OllieBray.com

Rising Stars Essentials: ICT [Book Review for Merlin John Online]

"Practical, professional problem solving for primary teachers" is how Rising Stars Essentials: ICT, written by Ian Addison and published by Rising Stars in association with the Guardian Teachers Network, describes itself. And it lives up to the promise.

As well as Ian's writing, the paperback publication also contains contributions from a number of well-known UK bloggers and tweeters involved in ICT in education, including Tom Barrett, Miles Berry, David Rogers, Mark Warner and Julian Wood.

Read my full review over on Merlin John Online and leave any comments about the over there as well!

Testing Windows 8 – Asus W510 Tablet [Merlin John Article]

I’m into testing out Windows 8 Devices at the moment. I’ve done a test on the RM Notebook 320 and the Asus W510 hybrid tablet. Both devices are available as part of the Microsoft, Intel and RM Shape the Future Programme.

I wasn’t too keen on the RM Notebook 320 – mainly because it didn’t have a touch screen and Windows 8 needs a touchscreen. But I did like the Asus W510 and I gave it a pretty robust test over the Christmas holidays when I was away in the Alps.

You can read my full write up over on Merlin John’s ‘Agent-for-Change’ Website. 

Shape the Future is now in Edinburgh and Glasgow and I’m hopeful that other Local Authorities might start to follow their examples as it seems to make a lot of sense to me.

"Shape the Future is an innovative, simple and cost effective way to get all students using 1:1 devices at home and in the classroom. The affordability of this device and software package is supported by Microsoft's global digital inclusion programme, in collaboration with RM Education and Intel. Exclusively available from RM Education, this has been specifically designed to help you provide a great value 1:1 device programme for all students and their teachers."

You can find out more about it here.

Reflections from the 2010 #EducationShow (10 of 10) – Innovation Ally

This is the last in a series of ten posts about my recent visit to the 2010 Education Show in Birmingham. They document some of the products that I saw, liked and enjoyed from the exhibition.

Innovation Ally was a new feature of the 2010 Education show and one of the parts I was most looking forward to seeing and exploring some of the more creative products on offer. Both Right Angle Events and Education Harbour who I have written about previously were found within Innovation Ally.

It was nice to see two Scottish companies in Innovation Ally these were The Tree of Knowledge and also Do-Be ltd. Both companies, amongst other things, offer training for UK schools and wide variety of other products.

Two other companies that caught my attention were Kites for Schools (because they were giving away free kites) and Rapid English. I’ll need to explore the Rapid English product in more detail but there statistics in improve literacy rates in young people looked very impressive.

With the exceptions of the above, I was actually a little bit disappointed with Innovation Ally… do I miss something I would have looked at in more detail?

Reflections from the 2010 #EducationShow (9 of 10) – Crime Scene Investigator

Reflections from the 2010 #EducationShow (6 of 10) - Raintree Graphic Novels

This is the sixth in a series of ten posts about my recent visit to the 2010 Education Show in Birmingham. They document some of the products that I saw, liked and enjoyed from the exhibition.

I’ve already written about Classical Comics earlier in my review of the 2010 Education Show. I was also really impressed with some of the graphic novels and comics that were on display from Raintree (formally Heinemann Library).

Initially, I started looking at some of the books because they included some of the classic cartoon characters from DC comics such as Batman, Superman and Wonder Woman. These sort of playful adventure stories with well developed characters have go so much potential in encouraging young people to read and to help them engage with text.

Of course if you take a developed character like Batman and combine this will a well written adventure narrative such as the texts that Raintree have produced along with DC Comics you have the first stages in developing a really interesting progressive reading strategy and linking it to other aspects of media and moving image education.

Let me try and explain my thinking here in a little more detail. The Raintree Batman books are aimed at readers between the ages of 8 – 13 years (some of the books have more complicated narrative than others).

But Batman is a highly developed comic book character which can really allow the reader to progress and explore his stories in any number of directions using a variety of tests and media that is available on the commercial market as the reader outgrows the Raintree series.

