know these details and they stay secure with you.

from: Using Glow to make a Glew Account | Glew.org.uk Charlie Love makes Glew an even more interesting choice. If I was in class I’d give it a go.

Online learning

“Mechanical MOOC” – a free and open introductory course in the programming language Python that weaves together existing resources (content, Web-based study groups, quizzes and so on).

from: The Mechanical MOOC Audrey Watters point to this new MOOC, No degrees or credits or certificates or letters of achievement will be awarded, if I though it would only involve a couploe of hours a week I’d join up.

Mozilla wants to create a generation of webmakers.

from: What we’re up to with Mozilla Webmaker (Open) badges. | dougbelshaw.com/blog Doug now works for Mozilla Foundation. I am all for making more webmakers, and am interested in how badges play out, less sure of badges effectiveness (see the first quote in this post). I suspect badges need to be augmented by personal or social media, I didn’t find codeacedemy badges much of an incentive. I am looking forward to seeing Doug speak at eAssessment Scotland this Friday.

An introduction for new programmers
So easy your human companion could do it too!

from: JavaScript for Cats looks pretty useful, I think I am involved in an intro to HTML, CSS and baby steps JavaScript for computing teacher later this year.

Odds and Ends

Alan O’Donohoe who has produced some great AudioBoos (some of which he kindly tags EDUtalk), is looking for donations to get a pro account:
Audioboo Appeal « Teach Computing.

What I am questioning, however, is whether the logic of Capital and private enterprise should be applied to the institutions of our state. Some things, after all, are public goods.

from: Some thoughts on time, performativity, and the State. | dougbelshaw.com/blog a good question.

Tuttle SVC: Should Teachers Consider TED a Reliable Source? Why, Exactly?

Techy

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Rss From Noun

A while back I noticed More Code Fun: Reading (or ‘to Read’) List – CogDogBlog which pointed to Reading: keeping on top of stuff I save | Helpful Technology The site has a nice byline Digital innovation for people with more sense than money when I grabbed the code to create my reading list.

My reading list pulls together various RSS feeds: my delicious, things live starred in google reader, instapaper & instapaper. I read my google reader and twitter on my phone. I don’t always want to follow the links so star or favourite them for later consumption. The reading list. pulls all of these together. Easy to use and I like the way it combines existing services rather than needing a new one. I’ll easily be able to add other feeds if I want to later on.

This week’s harvest

  • Print With Any Printer From iPad, iPhone – Wired How-To Wiki
    Which I am keeping for later reference. I’ve not felt the need to print from my iPhone in over 2 years of use or from an iPad. In fact I got rid of my home printer a couple of weeks ago (still networked to my wife’s B&W one) because it was gathering dust.
  • I registered for Skype Education as it looks as if it might be interesting.
  • Of the many What to do when you can’t get to school for pupils blog posts Primary Bits and Bytes » Blog Archive » Snow Place Like Home was my favourite, probably because of

    “REMEMBER! Real snow is the best! You should only really be here if you get too cold or fed up with playing out, snowballing or building snowmen!”

  • OOo4Kids looks like it will be worth checking out at work.
  • My Adobe Connect Recipe – CogDogBlog looks very useful for the time that Glow moves to Adobe Connect for video conferencing.
  • I am having an interesting conversation in the glow forums (login required) about video in glow blogs, this provides some food for thought: HTML5 Video Player | VideoJS it amazes me how complicated getting video onto the web is, formats, browsers etc. As someone who doesn’t understand these things it seems to me that the new html5 video tag could surely support more than one video format per browser and clean the whole thing up.
  • yesterday I linked to the NounProject on twitter this collects, organises and adds to the highly recognisable symbols that form the world’s visual language, so we may share them in a fun and meaningful way. The symbols on this site are and always will remain free.

RSS image from used under NounProject Creative Commons — Attribution 3.0 Unported

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I used a aGent v5 Webcam with a £1 tripod from a pound shop to make a cheap visualiser. DIY Visualiser First try at recording some ipod touch screen action: iPod Maths Maps, I hope to repeat this with a vocal explanation. The Webcam is 5mp and the images look really good. The ipod was shot at half size and there is a bit of reflection.

I spent a wee bit of time working on some goole maps stuff in glow: Google Maps api (glow login required) and have a fairly simple map creator working in safari and firefox, not Internet Explorer though.

Recent delicious bookmarks:

  • iResponse Software Download « ipod/iphone response system 59p needs desktop app
  • Thinking allowed: Maths is beautiful great blog post
  • Wolfram|Alpha for Educators Wolfram|Alpha is a free online computational knowledge engine that generates answers to questions in real time by doing computations on its own vast internal knowledge base. Our long-term goal is to make all systematic knowledge immediately computable and accessible to everyone. This can be valuable to educators in many ways.
  • Comics Internet Safety A comic for teachers to help think about classroom practise
  • Embedding Javascript in Google Sites Wiki Why isn't embedding Javascript on GoogleSites as easy as Wikispaces?
    Of course, a quick Google search revealed a workaround and a learning opportunity.
  • Wisgary.com – Google maps API Distance Calculator This Google Map calculates an approximate of the shortest distance between any two points on the globe. It is calculated whenever you hit the Calculate Distance button, or when you drag a marker to a different position.
  • Using iPods to Motivate Reluctant Readers Written by Jacquie Fitch, 4th grade teacher: I am working with a group of 12 students who are below grade level in reading. Most of the students struggle with missing phonetic skills as well as comprehension issues. It is hard for them to sit still and they cannot work/learn in large groups. I am looking for ways to motivate these kids and to teach them to enjoy reading. I’m also hoping to see an increase in fluency skills.

