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ICT in Education Lecture - Edinburgh University 2008 PGDE (Secondary)

I was really privileged to get an opportunity to speak to the Edinburgh University PGCE Students today about ICT. Although I still have concerns that the only compulsory 1 hour ICT lecture is left until over two thirds of the way through the course!

Anyway, feedback has been really positive and I hope that some of the audience might follow this up with emails or comments here.

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I referred to the following links during my presentation:

1. Generators:

The Generator Blog – 100’s of generators to make learning tasks fun!

2. Search Engines:

Google – The biggest search database on the planet. Always use the Advanced Search function and remember that a Google Advanced Search can return searches for specific file types (including PowerPoint and flash animation).

Google News – Searches the latest and historical news on the web.

Google Scholar – Searches academic journals and papers.

Searchmash – A Google Side Project that shows normal search results but also image results, blog results, video results and Wikipedia entries all on one page.

Qunitura – A visual search – great for project work.

Clusty – specialises in searching the deep web.

3. Using Images:

Everything that you need top know about images including some flickr tutorials can be found  here and as a video tutorial here. 

4. Presentation Tools

For every thing that you need to know about PowerPoint and other presentation tools (including Captivate) visit SWict.com.

Death by PowerPoint is not an uncommon phrase in schools and conferences these days. PowerPoint is a powerful presentation tool but you need to be careful how you use it as a teaching resource.

Remember to involve pupils in the design and aesthetics of slides. What might look great to you might look awful to a 14 year old. After you have shown a presentation to a class gather some feedback on it (see idea 15 or idea 2). Ask pupils what they though of the presentation, not the topic. Was there to much text, what did they think of the pictures, what were the animations like etc...

In the past I have given students PowerPoint presentations to take home and edit for me.

Use flash animation in your presentation. As long as your computer is connected to the internet you can get flash to play directly from a web site to your PowerPoint presentation. Click here for tutorial telling you how you can do this. Now all you have to do if find some animations on the web, below is a summary of some good places to start looking.

• The Guardian’s Education website offers a whole           range of excellent ‘Interactive           Guides’ which include flash animation http://www.guardian.co.uk/interactive          
• The BBC News also offers some good flash resources.
• For S1, S2 and beyond try Brainpop. You can get           a free 14 day trial for this excellent resource.

You can search on for Shockwave Flash Files on the web by putting the subject you are looking for into the search box followed by a space then filetype:swf. For example try typing Hurricane Katrina filetype:swf into Google.

There are also a number of commercial resources available which include flash files. Check out Boardworks and order a free sample CD.

Include catch up slides (if getting students to copy things down from the board) and think about using PowerPoint for differentiation.

Link difficult words and terminology to sites like wikitionary. This can also provide useful tangents and discussion points.

BBC Picture of the Day is a useful resource, ‘The Day in Pictures’

5. Web 2.0

Web 2.0 is a fairly new term that describes some of the recent changes to the World Wide Web. Traditionally the web was a place where people could get information it was ‘read only’. However in the last 5 years the web has developed. Now as well as being able to read information it is also possible to write to the web. Its two way, read and write. Wikipedia has a good article on web 2.0 and you can find that here. I would also recommend the ‘Coming of Age’ a free on-line book which talks about the new World Wide Web. Some people including Will Richardson prefer the name the read / write web.

Some of the Web 2.0 tools that we have available to us as teachers are Blogs, Wikis and Podcasts.

1) A blog is an on-line journal at can allow people to comment. They can be personal or public.

2) A podcast is an on-line radio programme that anyone can download. You can subscribe to podcasts through sites like itunes, which mean that new episodes instantly get delivered to you when they are produced. Ewan Macintosh once described this to me as the difference between going to collect your paper and having it delivered to your house.

3) A wiki is a web page that anyone can edit and up-date. Wikipedia is the classic example of this. Why not get your students to create, edit and maintain a page?

 

6. Mobile Phones

Most students have mobile phones these days. To find out different uses for mobile phones in the classroom have a look at this article that I wrote as part of the 50 ideas presentation.

 

7. Internet safety

Think You Know – Useful information on Internet safety.

I’ve been doing a lot of work on Internet Safety recently and I think it should be the responsibility of all teachers and school staff. If your interested you can find more information here.

8. Other related posts:

• Brighton      and Hove Online Handouts – Taking Geography Forward

• Geography:      Back to Basics

• 50      Ideas in 50 Minutes

 
Good Luck with your last placement!

Internet Safety and Responsible Use Training for Portobello High School, Edinburgh.

At Teachmeet North I announced that I had set myself a target of training at least 1000 adults in Internet Safety and Responsible use between October 2007 and October 2008. This evening I was given a chance to speak to parents at Portobello High School in Edinburgh. I am greatful to Caroline Robertson (a CEOP Trainer) and Peigi Macarthur (the Head Teacher) for giving me the opportunity. I understand that the school will soon be rolling out the training for staff and for pupils.   