There are 1000s of people that read batman stories in comic books and graphic novels every week around the globe and many of these people are adults. Some of the more recent Batman Graphic Novels including the Dark Knight Returns (that I put into the library at Musslebugh Grammar School) has a highly complex narrative and complicated plot and was mainly signed out by 15 – 18 year olds. How’s that for progressive reading programme that follows the same character!

It is also worth mentioning that characters such as Batman and Superman currently have a real cultural significance for children due to the recent Hollywood  feature films of both of the superheros (with more sequels on the way). This provides another great opportunity for teachers to use current and relevant text that children have already been exposed to via the media. Even if children have not seen (or are old enough to have seen the film) they are likely to have played the computer games that always accompany new movies.

Raintree didn’t just have superhero graphic novels on display. They also have some really other interesting graphic novel texts to support other areas of the curriculum. These included ‘Graphic Expeditions’ to support the teaching of geography and place. These would be ideal and a great resource for schools to help embrace the cross-curricular philosophy of Curriculum for Excellence. I liked the look of the ones called ‘Rescue in Antarctica,’ and ‘Getting to the bottom of Global Warming.’ There are also graphic novel tests to support history, English and science.

I loved the idea of the Graphic Science Texts because they combined the idea of using superheroes (Max Axiom) and superpowers to introduce children to more complicated scientific concepts. 

For example a superpower might be to be able to travel at the speed of sound and ride a sound wave – providing a great concept to introduce children into the science of sound. Or the ability to shrink to the size of and ant – providing a great context for learning about eco-systems, the food chain and mini-beasts!

The science graphic novels really reminded me of the Engineering Superpowers Project at the University of Strathclyde that I wrote about a back in May 2008.

Wonderful stuff!

Further Information: For more information on the use of Graphic Novels in Education see my article on Merlin John On-line.

Reflections from the 2010 #EducationShow (4 of 10) – Stephen Heppell’s Cool Schools

This is the forth in a series of ten posts about my recent visit to the 2010 Education Show in Birmingham. They document some of the products that I saw, liked and enjoyed from the exhibition.

I admit to being a huge fan of Stephen Heppell’s work and I really admire all of the interesting things that he is doing at the moment around school design. Stephen had a exhibition space in the middle of the 2010 Education Show titled ‘Cool Schools’ – the space was used to showcase some interesting furniture, for a series of presentations on school design and to listen to students present from a variety of schools.

I went to see the second presentation on school design on the Thursday and really enjoyed looking at some of the great pictures of schools buildings of projects that Stephen has been involved in over recent years. A lot of the thinking is incredibly practical, sustainable and innovative and puts many Scottish new builds to shame.

Some of the examples he showed included:

Hellerup School, Copenhagen, Denmark

Key design characteristics: Lack of corridors, lots of open space, wide stairway doubles up as a lecture theatre and a skateboard track around the outside of the school!

TK Park, Bangkok, Thailand

Key design characteristics: The Thai Knowledge (TK) Park sits on the top floor of a shopping mall in Bangkok and is open for all ages whenever the shops are open. The library area (shown above) has proved a hit with young readers who need to climb up to access the books they want to read. The tough books are at the top, crash mats are at the bottom!

Saltire Centre, Caledonian University, Glasgow

Not a school but the Salture centre in Glasgow also got a mention. If you are Scottish education and you have not been to visit the Saltire Centre you must go and have a look at it. It really is a fabulous space to learn in and just be in really! Like some other learning spaces that Stephen showed it sometimes makes use of inflatable rooms to which can quickly and cheaply turn larger spaces into more intimate places for project work and quiet discussion.
The above images come from the postcards that Stephen produced for the 2007 BETT Show you can find more examples of innovative school design and details of these projects over on Heppell.net

After his talk I managed to get an opportunity to chat with Stephen and we talked about schools design, his new Portland Academy and possible models of future teacher education.

We finished our conversation by both enthusiastically agreeing on one very important thing. The next ten years is going to be more exciting than ever for UK education and learning!

