OllieBray.com

New Technology and Outdoor Learning: Summary

When I first started to write up my presentation from the  2010 Learning and Teaching Scotland Outdoor Learning Regional Events it was going to be one long post. In the end I split it into eight shorter ones because I seemed to have a lot to say.

I promised delegates at the event that I would post my slides and notes on-line.

The slides that I used are embedded below:

Outdoor Learning and New Technology

View more presentations from Ollie Bray.

The notes from the presentation are in eight parts:

• New Technology and Outdoor Learning: Introduction

• New Technology and Outdoor Learning - 1 of 8: Geocaching

• New Technology and Outdoor Learning (2 of 8): Educaching

• New Technology and Outdoor Learning (3 of 8): Using Mobile Phones

• New Technology and Outdoor Learning (4 of 8): 4 of 8: Bing Maps and Google Earth

• New Technology and Outdoor Learning (5 of 8): Activities with purpose - Open Street Map and Microsoft Photosynth

• New Technology and Outdoor Learning (6 of 8): Using Blogs

• New Technology and Outdoor Learning (7 of 8): Inspiring Stories

• New Technology and Outdoor Learning (8 of 8): The Curriculum

I guess with this summary post that makes ten in total!

We are the People We've Been Waiting For [Scottish Screening]

I’ve been really impressed with what I have heard from Lord David Puttnum at various conferences such as Handheld Learning Conferences and NAACE. That is why I have just signed up to a free event on Wednesday night at the Dominion Cinema, Edinburgh.

The doors open at 6pm (for drinks and socializing) and there is a chance to see the first Scottish screening of  ‘We Are The People We’ve Been Waiting For’ this is a full-length feature film on education, inspired and guided by Oscar-winning producer Lord Puttnam.

The film follows the experiences of five Swindon based teenagers and looks at education across nations and generations.  What unfolds during the course of the film is a very inconvenient truth about education. The world has changed enormously but education in the UK has not kept pace.

Its narrated by John Hannah and featuring contributions from Richard Branson, Germaine Greer, Henry Winkler and Sir Michael Barber.

After the screening of the film there is an opportunity for a question and answer session with Keith Brown MSP; Ken Mackintosh MSP; Murdo Fraser MSP and Margaret Smith MSP.

Dirk Van Damme from the OEDC will also be at the event. He wrote an interesting piece in the TESS on Friday if you have not already seen it.

The trailer for  ‘We Are The People We’ve Been Waiting For’ is embedded below and if you want a free ticket email : Yvonne@cspp.org.uk (there are some left!)

New Technology and Outdoor Learning (8 of 8): The Curriculum

This is the eighth of eight posts where I discuss some of the things that I talked about at the 2010 Learning and Teaching Scotland Outdoor Learning Regional Events

One of the parts of the 2010 Learning and Teaching Scotland Outdoor Learning Regional Events was to let delegates have an opportunity to read over the relatively new Curriculum for Excellence Through Outdoor Learning Document. I personally think that this is one of the best Curriculum for Excellence documents that has been produced so far.

The core values of Curriculum for Excellence echo the key concepts of outdoor learning: challenge, enjoyment, relevance, depth, development of the whole person and an adventurous approach to learning.

Curriculum for Excellence also offers opportunities for all children and young people to enjoy first-hand experience outdoors, whether within the school grounds, in urban greenspaces, in Scotland’s countryside or in wilder environments.

Such experiences inspire passion, motivating our children and young people to become successful learners and to develop as healthy, confident, enterprising and responsible citizens.

If you have not read the document you should even if you are a school from outside Scotland. You can view it online here and download it here.

During the Outdoor Learning Regional Events delegates were also shown the new Learning and Teaching Scotland Outdoor learning Web Pages. The LTS Online service is about to get a bit of a facelift but much of the outdoor learning content will remain the same.

One of the best features of the new site is the section on ‘where to go?’ in this section you can type in your schools address or postcode and it will list some of the outdoor learning opportunities that are close to your school using a Google Map.

There is also a great section on Risk Assessment as well as lots of great outdoor learning case studies in the support for staff area.

