Experimenting with Loom

This looks such a useful resource for teachers. I made a very short video, posted it straight to Facebook, now I am going to try the embed code:




This works from a plugin in Chrome, no messing with editors etc., the video is stored in the cloud, I think I can download it - trying that next...
All in all, so far, it looks really good!

Photospheres 2 - trying indoors

I have been studying photospheres to see how people are using them!
What I would like to achieve is to make conversation or story starters.
One image which I saw, and it looked really good, was inside a workshop which gave me a whole new set of ideas.

I thought that if I could do that I would add in all sorts of artefacts to create different scenes.

I tried a 360 photo in my office - there is lot in here that could be used to start a discussion, books, photos, ornaments, two dogs, technology, all sorts. My office is far too small, the image was totally jumbled, I think each shot overwrote what went before.

I moved into our largest room, the living room, this is quite a big room. The first three tries were dreadful, bits of coffee table, books, chairs all got jumbled up. I moved the coffee table over to the patio windows so it was not in the middle of the room and got a reasonable, though far from perfect 360 photograph. I had set up just a few props to see if it was possible, the teddies in the chair, a photo, open wooden box, flowers - most of which are no use as they are not clear.

I think it needs to be a big classroom, school hall or similar to be able to set up an indoor story starter. Outdoors it is easy to makes 360 photos but detail can't easily be seen so anything that a teacher wants to inspire discussion or story writing would need to be near the photographer and fairly large.

Photospheres, how to make and embed them

The Google Street View app (IOS and Android) offers the opportunity to make photospheres: 360 degree panoramic images with the photographer in the very centre of the image and totally unseen. I have spent the week playing with it and finding out what I can do with it. This is by no means complete but a good start for anyone wishing to start creating photospheres!

To make a 360 degree image:

Download the Google Street View app
Open it on your phone or mobile device
Click on the Yellow Dot and choose to open the camera.

Line up the yellow dot with the circle on screen and it automatically takes a photograph when in line. Move right and line up the dots, follow round a complete circle, this takes about 10 images
Move the camera up or down and follow the dots again. There are five levels of yellow dots to follow and take images. (NB if your phone does not have a gyroscope you will only be able to go round in a circle around you and not complete the 360 recording.)

Once you have completed all of the images needed touch the tick and the app starts stitching the images together to create the 360 degree image. This stage takes a few minutes.

Soon after you complete it it will be available to Publish. The app automatically records where the image has been taken, and that position is where the image will be recorded in Google Maps once it is published. At this point it is available to the public.

Publishing it puts it into two places:

• it will be in your photos in the 360 folder. From there you can upload it to Facebook where it will appear as a 360 degree image.
• it will be on Google maps, but I found it fairly difficult to find! In Google Maps click on the double arrow in the bottom right corner to open images. Click on the little peg man to open the next menu which shows photospheres marked by tiny blue circles. Find the one which you want

An example of finding your photospheres:

To embed a 360 Degree image in a blog or web page

 Choose Share or Embed from the Google Maps left side navigation menu (see image left) and copy the embed code. NB you will need to access the source code of your blog, forum posting or web page to be able to paste the embed code into.

In Blogger this is clicking on the html side of the page tabs.


In many blogs look for the greater than followed by the less than
 symbols to be able to embed code.





You may need to alter the size - mine is bigger than many spaces will allow! I have changed the dimensions given (400 x 600) making it 100% wide and 480 long so hopefully it will show accurately on a mobile device but this may have to be changed yet - this is all new to me!



Tips:

1. Don't try to take a 360 in bright sunshine - the photographer casts a shadow and it is hard to look up into the sun to take that particular image!
2. Straight lines are a little tricky to get accurate - make sure that for the higher and lower level photos you actually turn round holding the phone steady to orientate the higher lines well.
3. Try to keep on the spot, concentrate on the feet.
4. Watch out for moving pets, if they appear in an overlapping image but not in the one being overlapped you seem to get an extra bit of image added in - thus putting all of it out of line.
5. When you think you have finished taking photos, check that the whole outside of the recording circle is complete! This morning I took photos, got to the end and realised there was still a small gap in the white edging. I retraced my 360 path and found two missed circles, the very first image I took had black spaces that I did not understand but now I realised I missed two shots!