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sandaig home

This post consists of some notes and information to go along with a short chat I will be having with folk at the North Lanarkshire business meeting in Modern Languages at the invite of Robert Dalzell QIO International Education.

Disclaimer, a quick scan of this blog will prove that I’ve not mastered my first language never mind a second. I have no real knowledge of MFL except that I read quite a few MLF blogs and I have talked to MFL teachers before.
Not much of this post is specfic to MFL but hopefully the examples I give on the day will be of practical use to the audience.

Why Blogs?:

  • Easy low bar technology:
    If you can type you can blog. Recent blogging systems deal with text, and multi-media is a very simple and straightforward way. Low cost or free. Modern blogs handle media and organisation automatically in ways that used to be open only to skilled web developers.
  • Community & audience:
    There is already a widespread network of educational blogging you can join. For pupils blogging can make learning real and purposeful.
  • Dissemination & Aggregation:
    Through RSS (really simple syndication) it is easy to keep up with a large number of blogs and easy for your blog to be widely read.

Further reading on OpenSourceCPD:

Ways to use blogs in education::

  • CPD
    Blogging has become a powerful tool for professional development for many teachers and educators worldwide. By reading blogs you can keep up with some of the latest ideas in education and join in discussions of these ideas.
    I’ve put together some ideas about this at OpenSourceCPD- Reading Blogs as CPD and there are some links to mfl teachers blogs below.
  • Teacher to Pupil:
    Teachers can publish homework, revision, extra material. This can be text, files such as pdfs, audio (podcasting) or video.
  • Pupil Publishing:
    (This is my favourite bit) A static website involves a fair bit of work and distances children from the publishing process. Weblogs allow children to become more directly involved in the publishing process without delving into time consuming html skills.
    Allow children to ‘write the web’ as opposed to reading it.

    It is another wall display

    To give the children a wider (one of the widest) audience for some of their work, increase their sense of ownership and responsibility of their work and gain feedback and co-operation from others. Working in small groups on a shared text/media encourages peer feedback and co-operation.

    Hopefully it should inform parents and even allow children to understand aspects of class life. Scanning down the blog show a surprisingly wide variety of activities recently covered.

    For many children working on the computer still has motivational value and this is surely increased by the fact that we are publishing for the world.

    Many types of media; images, comics, audio, video, animation can be used by pupils as well as text. Starting Blogging in the Classroom

Further Reading:
Blogs tagged MFL on ScotEduBlogs:


LTS: MFLE – Information, support, ideas and resources for modern languages teaching

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Over the last couple of weeks I’ve been reading quite a few post as about what makes a good edublog and blog identity. Eventually I ended up on Andy Roberts’ Writing an About page where he followed the advice from lifehack.org , I’ve done the same. I’ve started working on an about page. It is pretty clunky at the moment but if you are interested in where I am coming from it might give you an idea.

I’ve never really wanted to do this, but I notice if I visit a blog and can’t find who/where the person is it makes me wonder.

I’ve also exported the blogs I read in my feedreader and converted it to html. If you want to see what I read most days you can on the subs page. Pretty much as it came out of the reader, I just deleted those handy feeds that are only of interest to me, del.icio.us for me, comments on radio sandaig, comments on my flickr etc.

What do you think, do you want to know a bit about who is writing a blog, are a pile of links useful?

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(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).

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Just noticed VidDownloader – Back Again! – Download Youtube, Google, Myspace, Break.com…videos in DIVx Avi Format which might be useful at home if you want to download youtube etc and take to school. I found that one via popurls | popular urls to the latest web buzz a useful home type page.

And an interesting looking wiki Wiki – AboutUs, this seem to auto generate a new page and content when you search for a domain name: eg SandaIgPrimary.co.uk – AboutUs. There was no page for SandaIgPrimary.co.uk when I searched for it, but the wiki pulled in information about location (based on web host), generated a screenshot and a Description. The description was interesting, as it was pulled from the about.html page, I guess the wiki software checks for an about.html (and others?) from the domain and tries to find a meaningful piece of text. I think it looks for a meta tag description first, but I’ve never got round to adding one. You can then go on and edit the information in the normal wiki fashion.

John @ Sandaig PrimaryI got to the AboutUs wiki in an interesting fashion. One of the things I do in my spare time is webmaster for The Tai Chi Union For Great Britain. I was mailing back and forth about some stuff with another member who runs a webhosting service Recursion (As I’ve mentioned recursion is one of my favourite words. Gordons blog is suitable named; The Loopzilla. From his hosting site I saw he was interested in wikis and he sent me the AboutUs wiki link. He also mentioned he was friends with Linda H who joined in with a lovely conversation with our primary 4s and links to Sandaig on her Classroom Displays blog.