OllieBray.com

Did You Know 4 0 : The Media Landscape

The original ‘Shift Happens‘ presentation by Karl Fisch, Scott McLeod and Jeff Brenman was turned into a video and uploaded to YouTube in June 2007. The video was then remixed, becoming a YouTube and Slideshare hit called ‘Did You Know?‘ its now attracted over 6.5m views on YouTube.

'Did You Know 4.0?' is the latest version that has been created by The Economist and Xplane for their Media Convergence Forum (The Moment of Truth: Consumers, Technology and Commerce) which will be held on  20th - 21st October 2009 in New York. You tube video below.

Although I have seen the original lots of times - I still like looking at these videos.

Children See ….. Children Do .....

A powerful reminder that we all have a responsibility in the education of young people:

Rocktober: MGS Gig, Live Streamed to the Web (follow @mgstv)

My substantive post is at Musselburgh Grammar School (MGS) in East Lothian where I am part of the school leadership team. One of the great things about MGS is how they have always been a school that embraces new technology.

This innovation has included the first European Schools Podcast in 2005 and the creative games based learning Guitar Hero transition project in 2008 and now the use of mobile technology to live stream one of their many student shows.

On Friday you can watch MGSTV's Rocktober Event Live on twitcam. to find out more you will need to follow @mgstv on twitter or you can find out more information form the school website.

WallE – Using robots as a contextual hub for learning in schools

My friend and colleague Lynne Lewis who is Principal Teacher at Athelstaneford Primary School in East Lothian has been doing a unit of work on robots with her class. Due to the small rural nature of the school Lynn has a composite class of 6, 7 and 8 year old children.

For the first part of the term Lynn has structured her curriculum around robots in particular WallE and used this as a contextual hub for learning. It looks like her class have been learning loads and having great fun.

Lynne sent me this Animoto Video of the class in action which also shows some of the learning activities that the class have been taking part in. I was going to show it at Teachmeet SLF09 but Lynn’s name didn’t get picked from the fruit machine. Luckily she (and her class) have agreed for me to post it up here – I think its excellent!

New iPod Nano – huge classroom potential

To be honest I was a little bit disappointed with the Apple announcements on the 9th September. I wasn’t expecting to see the Apple Tablet but I was expecting the new iPod Touch to have a camera. Gizmodo offers some suggestions for this – what do you think?

However, I really like the new version of iTunes, particularly the App management feature and I love the look of the new iPod Nano. I think it’s got a huge amount of potential in the classroom.

So, in case you have been sleeping under a rock for the last few days. Here is a bit of an overview of the new features of the nano

Video: the new iPod nano now has a built-in video camera that lets you record video and to share it with people though iTunes to the internet via a number of social networking platforms including YouTube and Facebook. One disadvantage for schools is that the new nano does not take stills. I think this is a bit of a shame?

Pedometer: the new iPod nano now doubles as a Pedometer. It uses the built-in accelerometer to keep track of your steps and help you meet your fitness goals. The built in software allows you to create a daily step goal or you can set it to ‘Always On’ so it counts all the steps you take, all the time. This could be great for health and wellbeing and collecting real data in schools.

Voice notes: the new iPod nano has a built-in microphone that lets you capture an audio recording. Think about the possibilities for recording thoughts, learning, achievements or even a traditional classroom lecture

FM Radio: the new iPod nano includes an FM radio.

There are still a lot of people asking ‘why would Apple put an FM tuner into an iPod?’ After all they could have done this years ago – but have always refused to? The answer it appears comes from iTunes-Tagging. As well as being able to live pause a radio stream you can also tag tracks that you are listening to on the radio by hitting the center button.

Why is this important? Well, if the radio station supports tagging, the information about the song will be saved and you can see the list of songs that you have tagged on iTunes. Guess what! There is then also an option to buy these songs! Very clever Apple.

For me one of the most powerful things about the new nano is that after Christmas 2009 there will literally be 1000’s of these little devices in school classrooms. How can we support teachers, give them ideas and encourage them to use the technology that will soon be in the pockets of a lots of children?

Anyone got plans to use the new iPod Nano with a class?

Learning from films

My good old friend Mike Tidd, Curriculum Leader at Cove School, Hampshire had a nice little article in SecEd last month about using Film in Geography. In the article Mike talks about his experiences of using film with his geography classes and also lists some of his favorite geography films.

