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Blue Kryptonite and our Superhero Display
Jan 13th
Angie is the teaching assistant who works with us in Year 5 – she is a star! Together we came up with the idea to do a skyscraper city scene for the backing of our Superheroes display. So far this long board has been a giant underwater scene and then a running track.
Today we re-introduced (after a little snow break) our Superheroes topic. The classes had some time working with the Head of Drama from the local secondary school, who came and did a short PSHE/Drama session with them. We spent some time learning about Superman, surely the ultimate superhero. I found out something that I didn’t know – there are lots of different types of Kryptonite, and they all have different effects on Superman.
“His only weakness is a radioactive rock from his home planet, called “kryptonite.” It makes him sick and weak. His enemies use it to hurt him. Blue Kryptonite makes people able to control him using hypnosis, green slowly kills him, black makes him evil, and red has many different effects on him (each piece of red kyrptonite affects him differently). There is also gold, white, and jewel kryptonite.”
You learn something everyday, and it is great that the children told me all about this – I love learning with them.
Anyway who do you think is the ultimate superhero?
(The text was taken from Simple Wikipedia which is a great alternative for kids.)
WISE Qatar – Doha Diaries 4 – Wordle of Participants
Nov 22nd
The broad cross section of participants at WISE 2009 fascinated me. I have never shared a face to face event with such a global register.
During a quieter moment in the conference I made a Wordle of the job titles of all of the delegates.
I think it makes for an interesting observation of what groups, organisations and countries that were represented. Not all stakeholders were present, so not all of the views needed for such a wide debate on education were contributed.
In my opinion WISE 2010 needs to have a clear involvement of administration, parents and most of all students of every age group. We need to see the word “pupil” leaping out strongly from the next Wordle I do.
7 New "Interesting Ways to Use" Resources
Oct 23rd
With the half term break upon us here I wanted to introduce some new members of the “Interesting Ways to Use…” family. In addition to the usual types of tech topics I have decided to start some resources that are not technology specific in a hope to widen the relevance. Read the rest of this entry »
Networked Multitouch Desks: Teacher/Student Features
Aug 18th
I was delighted to receive a video this week from Andrew Hatch from Durham University and the SynergyNet Project. In it he explains and demonstrates some further features of networked multitouch desks that the team have been developing.
Just to recap what was demonstrated:
- Menu hiding on student desks.
- Remote load of application or content.
- Synchronise content layout to student desks.
- Independent updates and action on the desks.
- Changes on teacher desk updated on other student desks, including adding new content.
- On screen keyboard in the note application.
- Lock student desk content.
- Clear student desk content.
- Complete synchronisation between two tables – allowing for collaboration.
Further to the simple act of passing content from one table to the next, these features really begin to structure the way a whole class might work using multitouch. Once again this is one of the main aims of this project, to explore and develop the whole environment not just one single device.
What do you think? I am excited to see these developments and it gives me a much clearer idea as to how the whole classroom may function.
Google Search Curriculum and the Apps Education Community
Jul 16th
Where we would be if say tomorrow you couldn’t access any of the tools provided by Google. None whatsoever, how would our classrooms change? How would our work as teachers be effected? Interesting thought eh? Obviously we would cope right?(!!!) But it certainly highlights how important the tools they provide are to the way we access and organise information and the way our children do the same.
In this post I wanted to quickly summarise some Google related developments that have caught my eye recently and may have an impact on the classroom.
Google Search Curriculum
This was announced during the recent NECC conference in Washington DC (Checkout these Google related presentations from the NECC conference). When I first saw this Tweeted I thought it would be a bit obvious, but clearly there is much more to it when teaching it in the classroom.
There are three modules covered: Understanding Search Engines, Web Search Technique and Strategies and Google Web Search Features. Each course has lesson plans that are detailed and differentiated: Basic, Intermediate and Advanced.
