Tag: literacy

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Windscape is an exciting children’s adventure that explores the dilemma between the usefulness of wind farms and the beautiful scenery they can sometimes destroy.

Paul Murdoch, the author of Windscape has recorded the audio for each chapter, created learning material and made them available for free.

With Paul’s permission I’ve taken the resources and turned it into a Glow Blog.

Windscape – an exciting children’s adventure by Paul Murdoch

and a podcast to which you can subscribe on: apple or android.

I have already started using the resource with my class and am looking forward to continuing.

As the audio is a blog it is easy to change things, we are open to adding to the learning resources if anyone has ideas. You can get in touch through the site.

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Wednesday evening I hurried home after school to join the zoom meeting for the launch of the Virtual exhibition Doing Data Differently.

In the current climate, discussions about data in schools are usually linked to pupil attainment, data are represented using charts and graphs, and teachers rarely initiate data collection themselves or use it for their own purposes. The widespread use of attainment data in schools has been widely criticised for its impact on the curriculum, on teaching and learning, and on teacher and pupil wellbeing.

I’d heard of the project from Ian Guest, @IaninSheffield, an academic working on the project and an online pal. Ian did interesting work on teachers use of twitter. We talked to him about this and many other things on Radio EduTalk. Ian took a rather individual approach to gathering data during his phd.

The virtual launch was a great taster for the Doing Data Differently site or exhibition. If the idea of data in education is unattractive this will change your mind. The recording of data was done on postcards in very creative ways. A quick scroll down the Metaphors, for example, collection gives you different view of “data”.

I was particularly interested in was the amount of discussion and excitement generated by the postcards. One mention returning to change something in her class immediately. Perhaps I heard someone saying that the project vaccinated them against data. An interesting idea.

I felt that these postcards gathered more complex, subtle, less easily simplified data. This could be approached conversationally as opposed to mathematically.

The project is continued in a colloquium on vimeo. I’ve listened to the first, thanks huffduffer, Data harms and inequalities and queued up a couple more. The first was an interesting discussion of data misuse, bias, and bad algorithms. I am guessing that the videos are more academic than the postcards and should compliment thinking about data use in education in the round.

There is a lot more for me to read and think about on the site. It is facinating seeing an unusual view of other teachers practise.

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Bookmarked Teach Writing with the New English Language Arts Pack | Minecraft: Education Edition (Minecraft: Education Edition)
We’re excited to announce the new English Language Arts Pack created in partnership with the National Writing Project. These 10 lessons for Minecraft: Education Edition focus on world-building and engage students in a game-based learning experience that will help them learn about the writing process...

via: Digitally Literate Newsletter #261 – Silence no longer an option.
There are a lot of good ideas for using Minecraft, I’ve found I need time to figure out how to use them in my classroom, so bookmarking for later.

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Reposted https://twitter.com/IaninSheffield/status/1315385032576565248?s=20 by Ian Guest (Twitter)
DOING DATA DIFFERENTLY We're launching the virtual exhibition from this research project between 16:30 & 17:30 on Wed 11th Nov. online. Of interest to colleagues (esp. sr. leaders) interested in literacy in primary schools Registration (free) http://bit.ly/DDDExhibitionLaunch… - join us!

I’ve registered. Really interesting way of gathering information about primary teaching.

 

 

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Liked Cristina Milos on Twitter (Twitter)
“I changed the way I teach new vocabulary. Fewer words, slower process, more effortful, but better understanding and use. #engchat #pypchat”

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Gif showing the mixedd up sentence maker in action.

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’.

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For example, teaching digital skills would include showing students how to download images from the Internet and insert them into PowerPoint slides or webpages. Digital literacy would focus on helping students choose appropriate images, recognize copyright licensing, and cite or get permissions, in addition to reminding students to use alternative text for images to support those with visual disabilities.

Really interesting post by Maha Bali with some great real world examples.

Knowing the Difference Between Digital Skills and Digital Literacies, and Teaching Both

So often we only seem to have time for breezing through the skills and mentioning literacy. In my own work we deliver fewer and fewer daytime CPD opportunities, shorter twilights are delivered more often. Skills then become the main focus.

I’d be interested in knowing how much penetration digital literacy has in classrooms across Scotland?

Especially among staff who do not identify themselves as having digital skills?

An even more challenging read is: Media Literacy: 5 key concepts to teach this year

I am yet to see Microsoft or MinecraftEdu act in a way other than marketing and brand-building (ie scholarly).

and

Most media messages are organized to gain profit and/or power.
To learn this, kids need to be removed from the kind of dubious activity that ‘brands’ are doing to children with the willing co-operation of teachers. Point 5 – The message that goes with the device you place in the child’s hand was not created, designed or sold to make them more literate – and yet, we call it ‘digital literacy’ to mask the obvious effect of forcing one brand over another into kids education.

