Web 2.0 goes 'Periodic'

I am alerted by Chris Smith to an excellent poster that really made me smile and then think.

Have a look at the poster at the bottom right of the page or go here
to see the real thing.

Trafford 26th June 2007

Teachers, ICT co-ordinators and LA staff gathered to have a hands-on session focused on the New Framework for Literacy and Mathematics. Y5 Unit 5 'Narrative' started the session with attendees getting to grips with how to transfer slides from a video into a presentation package to make a multi modal presentation. We used Textease Presenter for that. Then onto multimodality where animation became the focus to make talking, moving books starting from controlled vocabulary and writing for a specific audience. The key here was that the ICT should not get in the way of the quality of the literacy!
The mathematics framework was dipped into using the Textease Draw tools to measure the angles of plain shapes and then on to using Textease Spreadsheet for graphical representation ... showing its dynamic updating.

Colleagues were finally shown where all of the resources sit to support all of this work.

You can read what they said about the session in the blog comments here.

Ewan does it again !

My Feedbliz email this morning popped up another posting from Ewan McIntosh wearing his MFL hat and talking about podcasting ... this time in French.

There is some terrific stuff here ... I direct you to his bit about getting royalty free sounds from 'Incompetech' and ( if you can translate it ... 'come on Ewan ... you can do it for me') a breakdown of the parental permissions on podcasting in schools which apply in France. Also the link to PortableApps.com which will be useful to Audacity users.

There is also a link to the Learning and Teaching Scotland MFL page on Podcasting which is really useful.

Check out the link on the right to Ewan's Blog and quickly put it in your feeds to keep up.

Google Maps .V. Microsoft Virtual Earth

As an orienteer I have always been facinated by maps and when alerted by the BBC's Click Online program to Microsoft's new proposals and worries about invasion of privacy I thought I would do a comparison of the two maps.

So I went to each in turn and had a good look at my house ... we reckon one set of aerial photos is about 4 years out of date and the other is probably 5 years out ... but it will get better won't it ?

Having said this the power of the search and zoom on both is fantastic ... what learning tools our children have available for visualising thrie physical world

Podium Podcasting

I am alerted to the 'ICT Inspirations', the blog of Simon Mills, and a neat description of the use of Podium in a class based project on advertising fitting in with the Framework's unit on persuasive text that is certainly worth the read.

There is also a useful guide to how to use Podium written from the point of view of someone who worked through it so knows what first time users will want to know.

RE and Podcasting

Sharon Artley, Consultant and Trainer in RE and ICT has some superb ideas on using Web 2.0 tools to support and enhance her work in ICT and RE. Her website 'smartleydoesIT' has some superb ideas for podcasting within RE themes and is well worth a visit and it is also welll worth subscribing to the podcasts to hear what the children do with the ideas.

6th formers want to be primary teachers !!

You heard it first here!!

Friday 22nd June saw 42 6th Form students from Wyggeston and Queen Elizabeth I 6th form College visit the School of Education at Leicester University to engage in a day of 'ICT and Primary Practice'.

These students had opted to come along and work with myself and Tricia Neal for the day to engege in the sort of ICT activities that go on in primary classrooms ... they brought three of their tutors with them as well !!

The day was split into two parts... Tricia did lots of work with robots and explained the ideas behind control and how that fitted into the primary curriculum: I did a session using Textease CT and we worked on 'kinetic calligrams', completing a painting, what spreadsheets can do and even made the earth rotate with a 'turtle' program.

All of the students seemed to enjoy themselves greatly and they were a real credit to their College both in their knowledge and their manner. With people lkie this wanting to enter teaching then I think the future is fairly secure.I felt that it was an innovative idea on the part of the College to set up this day and to begin to focus their students on potential pathhways for their future.

You can read what they have to say about their day here.

Innovation

In the never ending quest for innovative technology I came across this 'useful' addition to my ... 'I have spilled my coffee on the keyboard again' syndrome.

Kent 3.3

Thursday 21st June saw a group of ICT specialists from the area around Swanley descend on White Oaks school to learn more about how ICT, and in particular Textease Studio CT, could help with the new primary framework.

The focus was on the education rather than the ICT and teachers spent much time looking at how the various tools available could fit into their classroom practice. There was much interest in the idea of recording sound onto objects on a page as a way of speading up the process of annotating and understanding. It also became clear that this functionality could easily have a role to play in assessment and also in ongoing, developmental record keeping of child progress.

