Royal purple

Wonderful - I posted it by mobile phone to Posterous and it ended up here :-) Hmmmmmm one wonders how. Investigation time!

Our Last ICT Conference

Today was our annual conference - the last one! A really fantastic day even though my feet hurt so badly now :-)

We split the building into four areas:

The Virtual Zone - showing off Learning Platform work and the use of Second Life for e-safety sessions. Children shared what they have been doing, teachers shared resources, we had a spoof video clip on the difference between the learning platform and Facebook by 11 year olds ... hmmmm ;-) I was in the virtual room and I kept losing the children to the games and mobile zones - wonder why??? Once I got a group in ready for their preso I had to bribe them with my iPad and iPhone to keep them there!

The Mobile Zone - schools showing off and talking about the use of laptop trolleys, netbook trolleys, iPod sets, mobile phone work, iPad, tablets and more (actually there was a lot of control work with Probots and Lego in that room too) it was buzzing and lively, I just wondered why the teachers were playing with the ipod touches for up to 30 minutes at a time :-) We have a tiny SMS to develop reading skills project that has just started and the teacher was in the mobile zone to talk about it. Amazingly she said at the end that loads of secondary teachers were astounded and thought it might be a good idea to let pupils use their phones in class.... wow from tiny acorns...

The Creative Zone - where Apple have been demonstrating all of the wonderful capabilities of the Apple software and launching our creative trials of MacBooks for green screen video, podcasting etc., there was an Apple Distinguished educator there all days demonstrating what could be achieved - hands on - wish I could have been there all day! Also there were pupils demonstrating stop motion animation all day with a swap over of pupils at half time :-)

Finally
The Games Based Learning Zone where teachers could see pupils using DSis, Wiis, PSPs, Kinect etc and explore how they can be used to inspire classroom projects. It is frightening just how quickly the children learn new skills such as those needed for various games on the Kinect and just how poor the adults were on the same learning curve.

Both an inspiring and sad day!  Inspiring as there was so much creativity that was being shared by children and teachers in all of the different zones but also a wide range of  great resources on show in the exhibition hall.

All of the Oxfordshire schools that attended had their evaluation forms put into a hat and a grand raffle will be drawn tomorrow to complete the event. The prizes - some 50 or more lots - is all of the kit that we have been using for years as a LA ICT team. Netbooks trolleys, laptop trolleys, ipods, cameras, sets of cameras, control kit, data sensing kit, flip cams, IWBs, projectors, wiis, DSis all sorts!

I not sure how I feel about it all - very sad obviously, glad the kit is going into schools not into a skip like so much unwanted county kit but the big county consultation document shows that my job is going, the building we use closes on the 31st July, and still two of us have not been informed about anything yet so could be expected to turn up to teach on the 1st August with no training room or facilities :-)

It was very touching to realise how many teachers are concerned for us, everyone asked what is happening and if we have heard anything yet. One of the big companies said that if I go independent to let them know and they will try to send some training my way - aren't people lovely?

mLearning - a completely on-line course

Having delivered a fair few but strangely not actually done one before, I have recently finished taking part in my first ever completely on-line training course. I really enjoyed it! It was so different from any other courses that I have done.

Most courses that I have done over the years have been one or two day training events - EPICT, CEOP, ICT Assessor training etc., where I went somewhere, took part in something and was "trained."

Thinking back to one of the last real life training courses I did for my degree, it involved me driving home from school as early as I could get away. Cooking dinner and leaving family to fend for themselves. Driving for an hour to get to the university in Oxford. Getting into the library for as long as possible before the course session began at 8pm. Into the room for 1.5 hours of note taking etc during the lecture,  an hour's drive home, wash up, sort out lunches, clothes etc. for next day and fall into bed by about midnight! Every week the children were abandoned either to mother-in-law or husband if he was on the day shift. I know it is fair to say they all disliked it! Tis true that was about 1993 and before the Internet had made life so much easier!

With no children these days and consequently much more freedom from time constraints when I said to my husband that I wanted to do a 6 week training course he more happily agreed saying to go ahead and sign up. He asked which night it was - I replied whenever I want to do it. He asked how long it would take and I replied about 5 hours a week. I still think he thought I would be away from home.

