ICT in my Classroom

I used Google Earth and a resource I had made about a year ago in my numeracy lesson today. It was just so much fun and the children were really responsive! Maths Vegas is basically a set of placemarks detailing some maths activities in and around the city. I remember that when I made it I sort of realised there was a great deal of maths available in real life it just needed unlocking. And the spyglass that is GE is a great way in.

So we have been looking at the area of compound shapes and generally exploring 2D and 3D shapes again. So I zoomed into the city of Las Vegas with the 3D buildings layer switched on and looked closely at some of the buildings we could see. Identifying a cylinder and other cuboids. We then explored the area and perimeter of a car park that I had added. The children loved it and were really engaged with the work. One thing that was useful was the ability to use objects they know to help them estimate – so we estimated the breadth of the car park and looked at what units of measurement would be most appropriate and the size of one of the cars parked in the car park. This helped them realise the scale of their estimates.

The Maths in Las Vegas kml resource was posted last year on my part of the GE Forum

I have been invited by the headteacher at Highwood Infant and Nursery school to do a session in their INSET day. They have recently had Promethean IWBs installed and they would like to be inspired by some creative uses of them. I think that I will keep it simple and explore some of the useful online resources that have been successful at school such as Ferry Halim.

Esther from Google Maps has been in touch after reading my post about the local history work (see below). She has asked if I could write an article about how we use the mapping service in the classroom. It will coincide with some current work I am doing with my class about our local history. I am hoping to use Quikmaps (a mashup of Google Maps) to locate some old photographs on a current map. Should be fun.

They seem to do that a lot. I can’t help but think over a few ideas as I drift off to sleep and I was mulling over the use of old and new photographs that we have been doing in our local history. I wanted to explore the use of GPS and geotagging to help us locate some of the old pictures. Well basically what I have come up with is a conceivable set of Geography/History/ICT based activities that would be great to do.

You would need.

• GPS Receivers – hand held X 5 (one per group)
• Network copy of Robogeo (geotagging software)
• Digital cameras – X 5 (one per group)
• Copies of old photos laminated to be taken out with you
• Optional: portable mp3 recording equipment; iPod, iRiver

Prior to taking the children out you would need to locate whereabouts the old photographs have been taken and add these as placemarks into all 5 GPS devices – or you could just record the placemarks and ask the children to enter the lat and long as part of the task. (This task is assuming there has been some prior work using GPS devices within the school grounds for example)
So what would the task involve? I will break it into different steps. Essentially the main learning objective are

• To understand and recognise the changes that have occured over time to different locations in your local area.
• Use GPS and geotagging software to accurately locate the old photographs onto a modern day map.

The activities would be in this order:

1. Locate each GPS placemark and match it to one of the old photographs the children have with them.
2. At the exact location take an identical phtotgraph using the cameras – take time to frame the photograph exactly as the older one was taken.
3. (After completing all of the photographs) Return to an ICT suite connect both GPS device and camera to computer and load Robogeo software. Match up each placemark (lat and long) from GPS to the photographs. [This can be done for the new set of photographs as well as the older set.]
4. Export the finished work into many different formats: Google Earth, Google Maps, to flickr. Embed the map into a class wikispace.
5. An added feature of RoboGEO is the ability to associate an audio file with the image. The audio files could be recorded using an iPod or other mp3 device and loaded onto the PC as well.

The activities might need a bit of support but they are certainly not out of reach for upper KS2 children.I am not sure how many primary schools own there own GPS devices though!

This is a lovely little app that could prove to be very useful. As the site suggests Bubblr is:

…a tool to create comic strips using photos from flickr.com. Begin searching images and add bubbles to them. So easy! Just type a tag and and press go!

The specific aspect I really like is the way that you can search for a username in flickr so that you only see those photos. If a class has an account it then allows a classteacher to direct children to a certain resource and certain images to use.