First ideas about what we could do with it in education:

• use it for description work - what can you see, smell, feel, hear... speaking or writing
• use it as a story starter, put items on the photo to inspire story telling (See tomorrow's blog for a story starter, it is all planned!
• use it as a conversation starter, where is it, have you been there, where was your last holiday....

Finally for the moment - it works really well with Google cardboard for a totally immersive experience.

Many thanks to Heike Philp who first told me about the Google Street Map app and what you could do with it! I have really enjoyed finding out as much as I could.

Starting to make videos for flipping the classroom

I am going to do a series of very short posts leading people new to making videos for the flipped classroom gently through the process!

Many of us will already have several devices capable or recording video and sound, it is a matter of deciding which is the best quality for your purpose.

This first post is simply to find the resources that you can use and try them out.

Do you have a smart phone with video taking resources? Experiment with it. You may need a holder but before you spend any money try filming yourself just for one minute by holding it and taking a selfie video. Listen to it carefully, is your voice loud enough? Clear enough?  Look at it, is your image clear, good enough for someone to watch two or three minutes of you talking on a regular basis?

Before you decide on using your phone what else do you have? Flip cameras, small hand held camcorders and many digital cameras have the capacity to take digital video. Try them! Will they pick up your audio?

Do you have a laptop with a built in web cam? Try it and watch and listen!

Do you have a headset with a mic? Plug that into your laptop, does that help? It should block out most of the background sound in your surroundings.

Do you have a desktop with a web cam? Again it will be much better with a headset and mic rather than using its own mic which will be further away from you and so quieter as well as picking up all the background sound around you.

Do you have a tablet capable or recording video and sound? Does it have its own tiny headset as the iPad does? If so prop that up and record yourself again with an eye and ear for quality of sound and picture.

Do you have an external mic that you can plug in and have hear you? If so try it out and again listen to the quality! I have a very good quality mic but a small web cam - they will not record synchronously! The video lags behind the audio - much more infuriating that slightly poorer quality sound.

So - first things first! Try everything out that you already have a find the best combination to use.

Web sites that may help

How to use a digital Camera from Jisc

A Google search for phone tripods

Information on choosing a headset

The Future of E-Learning

Find more education infographics on e-Learning Infographics

Demonstrating ThingLink

http://thinglinkblog.com/2014/12/18/6-amazing-appsmashes-to-inspire-creativity/

Demonstrating ThingLink

http://thinglinkblog.com/2014/12/18/6-amazing-appsmashes-to-inspire-creativity/

Learning Minecraft 1

The first session as part of EVO 2015 was 16 Jan 2015. Thanks To Filip and Kalios who got me started!
My intro - I live in Wales, have been a teacher for far too many years. Love making machinima and would like to make some in Minecraft - once I have learned how to manage the game itself. I tried it a few months ago but never got very far - just kept getting killed!

Ebbe Altber's keynote speech at the Virtual World’s Best Practice in Education

I just listened to Ebbe Altber's keynote speech at the Virtual World’s Best Practice in Education. Ebbe is the new CEO of Lindenlab. The best news is that he wants to make the metaverse easier for all - consumers and creators! This speech was good news to us all!

He told us he was there to start the dialog, to figure out where to go from here. He has looked at branding and TOS and integration... “I am working with legal counsel to figure out how to make it more obvious or very obvious that creators own content” and Second Life are not wishing to lock it in but to make it easy to move to OpenSim.  “We have a breadth of content creators for many purposes. This is unique to SL. We should support everybody.

There is still so much to do to make the metaverse so much easier for all consumers and creators, even with all of the work that we are doing it is still too hard for many users.

Nobody else has an environment this open and where users take it where they want to take it.”

Future Technology

Most of the responses here are verbatim but not in speech marks in case there is something not perfectly accurate!