The course was 30 hours spread over 6 weeks with each week's work being made available on Tuesday evening.  I logged in on the first night and read the week's instructions, decided I needed to do as much as possible during the week to leave the weekend to family visits, housework and planning my real work for the following week as usual, so got stuck in and did the work. It soon became very clear that the on-line course enabled much more delegate interaction than I ever was aware of in the face to face course, we had forums to discuss work, to chat in, and one to sort out technical issues. We were in touch with each other!

In the face to face course I basically rushed in at the last minute, sat and listened taking notes and rushed out at the end, a typical lecture scenario, I did have tutorial time when it came to discussing my dissertation, then a further tutorial to finalise things but had little interaction with anyone really, the most being a few minutes class discussion at the end of each session.

In the on-line course I was completely free to decide when to work, all of the resources for the course had been made available or were on the web with links provided. The reading list was easily accessible, I was not fighting everyone else on the course to get one of a handful of copies held by the library - and then return them for the rest of the delegates on the course!

There were only two hours in the whole course that were scheduled, live on-line discussions, but they were recorded for people who could not attend.

It also was very obvious that everyone on the course really wanted to do it, delegates were enthusiastic about trying out new stuff and sharing their experiences.  I learned people's names, something of their work situations and interests. People were from several different countries, working in different circumstances with different age groups, bringing between them a huge wealth of experience to the work and all willing to share their knowledge. The course was exhilarating in a way I never expected it to be. I had a wonderful time!

I would absolutely recommend on-line courses to anyone wandering whether to try one or procrastinating in any form about their value. For people not used to planning their own time a little discipline may be needed but the benefits of this on-line course were great and the learning opportunities are enhanced massively.

This particular course was mLearning being run by The Consultants-E, for more information about their courses see http://www.theconsultants-e.com/, many thanks to Nicky and Gavin who ran and moderated the course and to all of the delegates who shared their experiences so freely!

A Holiday in The Gambia

Click To Play

I have just returned from a week's holiday in The Gambia. The week was supposed to be just relaxation but once we got there we signed up for a few outings - can't resist looking round just a little bit :-) We flew into Banjul international airport where there was a veritable battle over our cases with dozens of porters trying to get them onto their trolley… it was clearly going to be one of "those" holidays… tourism is one of the biggest trades and people need to make a living from it! It is a very poor country with over 1/4 of its people living below the international poverty line. It was quite funny though - we paid a porter to take the cases to the door, another to take them to the coach, a third held his handout to put them onto the coach!

The Gambia is a long, thin, low lying, small country moving inland from West Africa along the River Gambia. It has two quite clearly defined areas, north which is westernised and south which is largely traditional.  It has tropical weather and the charts show that the temperature in February is about 32 degrees. It wasn't when we were there!! I don't think it got down to 32, it was over 40 most of the time!

Click To Play

We stayed out of town in the middle of nowhere at a place called Brufut, there was nothing much except the hotel so it was very quiet and peaceful. Nearby areas such as  the Senegambia strip and Bakau town are pretty modern places with bars, restaurants and places of entertainment as well as shops, supermarkets, chemists etc.
There is a good tarmac road from the airport to where the hotels are, the locals call it the M1, there is another road going from east to west - apparently the M25 :-) Road signs etc are few and far between. tarmac is a rarity with sand being the common surface. In the rainy season roads are virtually impassable because of mud so the cars that people have over there are mostly 4 X 4s.

The river is about 700 miles long and up to 11 miles wide. We travelled the tributaries for a day seeking out beautiful birds in the mangroves. This day out was booked at the hotel, a coach was laid on to pick us up and take us to the boatyard. First impressions of the boat - well let's not go there :-)  We had two choices, sundeck or bar so we chose the sundeck. We were ordered to take our flip flops off - "shoes off, shoes off…" so we obliged and walked up the steps to see spread before us about 6 mattresses with frayed, ancient covers, wet from the low lying cloud over night - and all looking rather dilapidated.  As soon as the sun broke through though everything dried and we were set for the day. Coffee with brandy was served soon after we arrived, the most beautiful, light, crisp garlic bread mid moorings, champagne and orange juice just after that and lunch not long after that!! We were spoiled rotten. The birds were a little shy, but pelicans, stalks, whimbrel, oytsercatchers  and loads of others, I have no clue what they were called, were all there to be seen and photographed. After lunch we had a swimming stop. This was a revelation! One poor lady wanted to get in the water to cool down but was worried about the depth - apparently about 7 mts., I got in expecting to swim but it was so salty that was impossible, all I could do was float. When the lady lacking in water confidence saw me bobbing about on top she realised she had no worries. Neither swimming nor sinking was going to happen.

