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Yes that’s me and a colleague doing some throwing and catching work with our Year 5s during a PE session.

Since it started Google Streetview has been criticised by many for possibly breaching privacy laws and some residents in Buckinghamshire have even blocked the images being taken.

That said, I think the new imagery provides an incredibly rich educational resource. I think it can be used in a number of ways to support curriculum work:

• Illustrate places that are crucial parts of topics, such as historical monuments or geographical features.
• As part of a local area study explore the Street View imagery (where available) to start discussions and activities before going on a walk.
• We used Street View to look at a type of building described in detail in Streetchild used in Year 5.
• Help children picture part of storytelling or writing by following a path or looking at a setting using Street View imagery.
• Explore the maths that surrounds us all using the resource and Maths Maps.

Let me know of any further uses you have for Street View in the classroom – or indeed if your lesson has been caught on the Google cameras.

London to NYC: Swim the Atlantic…

I am so excited to finally be writing about this! Just as the English school Summer holidays are beginning, teachers and educators in Europe will have the opportunity to share their great ideas and exceptional implementation of Google Tools in the classroom.

For almost 3 years I have been running my own mini campaign to bring the Google Teacher Academy (GTA) to these shores. I recall sending numerous tweets, emails and messages to organisers, certified teachers and attendees at US teacher academies, urging them to ask about a UK event. They asked on my behalf and I thank them for raising the flag for me so many times, and putting up with my pestering.

I took every opportunity to press the need for something in the UK as I was experiencing and reading about so much good practice that centred on the use of Google tools. And I have done for the last 3-4 years.

Unfortunately my wishes seemed to be falling on ears that were unable to help:

“We have many requests for Google Teacher Academies to be held in other countries, however we are unable…”

However my determination was reinforced with the GTA UK Google Group and the support shown for it. I was fortunate enough to meet with Google at BETT this year and took the idea of a GTA UK on another step, which has eventually led to this announcement.

Back in November 2008 I wrote about some of my frustrations, and why a GTA in the UK was (is) a good idea,

50 certified trainers in the UK and Europe taking innovative ideas with them back to their schools, districts and counties would help other teachers to begin to better understand Google tools and the potential they have. Admittedly Google tools are not the only thing available, but in my opinion used in the right way they hold a strong place in any classroom toolkit.

I cannot wait to see you all on July 29th at the Google offices in London to share your stories, innovations and ideas. Let’s make it a great one. Good luck with your applications.

Pic: London to NYC: Swim the Atlantic…

I have had a fantastic week returning to classroom blogging and starting our new class blog >> Priestsic5. Before Christmas I wrote a post asking for teachers to share their experiences with class blogs. To explain what platform they were using and to share some reasons behind it’s use. As you can see from the link I have decided to use Blogger as our platform.

Why Blogger?

The two main reasons are ease of use and sustainability, and I think that the former directly effects the latter. I want the blog to be a well established feature of the classroom and for it to be sustained into the future. Blogger is extremely easy to setup especially if you have some blogging experience of your own – but even if you have not.

One big plus is the associated services and tools that can be utilised alongside your Blogger (Google) account. The most important is perhaps image hosting in the form of Picasa Web Albums. Used alongside the desktop Picasa 3 application it is a good solution. Amongst other things I can blog directly from Picasa, synchronise local image folders to the web automatically and upload photo videos directly to YouTube.

Synchronise

Just to unpick the image folder synchronisation a little further – on our blog I have created an Art Gallery slideshow in the sidebar. I want this to be a collection of all that the class create and so I will be regularly updating the set of images. Currently all I have to do to add another image to this slideshow is add it to a local folder on my class computer – that’s it. I think this is a really useful feature as we are often managing lots of images from a whole class set of work. Using the Art Gallery example here’s how to do it:

1. Upload you images to your computer, Picasa should automatically pick these up and display them for upload.
2. Create an Art Gallery folder for the images (usually done during upload process)
3. In Picasa next to the folder, on the right hand side of the screen, click the Sync to Web button.
4. Sign in to your Google account.
5. Your images will be uploaded to a web album.
6. Click on the newly created online  album – click on “Link to this Album” in the right sidebar.
7. Select “Embed Slideshow” and copy the code.
8. Paste this code in your blog. For ours I used “Add Gadget” (HTML/Javascript type) from the Layout settings.
9. Save and refresh your blog to check it is working OK – you can manually change the size in the code.
10. Now every time you add an image to the original local folder (on your computer) it will automatically update to the web and consequently update your slideshow too.