We are developing core tech, including Oculus. There is already a beta version

As the hardware develops, we will be next to it, we want you not to be looking at the world but being in it.

With Oculus we have worked focused on viewing experience, not yet the user interface.

The keyboard disappears; we want to explore how to make changes in how you interact with the world. With a full time liaison, you can think up a million things we COULD do but we need to prioritize. You won't all agree on what is top priority. It takes a lot of resources and time to engage in that conversation and that is a cost. Many are not up to speed on the topic, are biased, or are not experienced. It can add a lot of cost to involve everyone in design, we want to be more transparent, we want feedback, to learn from you, to correct things, we learn from watching what you do.”

Someone asked about the bad press and if it was possible to improve that status.  Ebbe said that SL got overhyped too early, some was self-inflicted, and maybe there was a hope that tens of millions would use it.

There came a backlash, it became bad or negative, that is unfortunate, there is a lot of good stuff happening here, not seen outside.  We want to correct this. The market is starting to embrace virtual reality.

Could the linden dollar spread outside Second Life?

Ebbe replied we would love to do that but it is a massive undertaking.

“I spoke earlier of compliance, to do compliance on a scale that bankers are comfortable with, we are fortunate to be so far along, nobody else is this far,  we want to make safer high volume transactions. We are talking about that, we have done all the compliance work to be in line with state and federal regulations.”

Are there any current projects you can share that will make the viewer easier to use and more intuitive?

One effort was not received well, to simplify it. I don't know why yet. Ultimately, in order for SL to grow, it has to become easier to use. It takes too much time to engage and immerse people and make them functional… we can't go mass market as we are today.

Following up, are there any plans in improving transparency with 3rd party viewer -  innovations may come faster

We do a decent job of collaborating with open source, Oz Linden interfaces with third party players.

That community adds value to provide other viewers optimum for other audiences.

WE can't do everything for all, those with disabilities, those on other platforms

We need those communities to help us.

I think we have a good relationship with the open source community.

It is a double edged sword, some open source developers took advantage and did nasty things.

What tech from HiFi be used in SL?

Ebbe- I hope it will create many advances many can benefit from to move virtual worlds and virtual reality forward. The more new hardware and interfaces, it moves us all forward.

 Philip and I know each other well, some of us will visit them in a couple of weeks to see demos

how we can help each other, it is early stages - I am transparent with Philip, we have assets that are valuable to them, and I hope we can collaborate.

I am interested in the work they are doing with bringing emotion into your avatar experience, see the expressions on a face, what emotions can be expressed visually, they are working in that area.

I want to be sure we provide that level of emotional capability to our avatars

We are aware that latency increases and impacts performance, further away from America you have increased latency and reduced sense of functionality , we are testing what aspects cause these issues, we have to create a lower latency tech, we need to push less data over the pipe.

You had mentioned that you were looking to allow people to export their content/  Will there be an export flag that will help?

Nothing we are doing technically prevents export. Many get their content out.

Maybe it is third party solutions, we are not preventing. Are we making it simple enough from our viewer?

Maybe we need to make that more streamlined, we are not preventing it, but we don't want it to be easy for others to rip people off.

I have to look at that. It's a permission issue?

Ebbe should there be permissions to allow export?

I need to understand it better. If you own it you can take it. Ownership is a complex issue for us to reduce copybotting and stealing.

We don't want to be inflexible, permissions, monitoring tools, preventing fraud, we want to protect you and your creations.

In the foreseeable future we will be working on the main grid without restricting what people can do, once we solve it so adults can use it, then we can go to attract other audiences, other special cases but no teen grid in the near term, I would love to do it, but it is priorities.

We need to make SL more welcoming, If ease of use and quality and tech more flexible, we may arrive at a place where it would not be cumbersome to offer to more dedicated special audiences, but this is not a top priority.

As people start to be inworld, with their relevant projects, they will see how their work can improve.