We spent a day travelling in the south looking at villages, there are still villages that  have to draw water from a pump house well. Children are not usually allowed near the wells, obviously any breakage would result in the loss of water to the whole village, but the villagers are clearly used to the old Bedford Army wagons arriving and know that means visitors - so the children were out in force asking for sweets and money, showing us how the well works and displacing folks actually gathering water who seemed to disappear into the background leaving us to the tender mercies of the village  young.

Extended families live in family compounds. This is normal and commonplace. In muslim areas these compounds may include several wives and sets of children. It seems that children, however young, look after the next age down, we saw that as a recurring pattern wherever we went. Tiny children gathered up even tinnier children and carried them around :-)

We drove for miles along sand tracks, past several villages and family compounds. We saw miles of walled off plots of land. Apparently people buy a plot of land and put a wall around it. As and when it is needed for a house, or they have money to build, they may build a wall or two. Over a period of years a house may appear on the plot. Meanwhile the termites build their homes on these plots with no thought whatsoever for the owners! A "comfort stop" was on the schedule, we stopped, in the bush, ladies to the right and gents to the left please :-) That was a bit of a shock to first time visitors!
As we passed one village we saw a large group of vultures. Apparently this was the place where carcasses were put, they were eating a dog at the time. The guide called them Sanitary inspectors!

We arrived, eventually at a village school. The Government provides school buildings and teachers but parents have to provide school uniforms, food etc.,  for some families that is impossible so some children still do not go to school. The headteacher at the school we visited was quite a lady! She opened with two classes, invited the tourists, invites them to leave as much money and goods as they can and uses it for education. She now has ten classrooms, a library almost complete and 550 children on role. There is an accommodation block for the teachers, whose monthly wage is about 500 dalasai (£12.50) each and the children are fed once a day at school.
The children sang and danced for us - it was delightful! They showed us their vegetable plots, where they sell the surplus food, their classes etc. They were all talking in English and many of them, at least the older ones, could hold a reasonable conversation with us in English. Looking back into the room where we had been invited to leave all of our wordily wealth and virtually everything else too, my husband saw the headteacher and travel guide squabbling over the binoculars he had put in the box :-) She won!

The music and dancing was spectacular, we watched groups several times over the week, their costumes were lovely, very colourful, very sparkly!  They sang, danced, did fire eating, all sorts with the most amazing energy.  There seemed to be lots of symbolism in the dancing, sadly I had no idea what most of it represented.

Click To Play

Several nights, after dinner, in the dark we walked along the beach. It is the Atlantic Ocean and huge rolling waves break onto the shore sending brine in white fluffy lines onto the sand.  The first time we went, as we walked, we realised the "brine" was running hell for leather back to the water as we moved. There were hundreds of white crabs from the tiniest things as small as my little finger nail up to about 6 inches across. I tried to film them but did not have the right equipment there :-(

To see photographs from the Gambia Click here

I am not convinced that I want to return - we love Africa with its colour, music, traditions, crowded, roadside stalls selling anything, animals wandering freely etc, but it is getting quite westernised and losing it's appeal in the process. Also it is still very poor, that one can do so little for them whilst there is quite upsetting.

Sounds to Inspire Writing

I am three weeks into a course being run by The Consultants-E called mLearning. In the UK I guess most of us would call it Handheld learning but in the current "down with ICT" message that I, at least , am getting from the Government I think it will be the only way for schools to go over the next ten years.

The course itself has been really interesting so far, we have been exploring what it is, our own contexts and experimenting with various techniques.

During the first week there was an exercise on sound and one of the delegates introduced the idea of a story in a sequence of sounds. It seems a very obvious way of using mobile phones, mp3 or 4 player in the primary classroom. I have taken the idea and created a few MP3s that could be downloaded and used on mobile devices to inspire writing.

How I would use them:

•    Listen once
•    Listen a second time and note down key words or phrases linked to the sounds
•    If necessary listen a third time filling out their notes
•    Pupils either work alone, in small groups to create a story
•    If pupils are working in a foreign language I may ask them to prepare to tell their story
•    If pupils were working in their own language I may get them to work in groups to make a “choose your own path through the story” in a wiki.

