One of the great things about BETT is
walking around and seeing all the little booths with small developers in them.
I saw Musii in one of them – I'll let them explain what it does…
"Musii is a interactive music system designed for play and developmental therapy.
Musii is a soft inflatable object that emits sound and is illuminated with colour when touched. It enables any non-musician to experience playing a musical instrument as well as offering stimulating visual and tactile sensation.
Musii combines an array of state-of-the-art technologies into one exciting product that invites participants of all abilities to control sounds and colour through touch".
A lovely simple idea that would be great in
the early years and to support the development of motor skills for children
with support needs.
One of the great things about this years Scottish Learning Festival (SLF09) is its commitment to CPD and this year the CPD lounge will be a prominent feature.
I was genuinely honored (particularly when you look at the other speakers!) to be asked to present in the CPD lounge as part of the ‘CPD Sevens’ on the Thursday morning at 10am.
I have 7 minute to talk to the assembled audience about the value of personal learning networks. I also hope to be involved in a post talk GLOWmeet discussion.
If you are around at that time why don’t you pop in for a short presentation, a chat and some great coffee?
Teachmeet returns
to the Scottish Learning Festival for the 4th Year. We don’t have a
venue yet but we do have a logo (thanks Mr
W). We also know, as with previous years, it will be on the Wednesday night of the SLF.
I’ve volunteered to try and sort out the venue within the SECC.
So, what is Teachmeet?
Well, a number of years ago some dodgy bloke said that it was the best form of
Teacher CPD ever and to be honest my viewpoint hasn’t changed!
Teachmeet is a type of
un-conference organised by teachers for teachers. It’s an opportunity to learn
something new, be amazed, amused and enthused. Teachmeets are informal
gatherings of those curious about teaching and technology. Anyone can share
great ideas they've trialled in their classrooms, ask important questions or
simply sign up to take part in learning conversations.
Just like previous Teachmeets, this Teachmeets will be organised by the
Scottish teaching community and we are looking for people to speak (7 or 2
minutes), people to sponsor and people to help organise.
Head over to the Teachmeet
SLF 09 Wiki to add your thoughts and support for the vent.
Above are the slides from my 2008 Scottish Learning Festival Presentation on Breaking Down Walls with Google Earthmany of the ideas I have already shared at Teachmeet07 and Teachmeet08. Screen vasts of the demonstration's are below embedded as Google Video files.
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. The screencast below shows the demo that I used at tonight.
Idea 2 - 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 Spinningas 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. Here’s the
screencast showing you how to do this:
Idea 3 - 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. Here’s a quick
screencast showing what I mean:
Idea 4 – 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. Here is the
screencast showing you how the ruler works:
Idea 5 – 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 6 – 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 7 – 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? You can see an example below:
You
can even use Flickr Vision in 3D:
Twitter
vision gives another interesting perspective. It basically shows text messages
of people thoughts from around the world.
Idea 8 – 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.
This
video shows Google Earth working inside the web browser. As this becomes more developed
it will be great news for schools, as you won’t have to get Google Earth
Downloaded onto you school / home computer.
Monster
Milk Truck allows you to drive a virtual milk cart around the globe to
explore things. The video shows me driving around and then teleporting to Edinburgh – can you work
out which famous building I deliver the milk to?
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?
The plug in driving simulator is fantastic particularly for some
of the big US 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 fly’s you
though what your route will look like in 3D.
Idea 13 - Google Sky
Google Sky is a great resource for teaching children about the solar system. It has obvious links to A Curriculum for Excellence in particular the outcomes for Science and Social Subjects. A You Tube video about Google Sky is below:
Idea 14 - 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.
Teachmeet at the SLF
was a fantastic event and for me still remains the best form of CPD for
teachers. I learnt so much during the 2 hour workshop sessions and had some amazing
conversations with colleagues from around the UK and further afield.
I presented a 15 minute
roundtable session on titled: Maps,
Mashups and Milkfloats. The slides that I used during the presentation are embedded
below and the Google Earth Screen Casts are embedded further down the page.
Part One: Wordle – Great Fantastic, free resource!
The use of http://wordle.net/ to create beautiful word
clouds. Again great for lesson starters, assemblies and don’t forget to use it
to find out the prominent words in your school development plan. Remember if
the word ATTIANMENT is bigger than the word
LEARNING or CHILDREN then you
should re-write your plan!
Here is the word cloud from
the Teachmeet Wiki:
I wish I was called John!
Part Two: Games for Homework
I sometimes ask students to
play games for homework. One of the sites I use is the OS Map
Zone web site. I know that they have played them because I ask them to take
a screen shot of their best score and to email it to me, or to print it out and
bring it in for the next lesson. This way I can set up a leader board in my
classroom (A bit like Top Gear – the fastest around the race track).
I think teachers that struggle to collect homework in
should ask themselves, ‘why don’t they
set their pupils more innovative homework?’ Homework that they actually
want to do? And save the more ‘traditional’
work for the classroom, where students need the motivation of the classroom
teacher?
This
video shows Google Earth working inside the web browser. As this becomes more developed
it will be great news for schools, as you won’t have to get Google Earth
Downloaded onto you school / home computer.
Monster
Milk Truck allows you to drive a virtual milk cart around the globe to
explore things. The video shows me driving around and then teleporting to Edinburgh – can you work
out which famous building I deliver the milk to?
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?
The plug in driving simulator is fantastic particularly for some
of the big US 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 fly’s you
though what your route will look like in 3D.
