Rossett Hall Hotel ... chapeau to the teachers of Welsh

What a fantastic evening I had with a group of dedicated teachers of Welsh last week at their residential 'teach-in' at Rossett Hall Hotel near Wrexham. The group ate well, sang well and partied well at the award ceremony and were spot on and bright eyed the next day for a 'Textease Workshop'.

Terrific enthusiasm and some really insightful work as these primary specialists got to grips with the implications on multi-modality and its potential to allow them to teach Welsh.

My thanks to my colleague Danielle and the very powerful 'Wrexham' team (Enfys,Buddug and Dwynwen) for their terrific support and confidence in my ability to get bits of it right !

Scotland's 4 Ds

Dumfries (and Galloway), Dundee, (West)Dumbarton (well nearly) and Dingwall ... a Scottish tour !

Monday with over 100 teachers in Dumfries. Their first day back after the Easter holidays but what enthusiasm. We explored the changing definitions of text in educational contexts and looked at the wider picture illustrated by Article 13 of the UN Charter for children. This led us to look at the way Textease Studio CT handles multimodality, in particular the power of adding sound to text in a variety of ways. Keeping reading records as 'live' sound recordings was the innovation here as many teachers had not imagined that they had the technology to do this simply and quickly. Tuesday in Dundee with 60 or so enthusiasts in a fantastically impressive hall with a huge presentation screen. Again we looked at the way Curriculum for Excellence had a clear focus towards the future and how the definitions of text opened up opportunities to look at multimodality, blogging and social networking.



One of the many things that struck me in both of these sessions was the absence of men. Out of about 160 odd teachers who turned out for the sessions I think I counted 4 men. Come on guys where are you?

It hasn't all been ICT and work. Just north of Dumfries, up a narrow valley, if you know where to look, are some fabulous sculptures ... just sitting in the environment.



In West Dumbarton teachers gave up a half day of their holiday to come and work with me (WOW!) and we talked much about creativity and listened to part of Sir Ken Robinson's presentation at TED ... we talked about 'white space' in teaching and learning ... the necessary gap between doing one thing and then doing another so that each experience has time to root and grow before you dash on to another. And we spoke of the idea that boredom might well be a catalyst for creativity (interesting idea). These teachers were also taken by the idea of having a dynamic reading record which was multimodal ... containing a visual record of the book or story read, a sound file of the experience and perhaps text to review the book. We also spoke of the possibility of children listening to their own reading in this way and taking some level of responsibility for their own improvement and progress.We also experimented with making videos of signing to go along with words and picture for those who had hearing impairments.



We also took a brief look at the latest output from Curriculum for Excellence - The Technologies. An early view suggests to me that this is a sensible document which will give professionals breadth and scope for creativity as well as ongoing development. It will, however, need supported interpretation to assist teachers with the development of their curriculum and classroom context.

All set up now for the last of the '4 Ds of Scotland', two sessions tomorrow with SMTs from the Highlands and Island. The session is being held in Strathpeffer where I have learned that the Kaiser Chiefs will be performing in May !! Perhaps they could see me as a 'warm up act'!

A super session with two different groups of SMTs in the fashionable Spa town of Strathpeffer ... we were not overwhelmed by groupies rushing in to buy their tickets for the Kaiser Chief concert but I was amazed at the distances some people had travelled to get to the sessions. Two teachers had driven down from Thurso ... well over two hours away ....

Alan Stewart ( many thanks Alan) documented the sessions on the fly using a very nifty piece of Web 2.0 technology called Drop.io ... a simple private exchange which enables you to create simple private exchange points called "drops." The service has no email signup and no "accounts." Each drop is private, and only as accessible as you choose to deliberately make it. Create multiple drops, add any type of media, and share or subscribe as you want. To make a drop just click the big red button that says 'drop it'. If you haven't experimented with this yet it really is well worth the effort.

PS

Alan Stewart reports on his blog what I said and did ...

Last Stand in South Gloucestershire

James Watson again was prepared to do his learning openly and videoed the last of the three sessions using Textease Studio CT I did for the teachers of South Gloucestershire. You can watch the video to catch the things I did .... one of the main points, that James picks out particularly was:
...the real point to take-away is the following little secret…
just how easy it was for Doug using Textease CT on the interactive whiteboard?
The evening was really buoyant and people laughed a lot and seemed to enjoy the activities.