In the remainder of the post I will be explaining a few additions and changes I have made to our class blog that I consider to be important.

Next Blog Link

One of the features of a blog with Blogger is the top navigation bar that appears. This has a “Next Blog” link button which takes you to a random blog. Naturally this is not ideal for a class blog as you have no control over what you are linking to.

The first thing I did was find out how to remove it. It is a pretty simple case of adding a small piece of CSS code to the Template code. I found this site’s explanation exactly what I needed. Here is a short screencast from the same website illustrating the process:

Remove Blogger Navbar – More free videos are here

How Many Visitors?

By simply tracking the number of visitors you are able to illustrate to your class that we have an audience. There are people out their in the world reading what we post. These numbers are important in helping you establish rules for writing posts and comments. Children have a better appreciation that their work is going to be viewed by more than just “us”. A visible visitor counter like StatCounter provides some useful analytics for your blog that you could use in maths further down the line

Dots on a Map

In my experience one of the greatest ways to hook your class into the use of the class blog is to display a map of your visitors. In the past and in the last week I have found this to be a great focal point for the class when they are looking at the blog. I have used ClustrMaps for years on my own blog and with classblogs.

It is simply a case of creating an account and then embedding a short piece of code in a blog sidebar. After 12 hours or so the map will begin to be populated with visitor dots. It is these simple marks on a map that become points of intrigue for the children in your class. After 24 hours of our own blog we had about 400 hits – I displayed the full screen map and just listened to the children pointing at the different countries and chatting about where their visitors were from. There was a buzz of excitement.

There is something so powerful and yet so simple and wonderful in allowing your class to realise that those little dots are people who have just visited your blog and read about work you do in your classroom. They begin to realise the connections we can make and begin to develop an awareness of things beyond their own community.

I know it is only a little map, but it really is a powerful aspect of class blogs and I would strongly recommend you display something too. Can you think of any other way that your class would willingly look at a world map every day and ask questions about where places are? Have your class blog displayed when the children come in first thing and leave room for their geographical curiosity to shine through. What you do with that natural curiosity afterwards is up to you!

Since then we have started a UK group, with over 120 members and much discussion has taken place. It is that discussion and debate that I want to focus here in this blog post.

Some consider Google to be a heavy handed corporation, riding rough shod over it’s competitors and assimilating those it can’t compete with.  José Picardo wrote about the way the Etherpad situation was handled and points out that:

Google makes its living by offering free services with the only aim of attracting huge amounts of users to whom Google can then show their customers’ adverts and sell their premium services.

My dad used to tell me stories of free cigarettes being given away by tobacco companies outside the school gates to pupils on the way home. Google’s strategy surrounding free web apps for education is very similar: hook’em while they’re young.

He goes on to qualify such a comparison by saying that,

the desired outcome is the same: to get young people conditioned to using a product from an early age.

Marketing Google Apps for Education is a long term strategy to bring in younger users of Google tools, to create habits in work and life so that eventually more ads can be clicked, maybe years later. That’s surely the bottom line.

So is it right that we are using Google tools at all in the classroom? I rarely get into this sort of territory but we have been using Google tools in a myriad of ways in the classroom and I think it is worth debating.

Google logo render – Mark Knol by mark knol
Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike License

Many people have questioned whether a GTA is a good thing as we may just be perpetuating the “Googlisation of Education“, as Josie Fraser puts it. Is it right to hold a professional development event purely based on one company’s products, especially one that reaps a huge proportion of it’s revenue through adverts?

On the other hand Google has produced some of the most powerful learning tools currently available in the classroom. A GTA in the UK would be a great opportunity for teachers to learn from each other and find out about best practices.