 

Below are what I consider to be the key slides from my presentation:

 

 

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These are the websites that I mentioned:

CEOP - Child Exploitation Online Protection Agency:

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.

Think You Know:

Find the latest information on the sites you like to visit, mobiles and new technology. Find out what's good, what's not and what you can do about it.

If you look after young people there's an area for you too - with resources you can use in the classroom, at home or just to get with it.

Most importantly, there's also a place which anyone can use to report if they feel uncomfortable or worried about someone they are chatting to online.

All the information here is brought to you by the team at the Child Exploitation and Online Protection (CEOP) Centre. We hope you like it.

Grid Club:

Educational resources, games, quizzes and activities. Includes notes on curriculum relevance.

Cyber Café:

Discover the safest ways to use the Internet, chat rooms, e-mail and send text messages. Aimed at 8 - 10 year olds.

If anyone has any questions about the evening please feel free to get in touch or leave a comment below.

Childnet International

Childnet International’s mission is to work in partnership with others around the world to help make the Internet a great and safe place for children.

For a good introduction to Childnet’s work you can download Childnet’s IMPACT report here.

I also referred to these articles: 

• Guardian Article: 'Unprofessional' young tennis players have funding suspended
• Scotsman Article: Oil Worked sent 15 year old girl S & M Messages
• OTG Daily Article: Over half of employers say that Internet activity affects recruitment decisions

 

On-line Handouts

1. Purely for Parents Guidance Sheet
2. Think You Know who your talking to leaflet
3. Internet Safety Leaflet for Parents
4. Blog Safety Leaflet Parents
5. Young People, Music and the Internet

Promethean Active Expression Voting System: Delivery Two

Last week I went to a trial of the Promethean Active Expression Voting System and I wrote about how impressed I was with the system. Since then I have been contacted by Promethean who have asked me to give the system a real robust test for the teaching of Geography.

The 32 piece voting system arrived today and we hope to get the software installed and things up and running for after the Easter Holidays. I will be working on the project in conjunction with the MGS Geography Department, who all have Promethean Whiteboards in their rooms.

I had a few children in my office today (for varying reasons!) who all seemed fascinated by the handsets. I really think this really could be an evolutionary product and I am looking forward to trying it out and watching it being used at the chalk face.

I will write about the trail here between now and the summer holidays.

Buzz the Schools Quiz – Delivery One

It’s nice to get deliveries to the school and the last couple of days have been no exception. On Monday nine copies of Buzz: the schools quiz arrived at the school. This is part of our Games Based Learning Initiative that we are currently working on within the Musselburgh Cluster. This initiative also involves a Guitar Hero Transition project (more on that when the rest of the equipment arrives!).

Buzz the schools quiz has been developed with the KS2 Curriculum in mind but there are lots of links to the Scottish Curriculum. We have been trialling the software and Buzzers in Whitecraig Primary School since December last year and the children love playing and learning from Buzz.

I’m looking forward to hearing what the other schools think about Buzz and if the children like playing the game.

Buzz for the PS3 is due to be released soon and I hope that we will be able to have a secondary trial of this software when it is released later in the year.

CEOP Ambassadors Training

I am pleased to announce that I have become one of the first Scottish Ambassadors for the Child Exploitation and Online Protection Agency (CEOP). This is following a one day training course in Edinburgh today. The course was very good and there was some excellent input from Many Ross and Malcolm Bryce-Stafford of the CEOP Education Team.

The other main presentation of day came from Rachael Sensicle who gave a one hour presentation in offender behaviour online. During her presentation she introduced the delegates to video footage of convicted sex offenders who were interviewed as part of a debrief research process to try and find out more information about convicted paedophiles. This was a really interesting presentation – but I have to admit to finding it quite disturbing and I felt quite emotionally scared by the end of it. I really commend the front line work that Rachel and her team carry out to protect children internationally.

Overall I thought he training was very good. Although, I do have a worry about the knowledge of some of the delegates on the course. I hope that CEOP will monitor the quality of delivery of some of the new ambassadors by doing some drop in spot checks on some of the trainer training sessions. I also think that as a pre-requisite to the ambassador course individuals should have attended the half day training workshop and have experience of running at least on Think You Know (11-16) Presentation to children or adults.

The other concern that I have was the lack of emphasise on responsible use. For me this still remains the key to success with children and adults. For example, today, Second Life was really painted in a negative light. Due to the lack of knowledge of some of the delegates (some of whom had never heard of Second Life before) it was getting a real slating over lunch. The reality is, of course, there is a huge amount of positive education working going on in second life. Just ask Digital Katie.

So as a new ambassador what do I intend to do now. I can broadly split this into three categories:

1. Finish the Think You Know Training with students at MGS by June 2008.
2. Organise and run further training for clusters in East Lothian. In October 2007 I set myself the target of training 1000 adults in Internet Safety and Responsible Use. I hope to reach this target by October 2008.
3. Train Trainers – I’m delighted to say we have written this into our cluster development plan for session 2008 / 2009. I also hope to training the MGS Guidance Staff and offer a number of courses in next years East Lothian Staff Development Brochure.

