I have been working on OpenSourceCPD a bit recently. Mostly working on the On-site Cpd Opportunities. Nearly everything is labelled first draft being work in progress but I guess that is the beauty of a wiki.
Yesterday I knocked out a rough version of the first of some guides to Online Tools. This covers the basic use of Picnik the online image editor. I used Picnik a couple of times with my class last session and was please with how easy it was for children to use. The course (or cpd opportunity) at OpenSourceCPD just goes over the basic use of Picnik and has a few ideas about using it in school. Very much a first draft at the moment, feedback is welcome in the comments or via email.
For the first time on the OpenSourceCPD site I’ve made use of a screencast. I’ve made a few of these before elsewhere and used the smartnote book recorder to make instructional videos for the children at school but this time I used an application new to me ScreenFlow.
ScreenFlow is a mac application that allows you to record your screen, audio from the mac and a mic (you can also record from an isight). It then allows you to edit the video and export to quicktime. The editing is very slick, you can auto highlight the main window, the mouse or zoom and pan the video. You can add other images, video and audio. I had a bit of trouble with my mic and recorded the audio over the original footage without too much bother. I am not completely happy with the result (and may redo it ) but that is more to do with me than screenflow, my previous efforts were much shorter, smaller and without a voice over. I think I was trying to go a little too quickly to make for good instruction.
As ever I’d be interested in feedback about OpensourceCPD and the screencast not only the content but the playback as it is a H.264 movie and nearly 30mb.
It is being run on Saturday 1o May by David Noble who is a member of the OpenSourceCPD ‘collective’. David is best known for producing Booruch my favourite educational podcast.
last November I blogged CPD in Aberdour about a previous cpd event David ran. As you can see from that post I had a great time.
I chat to David fairly regularly on the EdtechRoundup Flash Meetings and he has always an interesting view point or idea on Web 2 in ed, he has a deep knowledge and experience about the theory and practise.
If you want a quick start guide to or refresh of Web 2 in education you could not do better than taking a trip to Aberdour to spend a day in David’s company. Pretty railway station too.
I have just finished the first draft of a cpd course for OpenSourceCPD on RSS. Given an hour the amount of information that can be covered is limited. I cheated by including a good few videos as optional extras.
I’ve been enjoying editing the OpenSourceCPD site as the task is suited to my rather short term concentration. I can edit the wiki for a while, maybe change some of the design with css and add features to the wiki using pmwiki‘s Cookbook (addons). So far I’ve added recipes for quicktime, rssdisplay, slideshare, and various recipes for adding flash content. I’ve added some example of these to the Media Tests page.
I’ve even mange to produce a recipe of my own. As usual this stands on the shoulder of others, I just copied on of the recipes and used Yuan.CC Flickr Experiments to show a flickr photo with notes in a pmwiki page, this is unfinishe at the moment, but it works: Photo Sharing (the photo sharing page is not finished ether.)
The wiki is now awaiting more content. You can contribute by editing the wiki or if you are too busy by sending me material and I’ll add it and attribute. There is a Discussion section on the wiki for any sort of discussion of the project, or add a comment here or send me a mail.
About a month ago I wrote about the beginnings of OpenSourceCPD at TeachMeetPerth. Since the the site has moved to a suitable host and we have started making some links with CPDFind. There are now several very knowledgeable people listed on the Profiles page and more have shown interest in joining in the fun. I’ve added an Introduction to blogging course as an example and the beginnings of some general CPD Materials.
I’ve been enjoying setting up the wiki as there is quite a lot of cpd for me involved. PmWiki is proving interesting and flexible giving an opportunity to play with the tech as I figure out how to organise the site.
So the wiki is now awaiting more content. You can contribute by editing the wiki or if you are too busy by sending me material and I’ll add it and attribute. There is a Discussion section on the wiki for any sort of discussion of the project, or add a comment here or send me a mail.
These are the slides I used at TeachMeetPerth Last week. You can see the images on a flickr set. The VoiceThread above is a work in progress, I’ll probably re record the audio with a quieter computer and a script.
I first got the idea for OpensourceCPD from teachmeet at the Scottish Learning Festival in 2007. Ollie Bray is widely quoted as saying that teachMeet was his best CPD experience. This had me thinking about Teachers as providers of CPD I also talked to Con Morris of LTS’s CPD Scotland team, he mentioned that reading my blog could be a cpd opportunity for someone!
My favourite learning experiences at conferences and inset have always been the ones presented by teachers. I include in this the more informal teachmeets and the social continuation in the pub or restaurant afterwards.