The session was supported by Diana Marsden, who is based at Hextable Junior School and who is the 'Kent Hands-on-Support' teacher for the area. Schools in the are acan call on her to work with then to futher develop their ideas and expertise with the Textease software used. She can be contacted at diana_marsde@hotmail.com .

Read here what the teachers thought of the session.

Kent 3.2

What a fantastic session ... teachers really getting to grips with the ideas of excitement and enjoyment that can be derived from Textease Paint and seeing how it interfaces with Movies to make 'stop-frame animation'. People can really get carried away !!

Another group worked on data handling and experienced the whole gambit from sorting with Venn diagrams, through branching databases and spreadsheets to 'multi-user' flat file data handling and interrogation .... certainly a packed program.

It never ceases to amaze me the enthusiasm teachers can conjure up for materials which are going to excite their children. A privilege to work with them.

Kent 3.1

Aren't teachers excitable? The group I was with in East Peckham last evening certainly were and the 'hands on' session looking - in the afternoon - at how Textease Turtle and Draw can support work in mathematics and - later - how Presenter can support work in literacy, certainly opened eyes to potential.

It is always the case in sessions like this when they are 'mixed ability' in terms of software knowledge that there is a variable rate of learning. On the Kent Teachers' Blog pretty well everyone said that they had had a great time but they were aware that they now needed to capitalise on this input and explore for themselves. Some felt they needed supported exploration and that is where Mandy Barrow, a 'hands on support' consultant for Kent comes in. It is her remit to follow up intorductory sessions like this with 'in school', personal sessions delving more deaply into curriculum contexts.

There is an amazing amount of support on the Kent NGFL web site and Mandy can be contacted at mandy.barrow@kent.gov.uk

futurelab

Just a quick read through the latest of futurelab's mag 'vision' gets me to feel that there are a good number of people on the same planet as I am. The articles expound similiar thoughts and ideas and provoke as well as support.

The current edition has a look forward yet again in an article ' The future is bright the future is ...' and best is that it focuses clearly on learning potential. It is a generalist article but no poorer for that. Well worth a read.

The electronic version of the magazine is available here.

Second Life

The other day I was teleported by my friend Leon into his new Second Life space to talk about and think about the potential of this medium for education, in its widest sense.

Still a 'flying' novice I was able to see that there were a good number of educational institutions that have already set themselves up in the virtual world.

A quick look through the Universities involved made me really think ... it is difficult to find one that isn't thinking about this or hasn't dabbled an intellectual toe in the water ... research grants abound ... thousands of Phds will be written ... 'real' but different teaching will take place.

My thought are we can't just sit here and wait and see ... lets get in there and develop... a chance to lead not follow ... who will have the first primary school in Second Life where children from all over the world can meet together and leearn ... or is it there already and I just haven't found it yet? The potential is enormous but will we be able to grasp it ... YES ... Man did go to the moon.

Then I noticed an article in the Times ... read it here.

Somerset ICT Conference 2007

A good day at the Conference in the splendid surroundings of Dillington House on Monday 18th June talking with teachers about podcasting. I did two sessions, the first followed a session by two of Somerset's ASTs who were talking most ably about the use of sound in a great variety of ways to enhance teaching and learning across the whole of the primary curriculum. This gave me a great lead in and we spoke of podcasting as being almost a 'genre' which you choose if you want your sound recording to be serialised and syndicated. Of course, there was more to it than that but the two things did follow on really well.

It was interesting to see the small number who regularly use sound recording in their classrooms (in any format) but heartening to appreciate that they had come to find out how to do it and what its purpose would be.

'Internet Overload'

Just caught the backend of BBC's 'Click Online' today and heard their key presenter beginning a slot on the idea that the Internet is now getting so overloaded that it is in danger of collapse.

This is something that has been around quite a bit recently and it is one of the questions that is often leveled at me .... sort of at the same level as over twenty years ago when calculators first came out and I was asked what I would do if the batteries ran out.

It is an interesting point though as the network that we used is not actually owned by anyone and that regulation is not universal and that the structure that allows for the movement of all of this data is in the hands of competing telecoms companies.

The congestion, now that we have all but taken up the slack left in the system by the collapse of the 'Internet bubble' could be going to cause industry and commerce a problem ... not to say Government departments etc. ... so if there is a shortfall, where will it be made up from ? I could suspect that it might come from the cutback on what bandwidth you have at home. And ... I wonder where education fits in here?

We have begun to rely on something that has evolved exponentially rather than something that has been designed to meet purpose (after all the purpose is evolving too).