Furthermore the lesson plans provide a variety of links to specifically created presentations that support the lesson. For each lesson there is reference to the ISTE Standards for Pupil and Teacher. I have not used these before but they look straight forward enough and would be easy to tie into what is happening here in the UK, whether skills based or through the National Curriculum.
My Year 5 children are very good at using online resources to find information but I think that they could be much more adept. They could certainly cope with the the Advanced level lessons and I think there is lots to offer, especially in the third module about different types of searches as it doesn’t take much to scratch the surface beyond a basic keyword search.
They have been created by teachers and seem to be well worth a look and I hope to find some room next year to incorporate some of the ideas.
Apps Education Community
The support for Google Apps Ed users has finally graduated out of Google Groups and now has its own dedicated community space. (Powered by Google Sites of course) It is early days yet but they have currently added areas for:
Tutorials & Tips - “View videos and tutorials on how you can use Google Apps at your school and in the classroom. Have an idea? Submit your own tips & tricks!” Not much here at the moment other than existing Google tools videos. There is a link to a webinar about Ed Apps that goes into great detail about the tools and platform available. I think the idea is that users will begin to generate video content – maybe I should resurrect some of my ideas and stick them in a film!
Join the discussion – “Participate in the Community Forum by reading posts, asking questions, helping others, and choosing and sharing the best answers to your questions.”
Google Apps in Action – “Vote and submit on the best examples of using Google Apps in education.” An interesting concept using the Google Moderator tool. Submit an idea and then the community are meant to vote on it. Yet to see really whether it works, I suppose the better ideas will surface to the top.
Along with being able to add your own details to a map, you can also stay up to date with Ed Apps news and spread the word about the site.
One feature that is worth looking at is the Apps Lesson Plans, a link is provided on the left menu. Each lesson plan is linked to a Google tool if appropriate and although they may not all be appropriate for all age ranges, it is worth looking at some of the ideas and concepts explored. This will certainly help you to find the most appropriate ways to use the tools in the classroom.
SMART Table in my Classroom – My Conclusions
Jul 4th
Since mid-April I have been working with a SMART Table in my classroom and as the term winds down I wanted to post some of my reflections about the experience so far and my conclusions to date.
I am writing this prior to any updates for firmware or for the Table Toolkit software, I am sure hope some of the issues I raise will be addressed.
At the moment the SMART Table is not worth the money you would invest in it. It is currently priced at US$7,999 which works out to be just short of £5000 here in England. Due to that high price tag it is an investment, but it falls well short of delivering value for money at the moment. There is an awful lot you could do with £5000 that would make a far greater impact on learning in schools.
In my opinion there are three things that contribute to this: poor content; poor creation software and a straight jacketed approach to multi-touch functionality.
The first two go hand in hand and I will deal with them together. To make content to use on the SMART Table a teacher would need to use the SMART Table Toolkit, but in it’s current version it is clunky and very, very time consuming.
One example is for an application called Hot Places, in which the children drag labels to different designated places on the screen. I have to make a custom background in a 3rd party app, then each of the labels has to be generated individually – it took me 40 minutes to make one screen, with about 24 labels to work with. But we are not dealing with one child here interacting with those 24 questions, we have to remember to divide our task by the total number of users at the table. In this instance 4. So children would interact with on average 6 labels – working together they got this done in under 4 minutes!
The payoff for a teacher creating SMART Table resources is woeful at the moment – and when I say payoff I mean the balance between our own precious preparation time and the time the children are engaged with the learning.
But what quality of learning is there? I am sure that it will be defended on the grounds it is aimed at younger age groups, but there is still a need for deep learning at those age levels. The current set of applications are aimed at simple right/wrong matching style activities – only one lends itself to the deep understanding or application of skills and knowledge children need. So the content is poor and this is confounded by the poor software there is to create it. Add into the mix how long it takes a teacher to make it and it does not paint a rosy picture.
Those unfamiliar with my background with multi-touch technology in the classroom, may assume I am giving it a good knock here – but I believe in the medium, it definitely has something to offer the way children interact with media and digital resources, essentially the way they learn. This pilot is helping me and hopefully others understand more fully how that can be realised.