You can access the full article here.

Mike lists his top ten geography films as:

1. Slumdog Millionaire – Life within shanty towns of Mumbai
2. Brassed Off – Industrial decline in the UK
3. The Day after Tomorrow – Climate change has never been so traumatic

So, what would your top three Geography films be and why? Leave your answers below…

One Year in 40 Seconds

One year in 40 seconds from Eirik Solheim on Vimeo.

I thought that this was a nice little animation showing how the world changes outside your window over the course of a year. A photograph was taken every day and then spliced together to play as a movie with some sound, to reflect the seasons, inserted over the top of the film.

It would be a nice idea for a class to do this. No only would it be a nice memento for the children but it would also provide a wealth of cross curricular links such as ICT and place. It would be really nice if a number of different schools across the globe could photograph their year and then up-load their movies to play in a Google Map. This would add an extra international dimension and also inspire discussion about seasons and location.

Movie from: fubiz

BrainPop UK: Fantastic, Engaging Flash Animation Videos for your Classroom

I love BrainPop – I really mean that! I have used the American version with my classes for years and the children (particularly S1, S2 and S6) love it! But I have used it with all year groups.

BrainPOP is an educational website with Flash-based movies about maths, technology, health, science, humanities, arts & music, and English. Most of the videos feature the site's recurring characters, Tim and Moby.

According to Wikipedia:

‘Tim is a smart and useful teenager who does most of the talking in the movies. He has brown hair and usually wears a white T-shirt with a picture on it which relates to each movie’. He is 14 years old (but sounds about 16).’

‘Moby is an orange robot who communicates in bleeping noises (similar to R2D2). He has three lights on his chest that light up every time he beeps and Tim usually translates what he's saying. While Tim does most of the talking during a movie, Moby usually helps out by fetching things for Tim and asking questions about the topic they are talking about. As a robot, he can do lots of things that Tim is unable to do (e. g. changing his hand into a freeze-ray, sending himself back in time, removing his head).’

 

I was really pleased to recently see that BrainPop has launched a UK version of the website with an English speaking Tim – although some of my classes used to quite like the novelty of the voice in the American version.

The great things about the videos is that they are all really short – just enough to capture and engage children. There must be 100's videos on a diverse range of topics and many of the videos are cross-curricular.

Topics include:

• Drawing (Take your doodling to the next level),
• Compass (How does a compass know which way is North? What is "North" for that matter?),
• Colons and Semicolons (Dots and commas that make all the difference!),
• Chocolate (How does chocolate get from the tree to the candysweet shelf? Follow Tim and Moby on a mouthwatering field trip),
• Credit Cards (Find out why you need to think twice before you charge it!),
• Greek Gods (Learn all about the strange and mysterious behavior of the gods worshipped by the Ancient Greeks!),
• Area of polygons  (Measuring polygons may look tricky, but it's a snap, once Tim and Moby show you how it's done!),
• Cancer  (What is cancer? Why is it so dangerous?) and
• Nuclear energy  (Unlock the awesome power of the atom with Tim and Moby in this animated movie!).

I have mentioned BrainPop before as I used them as an example in my 2008 Scottish Learning Festival Presentation on Language, Learners and the Power of New Technology.

BrainPop is a subscription service but they always have sample videos that you can watch with your classes. The best thing about them is that if there is a National Event or Disaster they always make that video available for free for a while. For me, a good example of this was the Boxing Day Tsunami in 2004. After the event I was looking for a simple way to teach Tsunamis to all my classes and Tim and Moby provided the answer with their Tsunami Flash Video.

The other reason that I am writing about Tim and Moby just now is that the BrainPop UK website is offering a free trial until the middle of February. I’m already planning on using a number of videos with my classes and we distributed the school username and password to staff today. Lots of our teachers have already logged onto the site and feedback has so far been very positive. BrainPop are also offering some Sponsorship at Teachmeet at BETT 2009.

More on BrainPop later in the week – but I would be really interested to find out what you think of the resource.

World on Fire

I thought this was a really interesting and well put together video. I think it will probably feature in one of my assemblies in the new year.

Monty Python now on You Tube

My good friends will know that I love Monty Python. Here is one of the reasons why (You Tube Video Below):