The event should be clearly focused on learning and the ways that Google tools can enhance that. But it would also be a good opportunity to further debate the title of this blog post and the privacy issues surrounding Google in education and the ways young learners use their products.

I would focus on the ideas and the learning at such an event and not get too bogged down with whether or not it is right or wrong.  Are you going to stop using Google products in the classroom altogether based on your moral objections? I would prefer to see Google tools and services just one part of a broad and balanced approach to web products in the classroom. Perhaps the event should be similarly balanced – but then it wouldn’t be a GTA it would be just another conference and could be about thousands of web related products.

What do you think? Is a Google Teacher Academy a morally flawed concept or a long overdue professional development event for UK teachers?

Last Christmas we spent our holidays in Australia. It was an amazing trip for me and I would dearly love to return to that part of the world, perhaps on a more permanent basis. When we arrived in Sydney our apartment was not going to be open until later in the day. We had landed about 8am and the prospects of entertaining a 2 year old with all of our luggage still in tow was going to be tricky. But to our rescue came Judy O’Connell and Dean Groom, both of whom I had known from our various online networks but had never met before. Judy kindly picked us up from the airport and we went back to her house where we were able to unwind for a little bit. Dean picked us up later and took us on to our apartment in Manly. I am so grateful for that amazing gesture of kindness – it got our trip off to a great start and illustrates the trust that can be developed through online connections.

The TeachMeet community has had an incredible 2009 and I have been fortunate enough to have been to five events in person. The BETT show TeachMeet began the year and I was just amazed by the scale of things and the huge interest from the commercial sector. In May Stuart Sutherland and I organised and ran the first TeachMeet in the Midlands, hosted by the National College for School Leadership. It was incredible to be part of the full organisation and we are hoping to hold another in 2010. I was delighted to be invited to do a mini-note at TeachMeet North East London and also to organise TeachMeet Channel 4 to bookend their education conference. In September I was able to return to the Scottish Learning Festival and another TeachMeet held in the BBC Scotland building. Along with popping into various Flashmeetings I also attended Dai Barnes and Doug Belshaw’s hugely successful EdTechRoundup TeachMeet which was held online. This added another amazing dimension to this incredible professional development event. With Stuart Ridout, I am currently organising TeachMeet Bett 2010 as well as TeachMeet Takeover – it looks like it should kick off another inspiring year of grass roots professional development.

When you get an invitation from royalty to a conference in another country you can be excused for being a little sceptical. But the inaugural World Innovation Summit for Education (WISE) in Qatar was no joke. I was delighted to be included in only 1000 of the invited delegates from all over the world. A handful of edubloggers were invited but not many actually attended. It was a privilege to represent primary school teachers from the UK and be part of the wider discussions. Although the word “innovation” was in the conference name, little was done to “walk the walk” in terms of the communication processes used. That said, I blogged and tweeted my way through the event to encourage remarks and comment from a wider audience. I hope that if there is a 2010 event that more will be done to encourage delegates to share what they experience with a world audience.

This time next year I will have spent a term in a new job! After a bit of grumbling I stumbled upon a Deputy Head Teacher job that I believed would be a great opportunity. I spent the return flight from Qatar writing the letter, which got me an interview. The day and a half interview was a great challenge and I was thrilled to be offered the job. I will be starting as Deputy Head Teacher in the Summer term. I have been in my current post for about 8 years and I have been through some great times, but it has long been time for me to move on and face a new challenge. As part of the interview I asked readers of this blog and followers on Twitter to help with some testimonials. I printed them off and found a moment in the formal interview to hand them out to the panel – it was an amazing set of references and I have no doubt helped secure the job. Thankyou to everyone who contributed to the 20,000 character job reference.

During 2009 I continued my involvement with multi-touch technology in the classroom. At BETT in January I met with representatives from SMART and organised an early trial of the SMART Table in my classroom. After working with it I felt it’s capacity to impact on learning was limited. Sadly the trial was abruptly ended, in my opinion due to an honest and frank account of my experiences I blogged about. Although critical of the SMART Table I was committed to helping SMART improve and develop it as it would directly benefit the wider multi-touch educational technology field. But, alas, they prevented that by taking it away and they did it, in my opinion, to limit the damage caused by my negative posts. I am now a member of the SynergyNet steering group at Durham University who are developing a multi-touch learning project, and met in November of this year for the first time. The developments at Durham are really exciting: multi-touch classrooms, networked tables able to pass media between them and a general focus on the pedagogies that underpin multi-touch enhanced learning.