The third reason I mention is that the SMART Table seems a very straight jacketed environment, at odds even with the multi-touch way of working. The children intuitively engaged with the content available but there is no range of gestures across all of the applications. The process of opening one application and going through the steps to complete it closes off the environment in my opinion.
For years now I have watched creative people express themselves through multi-touch displays and applications that harness the open, fluid nature of the medium. The SMART Table misses a trick here, it seems to be boxing well below it’s weight – I referred to it recently as a Ferrari in a car park, unable to get out of first gear and really flex its multi-touch muscle. There seems to be too much residual SMART Notebook thinking and not enough innovative software design. Maybe the product has preceded the necessary thinking behind it all. This ties in with the fact that Durham University have a 4 year research project about this exact train of thought, what is multi-touch pedagogy going to look like?
The one shining ray of light that emerges from amidst this all is the Media application. I have posted videos of some of my children working with this program in the past. It remains the only application that offers teachers and children an open environment to learn, and couples it with a unique interface with media. When you use this application you actually feel like you are using something innovative, multi-touch, gestural driven. As a teacher there is the capacity to use rich content of your choice (video) and then layer on top questions that engage the children in a much deeper way.
You can currently upload 20 media objects, pictures or video and the user then manipulates them in a light box style application. I hope that the potential is recognised here and more is made of this in the future. A media app of this sort is not new, we were using it on the Philips Entertaible a few years ago – but the open activity stands out clearly from the others.
It is early days and there is still much to learn about this type of medium in the classroom – I hope that the device I signed for in April will not be the same as the one I give back later this year. In the sense that it has evolved in light of current practice and the content/software has along with it.
Content is king, after all it is what you do with these tools that counts the most - learning needs to be put back squarely in the centre of the table.
Interesting Ways to use Voicethread, Wordle and the Nintendo DS
Jun 11th
It has been great to see the range of classroom ideas in the “Interesting Ways” series really expand and develop over time. It is always great to connect with a fellow educator and invite them to edit the various presentations.
The most recent presentations have included Voicethread and Wordle which are really great little tools and their flexibility is reflected in the wide range of ideas that people have offered.
We are about to kick off a Nintendo DS project at school, which you will hear more about here soon, and so I have been thrilled to see a bunch of ideas outlined by people with direct classroom experience of using the consoles. It will prove a useful set of current thinking for our teachers and I hope we’ll be able to contribute too.
I hope that you are finding the presentations useful. As always if you have an idea that you would like to contribute then just get in touch. Thanks for all of the support and contributions so far. (By the way the very first presentation on the IWB has just hit 40 different ideas!)
SMART Table in my Classroom – Two Introductory Videos
Apr 25th
We took delivery of our second SMART Table unit on Friday (the first was faulty) and had the afternoon to use it.
I wanted to share with you a few bits of video that I took of the children using the Table as well as a short introductory clip about the physical structure of the Table and its’ components.
Media App for SMART Table from Tom Barrett on Vimeo.
The children worked very naturally with this application and it was fun listening to them chat away about how they liked it. The level of interaction here is high as there are only 3-4 children working at a time, any more and in my opinion the quality and frequency of interaction with the images would reduce (in parallel to a reduction in the amount of surface available to individual users).
Quick Tour of the SMART Table from Tom Barrett on Vimeo.
What do you think? I would appreciate your thoughts on the two short clips. There will be plenty of opportunity to post more videos throughout the course of the project and I hope to make a short film introducing the applications and software too.
I Bought a Nit Comb
Feb 16th
In last Sunday’s EdTechRoundup meeting I briefly invited my fellow educators to comment about whether I should move this blog to a self hosted one or to stick where I am. In this post I just want to articulate some of my thoughts about this issue for me and hopefully act as a place for further debate.
