Month: September 2008

The Philips Entertaible in our School

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Last Wednesday evening I attended my first TeachMeet event held in the Forth Room at the SECC. Typically I was first out of the hat to do a seven minute talk and kick the evening off – I was very nervous and my careful plans seemed to evaporate as I walked up to the stage. This post is what I would have liked to have said – but I think people got the general idea. It is the story of how a simple email led to a series of events that saw a prototype multi-touch interactive device used in our school.

In 2006 I was exploring the possibility of a second interactive device in our reception classes. I wanted to look at the alternatives to IWBs and came across a whole heap of plasma displays etc. I also happened to stumble upon a few articles from Philips about a research product called the Entertaible. The device was shown as having electronic board gaming at it’s heart but i saw much more than that – I saw it in a classroom with children working together on it.

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“ The intuitive nature of Entertaible means multiple users can interact with digital data and programs in a simple yet physical, ‘hands-on’ manner. ” Gerard Hollemans, Philips Research

The original Philips press release seems to have been removed from their site but at the foot of it was an email address for the team in charge. I sent them a message basically asking if they had considered the use of the device in the classroom and that I had some ideas for it. Now when you throw a little stone like that at a big organisation like Philips you do not expect it to make a dent or even a mark. But sure enough they replied and we arranged to have, what turned out to be, a series of telephone conversations about the prospects of the device in education. I was staggered really and amazed at how open they were to my ideas.

After being in touch for a short while, Gerard and Maurice from the Philips team invited me to Eindhoven to see the interactive device in action. I asked my headteacher who was hugely supportive of the idea and incredibly in the summer of 2006 I visited the research labs of Philips on their High Tech Campus in Eindhoven. In the meeting I was shown the table and the amazing functionality it had. The Entertaible is a project from the Philips Incubator, the name given to their research department – where new ideas are brought into this world.

After exploring the device first hand I talked with the team about the use of the IWB in our school and the potential that a multi-touch device could have in the classroom. It was wonderful to see the birth place to these sorts of technologies and great credit must go to my headteacher who didn’t even flinch when I asked about the trip and even covered the costs of travel so I could go. It could so easily have been the end of the story – a few emails and phone calls and that’s all – but through his vision it was only the start.

The visit only heightened my interest and curiosity in terms of what the device could do in a classroom. We stayed in touch for a few months afterwards but it wasn’t until November/December 2006 that I got to use the device again in London at a workshop for the Philips team as they explored various markets. I attended the education day and represented the primary sector – it was great to talk about some of my ideas for the table whilst sat at it and meet with further members of the Philips research team.

My headteacher had always said that if you do not speculate sometimes nothing will happen – he was so correct as in late 2006 we were asked if we would like to host the first worldwide school trial of the Philips Entertaible. If you do not knock on the door nobody will ever open it.

Gerard from Philips then asked me to help develop a series of applications that could be produced in the short time he had. I spent a day with a colleague from school who is an AST Reception teacher, in putting the planning together for a range of applications. It was fantastic to be in at the deep end, rethinking traditional activities in light of the collaborative and multi-touch capacity of the device. We had decided that the table would be best trialled in the early years and plans were set out to have it in one of our reception classes for a week.

In February 2007 the only table in the world of its sort arrived at school along with members of the Philips team – the applications were finally in the hands of the most important people, the children. Throughout the course of the week children in the reception class used the device as part of their normal day. In my opinion the table seemed well suited to the classroom environment and the children natural went to it with curiosity and intrigue. The reception teacher and her class had a great week exploring the new technology and worked on counting, position and letter shape activities.

The letter shape activity allowed 4 children to work on the screen at the same time, each on their own quarter. They would touch the screen to activate it and a large letter would be shown with a glowing circle indicating where to begin tracing its shape. When it detects an object or fingertip on that point the glowing circle begins tracing the shape of the letter. If the children are able to accurately trace and follow the guide it will complete the letter and a round of applause will sound from the speakers. However if they stray from the path shown then the whole letter will flash and the glowing circle will return to begin again. You can see it in action in these two videos.

If you are having trouble seeing the videos from Flickr you can see the full set of images and film here.

Children from every class in the school came and used the table throughout the week. The table had variable height so we raised it for the older children and they stood around it when they were working together. The week’s trial was a wonderful experience for all the children and teachers involved.

It was more than a year ago that we had the device in school and about two years from when I first discovered the device online and yet truly open multi-touch technology is yet to be seen in classrooms on any major scale. I know it will not be long and from this experience I realise how much time it takes to develop such a product. Durham University have also been working on the interactive desk idea and since my first contact with Philips Microsoft have developed the Surface, so momentum is growing.

I feel privileged that we had the opportunity to play our part, to represent education in the way that we did, putting new technology in the hands of our learners and hopefully help foster a new age of classroom based interactive devices.