Reflections from the 2010 #EducationShow 2010 (2 of 10) - Wild In Art

This is the second in a series of ten posts about my recent visit to the 2010 Education Show in Birmingham. They document some of the products that I saw, liked and enjoyed from the exhibition.

Just over a year ago I walked into the East Lothian Inclusion Service (ELIS) to be faced with a life sized cow that the children had been painting as part of a creative project! It was one of the cows that had been given to ELIS after the 2006 Edinburgh cow parade.

Anyway, the company that made the cows was ‘Wild at Art’ and I was delighted to bump into them at the Education Show. They don’t just make cows these days but they make a huge variety of different animals including penguins, elephants, hypos and various mythical beasts! They have also produced a nice little eduaction resource showing how paining a Wild at Art animal can like to other aspects of the curriculum.

I think it would be great to have a few of these creatures in your schools grounds for the children to design and paint.

I wonder if they will give me one for my garden?

Reflections from the 2010 #EducationShow (1 of 10) – Google Earth and Google Maps in the Classroom

This is the first in a series of ten posts about my recent visit to the 2010 Education Show in Birmingham. Most of the posts are very short and will talk about some of the products and ideas that I saw that could have real potential in the classroom. However, my reason for visiting the Education Show was to give a presentation on Google Earth and Google Maps in the Classroom.

There was standing room only in the Secondary Lecture Theatre during my presentation and it seemed to be well received. I've shared all of these ideas on the site before and the session was basically a re-run of my Teachmeet North East London Mininote from last April.

I've listed the ideas with links below. But you might also want to watch the video from Teachmeet NE London that was produced by Leon Cych (Learn4Life) and funded by Futurelab as part of the Teachmeet Talk series.

So the ideas covered were:

Idea 1 - Use the Google Maps mash-up Smoke Signal Generator (http://www.mapmsg.com/send/smokesignal) as a different way to set learning objectives, homework tasks or to re-cap a lesson.

You can use the mash-up in exactly the same way as you normally use Google Maps to find places by typing in the location. You can zoom in and zoom out in exactly the same way and switch between map, hybrid and satellite view. The mash-up however allows you to generate smoke signals from any location within Google Maps. Great for linking place to learning objectives.

 Idea 2 - Use geo-greetings to explore the world

You can use geo-greatings in lots of different ways but as well as being a fun way to send messages to the class. You can also do other activities like, get children to spell out their names and then work out which country their buildings are in (good for teaching atlas skills), they can also measure the distances between their buildings, reserch the buildings, try and find other letter shaped building.... the list goes on and on...

Idea 3 - Turn on the Grid Lines and spin the globe

This is a very simple, yet powerful and magical idea. I believe that children find maps, globes and places fascinating. A great lesson starter is just to have Google Earth Spinning as your class comes into the room (they will instantly start to comment and try to work out where places are). You can also very easily turn on the Grid Latitude and Longitude lines to allow you to quickly add an extra dimension to this starter activity. 

Idea 4 - Teaching about place and location

At the front of your classroom have a bucket of European or world city names (would also work with countries, mountain ranges, rivers etc…). You can get lists from websites like www.citymayors.com.

Students pick a city name from ‘the hat’ and type the location into Google Earth – class watch as they fly from their school to the city location. Once in the city Student gets one or two minutes to explore in front of the rest of the class. As long as you have websites like Panoramio enabled within Google Earth there will be no shortage of things to look at and you will quickly get a real feel for what an area is like. I think it is very important to always flay to your location from your school, this adds to the experience of distance, place and space. 

I've repeated this activity with loads of things such as cities, buildings, mountains, landmarks, rivers etc...

Idea 5 – Teaching Distance

The Google Earth Ruler is really simple to use and allows you to quickly change between units (cm, m. km, ft. yards etc…) There is a  lot of scope here about to talk about measurement and also ratios if you start to swap the units around. You can also use the ruler to perform interesting tasks. For example you can calculate how far the ingredient of a pizza have travelled before it gets to the UK. 