This exercise could be as easy or advanced as required, pupils could use only the main sounds and develop a story using them, or use every sound in sequence to make up a story, or in any other way a teacher can imagine!

Each sound files has a sound that does not really belong, e.g. the jungle has a cat’s meow and the shopping event has robotic sounds, some pupils may enjoy weaving them into a story if they hear them, others may choose to ignore the odd sounds, it really does not matter.

If you try them out please let me know if it worked, how it turned out, and if possible, share your pupil’s writing.

Jungle at Dusk
Cut Down a Tree
Whoops
Shopping Event

A mad few weeks

Well for various reasons it has been a few weeks since I wrote anything here - the main reason being my desktop computer died about a fortnight before Christmas and I have been juggling an old machine and laptop to get by! The desktop I have been using was the one I had before the one that just died, it is a bit old now and I had cleared all of my software off for my son who only used it to talk to his fiance whilst she was studying in France and he was here. Since she came over the computer has been sat idle upstairs as they use her laptop in their flat, so out it came and I have just about finished installing and updating everything again as I am going to put it back upstairs in the box room office tomorrow! However so much has been happening I feel as if I should have written a book in the time never mind a single, strange, rather mixed up, multi-themed post.

I went out to buy a new computer the other day. I had decided I wanted a nice neat all-in-one type. I found a good one, a Sony with everything I needed, but decided to have a last look around before buying, a bad move, I ended up with a big Mac, and not the burger sort :-)

It will take me a while to get used to it I think! I have loaded Parallels, Windows 7 and a new version of MS Office that I purchased and downloaded the day my old computer died. I have put a few favourite essentials on that just so the virtual computer so that I can do all that I need to do on a daily basis but where possible I am using the Mac software to start to get used to it. I am really impressed with how the Mac does things, I just wish I was a month on and knew a bit better where everything is and what to expect, I feel a little insecure at the moment!

It has been about ten days since I was at Learning Without Frontiers conference at the Barbican in London. Lots has already been written about it, it was an amazing few days with lots to see, think about and learn. The thing that just blew me away was Tim Ryland's green screen filming with children. He used the iPad app Epic Citadel as the background and started a story about two pickpockets. It was totally believable set in an "Oliver" style of old London. The children acted out the story, filmed against green, then the action was set over the old London scene. See lots more on Tim's blog posts http://www.timrylands.com/blog/2011/01/10/learning-without-frontiers-london-2011/ and http://www.timrylands.com/blog/2011/01/11/learning-without-frontiers-london-2011-2-a-few-more-links/.

I bought the software virtual world software for little ones called "All about Me" I love it! I have to pass it onto to my grandson but only when I have finished playing with it :-)
The DSi Excel was impressive, it does not have apps so is used in a different way to the iPod Touch.

See more about the LWF conference from colleague Nick at http://buzzinged.org.uk/ he has been much more productive than me ;-)

There are a lot of video clips at http://www.google.co.uk/search?q=learning+without+frontiers&ie=utf-8&oe=utf-8&aq=t&rls=org.mozilla:en-US:official&client=firefox-a#q=learning+without+frontiers&hl=en&client=firefox-a&hs=4z6&rls=org.mozilla:en-US:official&prmd=ivns&source=univ&tbs=vid:1&tbo=u&ei=t1M7TcicJMyXhQfilcXACg&sa=X&oi=video_result_group&ct=title&resnum=6&ved=0CFYQqwQwBQ&fp=18c83b03fcd69cdc  and all  of Leon's clips are being made available at http://www.l4l.co.uk/

From there we went on to BETT and sadly between meeting people, presentations and doing things for work I did not see as much as usual but the one piece of software that stood out above everything to me was the I Can Animate app by Kudlian.  The software itself has been around for a while but the app - for the new ipod touch 2s with cameras - amazing!!  It has green screen capability and I was thrilled with the small sized green board that the demos were being filmed on at their stand.  I bought the app on the train on the way home :-)  and my husband covered a small board with green felt that we just happened to have in the loft - green screen miniature studio set up and ready! When my grandson came last Sunday we created a story, he recorded the narration and we made the props. Sadly my spring loaded iPhone tripod has not yet arrived so we can't record the stop motion animation tomorrow :-( However it will be done very soon and then I will be experimenting with more ideas.