I’d like to see this discussed by a group of teachers who belong to different clubs, ADEs, MIEExperts, Google for Education Certified Innovators and the like. How do we deal with our bias when teaching? Do we walk the talk if we claim some sort of balancing act?

The featured image for this post is Public Domain: Image from page 108 of “Argument to errors of thought in science, religion and social life” (1911) | Flickr – Photo Sharing!

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On Saturday I went along to this event in University of Stracthclyde Innovation Centre. Orgainserd by Rob Smith and Bill Boyd in association with Scottish Film Education.

There were over 20 presentations and talks on a wide ranging set of topics.

The problem at events such as this is to decide which talks to go to and the regret on missing others. This can be exacerbated by watching the tweets from other sessions. I tried to guess which ones would be suitable for broadcasting and podcasting. This is tricky at a conference based around film.

During the day I broadcast from 8 sessions and David Gilmour (@dgilmour) kindly recorded more. This will be published on Edutalk over the next week or so. ScotFLF15 | EDUtalk, the links here should update as they are added1

ScotFLF15 – EDUtalk

Athole McLauchlan Dream For A Living #ScotFLF15

Radio #EDUtalk 07-10-2015 Bill Boyd

Jennifer Jones Citizen Journalism and the Digital Commonwealth Project #ScotFLF15

David Griffith From Shots to Sentences #ScotFLF15

Bill Boyd Ten Tools for Reading Film ScotLFF15

Claire Docherty Using the Scottish Film Archive in the Classroom ScotFLF15

Jo Spence Into Film Resources #ScotFLF15

Framework For Film Education in Europe ScotFLF15

Tim Flood Draw What You See #ScotFLF15

Rob Smith Using Film in the Classroom #ScotFLF15

Some of the recording start slightly late, due to my getting to the room late and a few will feature a samba band from the street as a background. What they lack in audio quality the make up for in content.

Although I’ve worked with creating video with and without pupils a fair bit I am not very knowledgable about film so I found interesting things in all of the sessions I attended. It would be hard to pick out a favourite. I certainly learnt a lot of new stuff from Rob Smith about Using Film in the Classroom and David Griffith talking about grammar in both text and film in From Shots to Sentences. I am more familiar with the work of Jennifer Jones on the Digital Commonwealth Project, but really enjoyed her talk and was delighted to get a hard copy of the ‎Handbook of Digital Storytelling as I’ve pointed folk to the pdf many times.
I suspect I missed a lot of details from the talks as I was recording I hope to gain from listening to and editing the recordings.

I do not know the official count of participants but it seemed pretty busy to me, as usual the number of Scottish teachers willing to go to cpd events in their own time is commendable. Some had travelled a fair distance and must of got up early. (Great to see Neil Winton). At a cost of £25 with plenty of coffee, pastries and a tasty lunch this was amazing value. There was a great buzz throughout the day. I’d recommend going along next year (I believe it will be run again).

Feature Image credit David Gilmour.

1. I am using the WordPress › RSS Via Shortcode for Page & Post WordPress Plugins to embed the RSS. That plugin is showing its age anf throughs some errors. so I’ve concverted the post to use the new (sic) block editor and am using the Display Remote Posts block.  ↩

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About 20 years ago at an education conference one of the speakers said: “To be literate is to fully inhabit a culture”. At first it felt a little affected or a bit too “luvvie” for my liking. Over time however I have repented. I find it useful rather than struggling with new words like “learnacy”.

via Digital literacy | NET BLOG.

I really like this idea of literacy covering the whole of a culture. It seems to hint at avoiding any worrying about the word digital and accepting that it takes it place in a range of areas we can be literate in. We can escape the worry about being too luvvie by considering the range and Types_of_cultures.

 

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Samorost Grab
Three years ago I noticed a Strange ‘Game’, (the game is no longer at the url links from that post).
I played the game for a few minutes and got nowhere, it looked lovely so I just linkdumped it for my class and forgot about it.
Recently I’ve saw mention of it (on KimP’s Blog and Ewan’s) so I looked again. It still looked cool and I still got not very far.
This afternoon, I was delaying going to music (my least favourite bit of the curriculum) so I fired up Samorost on to the wall and gathered the children round.
They had a ball, giving me advice and solving the puzzles to work through the game. As a class they took about the same time as Ewan and a lot faster than Derek;-)

I realise that there are lot of areas (as well as music) that I don’t get. I recall getting the first version of Myst along with HyperCard 2.3 and not getting that at all, I spent a wee bit of time wandering in an aimless fashion then a good deal more time gently hacking into the game to check out it’s Hypercard roots.

Anyway there is not much time left this session and we are getting a refresh of hardware tomorrow which might slow thing up, but I hope to get my class to follow the AllStars progress using Samorost and perhaps replicate some of their activities> I might get to see what I can get out of this type of gaming. Moving a little way out of my comfort zone.

(Note to self Samorost2, thanks Ewan).

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