This academic year we have been doing shorter half-termly topics in Year 5. We have found that although shorter, they are more focused. The first one was Sealife. Built around and inspired by the Nintendo Wii game Endless Ocean. It was a pleasure to work with the children during the 7 weeks as we explored, discovered and learned together. Using an open ended game to drive a topic was amazing to work with and the children were completely engaged and enjoyed every moment.

Maths Maps has been a long time in the making. Years ago I made some Google Earth resources that used the satellite imagery to structure maths activities. With the development of Google Maps and the ability to now collaborate on a map as if it is a document, such as a Google Document, I have been able to realise what I had always imagined with these resources. Each Maths Map is a maths topic with activities located on real life objects visible in the satellite imagery layer of Google Maps. In total the 3 current maps have been viewed 85,000 times, but more importantly the idea has inspired other teachers to begin using Google Maps to produce engaging content for their learners.

This year I finally made the switch to a self hosted blog. With the nudging of Doug Belshaw I bought some space and installed Wordpress, transferred everything from my old blog and have been really happy here in my new home. The most obvious advantage is the personalisation that you can achieve with your own space. There is no limit or other person choosing what you can add or not. You are free to be as creative with your space as you are with what you write. I was pleased to have been nominated by my peers for 6 different Edublog Awards categories this year, thankyou to all those who wrote such kind words in their nomination posts.

I just tweeted about a couple of updates to two different “Interesting Ways” presentations. The IWB resource was started in November 2007 and now there are about 30 different crowd-sourced resources with a huge amount of shared expertise. I prefer not to be too tool-centric, nor do I like the formulaic “100 Awesome things to do with a Cabbage” sort of posts that have littered education blogging recently. In my opinion what sets the Interesting Ways resources apart is that (a) they all begin at zero, they are put out there not as a perfectly formed multiple of 10 lists and (b) they are built by everyone, the crowd, educators explaining and sharing their experiences. They are authored by the community and I feel lucky to be in the position to keep encouraging them along.

A memorable year in lots of different ways and Christmas at home this year has been made really special as my 3 year old son’s excitement has built to a feverish crescendo. I have been able to share in some of that too. I wonder what 2010 will bring? I am looking forward to it already. I wish you all the best for 2010 and hope you continue to join me.

Last night I checked in with the Shapes in Paris Maths Map to check to see if others had added any other placemarks or activities. Initially I couldn’t find the map – only “Maths in Melbourne” which I hadn’t created. This is when I uncovered the sabotage.

Unfortunately “medg” (from their Google profile – last edited by…) had moved all of the Paris placemarks to Melbourne in Australia. They were able to do this because I set the maps to be (a) Public and (b) Open to editing. As the placemarks are location specific it was a long process to find the exact points the activities referred to.

I have managed to recover the map and even add some new placemark activities about Shape and Space to extend the ideas to “51 Shape Activities”. I suppose I should have seen something like this coming, but never expected someone to go to so much trouble to disrupt the resource. As John Johnston remarked maybe not naive of me just “uncynical“.

View 51 Shape Activities in Paris in a larger map

The Maths Maps have been getting a huge amount of traffic. They are in the public domain and I presume that they can be found in searches of user generated Google maps. The three maps have had over 60,000 hits combined and the Paris map over 25,000. Unlike the “Interesting Ways” series the maps are discoverable and openly public. I think that explains the traffic (which I know is not teachers) and also the higher risk of someone messing them up for a laugh.

I still subscribe to the powerful process of crowd-sourcing to generate resources but will be closing the maps to open collaboration because of the higher traffic and higher risk. If anyone wants to contribute some ideas, and I really encourage you to help, then please just send me your GMail and I will add you as an editor. I think this is the right thing to do rather than always backing up and leaving it open to anyone to mess around with – after all I think that the bulk of the traffic is the public, and not educators.