The comic strips are very simple to create as you drag images to a dynamic timeline structure and this linear style scrolling comic book is what you would get when published. Bubbles for speech, thought and just text are available to add and move, add text to. I found it really easy to organise and it could have many uses – for example it would be a good way to illustrate a historical timeline.

Once again the published resource can be embedded into other sites including a wikispace - unfortunately I cannot embed it into a learnerblog for the class blog which is a great shame and I am finding that there are seemingly too many limitations to what can be achieved in the learnerblog environment.

After exploring a whole raft of web 2.0 applications I have been thinking about the application of EditGrid’s spreasheets that can be shared online. I certainly think that they have the capacity to change the way that spreadhsheets are taught or at least to add an extra collaborative strand. And I suppose I started to think how could the primary ICT curriculum be covered in the use of Web 2.0 apps? Probably pretty well!

Anyway EditGrid allows you to create a spreadsheet (which by the way is a simplified version of excel) and then share your work as you would a Wikispace - I suppose it is a wikisheet; or a spreadwiki or a sheetwikispread!! These spreadsheets can then perhaps be embedded into a class wiki – using the embed media button at wikispaces.
The obvious use would be to deliver much of the spreadsheets curriculum for Year 5 and 6 – but I really like the RTU or Real Time Update feature of it that allows you to see real time changes. I think that simultaneous maths lessons with either whole classes or small groups working together on the same workspace may be an interesting option. There is also the possible use of the spreadsheet between schools in different locations.

Maybe there is someone out there willing to do that ?

Strangely enough I only discovered this very useful little tool of Flickrs yesterday. Adding notes is far more visual than I imagined – I suppose it was a bit daft of me to miss it. But nevertheless this morning I decided to use ti with the children in my Year 6 class and we revised some maths we have been doing. I scanned a good example of the grid method for multiplication and then simply labelled what we saw, this really helped to consolidate the different features. Check it our here.

Such a simple tool – I must make more of it.

I have begun a class wiki over at wikispaces.com. I have already added a few tasks that came to mind – something about the RE work we have done, something on the Local History study [I imagine this being linked with some internet based research] and also a literacy task I have called “Let’s write a Biography together”.

I have also joined a couple of Google groups to keep tabs on what educational wikis are doing – I think that it will be an interesting resource for the class.

Based upon the number of comments and posts on the class blog I think that I will offer a time during the week at school to blog using the school computers.

Today has been Wiki Wednesday!

I have had some time at school to get a few jobs done out of class and I have been exploring the use of wikis. Initially my thoughts were regarding there application in a classroom – children sharing their writing etc. Today I have been exploring the use of wikis as a professional development or management tool. So I have set a wikispace for school where I have added some content regarding the school’s SRF and also the SEF. To me the use of a wiki has some important advantages:

• Access the document where ever you can get online.
• Collaborate with lots of people in different places.
• Track the history of the document changes.
• Revert back to previous versions.
• Key members of staff can monitor the changes of a document.

So for example every year certain school policies have to be reviewed and often changes have to be made – I think that using a wikispace would be a simple and easy way to do it.

I then read John’s blog about his lesson on Wikipedia and it reminded about an idea I had. Essentially anyone can author content for the resource so why not set it as a writing task – it would involve research and in depth writing skills. I wonder if any schools have ever successfully contributed to it?

It is great when a child teaches you something new! Right in the middle of the blogging lesson and after I had said that there is no way of spell checking your work when writing a post – a girl in my class tells me a solution!

Google toolbar spell checker!

Works a charm – click on the ABC icon and this switches on the spell checker. (Using Internet Explorer) Words in the form you are working in are highlighted and underlined in red if they are incorrectly spelled. Choosing such a word gives a little drop down list of possible alternatives – take your choice and the replaced word is underlined and coloured in green. Then click the ABC button again to switch it off. Simple.

There seems to be an AUTOFIX option too which I will explore.

Isn’t it great when our own knowledge is extended by those we are teaching.