All it took was one email, one knock on the door – I hope it encourages you to do the same.

Fruity Forms

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This week we used Google Forms to collect and share preference data about fruit. We spent Wednesday afternoon’s design and technology session learning about different fruit as a precursor to creating a healthy fruit smoothie.

The children had the opportunity to taste about 15 different types of fruit and record their thoughts and preferences. I used a Google Form to collect this data into a spreadsheet so that the children could use this information to help inform them of their peers’ preferences. That is why this was so useful, the form acted as a simple data entry point to contribute to a wider pool of data. This larger set provides the children an insight into the a wider range of preferences which we will use to help plan the ingredients for their smoothies.

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We are working in Google Apps for Education and there are a number of ways to share both the form and the spreadsheet, in the screenshots below I explain some of them because there are a few different options.

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I used this feature when I shared the fruit form with my class. They accessed it from their email and the form was included in the message. However be aware that when the children completed the form and clicked submit from the email message ironically the Google toolbar blocked the pop-up that opens as conformation. The form data is not submitted.

In order to sidestep this quickly during the lesson without having to ask the children to edit pop-up settings I asked them to access the form via the link that is included in the email. In the future I will just send the link to the kids and get them to access it outside of their email. 

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Remember that the form and the spreadsheet can be shared separately – once we have collated all of the data we need, I will be sharing the children into the document so they can access the results. I displayed the spreadsheet data on the IWB so the children could see what was happening I highlighted the live update of the data as forms were submitted.

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This final option to share the form will allow children access to it from their documents home screen. We had great fun sharing the fruit preferences we had by using Google Forms and we will soon be all set to average out the data to help with our smoothie recipes. 

With a week passing since we began using our docs accounts the kids have experienced the use of sharing and working on documents, forms and spreadsheets – on Friday the children worked in pairs on a piece of work in RE, shared with each other as the pair were co-owners and then handed into me by sharing too. I showed the children how I star the documents that I need to mark and how to filter their docs home view in different ways. It is still enjoyable to see children sharing Google Docs to hand work in, it is just so simple and effective.

Important to note the pop-up problem if you share the form embedded in an email – next time I will probably use option 3 rather than email.

Related posts:

Finding their Voice

Google, Literacy, My class, VoicethreadPublished onUpdated on8 Comments on Finding their Voice

Over the last few weeks we have been working with the poem The Highwayman by Alfred Noyes. We have been discussing and exploring it through lots of talk and drama. On Monday we talked as a class about the drama technique of hot-seating, I asked the children to work with a partner to prepare some questions they might ask the Highwayman if they had the chance. As they were working I wandered out of the class and immediately returned into the room, but this time I tiptoed in and asked one of the children, in a whispery voice, whether it was safe or not. They looked bemused and I crept through the rest of the class shiftily looking from side to side. I had become the Highwayman. 

I have always enjoyed drama as a way into text and the children love it when their teacher goes out on a limb a little and pretends. I told the children that I didn’t have much time and that I had gotten their message about meeting them here. We had a series of questions about the plot, the character’s feelings about Bess and what it was like to be a criminal. All the time I was checking through the blinds and looking suspiciously at the kids. When my time was up I acted as if the paranoia had got to me and I accused the children of setting me up – that it was a trap and I with one more furtive glance I dashed off out the door again. When I returned we were all smiling. (The children went on to do hot-seating in smaller groups.)

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In the following lesson we used a Voicethread to further explore the characters in the poem. (Each child had their own laptop in this session.) I asked the children to add voice and text (I always give them the choice) comments on the various character images I had uploaded. I prompted them to make these kinds of comments:

  • Questions that they might like to ask the characters. Consolidating the previous drama work.
  • Answer a question that they see from someone else. Take on the character’s role and answer a question posed by other people in the class.
  • General reactions and thoughts on the different characters in the poem.
I have enjoyed using Voicethread in the classroom for a long time now and have always considered it to be a great tool to encourage quality speaking and listening. This was only the second session using the tool and I once again witnessed children recording, listening back and improving what they had done. The open and transparent nature of sharing their work seems to sharpen their attention to detail especially in voice recordings. I sat with a few boys who need considerable support with their literacy and they were just having a great time, big grins, listening and enjoying the comments from others in the class and recording their own. Finding their voice. When you work like this as a class there is a tangible sense of a community of use.
 
We were coming to the end of the session and with 10 minutes to go I wanted to review the lesson with the children but I decided to change the plan a little and explore a new method to do this. I asked them to log into their newly created Google Mail accounts and send me a short message explaining what they thought of that lesson. With my inbox displayed on the SMARTBoard the reviews of the lesson rolled in. Although the comments were simple in nature it proved a point, it tested the process more than anything. These 9 year olds were independently able to switch applications, sign into their accounts, think about their learning and respond by composing and sending an email in under 10 minutes and for some much less than that. The children each had an opportunity to express their feelings about the lesson, to add their voice to the lesson review. If I had just asked them as a whole class then I would have only been able to garner a handful of comments. Would these comments have been from the same groups of children? Probably – so the use email in this instance helped everyone to express their own indiviual remarks.
 