If anyone is interested in attending one of my presentations please email me. I will be speaking to parents from Portobello High School in Edinburgh between 7 – 8.30pm on Thursday 13^th March.

Commoncraft: Twitter

I’ve mentioned before about the commoncraft tutorials – here’s the latest one on Twitter. I don’t think it’s quite as good as some of the others, but I like it all the same! It's embedded below as a YouTube Video.

PicLens

One of the great things about events like Gamesmeet and Teachmeet is the opportunity to share ideas between like minded colleagues. The other great thing is that they are normally hosted in pubs!

I’m a big believer that small ideas change things and can have real impact in the classroom – I have spoken widely about this at a number of conferences and has been one my focuses when trying to support staff in Curriculum for Excellence discussions.

Last Friday, at GamesMeet Mr W showed me PicLens. This is a great little application for quickly searching through and looking at pictures from the web. I’ve only been using it now for a couple of days and its already been immensely helpful in sourcing images for presentations and assemblies.

PicLens is quite hard to describe Freeware Genius does it quite well,

‘Imagine that you’re browsing, say, Flickr, and that you are looking at a page full of thumbnails. Normally what you would do is click on the thumbnail and view the image, go back to the page with the thumbnail and click on the next image and so on. What PicLens offers is an alternate way of viewing the images that literally "takes over" and overlays itself on top of your browser window; your images will be displayed full screen and all thumbnails presented in a horizontal sequence that is quickly browsable on the bottom of the screen.’

This YouTube Video also shows PicLens in action:

The iPhone and Enterprise in Schools

A couple of my friends (yes I do have some!) have got iphones and I’ve been experimenting with one quite a bit lately. I’m at the point of considering getting one, although I have been advised to wait for the 3G model that is meant to come out later in the year.

Anyway, as I am interested in the iphone I took the time this weekend to watch the video from the Apple event on the March 6 2008. During the event Apple CEO Steve Jobs unveiled the iPhone software roadmap, released the iPhone Software Development Kit, and introduced the iPhone Enterprise Beta Program.

If you interested in Apple, Mobile technology or the iphone then the video of the presentation is definitely worth a look. There were a number of interesting parts to the presentation. One was a demo of what Spore might look like for the iphone when it is released later in the year – the graphics that the iphone provide really are outstanding.

However the part of the presentation that I found really interesting was the bit at the end on entrepreneurs (you can forward to about 1h 12mins into the video to see the bit I mean – its right at the end). It reminded me about one of Don’s recent posts on how we teach entrepreneurial skills in schools. The venture capital firm KPCB has created the ifund to invest $100, 000, 000 to support the development of third party apps for the iphone.

I think we have probably got a lot of potential software developers in our Scottish Schools, but what we need to do is give them the time and creative push to help them develop software.

‘If you want to invest in the future, you need to invent it first!’

Computer Games in Education: Gamesmeet

For the last couple of weeks I have been collaborating with Tess Watson and Derek Robertson to organise a small scale Games Un-Conference at the Illicit Still in Edinburgh. We have purposely kept the event fairly quiet and low key and apart from a few key invites – we have really just let people discover that the event is happening rather than go out of our way to advertise the evening.

We hope that we will organise a bigger Gamesmeet sometime before the summer term and this is really a bit of a trial run. We have developed our ideas via skype, facebook and a wiki.

Some of the games that will be on offer for people to trial appear in the slideshow below. I’m sure I will write more about the event after tonight.

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World Maths Day - International Games Based Learning

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The 5^th of March is a special day for lots of reasons. But my reason for a special assembly was to celebrate and launch World Maths Day 2008. A couple of weeks ago I was approached by the maths department who were keen to build on some of their previous initiatives by celebrating World Maths Day with all of their classes.

World Maths Day is basically an international competition where you take part in one minute competitions with other player who happen to be online. The questions that you get asked are not dissimilar to Dr Kawashima’s Brain Training but you are competing with up to three other people virtually and these people could be anywhere else in the world. For the 2008 competition there are more than 20, 000 register schools from over 150 countries – international citizenship in action!

At Musselburgh we gave all students in the school who take maths from S1 – S6 (most of the school population!) an individual card with a unique log in and password. Our office staff, admin staff and maths department worked tirelessly to set this up. From last Wednesday students had a chance to go on-line and practice to get ready for World Maths Day – and we have quite simply be astonished by the results.

In their own time, from last Wednesday, our students have been answering over 10,000 correct answers each day. Over the last weekend them managed to clock up 46, 000 additional correct answers. To me, this demonstrates the real power of Games Based Learning and competition combined with the sense of collegiality and fun that our maths department have fostered in this project. This is simply, the Curriculum for Excellence for real! – We took a risk, it’s paid off, there has been some real learning and it’s been really good fun. Even the library was decorated for the day with an international theme.

Now all I have to do is wait until 11am on Thursday to find out the results (that is when the sun goes down on March 5th in Honolulu!)