 Idea 6 – Sea Level Rise Mash Up

http://flood.firetree.net/ is a favourite Google Maps Mashup of mine. It allows you to change the sea level height to see areas of land that would be flooded due to sea level change. Its simple but really effective, interestingly it wouldn’t take much for the Glasgow Science Centre to be underwater.

Idea 7 – Look at what other people have already created

At http://www.gearthhacks.com you can download klm files (Google Earth Files) about Current Events, Previous Events, Sightseeing, Sports, Historical Places, Transport, Natural Formations and a whole heap of other stuff. The Current event files are excellent. The screencast below shows how quickly it is to download a Google Earth file on recent Greece Fires.

Idea 8 – Flickr and Twitter Vision

Flickr vision is a another great lesson starter activity or way to promote class discussion. The site basically shows the geographical location of real time photos being up-loaded to Flickr. It gives a real feel for what’s going on in the world and sense of place. It can also be used to promote interesting discussions. For example, you have to wait a long to see a photograph being up-loaded from Africa, Antarctica or South America? 

Twitter vision gives another interesting perspective. It basically shows text messages of people thoughts from around the world.

 Idea 9 – Turn Layers On and Off

Sometimes things get really crowded and sometimes you want more detail. You can turn layers on and off using the layers tabs. Fly to New York to see the 3D Buildings in action. If you are struggling with Bandwidth Issues at school you can save on bandwidth by turning the layers off.

Idea 10 - Explore the Historic Imagery layer

The Google Earth Historic imagery layer allows you to compare up-to-date satalite imagery with older satellite imagery. In the video I look at the construction of the Birdsnest Stadium in China from 2002 to 2008. Its very impressive stuff!

Idea 11 –Google Earth in the web browser

Download the Google Earth API to get Google Earth working right in your web browser.

 Idea 12 - Monster Milk Truck

Monster Milk Truck allows you to drive a virtual milk cart around the globe to explore things. 

Idea 13- First Person Camera

In a lot of ways this is similar to Monster Milk Truck. The First Person Camera API allows you to wander around the world (Google Earth) on foot.

When you get into some of the cities with 3D buildings, it kind of reminds me of some of the early versions of Doom. Which is interesting as one of the ideas that I have been talking about recently is could Google Earth become in itself a rich gaming environment?

Idea 14 - Driving Simulator

The plug in driving simulator is fantastic particularly for cities that have 3D Buildings in them.

Basically, you type in where you want to start and where you want to go to. Google Map directions appear on the left hand side of the screen and calculates your route. A Google Map shows your intended route on the right hand side of the screen and in the middle Google Earth flies you though what your route will look like in 3D.

Idea 15 - Create Powerful Google Earth Posters

Full write up on this activity here.

Idea 16 - Have a look at these other great resources

Try and follow these websites for some up-to-date Google Earth information and ideas on how it can be used in Teaching and Learning.

• Google Lat Long Blog
• Google Earth Users Guide Project
• Juicy Geography Google Earth Guide
• Google Earth Blog
• Ogle Earth Blog
• Google Earth Developers Blog

Please get in touch if you have any questions about the session.

Reflections from the 2010 #EducationShow – Introduction

On Thursday I had a flying visit (literally) to the 20th Education Show at the Birmingham NEC.

I’ve been to the Scottish Learning Festival lots of times and BETT twice now and the education show had a very different feel to it. I really enjoyed my day there, speaking with different exhibitors, catching up with a few familiar faces and looking at some of the products on display.

The Education Show does not have a technology focus although there were a number of technology companies exhibiting. I really enjoyed looking at the range of resources on offer and also seeing the amount of teachers that had turned up to the show with their classes to make a few last minute purchases before the end of the financial year!

I saw at least one head teacher dragging of trolley of no less than 1000 glue sticks!

The main reason I was at the show was to represent Learning and Teaching Scotland and also to present a session on how teachers might make better use of Google Earth and Google Maps in the Classroom.

Over the next short series of posts I’ll write up my presentation and reflect on some of the other products that I saw at the show. I’m going to purposely avoid writing about products that I have already written about in my BETT 2010 review.

So, I best get writing and reflecting!