Videojug | Create a Graph | Good ol' Word

Laptops, Literacy, Maths, My classPublished on2 Comments on Videojug | Create a Graph | Good ol' Word

Videojug and the pursuit for folding glory!

Who is doing instructional writing? We have been covering this text type for a few weeks now and two weeks ago we used this site as part of reading and evaluating instructional text. I decided I wanted the children to compare 3 sets of instructions for the same thing and to rate the instructions I chose to look at a renowned video titled “How to fold a T-Shirt in 2 Seconds”. However I did not reveal the video until the class had tried to follow two different text instructions (no pictures). And yes I did take in a load of T-Shirts for the kids to use! Don’t worry by the end of the lesson you will have all of the neatly folded!

The two sets of written instructions were taken from the Videojug site – a written set accompanies most videos. The first set the kids used was one edited down to one paragraph, no numbers or bullets. They struggled, but the point is they are meant to. (T-shirts become messy at this point) Suddenly the children are talking about how difficult it is and saying that this feature or that feature is missing.

We then looked at the second set of instructions which are just the exact written set from the Videojug site – as you see it online. The children still struggled, even though there are far more reader friendly features. There was some mild folding success, but not much. We discussed as a class why this was and rated the instructions as before.

I then told the children to open the laptops they had on their tables and look at the video. I showed it on the SMARTBoard too. I suggested to pause the video as it played so the children could keep up. It’s good as it has a “You will need” section and clear numbered steps on the video. I would recommend getting the site preloaded if you are getting lots of machines to access it – also if you are working on a wireless network.

Bisect t shirt

There were lots of serendipitous moments and suddenly children were expertly folding the T-Shirts as if they had been working in a clothing boutique for the past 10 years! We then had a Fold Off, children folding as fast and accurately as they could. I even challenged the other year 5 teacher, Rick to a contest. Entering his class with his kids backing him, I struggled and lost my 2nd pinch as he made a beautiful fold to the rapture of his children’s voices, I skulked off and called for the return tie! 🙂

Create a Graph

A classic maths tool, Create a Graph is saved by about 850 other people on del.icio.us and is a wonderfully useful tool for your data handling work. It can of course be used as an excellent way to demonstrate the creation of graphs with a whole class but This week we used it as part of an independent activity in a maths lesson. The children had pulse rate monitors fitted and a laptop to access the site. They needed to record their pulse after 2 mins of resting and then again after 2 minutes of walking around the room. This was repeated for 10 minutes – we tried to predict the shape of the line graph and the children managed very well with the tool. An important aspect of the tool is the ability to add a minimum and maximum value to the graph, so that you can create a more balanced graph with greater detail. We also discussed why 0-30 would not be useful on a pulse rate axis!

Once the line graphs were created we exported them as PDF files and talked about them in the plenary of the session using the SMARTBoard. You also have the option to export/download the graph in other formats: SVG (Scalable Vector Graphics) PNG (Portable Network Graphics) JPG (JPEG, Joint Photographic Experts Group) EMF (Enhanced Metafile Format) Can be imported into programs such as MS Word or MS PowerPoint, EPS (Encapsulated Postscript) Can be opened with graphics programs such as Adobe Illustrator or QuarkXPress. A good range of options to keep everyone happy!

I like the way that you can continually preview the graph as you enter data which allowed the children to spot errors as they built the graph. All in all a good apple!

Good Ol’ MS Word 

Now even though I have dabbled in blogs, wikis and online documents I still think there is great value in just some basic word processing skills. We are using the new MS Word on the class laptops and we have charged the children to write a set of instructions, a help document for the excellent Sploder game creator site. It has been great seeing the children bring to their work basic skills they have learned along the way and to develop some new ones. It has also brought us excellent opportunities to recap saving routines and simple image manipulation.

I know, and have experienced, the value of working on writing with other collaborators, with other children, other schools using new age writing tools. But in this instance I wanted to write without publishing along the way, I wanted the children to hone and master a single piece of work for a chosen audience without the outside world looking in. That’s not so bad is it? We have had some fantastic results, which you will no doubt see glimpses of here soon, and the children have been extremely motivated by the whole writing task.

