ICT in my Classroom

We do so much these days to try and engage our learners within our classrooms, to create content that is inspiring. But what about finding inspiring content for us. Teachers need to be inspired to go on to create great learning opportunities. We mustn’t forget about finding content that inspires us too. With the summer fast concluding concluded I feel energised, excited and inspired to begin our sealife topic. Here is a bunch of my ideas.

When you begin digging into this topic area you soon realise that there is SO much good content, resources and ways to work with it that maybe everyone should be doing it. I can’t wait to get my snorkel on! If you have been following me on Twitter then you have probably been awash with my notes about it all.

Endless Ocean

This is one of the major elements of our unit, and I suppose you might say that the topic is lead by using this game on the Wii. I already know games based learning is a powerful way to engage learners. Innovative work by teachers in Scotland continues to inspire me and I hope that our unit will measure up to their great work.

It is a very open ended game, allowing the player (a diver) to just swim around and explore the reefs, lagoons and open waters on offer. I love the fact that we don’t know what we might found in the murky depths. I began making notes as to the types of fish we discovered. But you know, I think the engagement and hook will be in those moments when suddenly, unexpectedly,  someone finds a lion fish or a hammer-head shark. I recall these same moments of shared discovery when we played Myst, and it produces a great community of use in the classroom.

I want our play and our learning to have that edge. To emerge gradually as the map does in the game, I know which direction we are heading but what we find there is an unknown.

Steve Bunce has already used the game with classes and suggested I use a carousel of activities so that smaller groups can use the game on a more intimate level. There also has to be some time when we are sharing the discovery and exploration as a whole class. I will be planning the first week of work to include small groups working on the game and four other independent activities related to our topic.

Marine Guide

We will use the game throughout the whole course of the 7 week topic and most importantly find out more about the species we catalogue in the game. As you discover a creature you are given it’s name and a snippet of information about it, this is then recorded in the game’s Marine Guide.

I am going to ask our kids to do something similar. A drawing, habitat, size, food – all entered into a small paper book. I want to keep it simple so we can update them quickly as we discover different creatures. I would like the children to explore some online resources to help them learn more about the different species. This ties in with the non-fiction strand of the literacy strategy.

There seems to be quite a considerable number of species to find and I am not expecting the children to amass information on all of them. Perhaps on occasion they can choose from a handful of species we have found to record and then there may be those that we all need to record. I will see how things pan out.

Fish Friday

This idea is very much from my RANDOM pile but I think it could work really well. John Davitt has created something called the Learning Event Generator that randomly selects a topic and a way to show it. For example: DO “How to make an omelette” AS “a play by play sports commentary”. The AS list is over 200 ideas strong and I would highly recommend it whilst you are planning.

So take a big list of the species we have discovered and an edited (can we really do that in the classroom, with these kids) list of the outcomes and you get…

Show me what you have learned about the SWORDFISH as a FINGER PUPPET SHOW.
Show me what you have learned about the LUMINESCENT SEA SLUG as a T-SHIRT DESIGN.

I would break the two parts up. Give the kids, in small groups, the species name and 10 minutes to gather what they already know and more. And then reveal their way of showing their learning and 25-20 minutes to work on it. I think it is going to be fun and will challenge our classes in different ways.

And that’s my idea for Fish Friday.

Scuba Diving

As you can tell from the game you take the part of a scuba diver. Apart from actually diving in the local pool I wanted the classes to better understand what scuba equipment is all about. I am hoping to arrange with the local scuba diving club to bring a whole load of gear into school so that the children can not only handle it but get to chat to real scuba divers. Maybe they can have a go on Endless Ocean with us too and tell us how realistic it is!

Google Earth > Ocean Layer

Google Earth never ceases to amaze me and before researching into this topic I didn’t look too far into what was on offer in the Ocean layer. It will prove to be a highly valuable resource for our children, helping them better understand the actual information geography of different aspects of the topic. But as we have seen in the past, Google Earth will just be one way for children to “find out”, others will prefer reference books or websites. The important thing is that the choice is there.