I hope more Lindens will come inworld to interact with users so that can be a more normal comfortable thing. If we do special meetings, what topics, who would facilitate? How do we make sure something actionable comes out of it? If there are interest groups, like an ed group, that wants to have a more regular check in, we can see which Linden would like to participate.

As in RL every hobby and interest group, there are only a few Lindens, how can we engage, that is a challenge. I am happy to spend some of my time learning but how to do it fairly and efficiently?

We have to do what will have the most benefit for the most people

None of this would exist without all we have done together.

If the community has things to do, if they want to invite us to participate, today you will find more people who can and are willing to participate.

We are all ears we want to figure out how to engage with all of you.

Unless we do something technical, nothing will change. If we have conversations, that won't be enough to create change.

My dream is to make this something a huge number of people can enjoy and contribute to, this is just the beginning, there is more to come.

Facebook buying Oculus is excellent. They see the future we have all been working on

OnLive third party using our open source technology will make a viewer for the tablet

We do have conversations; we collaborate with all 3rd party teams

They improved their pricing model.

You can reach out to individual Lindens if you think they are interested.

Ebbe -  like an interest group catalogue to know meeting times and formats.

I know Torley. I understand his role. He can go inworld and hang out as much as he feels he has the time to do so.

We are here. We are willing to listen and dialog.  We want to talk about the future. The doors are open again.

We want to know how to make you successful.

That's it. I'm here. I'm happy to talk with all of you.

I want to learn and listen. I want to make you successful.

Philip Rosedale talking about the future of education in Virtual worlds

A few notes taken whilst listening to Philip Rosedale talking about the future of education in Virtual worlds.

He says that in addition to hardware, we need fast networks and low latency, and software that enables high speed transmission - then we can be emotionally connected with everyone.  We can literally see into the eyes of our students. High Fidelity is starting to make this available right now!

The architect or structure for moving forward - identity continues to evolve, avatars need to express and experience empathy to create more dedication to their avatar. Choices - mechanisms to identify folks become necessary – so that you can prove who you are! We need a shared marketplace that is independent of all servers where you can exchange content. Hyperlinking, or a doorway from one place to the next has to be clear – with maybe a look-up system like DNS?

We will be developing an internetwork of virtual worlds – Opensim and Second Life have started. Open source and open protocols need to be used. (No off switch)

Currently we have to use a mouse, with 2 degrees of freedom, up/down or side to side, the new software has up to 12 degrees of movement!

We should be able to host a rock concert will need hundreds or maybe thousands of machines – we can do it! We are experimenting with this at High Fidelity. You can get a lot of machines on line quickly so it is technically feasible. If everyone on the internet were talking at the same time, there aren't enough servers. There are 1/2 to 1 million physical servers and SL uses a significant percentage of them.

The next generation of VWs is likely to be built on shared machines! The implication is that to get access to all those machines that is several orders of magnitude higher than we have now...

On a tech side note, like the Oh Wow of Oculus, we have to see more stuff in the world.

When you fly up in SL, why can't you see the whole thing? We need a technology even better than SL that allows us to see 10 miles in the distance.

The hardware that we are going to see come on the market are fundamentally open the doors

The new hardware, led by Oculus, will open the doors to higher and easier ways to interface with virtual environments. The Leap and Connect are powerful.  In High Fidelity we use the short range version.

Without the learning curve, the population will grow.

The Architecture needs to be open.

We will be able to teach, seeing the eyes of the students – students really looking at you and paying attention! We can do things with specialised audio with higher power machines. The big challenge is getting more machines in the mix.

The privacy issues are going to be rich. When people have their own VW servers, we make decisions of trust as avatars coming into servers. We must have negotiations with the server.

For lots more info read http://highfidelity.io/

http://joyardley.wordpress.com/2014/04/07/hifiprogress/

http://highfidelity.io/blog/author/philip/

Well having finally settled in mid Wales, New Quay to be exact we are developing a whole new lifestyle.