You can read some comments from the sessions here.

Its over to an enthusiastic group of teachers now to get going with their own staff and pupils.

Textease in South Gloucestershire

My friend James Watson, Softease Sales Consultant for the South West, came along to a session I did on Multimodality for a group of teachers in South Gloucestershire. He spent his time videoing me doing 'my thing'.



The notes for the session can be found here

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.

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!

Dumfries and Galloway visit 14th & 17th May 2007

Wow !! Fame at last ...

Doug Dickinson Roadshows
May 2007
Softease Studio CT Launch News

ICTSU are pleased to confirm that Doug Dickinson, leading educational ICT consultant, will once again come to the region to speak to primary school staff.

Doug’s roadshows have proved hugely successful and popular in D&G over the past two years, with over 200 staff attending. Teachers and classroom assistants have found his practical sessions filled with real classroom ideas to be positively inspiring.

Doug has agreed to run two roadshows to facilitate staff attendance.

These new roadshows will be coupled with the early intimation of the launch of Softease CT, the latest upgrade to our core primary school software. Staff will be able to view some of the new features available.

ROADSHOW 1 PENNINGHAME PRIMARY
NEWTON STEWART

MONDAY MAY 14th 4.30 – 6.00pm


ROADSHOW 2 ST NINIAN’S PRIMARY
DUMFRIES

THURSDAY MAY 17th 4.30 – 6.00pm


Each day catering arrangements will be in place from 4.00pm onwards and so it would be useful to know an approximate number of attendees at each roadshow. Could each school please email Will Clark willc@dumgal.gov.uk with an approximate number, and which roadshow will be attended.
Replies please by Wednesday, 9th May.

We look forward to seeing you at one of our roadshows.

Benbecula Feb 20/21 2007

For two days, thanks to Hamish Budge and Kenny Matheson, I had the pleasure of working with teachers, parents and children on this lovely island in the Western Isles. The subject of the work was to inspire(!) and inform each group about Textease Studio CT for which the whole of the Western Isles has a site and community licence. This means that the software is available to everyone at home or school wherever they want to use it.

The 20th began with a tutorial for the head teacher of Sgoil Lionacleit, Mr John Harrison, who was most keen to learn of the sound input functionality for his teaching commitments. He immediately saw the power of the software as an agent for inclusion and as a recording devise for e-portfolios.

This session was followed by an afternoon with the maths specialists who were very interested in Texease Draw and the automatic way it calculated angle and length of polygons. They also liked the simplicity of the spreadsheet !

The early evening was spent just down the road at Balivanich School , a primary school very close to the beach ( a real stones throw away) introducing the head teacher Mary C Ferguson and her staff to the basics of classroom working with Textease CT. It was clear here that the staff appreciated that the software could work in any language ! This was followed by a small meeting with parents to just show the software that they now can have on their home machines.

The morning of the 21st began with a meeting back at Sgoil Lionacleit with the MFL department who were keen to understand about recording sound into Textease. They were also interested in Podium and immediately saw the potential for their work in MFL.

The English teaching staff of the school were next and they could see that here was a piece of software that did things that were, as they put it, 'differently'. The text wrapping and movement were key here and the ability to add speech.

Early PM was spent with the 'early years' advisors who recognise that software that had its place in the home also had its place in their work and they were keen to see how simple it was to add text, graphics and sound to a page. They were most taken with the ability to animate straight onto the page.

Late afternoon found me at Iochdar School South Uist, one of the schools looked after by Mary T MacInnes who I was to meet later that evening at Stoneybridge School, a tiny school also on South Uist. At Iochdar we explored some of the hidden bits of Textease CT and pondered on the use of Textease Presenter for writing books. The Stoneybridge session into the night was for parents, children and teachers and was wonderful in that there was a complete focus on the creativity possible with Textease CT. We had great fun taking and using videos of our 'Mexican Wave'.

All in all, a tremendous two days with a cross section of enthusiastic and interested people. Although Textease CT came through its paces really well perhaps the star of the show was the Gyration Cordless keyboard and mouse which turned out to be a 'must have' for everyone.

Many thanks to all on the islands who made my stay comfortable and enjoyable.