Here is a list of some of the features in the layer, plus my notes.

• National Geographic comprehension quiz – would be good as a paired reading task.
• Animal Tracking – would help to illustrate some shark and whale behaviour.
• ARKive layer – lovely resource of endangered marine life shown in context.
• Using different layers of info for reading text – perhaps creating a few quiz questions of our own.
• Expedition Tracking – active expeditions are shown, such as Roz Savage the ocean rower.
• Shipwreck sites
• Fishing stocks and UK fish factfiles – would be useful to explore some species native to our waters. Tie this in with the work on persuasive writing and sustainability of fish stocks.
• Dive and Surf Spots – adding Panoramio layer to show diving pictures.

There is so much here to consider (there are many more layers I have not referenced) but just knowing that we can direct children to a high quality resource like this is great. Disappointingly most of the embedded video which helps depict the variety of life uses YouTube which is blocked in our Nottinghamshire LA. A prime example of why it shouldn’t be. Although the placemarks in the ARKive layer also use YouTube video, on their own site the video is hosted, and it is a vast collection of images and video too.

Augmented Reality

Augmented reality (AR) is the combination of 3D models, a webcam (if on a desktop or laptop), AR software and a printed symbol. The screen will show what is visible through your camera. The camera tracks the symbol you have printed off and then places the chosen 3D model on that position. Turn the printed symbol and you turn the 3D model.

This is a screen shot of me impaled by the Sydney Tower.

Whilst exploring the topic I saw a tweet about the 3D Top Trumps that have been released. I wish there was a Sealife set to buy! I have played a bit with augmented reality (AR) with our classes last year. It has huge potential for learning. I used the AR Media Plugin for Sketchup and Google Earth to support some of our work on India.  Small groups looked at the Taj Mahal in 3D and it helped them get a better idea about the structure of the building.

For our Sealife topic I want the children to explore different 3D models of tropical fish and other creatures from the oceans. I discovered an amazing set of 3D artwork by Max Grueter in the Sketchup 3D Warehouse and in his collection he has some divers too with some lovely depictions of older diving suits. Just looking at the models in 3D is limited in it’s use, it will be engaging I know that – but I want the children to perhaps answer questions and engage more with what is displayed.

I am thinking through and developing some AR Comprehension Cards. Combining text, the 3D model and then questions to challenge the children too. Will be a great way to engage those reluctant readers and to look at reading comprehension in a different, augmented way!

Finding Nemo

This film could be used on it’s own as a central part to a sealife topic but we are going to concentrate on the more open, interactive Endless Ocean to guide us. But we will be using the film to explore some of the PSHCE issues uncovered within it: families, loss, friendship and growing up. I know the children will enjoy it and it is another way of engaging them with their learning.

If you have a copy of the DVD you will know that the bonus disc has some great resources that could be used in the classroom, such as the short film about the coral reef with Jean Michel Cousteau. I like Mr Ray’s Encyclopedia which gives a short narrated film clip about a handful of species from the film. I would use this in a notetaking exercise with the kids, or perhaps in 2s or 3s for a quiz.

My Planning

For what it is worth I have published some of my more detailed thoughts about the literacy involved in the unit in this Google Doc. Let me know what you think. I have thought about the ways I would like to engage the children with the topic and then looked at the Primary Strategy references. If I followed the strategy verbatim we wouldn’t cover information text (Year 4 unit) but I want the children to create exactly that sort of thing, so it’s included.

What you see in the planning is medium term and there every idea I had about the different literacy work. With only 7 weeks we will not cover everything nor do I expect to.

Books

Since being in school I have discovered lots of books that we already have that will support our work and these (with the help of many people’s suggestions on Twitter) will also help supplement the work we do.