Things we do now that we never did before

• Live according to the tide times – we plan the whole day around the tides being unable to walk along the beach at high tides we need to go when it is low tide J What a shock to go doggie walking and to find water up past the entry point to the beach because I was not watching the tide tables!
• Do almost all of our shopping online! I used to live about 4 miles form a big, well known supermarket and dropped in most days to pick up odds and ends or do a proper shop.  Now, to get anything close to a big supermarket, and the term big is somewhat exaggerated here, we have to drive over 20 miles! When we do approach one of the two slightly larger towns, Aberystwyth or Cardigan we have a mile long list of bits and pieces to pick up.
• Drink less coffee – I still can’t get used to the taste of coffee made with soft water
• Wash hair less – again a soft water issue
• I am still trying to perfect the art of drying and utilising seaweed – I know it is good for us, just not getting it right, yet!
• Getting really good at remembering to take bags shopping – I get cross at having to pay for carrier bags but it is against the law for bags to be given out freely in Wales

Things I wish were better:

·         Bandwidth!  That and the hills will be the two reasons that we leave here in a couple of years. Every day without fail my internet drops – enough to put the router out and create the need for a full restart – it drives me crazy. One very famous internet provider say we should get better when I complain – then, two weeks later send me a text saying they hope my problem is over now – I ask why it would be – they can’t answer!

Things that we love:

• Waking up to see the sea
• Walking through the woods and on the beach
• The people

Things we don’t love:

•  Sandy, salty windows after a storm
• Mud
• The poor workmanship in the house meaning it is almost being rebuilt to get it into good order despite having a great report from the surveyor! 
• Local Time – Pembroke time / Cardigan times / Welsh time etc – tomorrow often does not mean tomorrow, it is a term related loosely to some point in the future. This afternoon is not necessarily referring to any time today - just guess!
• The nearest train station being more than 20 miles away

We will stay here for a while, we are too far away from out family really, have very mixed feelings about where we belong still talking about where our kids are as "home" but it is a complete change and mostly great :-)

Testing a wordsearch maker

Make Your Own Word Search

Aesop’s Fables - Machinima to aid language learning

Just recently I have been working with Hazel Workman to  create  whole new set of machinima based on Aesop’s Fables. We both love second Life and it has become great fun to see how we can be portray the characters, as there are just two of us so some crowd scenes have had to be done with various chroma key techniques, these are Hazel’s speciality!  

Machinima is such a new form of video we have been trying to think of new ways to engage language learners with them to enhance language teaching.

See the ones created so far:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jTC04DLQU3U - The Bear and the Two travellers

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bCeFESuaEdg – The Fox and the Woodcutter

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=slhk60n3Id0 – The Dancing Monkeys

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2SFuZKtvDhk – The Milkmaid and her Pail

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ymW3QKuHWXg – The Fox and the Cat

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=C3mTRcmS5bM – The Dog and his Shadow

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=m97xBVQnWfc – Heracles and the Lion

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_3HOMP1c_RI – The Fox, Cockerel and Dog
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MVbBuBh-URc&feature=youtu.be - The Dog and the Wolf
https://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=GUDyZo4ff-A - The Fox who lost his Tail

So what can we do with these machinima in language classes?

First thoughts:

·        To start with there is lots of discussion in these stories, there is unfamiliar, maybe old fashioned language to be investigated.
·        The quality of English is poor, it is hard not to improve it whilst recording them – advanced students could work to improve the language of the tales.
·        Students could do their own retelling of the story. Project the machinima, without sound into the classroom and allow students to relate their version of the story to their peers.
·        As a longer project allow students to use the video footage and make a new soundtrack and thus produce a new machinima.
·        Students could do a complete re-write of the story set in current times with two people instead of two animals, act them out in class, and possibly make a video of the new story.
·        Investigate how some of the morals have become everyday idioms, this could lead to lots more work on idioms. Following are the morals and a few idioms that I consider possible offshoots or at least would make good discussion openers in brackets.

o   Misfortune tests the sincerity of friends. (A house divided against itself cannot stand.)

o   There is as much malice in a wink as in a word. (A nod is as good as a wink to a blind horse.)

o   Not everything you see is what it appears to be. (All that glitters is not gold or aA Leopard can't change his Spots. )

o   Do not count your chickens before they are hatched. (Don’t count your chickens before they are hatched.)

o   Better one safe way than a hundred on which you cannot reckon. (Better to be safe than sorry.)

o   Beware lest you lose the substance by grasping at the shadow. (A bird in the hand is worth two in the bush.)

o   We can easily represent things as we wish them to be.  (Sail under false colours, or, Something is not be what it is cracked up to be.)

o   Cunning often outwits itself.  (As cunning as a fox, or too clever by half, too clever for your own good.)