From the BBC;
'For decades ( ??? the question marks are mine) the Internet has kept pace with our demands on it. And demand continues to grow. And the service providers will continue to insist that the net will survive, and the doomsayers will continue to insist that it is just about to collapse.'

Read the Click article here.

Kent 2.3 - Thursday 14th June

Another in the Kent series ... this time in Faversham with the whole of the host school taking the opportunity to discover how Textease Studio CT could be used to support the work of the New Framework for Literacy and Mathematics.

Read what they thought of the session here.

Worries about Web 2.0 security

Whenever I talk to teachers or advisors about using Web 2.0 applications in curriculum contexts they invariably come up with worries about security. In a growingly litiginous society this is understandable but the worries should not provide barriers.

There are ways forward and I note that my good friend Peter Woodhead from Hong Kong offered a look at how they are making steps or even leaps forward ... 'To see how we are using Web 2.0 on our learning platform - which gives all students a safe place to create their digital identities - goto the ESF home page and sign in with the guest account details as given on the page explore the web 2.0 folder for goodies - nothing new but it's what we like doing and also see how I have used a freebie java script editor to embed an RSS feed from my Furl site onto the home page - something your kids could probably do easily' ...

'Any other name would be half as sweet'

Software guru Mike Matson (feel sure he would not mind me calling him that) and I are currently having a little professional spat at the use of the term 'Web 2.0' to describe what is happening at the moment in the escalating proliferation of tools to do things that you had never even thought of doing before you could ... if you get what I mean. He argues, and I actually think he is right that it is silly to give the idea whaich is just ' a bit more sophisticated than what we had before ' a numerical tag ... and I add ' especially as we didn't have 'Web 1.0' (did we?) and are we going to wait for 'Web 2.1' or even 'Web 3' ... still it does make you think what other might feel about this.

Discussing this with my friend Tricia has led to this 'informative' blog ... 'The Britannica Blog - where ideas matter' and an article ( in a blog - this is irony I think ) called 'Web 2.0: the Sleep of Reason'. The blog itself is worth a read but the comments are the best bits!

And when you have read Part 1 you can always read the sequel ... Part 2

This blog also directs me ( and so does Tricia) to the blog of Clay Shirky and that of Andrew Keen.

Playing to Learn

The debate goes electronic ... it was always heading that way anyway but has not got far yet. Lots of research, lots of pontification but what impact in classrooms in general .. when will the ideas become main-stream? Or do our young people really want their cultural icons taken over by institutionalisation?

My friend Mark Ingram directs me to these two additions to the continuing and escalating debate.

Have a look at Playing to Learn by David Hutchison and then, if you haven't already read it, the ELSPA report 'Unlimited learning: Computer and video games in the learning landscape' with a forward by Lord Puttnam and an intro bt Stephen Heppell.

Life processes and living things

Ran the last course in a set of three at the Science Learning centre at Leicester University on Friday 15th June. A select group of us met to consider the tools, resources and peripherals that could effectively support and enhance this particular strand of the Science National Curriculum.

Time was spent examining the number of ways that data handling is used ... from venn diagrams through spreadsheets and branching database to flat file databases. These, and curriculum contexts, were examined from a pedagogic point of view with an eye to the future and a passing mention of heutogogy and androgogy.

Teachers attending the sesion went away with the resources already loaded onto a 'USB stick' for quick and easy reference.

Adopt, adapt ... innovate !!

Talking to teachers this week and passing on to them resources I have made for specific purposes I have said over and over; ' What I want you to do is to take these resources and adopt them and use them ... when you become comfortable with them adapt them to your local purpose, make changes, alter the words and images ... and when that becomes familiar territory ... innovate ... use the ideas that are there and ones that you have fallen over on the way and begin to 'purpose build' to support individual children or whole groups. Be bold.'

This is not new stuff but I got to thinking that what is 'old hat' for one person is 'innovative technology' to another and so thinking about this I trawled the web to find if anyone else had used 'a-a-i' in an educational context.

Here are some (of the few) that I found ... I expect, and hope, that you know more !

From the Geographical Association

The Primary National Strategy had it clearly listed in a presentation called 'Leading ICT in learning and teaching within the curriculum' ... and this back in 2005

Even the Audit Commission had their say.

Kent 2.2

A wonderful day with some really exciting and excitable teachers exploring the use of Textease and Textease Presenter to support work within the new Framework and later fun with Textease Paint and Movies.

