ICT in my Classroom

I have just had a look at my Science Investigations grid over at EditGrid and they are now showing the number of views the spreadsheets have had. I was very pleased to see my Science grid has had 210 views, that was quite surprising - but what I have noticed is there has not been any contributions of results from anyone.

Maybe everyone is too scared to dip their toe in, I don’t know - so this is a call for help! Please contribute what you can to the shared results - after all the premise of the tool relies upon other people contributing to the investigation and then benefiting from the shared, pooled data - showing your class more reliable data.

This week and next week we are going to produce multimedia versions of our Poppy Poems that were written last week, coinciding with our World War 2 work in history and Remembrance day.

For the last fortnight or so I have been exploring the different web 2.0 multimedia presentation tools, see the list below, and have decided in the end to use Photostory from windows.

This is a list of the various multimedia presentation tools I considered for the job (all web based) :

• RockYou
• SlideStory
• SlideShare
• BubbleShare
• ThumbStacks
• Zoho Show

I eventually decided upon Photostory 3 from Microsoft because I wanted the option to add not only audio to each photograph but an overall soundtrack as well. The fact that it is individual software and not web based was not really an issue, but the actual scope within the software, what you could actually achieve with the tool itself was important.

I like Photostory for a few basic reasons:

• It is really simple and doesn’t over complicate the process.
• Users are taken step by step through the creation. It almost acts like a “wizard” rather than an application.
• The process is linear so you know when you have finished. You can retrace your steps easily too.
• Images can be altered in the application - so you can change all of the images to a sepia tone for example.

I think the children will enjoy the various elements of the application - they begin their work on Tuesday, the first of 2 planned sessions on creating a multimedia Poppy Poem.

Lots going on recently so I thought I would just write a quick roundup…

Parents Evening

Last Thursday we had our first parents evening which was really positive and for the first time I discussed our class blog with some of the children’s parents. The response, from the people I spoke to, was very positive and I was pleased about their reaction to it. We talked about a task that I had set on our History topic using the blog. I posted an image of a mystery object which I wanted the children to investigate and find out what it was. I set a simple reward for correct answers posted to the blog. Kids and parents loved it. I will be definitely doing more in that vein.

Macbeth Timelines

For our literacy work over the last 2 weeks we have   been studying Shakespeare’s Macbeth - the children have accessed the text through drama, character studies and abridged versions. On Monday and Tuesday this week we produced Macbeth timelines. I asked the children to look at 8 key events and pick and choose the appropriate characters and settings for them. I made a simple SMART Notebook file that demonstrated what they would do. It utilised the infinite cloner tool, so I had created a palette of characters and settings that the children had to draw from.

Poppy poems

Today the children were learning about remembrance as it is linked closely with last weekend. They looked at footage from the Pathe Film site and a short cartoon from the War Game film to add the first world war context. They then wrote poppy poems on red templates of the flowers. Next week I am planning on teaching them how to create a multimedia version of their poems using PhotoStory, should be fun.

More Bubblr

In Tuesday’s ICT lesson we used Bubblr as a tool to recount our evacuee drama experience we had with our secondary school. It was a great afternoon as it was an idea I had over a year ago and with the help of some colleagues and students from the secondary school we basically evacuated our Year 6 children for the afternoon! They had no idea where we were going and all of the teachers and students were in role when we got to the local town hall, which was also a great setting for it. Bubblr is proving a really great tool and is ideal as there is no real learning curve it is so easy to use.

Google Earth training next week which I am really looking forward to.

After school today I delivered some training that introduced ArtRage 2 a paint application from Ambient Design, a New Zealand based software company. The intuitive nature of the software made it a real hit with my colleagues.

Most importantly as a teacher you can clearly demonstrate mixing of colour with paints. The virtual paint behaves just as paint does (but without the mess) I did make a point of explaining that there is obviously a place for using the real thing when demonstrating to a small group or to younger children. I used a large clean paint brush on the SMARTBoard instead of my finger during the training which is a nice little touch.

Well worth a look. ArtRage2

This half term I am providing some voluntary training workshops in school on a real variety of different exciting topics, tools and concepts that I believe will be extremely important in the definition of a modern classroom embedding ICT and making the most of web 2.0.

• Infomapper
• ArtRage2 - this is amazing and a valuable addition to the schools software. I will post more about it soon.
• Google Earth
• Flickr
• Classroom Blogging
• 2Simple’s 2Connect and 2Investigate

These (not in any particular order, although I am delivering the ArtRage2 work tomorrow) will be short 45 minute sessions that any member of staff can come along to. I have already delivered some work last Tuesday on Infomapper that utilises OS data sets (bought by the LA).

Ever since the new update from Edublogs the theme I have been using no longer shows me the buttons and links I have previously added and been able to use.

So I am looking for a new theme - and slightly intrigued to find out if I can change more about the look and feel of my edublog than I currently do. I know that Joseph has added a few bits and pieces to his, like clustr maps.

Today we once again hosted headteachers taking part in the Strategic Leadership of ICT (SLICT) programme from the NCSL (National College for School Leadership). This will be about the 3rd year in a row we have hosted for the event. We had seven visitors with us this morning from different schools around the UK. We are always happy to welcome colleagues to our school, so that maybe they can learn from our experiences.

Much of today’s talk was centred on our development, over the last 3 years, of interactive whiteboards in each classroom and what strategic lessons we have learned from that process. But we did also begin to explore the “next big thing” - and we discussed how new technologies will be making an impact on what the future curriculum will look like.

I did give out this blog address, so if there are any of today’s visitors reading this I do hope that all went well with the rest of the day and the very best of luck with your future ICT plans.

Looks like there is some work ahead…just spotted this on Ollie Bray’s blog
Last year I produced some Google Earth resources inspired by the BBC’s groundbreaking Planet Earth series. I wanted to show the children where these amazing places were and although the video available on the BBC site is great, it does not contextualise it geographically.

So I made some resources on habitats using the videos available there was:

• Caves
• Forests
• Plains
• Jungles
• Saltwater
• Polar
• Freshwater
• Deserts
• Mountains

I posted them over on my forum for Google Earth resources, why not download them, take a look and let me know what you reckon- I think the video is only available to UK users (sorry )

I will be integrating their use in our science work this term when we look at how animals are best suited their environments.

I do not think old Will had this in mind when he named his theatre down on the banks of the Thames but I showed my children the Globe Theatre in all it’s glory on our digital globe - Google Earth!

As an introduction to the playwright and his works (we are looking at Macbeth over the next 2 weeks) I used GE to explore Stratford and look at his birthplace, then we zoomed over to the banks of the Thames in London to explore the great Globe Theatre. Using the 3D models in Google Earth 4 we were able to really get a good understanding for what the building was like - and is like today I suppose as it has been carefully restored.

The children were naturally highly motivated and they loved the fact that we could even see little model people in various thespian poses on the actual model stage! One child even asked me what the play was they were doing!

I think I will use a tag related search in Flickr to get some current photos of the theatre too. And perhaps gather together the Shakespeare resources I find useful and post them up soon.

[Thanks to Frank at the Google Earth Blog for the image]

I have just viewed Joseph Papaleo’s K12 screencast presentation on video conferencing and Google Earth and I was delighted to find a reference to the Maths in Las Vegas Google Earth resource that I made. Even though they were being downloaded from the BBS forum those resources did not get much feedback - so thanks Joseph for the kind words! (Looking forward to working with you and your colleagues next year )