If you are able to use the machinima please share you experiences. To check on the rest, there are more in development, subscribe to my You Tube Channel: http://www.youtube.com/channel/UCmTOaApJW37OjkBmtkGw3xw

Minehead and Estate Agents all over the place

One day we crossed the peninsular and went over to investigate all along from Minehead. We drove around looking at houses, eventually about 2pm we drove along the front, right out of the main area there was plenty of roadside parking and we came across a space right outside a pub with gardens. They were happy to have the dogs and we were happy to eat. We climbed the steps up to the beer gardens, ordered dinner chatted and looked around, it was lovely, lively, and there was lots of music at ground level. We did not spot any houses that we wanted to visit for a second time and returned to the caravan.

I was looking at houses on the web and spotted a house in Minehead that we had not seen. It was a good write-up, sounded like it had potential, looked nice, so we decided to go back and see it and another one on the Wednesday. Armed with the post code we retraced our steps and parked outside the house, it was right next door to the pub, the pub’s garden was adjoining the house garden, but none of the high level gardens showed in the picture! When we got back and looked at the picture on the web there were blue sky and clouds where we could see gardens… hmmmm – what a waste of a journey! The second house which we wanted to see, rural, large gardens etc looked pretty on the picture, no-one mentioned the electric pylon on the edge of the land overshadowing the house and garden – again it was not shown in the photos – what is the point, some of what I have seen goes beyond poetic licence and in my opinion is verging on blatant dishonesty.

I put a couple of requests for info in, stating quite clearly there had to be an acre of land or more, the condition of the house did not matter and it had to be rural and subsequently got blasted with hundreds of houses none of which had land or were rural… I think everything in my price range had been sent.

So far the British seaside around the areas that we have visited have been a huge disappointment. It is true that we have not been around the coast much in the UK in recent years. When and why did all the beaches ban dogs? That seems sad to me. Things have changed become more commercialised than ever and have largely been spoiled (IMHO) I am sure that others will disagree. 

Broad Haven Beach

Boton Haven - a pretty but tiny bay

Charmouth allows dogs after 6pm so each evening we drive the 13 miles there to walk along the beach and looked for fossils or just looked at what the children there had found as they walked along proudly clutching their finds. 

 As well as the beach there is the actual river mouth too.

Surprise in Weymouth

We searched along the coast towards Weymouth for suitable houses to buy and approached Portland towards lunchtime. We stopped to eat and were suddenly surprised by seeing The Red Arrows - it was a festival day in Weymouth! So from the suburbs we had an amazing presentation. Sadly most of it was behind houses and telephone wires, we had been totally unprepared to take photos, we never knew it was happening!

A friend posted this video link:  http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dRaK2ni9UAg&feature=youtu.be thanks Hazel :-)

The joys of caravanning

Cooking in a caravan is an art form – I have not mastered it. There is nowhere to put anything! It is a nightmare. The most success that we have had is to barbecue any meat and veges suitable for cooking on the bbq and cook rice, potatoes etc on the small stove.

We did have a lovely lunch, it was glorious sunshine so we sat outside, it was hot so I had a Crabbies – I love ginger beer! I had not realised that there was a tiny drop left in the bottle, so when washing up after dinner H picked up the bottle and told me I had not finished my drink, I had already washed the glasses so I tipped the bottle into my mouth, there was less than a mouthful – and a wasp! So now with a smashed up toe and severe limp I had a swollen tongue having been stung in the mouth – the joys of caravanning.