New Technology and Outdoor Learning (7 of 8): Inspiring Stories

This is the seventh of eight posts where I discuss some of the things that I talked about at the 2010 Learning and Teaching Scotland Outdoor Learning Regional Events.

There is something about adventure stories that captures the imagination of people and this includes children. I think it is really good when schools capitalize on ‘live’ adventure and follow the journey on-line.

Mark Beaumont is really good at doing this. Many readers of this website will have followed his journey on-line when he smashed the cycling around the world record. His second big adventure ‘Cycling the Americas’ made great use of social media and you were able to follow his blog (which often included audio and video), his twitter feed and his flickr photo stream.

I know some schools that used Marks journey as a real context for learning to teach children about cycling, emergency repairs, place, health, geography and imaginative writing.  I think that this sort of thing is fantastic because it helps to inspire children to go on their own adventures and explore places for themselves.

Of course Mark is not the only person who has a story to tell there are a number of adventure texts that often find there way into Scottish Schools. Jamie Andrews, the Edinburgh climber who has all four limbs amputated after a climbing accident in the French Alps has written up his story. Its been used in a number of Scottish schools and LEA's not only as an appropriate text for an English class but also for work in PSHE to discuss with children some big issues such as loss, recovery, appearance and disability.

Alistair Humphreys also has a great story to tell. After he cycled around the world no one would publish his book. So he published it on LuLu (a website that allows anyone to publish books) he has now sold thousands of copies. Not only is his writing really good but his self belief and determination in his work is also really useful to discuss with children and young people.

I also like the mico-journeys that Alistair shares on his website. I thought his journey around the M25 on foot with Rob Lilwall was absolute genius and I completely agree with him when he says ‘you can have adventures anywhere’.

Kenny O'Donnell even connected his class on Twitter to Alistair while he was up training for a future trip recently in the Arctic – what a great opportunity for the class to communicate with a real expolorer and technology has made all of this possible!

Finally, keep your eyes out for an announcement fairly soon about some work that we are going to be doing on adventure narrative in schools.

New Technology and Outdoor Learning (6 of 8): Using Blogs

This is the sixth of eight posts where I discuss some of the things that I talked about at the 2010 Learning and Teaching Scotland Outdoor Learning Regional Events.

Blogs are a simple form of website and they are a really good way to be able to document an outdoor learning experience or school trip online. They can be used in very simple ways for sharing information with parents, hosting photographs and providing a place for people to leave comments while the children are away on their outdoor experience.

The Musselburgh Grammar School Trips website is a great example of how the web can be used to support outdoor learning.  Not only are many of the outdoor learning experiences that young people take part in at Musselburgh documented there but it is also a place where parents and students can download letters, consent forms and find out information on the sort of things that they will be up to when taking part in school trips.

One trip that has been established for a long time at Musselburgh is the School French Trip. The latest version of the site has been in existence since 2006 but there have been a number of previous versions. 

Some of the things that the site does include:

1) News - Information from the field while the group is away.


2) Podcasts – audio recording of what the group get up to every day and personal reflections from each of the partisipants.



3) Photographs - Pictures from the trips over the years. Along with the audio recordings these make a lovely digital archive of the experience.



4) Information Zone – links to web cams of the area, tourist information points and trip itinerary.



5) Comments – a place that other children and parents can leave comments while the group is away. The comments are read out o the bus to the children every morning.



On another blogging note:

• The Outdoor Learning Team at Learning and Teaching Scotland also has a blog where you can find all of the latest Learning and Teaching Scotland Outdoor Learning News.

• Another great Outdoor Learning Blog worth a look at is the one from the East Lothian Outdoor Learning Team.

• Juliet Robertson (Creative Star) writes the "I'm a teacher, get me OUTSIDE here! : The emergency exit to outdoor learning..." blog

• Bill Stephen wites "Bill's Outdoor (and Indoor) Learning" Blog
  

New Technology and Outdoor Learning (6 of 8): Using Blogs

This is the sixth of eight posts where I discuss some of the things that I talked about at the 2010 Learning and Teaching Scotland Outdoor Learning Regional Events.