I am not sure that email is the ideal tool to respond with lesson comments, although replying to an email that you have sent to the children with key questions about the lesson would be more appropriate I think. Using Google Chat is another tool that would allow for instant messaging in review of a lesson, or I could have added a final image on the Voicethread for the children to add lesson review comments. (Another alternative is to take advantage of a Google Form for lesson review)
 
Whichever way you approach it I think that it gives every child the opportunity to make their voice heard.

So can I use Google Docs at home?

Google Docs, VoicethreadPublished onUpdated on5 Comments on So can I use Google Docs at home?

Absolutely. One of the children in my class had waited to the end of the session to ask me if they could access Google Docs at home. This afternoon we introduced all of our Year 5 children (60) to Google Apps and we had lots of fun exploring the tool with our new classes. 

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We discussed with the children the make-up of their usernames and then the syntax of their email. I use a little information sheet (see above) for them to record their data on, I asked the children to come out to me and I tell them and write down their password. Simple and effective.

Please use this document to support your own introduction to Google Apps in the classroom.

With the laptops already running  back at their tables they then go and login. (It is worth noting that they also have to go through some security questions before they access their Docs home.) As we had last year we had the usual problems of not typing things in correctly but otherwise the children all managed it well.

I decided that a simple data entry spreadsheet would be one of the best ways to introduce the idea of sharing a document. I created something that would accommodate the results we have collected during our circuit training in PE, number of repetitions in a minute for steps ups and star jumps, that sort of thing (see the header in the film clip). Once I created the document I shared with all of the children in our year group, this way when they login they will see a document in the home screen.

All the children had to do in this intro activity was to find their name and add their data they had recorded on paper to the shared resource. Just before they began I asked the children to try to imagine what it would be like if I asked every child in the class to record their data on one sheet of paper – their bemused looks helped me to emphasise the power of working in an online document and how we can all access it at the same time.

We began to explore the spreadsheet and as we opened it we could see that the other Year 5 class were well on their way in terms of adding their data. Again I took this opportunity to help illustrate the live update of the document and how the different coloured cell outlines signalled different users (Incidentally if you roll over these coloured cells you will see the username pop up) I asked one of the children in my class to enter their own data and we watched as it updated on the class IWB and all 16 laptops looking on. The children’s excitement was building, similar to the moment when they realise what all the fuss is about in a Voicethread.

 

This short screencast shows our spreadsheet being updated – a pretty dull video but useful to illustrate how it looks when being worked on by 16 users.

The children were buzzing by now and I felt we could push them on to learning about how you share a document, so once I had shown them how to do it I challenged them to create something and share it with me. I displayed my inbox on the screen and watched as the message alerts came rolling in. I realised the children loved to see this, they got so excited to see their email alert pop into my inbox – before their friend had managed it! I remember this being the case last year. I am going to explore the idea of incidental writing opportunities using email this year.

I showed the children GMail and asked them to send me an email and once again they were very adept at what they were doing, highly accustomed to it all already and were clearly enjoying it. I once again observed, even in this first session, the community of use that appears – children helping each other out, a supportive word, children asking their friends. And of course children empowered to be a mini-expert.

We have gotten off to a flying start and this week I have declared it a sandbox week, in that the children can email me and share any documents they create, a time to play and get used to this great set of tools. At the end of the week we will rein in this activity a little and discuss some simple guidelines for sharing docs.

Last year we only had about 7 weeks of work with Google Docs, today it begun in our classes and I am really looking forward to digging even deeper into what we can do with the tools to support learning in the primary classroom. And we have a got a whole year to dig!

Who knows what we will find?

Some related posts from this blog that you might find useful too.

TeachMeet'08

TeachmeetPublished onUpdated on1 Comment on TeachMeet'08

TeachMeet08%20SLF2008%20+date I am thrilled to be travelling up to Glasgow in a few weeks to take part in the 9th edition of TeachMeet alongside the Scottish Learning Festival. (Depending on a few things I may speak at the TeachMeet too)

There is a huge amount of innovation going on in Scottish schools, I am looking forward to attending an event where I can put a face to some names and meet the people I consider part of my learning network.

I will be at the SLF on Wednesday and Thursday attending a few seminars – I am particularly interested in meeting Ollie Bray and Derek Robertson to talk Nintendo DSs in the classroom. We are on the verge of beginning our own DS adventure in our Year 4 classes so I hope to glean some more ideas.

If you are attending the SLF or TeachMeet please let me know, it will be great to join up the dots and meet you. Anyone up for coffee in Glasgow Wednesday morning as I will be getting in pretty early?