Another joy of caravanning - where did all of the laundrettes go? We have searched the web which lumps laundries and laundrettes together - and gone to laundries... travelled miles to wash the laundry!

How I long to soak in a hot bath - showers are fine for getting clean but I consider my bath an essential part of the night time ritual - relaxing! No bath in three weeks equates to not much sleep in three weeks, that failure to relax along with the fact I can't have all of the windows wide open is not good and apparently I had conversations out loud with unseen people every time I dropped off to sleep last night :-(

Also if one uses a multi plug for charging phones and a laptop the resulting buzz for people listening to me in Second Life, where I teach for two days a week is a nightmare - so no charging phones or ipad or anything else whilst trying to teach - I am learning!!

One funny moment - was when approaching the Severn Bridge I put on the iPad to see how much the toll was going to be - it asked beautifully whether I wanted to link to my own network, I had left the phone providing data access on whilst it was packed away in the caravan which we were towing :-)

The sites which we have been on have cut the field grass, but not picked the grass up, so every time one of us or one of the dogs comes into the caravan,  especially when it is wet, we bring soggy grass cuttings in. We must hoover up about 6 times a day just to keep it bearable.

I can't, for the life of me, understand why anyone would ever want to go caravanning. The only joy so far has been meeting some lovely people.

Starting the search

We started searching went all around Lyme Regis, Bridport, across to Weymouth – all around that area and saw two delightful building plots, sadly beyond our price range once you have taken actually putting a house on the land.

We soon discovered that most beaches have banned dogs so it is really difficult to find somewhere for the dogs to have a good run and ours are used to space. Charmouth beach, which has rapidly become one of the places I love most in the world allows dogs on after 6pm, so each evening we headed to the beach to take them for a lovely long walk. Neither had seen the sea, so it was interesting at first, now as soon as they spot it they think we are going for a walk - a nightmare once we got to Wales and started touring the coast!

We did a little fossil hunting, but, sadly after smashing a rock with a bigger rock, the bigger one glanced off the one I was trying to break and hit my toe - I now have a self-inflicted black, swollen toe and am likely to lose the nail :-(

Starting in Somerset

We left Phillip's for a two hour drive to Somerset, but never took into account Stonehenge - a ten mile traffic jam - so it was a  four hour journey!

We arrived at Forton House in Chard, Somerset about late afternoon and the owner directed us to a hard standing pitch, and told us where to plug in the electric – great! It was raining and chilly. We got water, made a coffee and sat, with two dogs, in the fully loaded caravan, the awning taking up all of the middle ground, and contemplated our next move. To put the awning up was pointless in the rain, we thought we should put all of the stuff for the awning (camping chairs, table, the awning itself in the car and just settle into the caravan for the evening when we got a knock at the door. Two mobile homes had pulled in and one had no power as we were plugged into the only socket which they could reach…. So we moved! The site is tiny, enough room for 5 caravans, a toilet block and electric and water, the main reason we chose it was for the dogs. The house has four dogs, the site and all of the grounds are dog-proof and the owners were happy for our dogs to roam free. Finally we piled most stuff into the car and settled down in the caravan for the evening. The whole caravan system is computerised – with a wonderful book of instructions, I followed them to the letter about 5 times, we eventually got heating about 11pm – overnight when we did not want it, but I thought I had cracked it, thought the next evening would be sorted.

Sunday morning was lovely, sunshine, once everything had dried up we pulled out all of the awning poles, set it all up, introduced the dogs to their beds in the awning, I set up my computer ready for teaching and all seemed well.  Evening arrived and it began to feel cool, and cooler, and cold, did the heating come on?? No, despite my best efforts, not until 11pm… we began to think there must be a timer somewhere – but no, this is an on-going problem.

We went out looking at areas and for houses, spent ages trawling estate agent sites, I really and truly decided that estate agent sites are very poor. Some we printed off, those of houses we were interested in lacked house names and addresses, not even having reference numbers so that when we phoned it took the agent ages to find out which house we were wanting to see. 

