One of JISC’s jobs is to inspire UK colleges and universities in the innovative use of digital technologies. Much of the work of JISC is also directly relevant to schools but many UK school teachers have never heard of the organization and the great work that they do.
One of the latest JISC Projects has been to create a new range of resources (web2practice guides) to explain how emergent web technologies like RSS, microblogging (eg: Twitter) podcasting and social media can enhance your working practice.
Each available guide currently consists of a short animated video explaining the key concepts and is supported by a more in-depth overview of the topic. The overview details potential uses for each technology, possible risks and also explains how you can get started.
I’ve had the pleasure of sharing a few
beers, a few drams and a number of days out on the hill in the Scottish
Highlands with Kirk Watson.
Kirk now spends a large
part of his year working for British Antarctic Survey and this year they have
let him stay on for the winter (our summer). I’m still trying to make up my mind if he has
been bad or good! Either way, I’m dead jealous as it looks like he is having a
fantastic time in a really special part of the world.
Not only is Kirk writing about his
experiences but he has also started to produce a series of excellent YouTube
Videos and about his adventures down under. In the very first video you see the
research vessel leaving Antarctica and Kirk announcing that they won’t see a
boat or plane again for the next seven months.
Future videos show Kirk introducing the 21
strong crew who will be manning the research base for the next seven months,
training trips out (and under) the ice and even a snapshot of the Antarctic
base band!
Pop over to Kirk’s site watch some of
his videos and why don’t you get your class to leave him a question – you never
know he might be bale to answer it in a future video.
The other great news is that Kirk has
agreed (if we can get it sorted) to do a Scottish Schools GLOW
meet (live from Antarctica) – we still
need to work out the details, date and technology. But hopefully this will take
place in September / October this year. I’ll post details here and probably over on the GLOW Scotland blog if we get
this sorted out.
It was nice to finally meet Stuart Ball (pictures right above) from the UK Microsoft
Innovative Teachers Network at BETT 2009.
We have spoken on the phone before, exchanged emails and tweets. It was also nice to briefly
meet Kristen Weatherby (Microsoft) and Dan
Roberts (pictured left above), who was one of last years Innovative
Teachers World Wide Semi Finalists.
I won an Innovative Teacher
Award for a Virtual Classroom Tour back in 2006 for work that I had done on
developing a set of Geography
Revision Podcasts. I called the project GEOCASTS
and it was pretty successful and quite cutting edge at the time. This
particular resource is now hosted by my friends at do-be, who always tell me
that the resource is still very popular. You can still download all the GEOCAST
mp3 and mv4 files from the do-be website. I’m also keen to revisit this method of
distributing content to children later in the New Year.
The Microsoft Innovative
Teacher Network connects a global community of educators who share a common
interest in enhancing teaching and learning through the use of
technology. It’s free to join the network
and there are lots of interesting ideas and resources within the community
portal.
The winners of the 2008 EduBlog Awards
were announced on Saturday night in Second Life. I like the idea of the awards I think
they are light hearted, not particularly serious and most importantly encourage
sharing. I know that some people were delighted to be nominated and others can’t
stand the idea.
I tend to sit on the fence with this one. I was nominated
for the Best Teacher Award – I was pleased to be nominated (thanks James) but purposely chose not
to draw any attention to the fact. Viki
Davis won the best teacher category on Saturday night and I wasn’t particularly surprised
about this as she writes comprehensive blog about here classroom experiences.
She is also a fantastically committed teacher and writes passionately about the
children in her care.
The one thing that I was really interested in was how the
award ceremony was held. I ventured into Second Life to have a look at the
venue earlier in the day. I was really impressed with the set up of the awards
and what the venue looked like and I could start to see why this sort of
environment is so appealing for so many people.
I popped back into the venue during the awards ceremony for
a few minutes and it was packed with educators from around the world listening to
the awards. I don’t quite know how it works but the organisers were
transmitting a Skype Conference call through Second Life.
Finding out and working within virtual worlds will be one of
my 2009 learning objectives.
This is the third of five posts
about what makes up my Professional Learning Network. In this post I am going
to reflect on some web 2.0 technologies in particular Google Reader and social bookmarking using
Delicious.
A large part of my Professional
Learning Network is made up of reading other peoples blogs and websites. When I
referred to Nomadic Learning in my
opening post for this series, I guess it is the reading of other peoples
work from around the world that has really turned me nomadic.
Google Reader relies on RSS. I’m not even
going to attempt to explain what this is. But if you don’t know this excellent CommonCraft
video will tell you everything that you need to know (You
Tube Video Embedded Below):
There are lost of RSS
Readers on the Internet by Google Reader has quickly become my favourite. One
of the reasons for this is that it aggregates so well into other Google services.