I have to just mention that after the Wednesday preso in BETT, about Second Life, a Second Life colleague whom I have only met once was at the end of a queue of people who wanted to talk after the event. I was so shocked I could not believe it was her and had to check her name badge - what a lovely surprise!! It made the whole weekend for me!

Our team and centre is due to become an Apple Regional Training Centre over the next few weeks, it has taken a while to set up and now the time is just about here I am quite excited ;-) Whilst at BETT we talked to the Apple people that we are working with and they are going to put some of the new iPod Touch 2s into our kit so hopefully at least in this one aspect - miniature green screen video creation we will be able to do something wonderful!

Our e-safety course has started again in Second Life, join us Tuesday evening for week 2!

The EVO VILLAGE 2011 is running and with so much going on at work at the moment I really am not doing nearly enough to help the team, but we did have a lot of fun outfitting everyone with new clothes last weekend! For video of that see http://lancelot.emea.acrobat.com/p27122770/.

There is more to come for the last fortnight - but tomorrow :-)

QR Code Investigations

I have been experimenting for a few weeks with using QR codes to make class puzzles or quizzes. They are ideal for out of school use where you can read one on the side of a building to find out information or open a web link explaining more about the building but I feel that children would enjoy getting used to using them. As we have a set of iPod touches that go out to schools I am hoping to write a curricular puzzle for the next school that has them but how to do it, how to plan and run a quiz or create a classroom puzzle has been a bit of a trial in itself!

I have just pulled a set of QR code investigations together into a document and wonder if there is anyone out there who would like to try them! I tried to make a quiz before Christmas, based on the story of The Night Before Christmas, but I felt it was boring so not good, I will try to refine it for next Christmas, I may know what I am doing by then!

There are issues to consider when trying to make a classroom QR code quiz, investigation or whatever, one of the hardest to deal with is that sites which use plugins, Flash and Shockwave etc. can’t be used in the work as the plugins are not available on the Apple products. ANother is reading the codes. When I had printed off my first set of QR codes to try out the quiz several did not read and I thought they had failed – but no – the way I was holding them or propping them up to try them out was what failed, the paper was floppy so bent slightly meaning the camera could not read them accurately enough.

This document The Ancient Greeks QR Code Investigation is a set of open ended investigations for older primary children who are studying the Ancient Egyptians. The differentiation in this case would have to be by outcome, I have not set differentaiated tasks, I may in the future if this sort of activity would work. It could be an extension activity for more able once they have finished the core work, I guess there are many ways in which it could be used according to the facilities available in a classroom. The pupils need internet access through a phone or iPod Touch with a QR reader such as the free one at http://itunes.apple.com/app/id368494609?mt=8 to access it.

The investigations are written as QR codes, so are the websites that pupils may use for the study! Pupils may just find the investigation title with the QR reader then go and look up information on the computer to formulate their answer, which would give some better sites for this age pupil, sadly the lack of flash on the Apple products means that many interactive children’s sites are not available on the mobile devices.

Teachers should print out the sheets and cut out the images which need to be laminated to make them rigid enough to be read by a phone or iPod Touch with a QR reader such as. The laminated code images need to be put around the classroom so that pupils can look around with the QR reader, find an investigation that they like and then find the website to help them with their answer.

The instructions code says when pupils have done 6 of the 10 investigations to go to the teacher for their prize. The answers may be as short as a sentence or could be a much bigger investigation depending on the age and ability of the pupils involved. The prize may be house points, a star or something more substantial but if that is not how you want to use the puzzle don’t put the instruction code image out. You could use a website such as http://qrcode.kaywa.com/ web site to create your own instruction!

If you use it please let me know how you use it and how it goes! If you have ideas to improve it and you have time to feed back please do that too!! If you use it I hope your children enjoy it. If it fails - I am sorry it is only and experiment but I am lacking children to try it out on these days :-(

QR Code Links
http://qrcode.kaywa.com/
http://hamsterclass.posterous.com/using-our-class-ipod-touch-to-get-help-with-t
http://www.dontwasteyourtime.co.uk/qr-codes/qr-codes-the-nuts-and-bolts/
http://mrbroadfield.blogspot.com/2011/01/using-qr-codes.html
http://www.qrstuff.com/

Things to try to make use of QR codes
Treasure hunts, maths trails, nature trails, history trails – text posters around the school.
Messages for the local community posted outside school for schools to read.
As a stimulus from writing -  take the maps of the school, plant a virtual world on top, set a quest around the school.