Selling up

With an acceptable offer on the house we said “yes,” they said “great” followed by “is about 6 weeks to move out okay?”  We said “yes,” they came back and said “can you move in three?” :-) That is where the story starts. The following Saturday we bought a huge trailer, started to pack and move the stuff we wanted to keep to our son’s very large garage, we started selling and giving away much of 25 years’ worth of unneeded household items. The following week, after a quick investigation we bought a huge caravan and awning, kept packing, picked up the caravan, loaded it up, kept moving stuff and finally almost three weeks later I spent my usual Friday teaching on the internet sat at my desk in an empty room, almost no other furniture in the house and just about ready to leave. However we were not completing the sale until the following Tuesday so we decided to take advantage of the weekend to attend Cropredy festival, a long-time favourite!!

Cropredy was lovely, great music, lovely weather and very relaxing after the hectic preceding couple of weeks.

Also a wonderful video clip!

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=f9eS8Xjox4k

After returning home and packing the last few bits, including our mattress on the Sunday, we had to sleep in the caravan in the drive for the Sunday and Monday nights. The trailer, with the last few bits in, was taken and unloaded and then left at our son’s house and, Tuesday, moving day, dawned. I sat on the floor in a completely empty house, near the hub to teach until 5pm, when we loaded the dogs and computer into the car, hitched up the caravan and set off. First stop for a few days was our son’s house, the first caravan place that we booked had managed to double book so there was not going to be power or hard standing until the following Saturday. We spent the five days getting used to living in the caravan – not easy – especially since we could not put up the awning. However it was made much easier by the use of a nice bathroom, washing machine, space for the dogs, fields for the dogs to walk in etc. Actually looking back after two more weeks this was luxury.

Driving round the estate with Phillip we saw fields of sunflowers, they were beautiful!

Nexus 7 - My first quick look

Yesterday evening I bought a Nexus 7 and have had a short time to start to get a feel for it. My first impressions:

• Setup – quick and easy,  it linked instantly to wifi, no problems at all.
• It is a lovely size, I can hold it comfortably in one hand whilst keying in messages, or searches with the other! The touch screen is very quick and responsive, it rotates as required.
• I have done a podcast test, I downloaded an audio recording app which can be e-mailed, so I made a recording, as if I was a student, posted it to me as a teacher and used the recording to add to a group podcast in Audacity! Sadly I had to do a file conversion before I could use it in Audacity – but that was my first trial, there may be an app that will do it.
• It has a WordPress app – yay J I have not used it yet, but I guess I should be able to update the WordPress blog that I work on frequently if not at a computer.
• I downloaded Google Drive – so have access to all of my own and shared Google docs, brilliant for collaboration.
• I downloaded two camera apps, one takes a picture and reproduces it in sketch format, at can also be used as a video recorder. The other tool real images and then had masses of effects that can be added to the image. Sadly the camera is forward facing only, so can be used for face to face VOIP apps such as Skype, could be used for interviews, but it is not a device to take photographs of places.
•  Pocket / Chrome / Dropbox / Flip / Facebook / Linkedin and maybe more apps yet, I just signed into and got my content – perfect!
•  I clicked on an arrow saying Navigation – and found a beta satellite navigation system. I put in our nearest town and watched it find the town. I put it down and went into the kitchen but could soon hear talking – it was telling me where to go. Even in an old stone house it had found satellites to follow. When I did go into town later – it led the way! I was amazed.
• The TED videos, BBC News - great..

I have not had time to play with much yet, I am still looking for apps to perform various tasks but first impressions are that it would be perfect for a school device. It links wirelessly, has loads of opportunities for learning and collaboration and the price, at £199 for the 16GB one is good.  Its 9.5 hour battery life is great for school, I guess that this is if it is used constantly, I have used mine for an hour here and there today but it is not showing signs of running down yet, it has more than half of its battery image still showing power. 

Two things that I would like to see for my own use:

3G accessibility 

A mini sd card for extra storage, though I can use Google Drive

A forward facing camera

However I think it is a delight, I am thrilled with it!