Sickness | Diigo | del.icio.us

Laptops, My classPublished on7 Comments on Sickness | Diigo | del.icio.us

Unfortunately it has been a while since I have been fit to write as I have been off of work, away from school with a nasty bout of tonsilitis. On a course of penicillin tablets for it now which tastes completely rancid by the way! I am feeling back to my normal self at the moment and have had a full week in school which has been busy as ever.

diigo logo v2

Throughout this week in our Year 5 classes I have planned to utilise our class Diigo account for some simple comprehension work on instructions. Diigo is a tool that allows you to add annotations and sticky notes to any web page – making the most text heavy site partly interactive. As the children roll over these highlights or sticky notes they can read the pop-up message or comment. I have used it to pose some questions about an instructional text on making a healthy smoothie. The text itself is on the excellent WikiHow website and is in fact a piece of shared writing I completed last year with my year 6 class when we did instructional text too.

The children have been working on laptops during the group time in our literacy lessons at this task. The activity has rotated throughout the week so all the children can experience it. Once the children have read a question they can view the text immediately in front of them and they have no need to navigate away to a different window etc. In an ideal world I would have liked the children to answer using something like Google Notebook which is still very much my intention. But I thought that I needed to take things slowly and explore the use of Diigo first. So the children answered the questions in their jotters – a more nostalgic notebook shall we say!

They have enjoyed the task this week and have been engaged and motivated – the problems seem to be the tendency to move the sticky notes around the screen, so the order has been a bit lost. One or two notes have also mysteriously disappeared. I have been signing into the Diigo account so we can see our private annotations, but I suppose that if the notes were public and we didn’t sign in then no alterations could be made. They could be viewed but would be protected. Mmm I will test this out.

del.icio.us has proven to be an invaluable tool with so much constant access to technology with our laptops in lessons. Our Year 6 teachers are getting stuck in too, so our school’s weblink resource will no doubt begin to grow and grow. A great tool for any school that I cannot recommend highly enough!

Sharing a Google Spreadsheet in class

Google Docs, Laptops, Literacy, My class, SciencePublished on9 Comments on Sharing a Google Spreadsheet in class

Today was Day 1 in terms of our laptop use in the classroom and we hit the ground running, so to speak – just how I like it. I am sure you have had days like today, when it is a bit of a whirlwind from 8am right through to 4pm – where does the time go? Today the sands just seemed to slip through my fingers! Not to say it was one of the best days for a long time.

We now have 8 Toshiba laptops running happily in both of our Year 5 classes and today we kicked off with a simple word level activity in literacy. One group worked on Race to Ramses! a game about combining prefixes and suffixes to create new words. I have taught with laptops in the past but the new technology (laptops and WAPs) is just so much more reliable. And it is great seeing children completely engaged with one to one technology supporting their learning, I am so pleased to see it in the hands of the pupils – which is the whole point. You might think “web game, one group…not really setting the world alight” – but I suppose it is a culmination of a lot of work and to finally get things in front of children, reliable and solid feels like a big achievement.

Needless to say in the afternoon we swam into deeper waters and I’d like to think we pushed the envelope a bit…

The morning was successful and the children enjoyed working on their own machine and many children asked for the web address for the game – so we will have to get our del.icio.us account sorted or get them into their Google accounts soon!

In the afternoon we were looking at some science work we have begun regarding healthy living and exercise. Today we explored pulse rates and we used an online spreadsheet to share our results, hence the title of the post. (This work is similar to some online spreadsheet action we had last year with my Year 6 class) I decided to use a Google spreadsheet as I have been using the Docs application for a while (in fact I have a few grumbles about that – more soon) but you could have easily used EditGrid as an alternative – I set the sheet up so that all of the children’s names from both classes were present in the first column. Then 10 other columns were labelled, “Resting Pulse1, Resting Pulse 2…” It was in these cells that the kids added their resting pulse after counting for 30 seconds and doubling.

spread

I then accessed the same spreadsheet through my Google login on all 8 laptops per class that I put around the room – so in effect I logged in 16 times (plus my PC and SMARTBoard, so 17) to the same document from different locations. We talked a little about how to find our pulse and then asked the children to record 10 instances of their resting rate into the spreadsheet. It was great! With the live update feature we were able to see individual results popping up all over the place and even from next door in Rick’s class who were doing the same. Google Spreadsheets has an Auto Save option which makes life much easier and gives you the opportunity to see the live data. Not only did the hardware hold out fine, but accessing the spreadsheet was excellent – even with 17 simultaneous users on a single login. The children really enjoyed seeing each other’s work and it gave them a great overview of not only the class year group working together, but also to the sorts of data people were adding. Children from the other class were nipping across the corridor and questioning the validity of results from kids in my class.