Blogs are a simple form of website and they are a really good way to be able to document an outdoor learning experience or school trip online. They can be used in very simple ways for sharing information with parents, hosting photographs and providing a place for people to leave comments while the children are away on their outdoor experience.

The Musselburgh Grammar School Trips website is a great example of how the web can be used to support outdoor learning.  Not only are many of the outdoor learning experiences that young people take part in at Musselburgh documented there but it is also a place where parents and students can download letters, consent forms and find out information on the sort of things that they will be up to when taking part in school trips.

One trip that has been established for a long time at Musselburgh is the School French Trip. The latest version of the site has been in existence since 2006 but there have been a number of previous versions. 

Some of the things that the site does include:

1) News - Information from the field while the group is away.


2) Podcasts – audio recording of what the group get up to every day and personal reflections from each of the partisipants.



3) Photographs - Pictures from the trips over the years. Along with the audio recordings these make a lovely digital archive of the experience.



4) Information Zone – links to web cams of the area, tourist information points and trip itinerary.



5) Comments – a place that other children and parents can leave comments while the group is away. The comments are read out o the bus to the children every morning.



On another blogging note:

• The Outdoor Learning Team at Learning and Teaching Scotland also has a blog where you can find all of the latest Learning and Teaching Scotland Outdoor Learning News.

• Another great Outdoor Learning Blog worth a look at is the one from the East Lothian Outdoor Learning Team.

• Juliet Robertson (Creative Star) writes the "I'm a teacher, get me OUTSIDE here! : The emergency exit to outdoor learning..." blog

• Bill Stephen wites "Bill's Outdoor (and Indoor) Learning" Blog
  

New Technology and Outdoor Learning (5 of 8): Activities with purpose - Open Street Map and Microsoft Photosynth

This is the fifth of eight posts where I discuss some of the things that I talked about at the 2010 Learning and Teaching Scotland Outdoor learning Regional Events.

I think that all outdoor learning should have a purpose otherwise it is just ‘outdoor’ (isn’t it?). During my presentation at the Learning and Teaching Scotland Outdoor Learning Regional Events I talked a lot about purpose including:

• Learning new skills and reflecting on what you have learnt
• Overcoming physical challenge and understanding progression
• Facing your fears and sharing this with others
• Collecting scientific data and publishing your results to a wide audience
• To complete a national accreditation award eg: John Muir or Duke of Edinburgh Award
• Geocashing

I also talked in detail about two other technologies that could add purpose to outdoor journeys.

These were:

1) Open Street Map

OpenStreetMap (OSM) is a collaborative project to create a free editable map of the world. Maps are created using data from portable GPS devices, aerial photography, other free sources or simply from local knowledge. Both rendered images and the vector graphics are available for download under a Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 2.0 license.

Again, children gathering real data to support global collaboration projects like this provides real purpose for students work. One of the most impressive up-dates of OpenStreetMap ever was after the Hati earthquake.

Globally, after the earthquake, hundreds of people collaborated to produce a map of the island using satellite imagery that could then be used by the rescue services. Just have a look at the video below.

OpenStreetMap - Project Haiti from ItoWorld on Vimeo.

2) Microsoft Photosynth

Photosynth is a software application from Microsoft that analyzes digital photographs and generates a three-dimensional model of the photos. Its great for outdoor learning because lots of children can take a picture of a landscape or feature and then when you get back to class the software can turn it into a 3D object.

For example all of these photographs below of the view of the River Clyde....

Become a stiched 3D panorama (Silverlight plugin required):

This can be used to develop collaboration (eg: combining childrens photographs when you get back to school), the objects can also be used for reflective purposes and you can even geo-locate photosynths in Bing Maps to give real audience for students work.

Good Teachers Use Good Tools - [YouTube Video]

I got the phrase "Good Teachers Use Good Tools" from Derek Robertson and I'm sure he probably got it from someone else and they got it from someone else. Why? because it is common sense and the You Tube Video below is a good reminder of it.

New Technology and Outdoor Learning (4 of 8): 4 of 8: Bing Maps and Google Earth

This is number four of eight posts where I discuss some of the things that I talked about at the 2010 Learning and Teaching Scotland Outdoor learning Regional Events

Bing Maps and Google Earth have a massive amount of potential to compliment and develop the outdoor learning experience.

