OllieBray.com

Need cheering up………?

If you are feeling a little bit low about the fact its nearly December (and you haven't started your Chrismas shopping) or if you don't really want to go to work tomorrow morning.

Watch this (YouTube Video) of the Muppets and you will feel a lot better!

Killing good ideas: the stone and the stone wheel

I think this YouTube Clip may be coming to one of my in-service training courses soon.

It’s a great light heated example of how difficult it is to sometimes get people to take on new ideas…

Smart pens for schools?

Mark Pentleton (of Radio Lingua fame) came to visit me for a coffee the other day. Its always great to have a chat with Mark, swap news and catch up on any gossip.

Mark’s showed me his latest gadget - a smart pen. I was so impressed by it I have ordered one of my own (I must be a marketers dream!).

But on a serious note I believe that its gadgets like this that could completely revolutionize traditional note taking particularly in lectures for Higher Education students.

Here is a quick video of the product below and you can make up your own mind if you think it will be useful or not?

Tim Rylands – HHL09 and African Safari

(photo: James Clay)

I’ve heard lots about Tim Rylands and have followed his blog for a long time. Tim is the king of education web links, a clearly a talented teacher, fantastic presenter, PowerPoint Jedi and knowledgeable education consultant. I was lucky enough to meet Tim at Handheld Learning 2009 – I just wish we had more time to chat?

Unfortunately I missed his presentation but I did get a chance to watch the re-run on the Handheld Learning Blip TV channel. The main focus of Tim’s presentation was on the work that he has been doing with the Wii game Wild Earth: African Safari. If you have not played African Safari then it is defiantly worth a look as the education potential of such a resource is outstanding.

Brian McLaren who works as one of our development officers at the Consolarium in Scotland is doing some work with this title at the moment and with time we will get this written up over on the Learning and Teaching Scotland Games Based Learning website.

African Safari is a unique simulation for the Wii based on the PC game from Super X Studios. It is your task to take award-winning pictures of exotic animals in their natural habitats without disturbing them. This includes running with herds of zebra to following hunting lions and scavenging vultures.

The main features of the game include:

• 11 picture-taking missions with both primary and secondary objectives. Inclusding, nvestigating the hyena during a midday thunderstorm, observing giraffes in a hidden valley from a helicopter and meeting a family of elephants as they take care of their young.

• The Wii lets you use the Wii Remote to play from the animal’s perspective in the different games.

• You can come across more than 30 African animals including: cheetah, crocodile, crowned crane, elephant, flamingo, frog, bat, gazelle, giraffe, hippo, hyrax, leopard, lion, ostrich, oxpecker, pangolin, rhinoceros, meerkat, tortoise, trout, vulture, warthog, wildebeest and zebra.

• Multiplayer mode gives players the choice to drive the vehicle or snap photos while playing with anywhere from 1 to 3 friends.

• Photos collected are placed into an animated slide show presentation of informative articles. Players can select their own favorite photos to keep in their portfolio.

• An Impact Meter tracks how much of a disturbance you are to the natural habitat. If you disturb too many animals or get to close to them, your Wii Remote will rumble at varying degrees, making it harder to take a steady picture. If the Impact Meter becomes completely depleted, you fail the mission.

• There are terrific photo opportunities due to the accurately presented flora and terrain from the Serengeti National Park in Africa. This includes shrubs, flowers, kopjes (rocky outcroppings), streams and lakes. The weather also changes through the day

You can view a trailer for the game below (You Tube):

During his presentation Tim games lots of ideas about how he has used African Safari with classes all over the UK. I have embedded the video of Tim speaking at HHL below:

During his talk he mentions the following links, software and web based tools:

• African Safari – for the Nintento Wii (more details here)

• PowerPoint – In particular Tim mentioned how you can write in PowerPoint slides in the 2007 edition, which is useful for note taking within presenations.

• Quotepad - A great tool to take / aggregate  notes from the web or your computer (from anywhere!).

• Vocab Grabber - A great visual thesaurus to get children to experiment with worlds and to improve their language

• Ether Pad - Online collaborative documents – not normally blocked by school firewalls.

• Switheroozoo - A great little website for learning about animals and even creating some of your own – what do you think of my ElicheetaZeb?

• Fighting Maleria - A good website for learning about Malaria and a good example of how very serious citizenship issues can be talked through the medium of computer games.

• Wordle - An old classic but Tim uses it in an interesting way to analyze note taking – watch the video to see how.

The video is well worth 30mins of your time.

Climate Change Resources for Schools - Blog Action Day 2009

 
Today is Blog Action Day.

Blog Action Day is an annual event that unites the world's bloggers in posting about the same issue on the same day on their own blogs with the aim of sparking discussion around an issue of global importance.

First and last, the purpose of Blog Action Day is to create a discussion. Bloggers are asked to take a single day out of their schedule and focus it on an important issue. By doing so on the same day, the blogging community effectively changes the conversation on the Web and focuses audiences around the globe on that issue. Out of this discussion naturally flow ideas, advice, plans, and action.