Elevator Pitch

• Using Google Maps.
• Maths activities in different places around the world.
• One location, one maths topic, one map.
• Activities explained in placemarks in Google Maps.
• Placemarks geotagged to the maths it refers to. “How wide is this swimming pool?”
• Teachers to contribute and share ideas.
• Maps can be used as independent tasks or group activities in class.
• Maps can be embedded on websites, blogs or wikis.
• Tasks to be completed by students and recorded online or offline.

Some background

Four years ago I created Google Earth resources for the classroom and posted them to the GE Community Forum. Two of them were called Maths in Madrid and Maths in Las Vegas. These were based on the fact that there is maths all around us, every day, everywhere we look. Google Earth (and Maps) gives us a great perspective on it all. It also provides easy access for our students to see rich visual content that depicts everyday maths. I have always loved the idea of children seeing the maths they are working on.

The only issue with Google Earth is that it is restrictive in two ways. It is not browser based and it is impossible for me to create a resource for others to collaborate on.

Luckily Google Maps has caught up and using the collaborative features I can now invite other teachers and educators to help build on these resources. It is exciting to return to these old ideas and work on them with you all.

First Attempts

Earlier today I invited some people on Twitter to help me make a start and it was great to see loads of ideas added to the Maths in Madrid map I had generated, based on my original work. There were questions about shape, time, money, rotational symmetry, you name it! (Thanks to all those who helped!)

View Maths in Madrid in a larger map
Please don’t add to this map any more – see the Measures in Madrid map below.

The problem here is that although the ideas were organised under maths topics (see map) with different coloured pins, there was no distinction between age appropriateness. There would be too much to filter out for the teacher or student.

With help and direction from those collaborating, I took a simpler approach and created a Measures in Madrid map that collates maths ideas about the one topic. This time the placemark icons are used to distinguish which age group it is best for. See below.

I think this is much easier to use because the map is about one topic, but shows the grade/age level too. Many different maps can be created to cover lots of different maths topics.

Measures in Madrid – How can you contribute?

1. Explore the map below for the ideas already added, follow the link to open it in a new window.
2. Make sure you are signed in to your Google account.
3. Click on EDIT in the left panel.
4. Zoom close to the city and it’s surroundings. (Don’t forget Streetview)
5. Find some MEASURES ideas you can see.
6. Add a placemark (use the right colour for the age group it is best for – see purple pin)
7. Explain the activity in the description.
8. Change the title to show how many ideas there are.
9. Send out a Tweet or write a blog post to highlight this resource and encourage others to contribute.

View 7 Measures Activities in Madrid in a larger map
There are endless amounts of maps we could make and once this one is up and running I will be highlighting some more. I will be embedding them all on the MATHS MAPS page of this blog too.

Please help by contributing just one placemark – let others know about the maps so we can gather lots of ideas.

(Read Google Squared: A Complete Guide for more information about how to use it in the classroom.)

Ponte stretto by DanielaNob 
Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivs License

As it is still in the Labs I think it is important to contribute in a small way to the changes that could take place so based on my classroom experiences, here are mine:

1. Search for values and add back to the square - would be great for children to decide that the presented values are not accurate enough, go to a regular search and then have a little button beside the source to ADD TO SQUARE.
2. Change source for images too – when values have other possible sources we can change them. Sometimes the image is not as useful or appropriate as it could be. Would be useful to change the source or select a different image. Would also be great to integrate Creative Commons licensing for the images.
3. Confidence rate the data used – some of the values presented show a confidence rating, would be useful for us to be able to rate that info too. If it isn’t relevant to the search we have done then we can say.
4. Colour change for added search – when you “Add to Square” it would be useful to be able to have a visual cue to the separate searches you have added.
5. Embed - would be great to be able to grab the code to embed the Square in a blog or other site. You can do it from the exported Spreadsheet but would be nice to be able to add it straight from the Square.
6. Send the Square – would like to be able to grab the link or email directly from the Square.
7. Suggest a category from a duff search- rather then having to build from scratch after a duff search – it would be good if Squared was able to suggest a category from what you added. Did you mean…
8. Other media – please add Youtube and audio clips – we have been looking at Whales using Squared and would have been great for the class to see and hear these amazing animals right there in the search results. Maybe you could add Twitter as well – tweets from users about the category. “I just saw a humpback whale on our boat trip…”
9. Description source – changing the source of the description would be useful to allow greater access to the text. Especially useful when using Simple Wikipedia for example. Perhaps you could also change language as well for the whole Square.
10. Fix the Image insert for exported spreadsheets – when a Square is exported to a Google Spreadsheet the image appears as the URL. As Spreadsheets supports images it would be great to see these right there in the sheet so what you Square is exactly what you export.