Super to work with teachers who can see the potential and place it in their experience and their classroom setting.

Creative people too !!!

If you want to find out what they said about the session, read it on the Kent Teachers' Blog

Kent 2

A small group of teachers and advisers met in St George's C of E Middle School in Sheerness on Tuesday 12th June to delve into the depths and pedagogic intricacies of Textease Studio CT. Even long-time users found new things to contemplate as the use of the software to support and enhance the 'New Framework' for Literacy and Mathematics was explored.

My colleague James, as you can see, discovered something amusing during the course of the session!

What are we doing to our young people?

Noticed a new report from yet another 'think tank' who feels it is necessary to say something about the state of education ... this time it is CIVITAS who are in there talking about the 'Corruption of the Curriculum' ... it is little wonder that teachers get fed up!

Web 2.0 from Hong Kong

My good friend Peter Woodhead from Hong Kong sent me this link to where he stores the new things he finds out about Web 2.0 .... it is getting difficult to keep up !!

Farewell, Fish Friends

If you have not kept up with the Marin Country Day School's Trout Blog then you have missed an unfolding treat of really powerful education. I have only just remembered it and having checked out my feeds discover that the 'troutlings' were released into the lake on April 16th !!

The story told in blog, video, poetry and song is a testament to the work of a dedicated teacher and a group of children who excitedly 'wanted to know'. An example of good practice education at its very best.

Subscribe to the podcast here and listen, watch and be enchanted... or simply go the blog ... enjoy !!

Podcasting Reviewed

Trawling through my various feeds ( having been 'away' all last week ) I came across this interesting guide to podcasting from the world of education outside schooling but often referring to schools. More food for though. The podcast on the 'kineo' site by Donald Clark of Ufi is well worth the effort.

I like the idea that podcasts are pure content which help rather than distract.

We over-test our children !

This will come as no surprise to any teacher but a report out today from the GTC calls for a conclusion to the perpetual testing of our under 16 year olds in the quest to raise standards. The implication is that it does little or no good and has a demoralising effect on a very significant number of our young people.

At last !!

How much damage has been done over the last decade or more by this constant wish to 'test, test, test' we will never know. What is certain is that the balance of the primary curriculum has been shifted from its broad base to a narrowed down, testable set of components and that this has had knock on effects on self esteem and motivation further up the age range.

Don't expect that the Government will take the comments to heart too quickly. Remember that education is not about teaching and learning but is a political weapon in the search for control ( and this from me ... essentially a non-political animal!).

You can read the BBC's version of the report here or pick it up from The Observer's reporter Anushka Asthana here.

You could even tell me your views on this ... add a comment !!

Kent ... week 1

I spent this week down in the south east of England working with teachers in Kent primary schools. It was really encouraging to work with people who were open-minded and could see immediately the difference that ICT could make to the teaching of key areas of the curriculum.

The teachers I worked with were not ICT specialist, rather they were teachers who just simply wanted to know ! They wanted the best for the children that they worked with and were prepared to work hard to understand and then implement.

You can read of what they said about the sessions here.

I worked with Mandy Barrow, one of Kent's 'Hands on Support Consultant Key Stage 2 / 3' who manages an awesome website.

She pointed out to me the vast resources for Textease that sit on the Kent NGFL website.

I am doing three more weeks in Kent in June ! Details can be found here.

Early Years technology in the world today

A really down-to earth view of the use of technology with young children in a primary classroom. No whistles and bells just sensible use and pedagogic under-pinning.



Kathy Cassidy has a blog that is really worth a read as it keeps up-to-date with what her class and children are doing. A good example of day-to-day blogging in a primary classroom.

Radio 2 goes Web 2.0 !

My thanks to Samantha for alerting me to the fact that Chris Evans in his 'Drive Time' programme on Tuesday 5th June ran a two hour 'Lets get to grips with Web 2.0' all the way through his show.

You can listen to it here if you are quick or you could subscribe to the summary podcast!
Not for the early adopters but just shows that the word on social software is really out and about ( if you think Radio 2 is out and about ).

Tim Rylands uses ICT invisibly

Think about writing, think about inspiration, think in spirals and circle and let the thoughts have colours and shapes and see what really powerful tools and really powerful teachers can do to enthuse children.



Not new ... not revolutionary but certainly evolutionary.Its not social software as we are beginning to experience it just a teacher sensibly using the power of the technology for teaching and learning.

Where would the session have been without him or without his transparent knowledge of the technology?