The children had a tendency to sit with the laptop in front of them, in small groups rather than freely moving around the classroom and accessing any machine. But I suppose that is due to the nature of task.

Within the space of about 40 minutes, perhaps less, we collected approximately 600 individual results all in one place. No doubt they will be quicker next time. This method of data collection also allows us the ability to then manipulate the results afterwards, working out averages of the whole year group etc. I would highly recommend doing this if you have the reliable kit in your classroom, we have already said that it will be an excellent data entry method for our maths lessons on data handling.

It is now 12 hours since I started the day at school and I am just about coming up for air, no don’t worry I am not at school still! – but it is great to reflect here on these sorts of days. One to remember and I hope you might take some of these ideas and use it yourself.

Helping in the search for Steve Fossett

Google EarthPublished on1 Comment on Helping in the search for Steve Fossett

In my class assembly on Thursday I am going to talk to my children about the missing adventurer Steve Fossett and how with the use of technology I have managed to help look for him. Even though I am some 5000 miles away from where his plane is meant to have been flying, with the use of technology I, we can help.324409978 2eb8f78e3f m

I sat down and following a post in my Google Reader I went to Amazon’s Mechanical Turk and after registering, searched for Steve’s plane or the wreckage of it using Google Earth. Anyone can register and help look – you are given a HIT, a Human Intelligence Task – in this instance to review a small satellite image for any clues to his whereabouts. You are also given a precise set of coordinates, I put these into the “Fly-To” in Google Earth and took a look at the exact location. Brand new, up to date satellite imagery needs to be opened via a KML file and then it is a matter of scouring the small area as part of your task.

Once you have taken a look go back to the Amazon site and complete the HIT by checking the appropriate choice. It took me about 15 minutes to look at about 10 distinct areas almost 1 square kilometer of searching.

This is a human story that has a history – as Jim Gray, when lost at sea, was also searched for unfortunately without the right outcome. I hope that something good comes from this deployment of human and technological effort. There is obviously hundreds of square kilometers to search, but if everyone does a little bit perhaps there still may be a positive outcome.

Image: ‘Spirit Freedom‘
www.flickr.com/photos/15572047@N00/324409978

FlickrCC and our new class blog

Blogging, My classPublished on8 Comments on FlickrCC and our new class blog

First day back with the children today which is always good, finally getting them in to the classroom to see whether your furniture arranging was totally futile or not! I was pleased to see with my new Year 5 class that I have more space than I first thought I would. Perhaps I was imagining my Year 6 lot from last year!

So we got straight into talking about the class blog and as I did last year we posted our agreed set of class rules on our blog for you all to read. Those who have been following this space for a while will know that I used to have the Priestsic6 blog – that has now been passed onto Sarah Stamp the teacher taking over my Year 6 role. I have in turn inherited the Priestsic 5 blog which was begun by Mr O’Brien last year.

As ever we would love to hear your comments about our class rules and any connections you would like to make with our class of 9-10 year old kids. Our class laptops arrive tomorrow so I hope to increase the amount of blogging work we do in Year 5 with this technology at our fingertips – perhaps we can get reading your class blogs very soon.

Following on from my post regarding the use of Flickr I was kindly sent a link to FlickrCC, a search engine drawing solely from Flickr’s Creative Commons licensed images. After a quick look it is easy to use – your results are presented in a wall of thumbnail images which is really clear, gives you a range of sizes to download and an attribution link as well – making it all very easy to find great quality imagery. Many thanks to Joseph Williams at Sunrise Elementary School, Glendale Arizona for the link.

I hope you all had a good back to school day/s – and don’t forget to leave an encouraging comment for my young bloggers – we will be checking tomorrow!