Tag: IWB

Teaching Handwriting using an Interactive Whiteboard

IWB, Literacy, My class, SMARTboardsPublished on10 Comments on Teaching Handwriting using an Interactive Whiteboard

We still practice handwriting at school with the children. Since having SMARTBoards I have been using the software to transform the way we teach it and the way we support the children.

I don’t think that handwriting is that important, what is written is more important to me – however the practice does encourage some structure, which can improve legibility.

Instead of just using the board to model the different joins (replace) I use the SMART Recorder to make a little movie of the joins as I model them and play them back, on a loop (tranform). Most IWB software (if any good!) has some sort of video screen capture tool. This allows me to step away from the board and go and support he children as they are working. As the class work they can easily look up and see the modelled join/word playing back on the board.

Before I explain how to do that, here is my routine for teaching any handwriting session. When we begin I remind the children about the 5 Ps.

  • Position – I encourage them to think about the position they are in and where there book should be.
  • Place – are they cramped or squashed? Make sure they have enough room on their table.
  • Pen – I talk about the tripod grip, to watch out for the power grip where the wrist and lower arm is too tense and encourage the precision grip with a freely moving wrist etc.
  • Posture – Can you feel the back of the chair in the lower back. Don’t be too upright and tense, be comfortable and relaxed.
  • Peace – We all need some to do our best.

When talking about the actual joins or words I ask the children to trace them on a giant scale in the air with their fingers, talking about the movements as we complete them. I then ask them to do the same join on the palm of their hand. We repeat the join on our wrists where it is all tickly and then a final time on the back of someone sat next to them. This helps to feel the shape of the letters.

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Megan’s Present / Hand by Aeioux
Attribution-NonCommercial License

Before the children go on to practice in their handwriting books, I complete a modelled example using the video recorder. Here is how you do it:

  1. Open you handwriting page. We created a template on a blank page with the guidelines that suited our scheme.
  2. Open your video screen capture application – we use SMART Recorder.
  3. Select just the small area that you are going to be writing in – not the whole screen or page.
  4. I find it really useful to have the join/word already written with it’s transparency turned down. So that it is just visible, allowing you to trace over the top. If you are doing a simple 2 or 3 letter join model it more than once.
  5. Hit record and complete the modelling of the join or word.
  6. Hit stop and save your capture using the join or word as the file name.
  7. Playback your movie and set it to loop. Move away from the front and sit with children as they are working. With different movies open in different small windows you can have multiple joins so that children can work at their own pace through the work.

This is a good example of how technology can transform what we have been doing for decades. It breathes life into a common task, providing the teacher the opportunity to support the children at the point of writing. If all we do is write them up on the IWB we are just replacing old ways, we may as well do it on a dry-wipe board, or even just a blackboard or find a cave wall and some berries. The video playback is there if the children need it – they don’t need to remember what was done, they can just watch it, that has transformed the way they learn the joins and the behaviours that support that learning.

Within my handwriting sessions there is that important balance between technology and other approaches, a blended take on it all. Tickling the words on our wrists or a partners back is just as important.

SMART Table in my Classroom – Initial Thoughts

IWB, SMART TablePublished on7 Comments on SMART Table in my Classroom – Initial Thoughts

By the end of next week we will have installed a SMART Table in my classroom. We are part of a small scale (3 school) seedling pilot here in England. As you can imagine, I am excited to further explore what such a device might offer within the primary classroom, and to do so over a longer period.

In my experience there was a muted reaction to the SMART Table (and other interactive multi-touch technologies) at the recent BETT show in London. Clearly the first reactions are hugely positive, I remember using the Philips Entertaible for the first time back in July 2006 – big iPhones! However there were very important, lingering questions that soon simmered to the surface when I talked with Christian Lortz, the product manager for the SMART Table.

My approach to the IWB has been the same since we began using them in 2002, it is not about the device but about the application – it is what you do with it that counts. The IWB is a big control device for your computer. The SMART Table is much the same with the added feature of multiple users. When you work with 9 and 10 year olds you realise that such novelty very quickly wears thin.

These are some fo the ideas and questions I have in mind in the run up to working with the SMART Table.

Depth

I am looking forward to exploring the types of software that can be written that takes full advantage of multiple users. At the moment the brief applications offer little in depth learning activities. With my own year group I suppose I want children to be able to engage with an activity independently or collaboratively for between 15-20 minutes. Not all the time of course, but in my experience children will work through things quicker then anticipated. 

I hope our work with the SMART Table will help define software and applications of greater learning depth then what I have seen in the past. Beyond the initial novelty, leading to richer enhanced learning opportunities.

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User Profile

How do you track what individuals contribute to an activity? This is an important question for the adolescent multi-touch table. As a child approaches the table, I want their individual contribution to be tracked and monitored as an activity progresses. Who contributes most when working in a group? Who sits back?

Enhance or dilute?

The jury is out. A ready device is on it’s way to my classroom and I hope that in time the learning activities that can be provided for my class will enhance what we already do. Let’s hope that path is swift and the quality of what already is taking place in my classroom is not diluted by the novelty of multi-touch.

Can you stack them?

This was a question I put to the team at Durham University about the design of a suitable multi-touch table for the primary classroom. Mostly serious, I was keen to point out that I want furniture to be flexible so that I can clear room for a drama session or party. A stackable table-top device would be ideal. I am interested to see how the SMART Table integrates into our busy room and what the children make of it’s design. Will they be too big to sit around it comfortably?

Collaborate

We have explored the way that children can collaborate using Google Docs and their own laptop. This also includes the difficulties they often face. So I am keen to see how well they work in a more open, physical digital space. Will the manual style of collaboration change the way they work compared to working as a team in a Google Doc? Again I hope that software is developed that provides more in depth collaboration opportunities, perhaps over a longer period of time.