More information about Blog Action Day in this YouTube Video below:

As this years themes is climate change and to show my support I thought I would post five of my favorite climate change resources that should be being used in schools.

1. Google Climate Change Resources

Google has produced a great set of on-line resources in the build up to the Copenhagen Climate Summit. This includes a series of YouTube videos and Google earth files.

Have look at this youtube video below to find out more:

This is Google maps mash up for sea level change is also a good old favorite of mine!

2. ZeroFootprint - Kids calculator

A great carbon footprint calculator aimed at children - thanks to Mr Evans for showing me this on his excellent blog.

3. The Climate Mystery

The climate mystery from Microsoft and the Discovery Channel is a great resource and set of mini games. But I can’t quite believe how few schools are using it in the build up to the Copenhagen Climate Summit.

More information here (you tube video):

Also see my previous blog post for links to resources.

4. LogiCity

LogiCity is a game produced by Logicom and The National Energy Foundation. The game set in a 3D virtual city where players are set the task of reducing the carbon footprint of an average resident. As players work their way through the game they will pick up information about Climate Change, and some of the main ways in which everyone is currently contributing to the emissions of the main greenhouse gas (CO2) that causes Climate Change.

It places students in a virtual environment and lets them experiment and experience the potential effect that individual actions can have on the planet before it's too late. Users can travel to the future to see the direct results of their actions in real time by quickly fast forwarding to the year 2066.

Thanks to the serious games blog for the heads up and original post on this.

5. Learning and Teaching Scotland Climate Change Website

There are some great resources on the LTS Climate Change website that are specifically aimed at Scottish Schools.

Finally, don't forget my melting men idea and what is your favorite resource to teach about climate change in schools?

Creating Classroom Comics

Regular readers of this website will no that I have a real passion for the use of comics and graphic novels in the classroom. My favorite free on-line comic creation tools at the moment are Comic Brush and Pixton.

Comic Brush (www.comicbrush.com) is a bit like a free version of Comic Life and it allows you to make on-line comics for the iPhone / iPod, comic strips and full length comics. It is easy to use and you can either insert your own pictures into the comic strip or download an art pack (small charge) or do a bit of both. The art packs are great as they allow you to introduce licensed characters / artwork such Judge Dread or manga into your comics.

Here is an example of a comic brush comic that I made quickly about the recent Handheld Learning 2009 Conference. All the pictures I have used in the comic were taken by James Clay.

(click on the image to make it bigger)

Pixton (www.pixton.com) is equally as good but serves a different purpose. With Pixton you can really develop the fine detail of a character right down to facial expression and gestures. Pixton is free to use but you can also pay for an education license that gives the teacher more control over student accounts.

Here is a quick example of a pixton comic that I used recently to set some tasks at a recent Learning and Teaching Scotland whole staff event.

The problem is despite these tools being free they may be blocked by some local education authorities and they rely on a reasonable bandwidth in order for them to work properly.

As a result I like to remind teachers that you can actually produce fairly good comics in PowerPoint. I recently produced an Innovative Teacher InnoVid on the subject which some people may find interesting (version embeded below).

You can find out more information about InnoVids here.

And if thats not enough comic stuff for you you could also have a look at these 100 tips, tools and resources for teachers.

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!

BrainPop Teachmeet Movie

As many of you know, Moby is a personal friend of mine and I get on alright with Tim as well (although he can be a bit boring!). So, when I asked them if they would consider making short movie to explain exactly what Teachmeet was all about I was delighted when they agreed. We premiered it at Teachmeet SLF09.

The Teachmeet movie is available on YouTube to embed in blogs and on other websites. It will also be available for other Teachmeets and the nice guys at Brainpop have agreed to change the logo at the end for future events.



I received a preview of the movie halfway down my epic cycle of the USA and Canada this summer and was laughing out loud when I noticed it was my name at the bottom of the letter! I’ve also been struggling to keep it a secret ever since.

Racing wheel controller for the iPod Touch / iPhone

The iPod and iPhone have had a huge range of accessories from the iPod sock to sophisticated speaker systems. However the German company Hama has just launched a new racing wheel accessory.

It is very similar in idea to the Wii Wheel and the iPod Touch / iPhone slots into the steering wheel to make it easer for the user to control driving movements.

According to Pocket-Lint it costs 16 Euros and has been a big hit with consumers.

I think this is just the first type of accessory like this that we will see for the iPhone / iPod touch as it starts to gain momentum as a gamming machine.

Augmented Reality: Top Trumps and Computer Games

Augmented reality is likely to be one of the most exciting and potential game changers in education since the development of web 2.0. I also think it will help teachers and students bridge the gap to MUVU (Multi User Virtual Universes) such as CANVAS.

The interesting thing is that the first group of people likely to really benefit from augmented reality will be children as we gradually start to see it appear in computer games and even top trumps.

The question is how do schools keep up with these rapid changes in technology that will soon be in the hands of young people engaging them at home but not at school?

Here are a couple of fun products I am keen to have a look at over the coming months (You Tube video’s below):

Top Trumps 3D:


Sony EyePet Commercial:


Exciting times!