I’ve also been aware of the open source movement as a great deal of the software I use day to day is open source software, this blog, firefox, Vienna and many more. this got me wondering if this might be a useful model for distribution of cpd material by teachers, material that is not locked into a Local Authority, business or agency. Teachers as providers and consumers. The CPD material would be freely available and could be used by individuals or presented by a provide, the teachers supplying the material on the wiki could be providers/consultants. Of course because the material is freely available it can be supplied as CPD by anyone.
Free Redistribution: the softwarecpd materials can be freely given away or sold. (This was intended to expand sharing and use of the software on a legal basis.)
Source Code: the source code must either be included or freely obtainable. (Without source code, making changes or modifications can be impossible.) this might be a little more difficult, hopefully it will not mean that folk would be put off uploading a pdf which is hard to edit, but more the spirit that material shared here is for mashing up.
Derived Works: redistribution of modifications must be allowed. (To allow legal sharing and to permit new features or repairs.)
Technically, it is royalty free, share alike and may or may not allow commercial redistribution. Content can be either in the public domain or under an open license like one of the Creative Commons licenses.
but at this time I thought that Open Source CPD was a snappy title
So I have started a wiki OpenSourceCPD to support this idea. I hope it is going to be connected to CPDFind in some way. At the moment the site is sitting on a temporary server and I probably will not get a lot of work done until the spring break. Several scottish educational bloggers have added Profiles and there seem to be a far bit of approval at TeachMeetPerth.
The focus to start with will be Social Media or Web 2.0 in teaching and learning.
Nothing is set in stone (it is a wiki) but I’ve begun three main sections:
CPD Materials A basic outline of various social media tools that can be used in teaching.
Cpd Opportunities CPD courses for self study or to be used as a skeleton for leading cpd.
Profiles A list of practitioners that could lead such cpd (this could be on a paid or free, online or face2face basis).
If this idea appeals please get in touch, if you want a password to edit the wiki leave a comment or send me a mail.
If you have some material you want hosted on the wiki but have not the time or inclination to edit it get in touch and I’ll be happy to post it for you.
Yesterday evening I was in Perth courtesy of Krysia who kindly give me a lift to and from Glasgow through a fair amount of fog.
We were there for TeachMeet 08 North. T oget the idea of how good teachMeet is think how far you would go for some cpd on a Tuesday Night. The ScotsEduBlogoSphere had come from far and wide. None further than Ian Stuart of Isly High school who had set off at 8:30 am to get there.
As the event was set up the Sandaig macbook was pressed into service to run the flashmeeting which brought in an audience from further afield, I think I spotted Sinclair and Joe Dale in there. Flashmeeting is an amazing service, it is increadable that with a standard macbook and a wifif connection you can broadcast watch-able quality video and sound. The macbook was attached to Mr W’s snowball mic, I think it could get used to having such a great piece of kit attached to it. This meant that I could not tweet microblog the presentations which on a little refection was probably a blessing for my followers.
The meat of the event were the Seven minute micropresentations chosen as is becoming traditional by electronic fruit machine. The presentations were great, it always shocks me finding out how much I do not know about teaching with technology.
Ian Stuart kicked off telling us what’s been happening in Islay High School. I heard Ian at the SLF where I was amazed at the radical way the school is transforming teaching.
At teachmeet Ian focused more on the umpc technology the children are using, the power of these tiny devices is amazing. Small devices were a bit of theme at the meet, Asus minibooks, PSPs and other wee computers dotted the audience and dinner table.
I was lucky enough to be sitting with Bob Hill who leant me (or did I just borrow) his Eee PC with which I could watch the flashmeeting meaning Tess Watson‘s voice was in sterio until I found how to mute the sound.
These small pcs look like being the vanguard of a realistic one2one program. (and according to Robert Jones a possibility of getting Linux into schools). I would take a very long blog post to cover all of the ideas that came out of the 2 and a half hours of presentations. Hopefully the presenters will take a leaf from Nick Hood and blog their presentations, Nick’s is unusually in the comments to his teachMeet post. It is a great comment, (and one of the few where I’ve felt Snap shots has been useful rather than annoying) well worth following the links. I would be great if the presetator tweeted there posts @TeachMeetPerth which would provide a nice aggregation..
I talked about OpenSourceCPD more of which when I have more time at the weekend. for now I’ve put my comicLife slides, OpenSourceCPD on flickr. My TeachMeetPerth set is up too.
All in all another great teachMeet well up to the high standards set by previous events, all credit to Neil for organising, arranging and MCing.