I hope that the engineers at Google find them useful. Please let me know how you think Google Squared might be improved, especially in light of classroom experience.

In my opinion it is vital that we don’t just assume that primary school children, who have grown up with “Google” as a verb, can search internet content effectively.

In July last year Google search engineers recorded 1 trillion unique URLs that they indexed, and that was more than a year ago. The amount of information at our pupil’s fingertips is amazing. Sometimes it is too much.

I think Google Squared is a great addition to classroom searching as it provides well needed structure to those search results. It doesn’t just provide a list of sites to click on but a grid of types of information. Google Squared is limited to the types of search terms that can be “Squared” but I think the added structure is a huge benefit to the experience of finding information.

For this post I have produced a series of screenshots and will highlight some of the unique features of searching internet content in this way to help you get the most from Google Squared in the classroom.

(The Flickr slideshow is best viewed in fullscreen)

Information Validity

When a cell isn’t populated with results it provides a great opportunity to explore and teach information validity. We not only need to help children develop their search skills to connect with information, we need to model and teach how to judge the quality of what we see. Just because it is online doesn’t mean it is any good, accurate or indeed useful.

With a regular Google search you will always get results. Using Google Squared often leaves you with gaps in the Square. This is a good thing. These gaps in the search results allow children the opportunity to make decisions about what should be included. We have been using Google Squared during our “Whale Week” and children had to engage much more directly with the information in these gaps, then they would with a regular Google search results.

One example that occurred in class last week was whether a Blue Whale would live for just 10 years or nearly 100 according to the Google Squared results. With some support we were able to see that most of the other values provided for whales were over 50 years and so we were able to define what was most appropriate. Another example was the length of one of the whales, which suggested it was over 100 metres! On closer inspection it showed we found it was referring to the USS Narwhal – a submarine!

Try this search for the wives of Henry VIII and see if you can spot the anomaly. These inaccuracies should be embraced as great opportunities to help illustrate information validity.

Measures

Although there is an option to automatically standardise the units of measurement in any given column – the maths that is involved to convert these would be a great activity.

A search for Bridges provides the ideal range of data for such a task. Children could change the Longest Span, Height or Total Length to KM or M. Other good examples include Cruise Ships, Skyscrapers and Super Cars (Super cars results all seem to be in millimetres which is great to do some conversion into centimetres and metres)

Building a Square

For the average classroom I think Google Squared provides a great opportunity to explore and learn about the very act of searching – not just viewing the results. Building a Square of results should be considered a learning outcome in it’s own right.

I think that this would be a great learning activity because of the way the children would have to engage with the validity of the results, the way it can be built from scratch and the choices a child would have to make to refine the accuracy of their work.

Your challenge today is to build me a Google Square showing me as much as you can about 3D Shapes.

More Search Ideas

The Google Search Curriculum provides lots of valuable resources for regular Google searches. It provides basic, intermediate and advanced lessons for three different modules:

• Understanding Search Engines
• Web Search Technique and Strategies
• Google Web Search Features

I believe that Google Squared would be a worthy addition to this “curriculum” because it is not only a search tool, it provides the structure and choice to help children become better at judging the quality of information online. Most importantly it allows children to directly interact with search results as they build their square.

Why not explore some alternative search engines for the classroom in this Interesting Ways to Use resource.

If you haven’t looked at Google Squared before I strongly recommend you take some time to explore it. I hope that some of the ideas and screenshots in this post give you some inspiration to use it with your own classes, let me know how it would be included in your work.