The Final Teachmeet Challenge
Teachmeet is an
un-conference and this means that unusual things can happen. Before I started
my 15 minute ‘roundtable’ presentation Ewan
dared me to do the presentation on the escalator. I managed to present a couple
of slides from here – but as the escalator was moving, it was a little harder
than I thought! Alan Parkinson captures the moment below.
On the Thursday of the
Scottish Learning Festival Seonaid McGillivray
(Headteacher at Stoneyhill
Primary School) and I presented on the topic of Enriched Assessment for an Enriched Curriculum.
We used the work that we have been
doing on Guitar Hero as a transition project as our example. The sides from the
presentation are embedded below.
During the presentation we shared with the audience some of the great work that we have been carrying out in East Lothian to try and embed Internet Safety and Responsible use into curriculum (at home and at school). We also shared some of the things that we had learnt from running our series of parent training events at the end of last session. In East Lothian it is our aim that we try and make digital literacy the responsibility of every teacher, parent and child.
The slides from the presentation are embedded below:
The
Child Exploitation and Online Protection Centre is a UK police agency with a difference.
It has the teeth of any other police force and works to track offenders
wherever they may be. CEOP also delivers free education programmes into schools
to help children of all ages stay safe online and is active in sharing best
practice techniques with the wider child protection community through a number
of training initiatives.
The CEOP Corporate Film is embedded below (You Tube):
Hector’s WorldTM
is the 5 - 7 year old area of the Think U Know website. It comprises of five state-of-the-art, animated episodes.It takes children on a
journey with Hector and his friends as they explore issues such as personal
information, trustworthiness, making positive choices online and how to be open
with a trusted adult when they use the internet.
You can download five lesson plans on how you could use Hectors World in the Teacher / Trainer area of the think You Know web site. You can also order posers and stickers, and download colouring in books and song sheets from the teacher / trainer area.
Cyber
Café is the 8 - 10 year old area of the Think U Know website. Within Cyber Cafe you can discover the safest ways to use the Internet, chat rooms, e-mail and send
text messages. You can download nine lesson plans and ideas for useing Cyber Cafe with your class in the Teacher / Trainer area of the Think You Know website.
The Way Back
Machine is part of the Internet Archive. In essence it’s a back up of some
of the web. Try typing a website URL into the way back machine and if it has
been cashed you will be able to have a look at previous versions of the
website.
It's good fun but also could be quite scary stuff.
The Scottish Learning Festival is in Wednesday 24th and Thursday 25th September 2008. It is the biggest education event in Scotland and one of the most unique education events in the world – it’s free!
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I’ve presented at the Scottish Learning Festival (SLF) for the last few years and this year I have a set myself a massive agenda. Before the SLF it’s become customary within the ScotEdu Blogosphere to up-load your itinerary.
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I hope to see some of you in the keynotes, seminars and exhibition space. Drop me an email if you fancy meeting up for a coffee, beer or just a chat.
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I’ll also be at Teachmeet on the Wednesday evening.
All my presentation note’s and hyperlinks will be up-loaded here at about the same time that I am presenting – well that’s the plan anyway! All of my Scottish Learning Festival posts will be tagged SLF2008.
If you have not been to a Scottish learning Festival before – you will definitely find Neil’s Tops Tips handy.
This year at Musselburgh
Grammar School I’m trialling some Games Based Learning Resources with the schools
Support for Learning (SfL) Department. There are a few reasons for this and one
of them is that most SfL classes a bit smaller than normal class sizes. This
means that you buy a class set of resources relatively cheaply. Another reason
is that our SfL teaches a lot of Access courses. I think the flexibility provided
by Access courses lends itself more easily to more cross-curricular and
creative work, compared to other certificate courses in the upper school.
Initially the project will centre around three types
of hardware and various software titles will be trialled during the year. The hardware will include Sony PS2, Nintendo
DS and Nintendo Will.
The project will last most of the session and I hope
to report back on it during the 2009 Scottish Learning Festival, I will also
publish results of the trials here.
Details of the resources and software that we will be
loaning to the department for this project are:
Part One: Nintendo DS
A set of six Nintendo DS’s will be supplied to the
SfL department. A range of software will be supplied with the hardware in order
to support the project at various phases.
One Sony
PS2 will be supplied to the department along with two Guitar Controllers.
The following software titles will be provided in order to support the project
at various stages:
NOTE: Guitar Hero may be used to support a creative writing
or cross curricular type project. Similar to some of the transition work that
we carried out before the summer holidays with our primary Seven pupils from
the Cluster.
Project
Three: Nintendo Wii
One Nintendo Wii with Two Controllers
and two nunchucks will be put into the department. The following software
titles will be provided in order to support the project at various stages:
A couple of years ago I did some research comparing
different interactive voting systems and looking at if Interactive
Voting Systems Improved Learning. At the time I concluded that some systems
were a lot better than others and that I thought that a system that allowed
proper text based answers (similar to a mobile phone) would not be to far away.
This evening I went to a demo of the new Promethean Active
Expression System – at last this is a system that I would consider buying
for the school. It allows full text based answers as well as a whole host of
other great features. I’ve never been a fan of ActivVote as it just has never
offered enough but Active Expression has really got me thinking.
I would encourage anyone considering investing in a voting
system to give this some serious consideration, organise a demo and view the 3D Demo on the Promethean
World Site.
Now who wants to give £2000 to do a full scale robust test
of Active Expression in a secondary school?
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