I’m not saying that we should be using virtual worlds like these replace children going outside. Quite the opposite, I am saying that we should use free resources like this to compliment the outdoor experience.

There are lots of examples of how these two resources can be used but the ones I mentioned during the Learning and Teaching Scotland Outdoor Learning Regional Events were:

1) Use the real time weather layer in Google Earth of Bing Map Weather App to help encourage children to forecast the weather but also to plan with the children in the build up to your outdoor learning experience.




2) Use the Google Earth Webcam layer or the Bing Maps Webcam App to visit places in advance of your fieldtrip. Or use these layers to visit a place that you are unlikely to be able to visit with a class (eg: Antarctica) and then compare them to a local area that you have visited.



3) Use the Google Earth Ruler tools to measure distance, scale and orientation. Compare what you measure virtually to something that you have really measured in real life. In the UK Farm field size is a great example of this. Get the children to use Google Earth to measure the field sizes in different countries (eg: they are normally quite surprised when they measure the fields of southern Alberta in Canada) and then in small groups go out and measure a field near the school. Just think about what you can do with all this data.



4) You can also use Google Earth and Bing Maps to show an area that you are going to visit to parents before you actually take a group of children there. I recently did this with the parents of the young people that I am taking to Alaska this summer. An equally valuable use of this type of resource is to virtually visit these places after your outdoor experience to help children reflect on their experience and their learning.

5) Finally, along the same sort of theme it is great to use tools like the Bing World Wide Telescope App to compare the stars in the sky that you have seen to the stars in the sky in a different part of the world.

Here is a topical example:

i) Pick a place on the earth

ii) See what the stars would look like above your head and explore the sky

New Technology and Outdoor Learning (3 of 8): Using Mobile Phones

This is the third of eight posts where I discuss some of the things that I talked about at the 2010 Learning and Teaching Scotland Outdoor learning Regional Events

I am a huge advocate for allowing children to use mobile phones in the classroom as long as they use them responsibly and that the school / teacher has some sort of technology policy.  If your interested in this particular area then you might also be interested in the Times Educational Supplement magazine article that I was heavily quoted in “Mobile Phones Friends or Foe”.

Anyway, as I am a huge advocate for mobile phones in classrooms it should come as no surprise to readers of this website that I am also a huge advocate of mobile phones when it comes to outdoor learning.

I first spoke about some of these ideas at the Royal Geographical Society last November. There are lots of Apps for the iPhone, Windows 7 Phone and Android that are appropriate for use within outdoor learning.

Some of the iPhone Apps that I mentioned at the Learning and Teaching Scotland Outdoor Learning Regional Events were:

• iPhone notebook (built in)

• Google Maps and Satellite View (built in)

• Ordnance Survey Maps (I use OSBrowserR2)

• Built in GPS for Google Earth Exports (I use GPS recorder)

• Evernote – The ultimate electronic fieldwork notebook!

• Mobile blogging Apps – Including Typepad, Blogger and Wordpress

• Other fieldwork apps that night be appropriate for children (clinometer, compass etc…)

• AudioBoo – Great because people can subscribe to your 'Boos' through iTunes

• Speak and Spell – a letter game with a difference

Many of the Apps that I mentioned give children a real chance to send data back from the field and write their fieldwork reports as they go. The strength of both Evernote and AudioBoo is that it also gives us a real opportunity to help geo-locate children’s learning.

The GPS function of the phone should also not be under estimated and you can also buy a geocaching.com App.

Augmented Reality also has a huge amount of potential for its use in Outdoor Learning. I have recently been absolutely blow away by the Museum of London Street Museum App.

This App allows you to go to certain parts of London and the App augments pictures for the 1940s or historical artwork over real-time images of London. I’ve not had a chance to check this out personally yet but the demos look absolutely amazing.

Now I’m not suggesting for a moment that we should use the Street Museum App as part of our normal outdoor learning experience in schools. Although, I think it has huge scope here. Where I think the Street Museum App becomes really valuable is when we start to think about it in the context of children using it by choice themselves to extend their own learning and to make them independent learners because they have develped an interent in landscape and history.