You will need a Google Account to start using Google Reader. The CommonCraft video below will
tell you everything that you need to know about using Reader (You Tube Video Embedded
Below):
As of today (November 2008)
I use Google Reader to monitor over 200 websites from around the world. They
include teachers, principles, headteachers, entrepreneurs, news feeds and other
things I am interested in (eg: climbing , canoeing and kayaking). By following
contributing and keeping my own learning log I have built up relationships with
lots of other like minded professionals from around the world.
Social Bookmarking
is another great way to collaborate with people globally and to swap ideas and
useful websites that you have found. The CommonCraft
video below will tell you everything that you need to know about Social
Bookmarking using a service called Delicious
(You
Tube Video Embedded Below):
I’ve got hundreds of
categorised bookmarks in my delicious account
– that anybody is welcome to look at and use. But as the video explains the
great thing about social bookmarking is it becomes really easy for people to
send you useful links.
On Friday I was speaking to delegates on a SCSSA Course on ‘Creating
Time and Capacity to Manage Learning and Teaching’ and then to a group of
teachers in the afternoon who are involved on the new East Lothian Pilot
Programme titled, ‘First Steps to Leadership’. The title of my afternoon session
as Digital Literacy (I will write more
about this programme later in the week).
A theme for both of the presentations was talking about how
I learn and about my extended Professional Learning Network. Four years ago, I
will admit, I was stuck in a bit of a rut. I was unsure which direction I wanted
my career to take. I think teaching is still an isolated profession, I wasn’t
learning a huge amount and I felt I was becoming stagnated.
By chance, I was introduced to technologies which helped introduced
me to other educational professionals from around the world. I stared to
thrive, contribute and learn within these new communities. I started to feel I
was no longer alone and I became genuinely re-motivated in my job because I was
enthused by the sharing of innovative ideas with teachers and leaders from all
around the world. Within these communities I was also always treated as a
equal.
I became what I have come to describe as a ‘nomadic
learner’, I moved from place to place around the internet ‘grazing
on information’ sharing good practice and contributing to the wider local,
national and international education debate.
Currently my professional learning network is made up of
some of the services on-line and off-line that you see in the picture below.
Over the next week I am going to be talking in detail about my professional
learning network and how I feel it makes me better at my job.
Here’s a brief introduction to what I will be talking about and when:
Monday – People
Tuesday – Closed Communities
Wednesday – Web 2.0
Tools
Thursday – Other web
based services
Friday – Mobile Services
Some of the first pieces of work that I have to do for the MUVEnation Programme will also be captured
within these posts.
I have always been a big fan of Slideshare, I think it’s a great way to embed
PowerPoint or Keynote presentations into Blogs and other websites. It’s also a
really good way to share presentations with students that don’t have PowerPoint
or Keynote on their own computer – as its web based it is completely cross
platform.
At the moment with Slideshare
you can up-load presentations up to 100mb in size. However, not willing to give
up straight away I up-loaded a shorter presentation that I have been working on
for the Royal Metrological Society on Atmosphere to both Slideshare and
Slideboom.
Initially, I was very impressed with how quickly Slideboom converted
my file from a PowerPoint to a Slideboom
Presentation. However Slideshare only took about one minute longer and I
suspect that Slideshare has more users and therefore its servers are likely to
be busier.
Have a look at the two presentations below and then I’ll
draw you to a couple of the slides to compare:
1) You will
notice that Slideboom keeps all of the custom animations from the PowerPoint
presentation. If you compare slide 3
on both presentations you will notice that the three paragraphs on the
Slideboom presentation appear individually where as on the Slideshare
presentation all of the content appears at once.
2) The showing of
custom animations is particularly powerful when you compare the more
complicated slides in the presentation such
as slides 11 and 16.
3) Slideboom also
plays the animated .gifs within the presentation. If you compare slide 4 on both presentations you will see the sun is
moving in the Slideboom presentation but static in the Slideshare presentation.
4) Slideboom
doesn’t like flash animations that are embedded in the presentation. For
example if you look at slide 17 Slideboom shows this slide as a large white
cross (untidy) where as Slideshare converts the flash animation into a static
picture.
So will I be transferring
over to Slideboom? Not at the moment, for me its up-load capacity of 30mb
is just too small – although I do think it has some potential and I will be
watching it develop with interest over the coming months. It will also be
interesting to see the up-grades that occur on Slideshare, now that it has some
real competition.
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