Of course I will be taking the opportunity to write about our experiences with the SMART Table in blog posts and via my Twitter and Flickr feed. I may even push the boat out and start a new Twitter account for our kids to document what they think.

I have been following the progression of multi-touch technology in primary education for about 4 years now and have been fortunate enough to see and use devices such as the Philips Entertaible in our school, and the early stages of the Durham University Synergy Net project. Looking back on some of the posts that I have written on the subject, there is a refrain about how long it will be before we see these devices in our classrooms.

Well they are here, ready to go. But once again the key thing is to quickly get beyond the novelty and develop applications that go beyond what can be conventionally done and seek out true learning enhancement.

What key issues do you think need to be addressed in regard to a multi-touch device? Does the SMART Table really have the potential to further enhance what we do in the primary classroom? If you have used one, what were your first impressions and what applications do you think have a future with such a device?

If you would like to contribute further to the concept of multi-touch desk development then please consider joining my Classroom 2.0 group.

100 Interesting Ways

Interesting WaysPublished onUpdated on29 Comments on 100 Interesting Ways

In November 2007 I began the first of a series of Google presentations gathering together some ideas about the uses of different tools for the classroom. I thought that the easy manner of sharing Google Docs was ideal to collate thoughts, tips and suggestions from teachers and educators all over the world.

I began with interesting ways to use the interactive whiteboard and the family has since grown to include, tips for Google Earth, Google Docs and the most recent Pocket Video Cameras. It has been great to watch them evolve as people get in touch and I add them to the document and they make their own edits.

Here is the family photo 🙂

My intention from the beginning was that there should be many authors of the presentations and that teachers and school staff could happily take the resource and share it with their colleagues. As it is in a simple presentation format it seems to have been successful in doing that.

In total we have collated 100 101 suggestions, tips and ideas for the classroom! (I can’t type quick enough and people keep adding more ideas!) It is fantastic to be part of that collaborative effort to share what we do.

The most recent on pocket video cameras seems to have really hit a rich vein of classroom ideas – so far 29 ideas have been shared by people all over the world and I only started it 3 days ago. I haven’t had chance to add an idea myself yet! Perhaps this wealth of ideas illustrates the power and potential of video in the classroom – which isn’t particularly new but pocket video cameras give us, and the children we work with, much easier access.

Who knows what the next 100 ideas will be about but I hope that you can be part of it – please take some time to take a look through some of them above, let me know if you have used the presentations with your staff. If you want to add an idea to any of the above presentations just let me know your email address and I will add you as an editor.

Single Touch, Multi-Touch, Spatial?

IWBPublished on1 Comment on Single Touch, Multi-Touch, Spatial?

For the first time in 2006 I saw a multi-touch device in action in the labs of Philips in Eindhoven. Just recently the wave of multi-touch devices has grown and this is especially clear in the use of mobile phones (also my iPod looks different). I suffered from iPhone envy when I was in Glasgow for the SLF as so many people had them, pinching and flicking their way through mobile content. A month or so after I returned from Eindhoven I wrote that perhaps the IWB had past it’s sell by date. What I am aware of now, that admittedly I wasn’t at the time of that post, is how much research and development needs to be done for multi-touch to be a strong enough technology for the average classroom.

Multi-touch technology in phones such as the iPhone, G1, Samsung Anycall SPH-M4650 and the new LG KF900 places it in the mainstream and can only accelerate the advancement of similar learning technologies.

The first consumer oriented multi-touch PC (ready for Windows 7) in the shape of the HP Touchsmart tx2 is available now and has a whole raft of gestures for the user to take advantage of:

  • SINGLE, DOUBLE TAP: Select objects by touching them once (single tap), or double tap to open objects/programs.
  • FLICK: Scroll or pan within an application either horizontally or vertically. For example, in MediaSmart Photo, flick your finger to the left on the display and the inertia from your flick will move the photos leftward, just as if you pushed a piece of paper to the left on a table.
  • PRESS & DRAG: Touch an object on the display and hold and drag it to the desired destination.
  • ARC: Allows you to move tracks to/from playlists without having to make a straight line.
  • PINCH: Touch an object on the display once to select the item then place 2 fingers on opposite corners of the object, then move them closer together to decrease the object’s size or to zoom out. Move fingers away from one another to enlarge the object or to zoom in.
  • ROTATE: Rotate photos by touching the object once to select the item then use 2 fingers on opposite corners of the image and rotate the image either clockwise or counter-clockwise.
  • LAUNCH MEDIASMART: Touch the screen with two fingers together and write the letter m on the display to launch the MediaSmart Smart Menu.

My involvement with Durham University has made me realise that multi-touch is still a fledgling in terms of mainstream classroom technology. They are at the very beginning of four years of research into what multi-touch means for the classroom, so I was surprised to see the SMART Table being released.

On one hand you have an expensive device available for the classroom now and on the other academics still trying to find the answers questions about multiple touch interactivity and how this impacts on collaborative learning and pedagogy. I hope that soon I will be able to see the SMART Table in action and perhaps sound out Steljes, the SMART distributor here in the UK, about the future of multi-touch and what they foresee,

I have had a SMARTBoard in my classroom for five years and I think that multi-touch devices will become a standard for mobile technology, more and more PCs will take advantage of it, to the benefit of future classroom technology. But what is beyond that? Will mainstream multi-touch devices just remain in the hands of our students and be brought into our schools? Will it take so long for all schools to actually be able to afford multi-touch devices that the next development for user/learner information interaction is already becoming a reality?


g-speak overview 1828121108 from john underkoffler on Vimeo. 

The Philips Entertaible in our School

PhilipsPublished onUpdated on12 Comments on The Philips Entertaible in our School

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.

4 working at the same time

“ 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.