I have been using Edublogs since the Summer of 2006, when I first got going. There have been ups and down(time)s but overall I have been really happy with the simplicity of the service. Any minor issues I had were dealt with in the forums by James and his colleagues.
My blog, this space has been fantastic for me to explore ideas and to reflect on what is happening in my classroom. I see such a space as being part and parcel of what I do now. I am very, very grateful to those of you who read what I publish and leave comments – the conversation and connections here were the start of my own personal learning network or whatever term you prefer. But…
I was disappointed about how Edublogs introduced the adverts and how intrusive they are on the very words I wrote. In my opinion I also think that some of the blog and forum objections that were posted have been responded to in an aggressive manner. This made me question whether I should roll up my tent.
However Edublogs, a hosted service, has given me the opportunity to focus on writing about learning technology, the successes and failures and not to get caught up in the tinkering behind the scenes. I want that in the future. I don’t want to be lumbered with constant maintenance and endless WP/hosting issues. I just want to go to my blog and write. But then if I move that, I am told could be easily setup.
I also have the question about the momentum that has been built regarding this space. I don’t have thousands of subscribers but it seems lots of my posts have been linked to by a few people. I value all of those connections and realise that some of the material I have written has proven valuable – I don’t want to jeopardise that. But then it is only a little blog and people would find directions to my new home.
You may have noticed that I have paid for the ads to be removed. I needed to buy a nit comb and just get rid of them. I appreciate the service Edublogs provides and whilst I figure out what to do with this space I wanted it to be free from ads for me and for those who read it.
I am still undecided and would appreciate your thoughts.
I know this has been hotly debated and I am not looking for a repeat of the “Ads or Not” debate, just whether I should move or stay put?
Flippin' Nora!
Feb 11th
We have been using the Flip mino cameras in our school for just over a week. Yesterday I quickly gathered some ideas together about how teachers were using them. This is what I got back from our staff.
Nursery and Foundation
Used in the role play area in classroom and for speaking and listening activities
Useful for assessment and collecting evidence for Foundation Stage Profiling
Will be taken on trips to the farm and then review the footage to support with some writing back in the class.
Year 1
Recorded Victorian Day in school and used for recount writing.
Created a set of instructions for using the Flip cameras – instructional writing in literacy.
Staff / TAs have created talking stories.
Year 2
Filmed the children making salads (DT) which was linked to literacy and science – using the films to write instructions.
Used to film animals (pets) for use in describing animals in poetry.
Further filming of children in dance/drama lessons will support the animal poetry.
Year 3
Children filmed making 3D structures from Nets – watched back to support instruction writing.
Documented trip to Perlethorpe outdoor activity centre and Viking drama workshop in school.
Year 4
Used for drama roleplay and reviewing their performances.
Used as a recording method for a science experiment on the best insulating material – “How to keep snow cold” (!!!)
Year 5
Learning interviews during maths, by children and teacher/TA asking for children to explain their methods or strategies in their work.
To support DT instructions and sequencing of skills.
Documented trip to Perlethorpe outdoor activity centre, children given cameras to interview their peers during the day – footage used in Moviemaker back in school to make recount films of the day.
Recording and review of storytelling work in class – refining the process. Children record each other and then watch back, repeat and refine.
Year 6
Shape TV children interview each other in the role of a quadrilateral.
Filmed science experiements and the childrens predictions of the results.
Timed talks in literacy on a specific subject – practice interviewing each other.
And that is just 7 days.
Along with handing out the cameras in the last staff meeting I pointed them towards the growing Pocket Video Tips presentation that is currently up to 35 ideas. I hope you have found something there to make a start yourself, I know we have.
One last idea I have had is to arrange a Film Festival type staff meeting, perhaps on a theme such as “Learning” (I know not particularly original!) – I will be inviting staff to choose one piece of footage to show the rest of the staff and to explain about their decision to share it. I might even get some red carpet and a tux. Beyond ideas for using video, it will just be a great way to share what is going on in different classrooms.