• Dougal’s Deep Sea Diary – Simon Bartram (Good for recount and writing from a diver’s point of view)
• Baleen – Josephine Croser (A nice narrative but also would be good for information during “Whale Week” – yes we might have a solid week on learning just about whales. Amazing creatures. This might give us an opportunity to use our Google Sites, encourage the children to build a mini-site about whales.)
• The Hidden Forest – Jeannie Baker
• Commotion in the Ocean – Giles Andreae and David Wojtowycz (To inspire some simple poetry)
• The Wreck of the Zanzibar – Michael Morpurgo
• Why the Whales Came – Michael Morpurgo (Would probably use these as a class story throughout the unit)
• Odious Oceans – Horrible Geography
• The Fantastic Undersea Life of Jacques Cousteau – Dan Yaccarino (Unique and beautiful picture book)
• First Encyclopedia of Seas and Oceans (Usborne first encyclopedias)
• Is a Blue Whale the Biggest Thing There Is? – Robert E. Wells
• Migration Marvels - Voyage Guided reading set. (More able)

If you get a chance to look at the Dan Yaccarino book you will probably realise why that one gets a special mention from me. There is only a few sample images online of the picture book but I love the tantalising glimpse of the artwork it is made up of.

I contacted Dan about the artwork, which he said was done using stencils and an airbrush, to see how we might recreate some of it in the classroom. Layered tissue paper might work well and I expect we will spend a lovely afternoon very soon with copies of the book in hand and our creative hats on!

Tracking

From the Expedition layer in Google Earth I discovered the ongoing coverage of the ocean rower Roz Savage. This is an ideal example for the children to keep tabs on throughout the next few weeks as she makes progress across the Pacific. The Roz Tracker is a lovely example of real time mapping and social media which gives a great insight into the conditions onboard and the state of mind of Roz.

The RozTracker is an interactive map that you can use to track Roz’s progress across the Pacific, and see exactly where she was when she posted various social media.

One of my favourite Tweets from Roz says so much.

surrounded by sharky feeding frenzies. not the day to take a swim.

It would be good to spend some time with the children doing a couple of things purely based on this short message:

• Find out what type of sharks might be there based upon her location, the fact there are many and their behaviour.
• Based upon that information try and work out what type of shark she may be referring to. Send her a Tweet explaining what we found out. Are we right? Does she know?
• Learn what sort of food the sharks may be feeding on and draw up some food chain information. Why might it be described as a frenzy?
• Use this as a starting point for some descriptive fiction.
• Explore newspaper coverage of shark attacks.

A fine example of how social media can put are classrooms in touching distance of people doing remarkable things.

Another fantastic resource that I discovered via Twitter is Tour de Turtles. The site tracks 11 sea turtles as they begin their migratory journey. Each turtle has a name and is depicted as a contestant in a race, competing with each other. The turtles are being tracked with GPS and you can look at a map showing their ongoing progress.

There is loads of information about the 11 different causes that the turtles each represent – each one impacts on the lives of the turtles in some way. For example there is poor old Chica who is struggling in last place at the moment and according to her map is not entirely sure which way she is going! The cause that Chica represents is “Sea Level & Temperature Rise from Climate Change” and you can even watch a pre-race interview with each turtle and then live footage of them setting off too.

A lovely site that holds stacks of information for the children to explore, the opportunity to raise awareness of real issues affecting these creatures and big slice of fun and humour to engage young learners. We will definitely be checking in with the turtles. I expect I will ask the children to adopt one of the 11 for the next 7 weeks and see how things work out, encouraging them to learn more about them and keep tabs on their progress.

That just about wraps up some of my thinking for this next half term and as I said at the outset I am excited to get underway with it all. Just to finish you could always record your own dancing turtle like I have done. I know that after all the 7 weeks of hard work the dancing turtle will probably be the one thing the kids remember most!

In November 2007 I began the first of a series of Google presentations gathering together some ideas about the uses of different tools for the classroom. I thought that the easy manner of sharing Google Docs was ideal to collate thoughts, tips and suggestions from teachers and educators all over the world.

I began with interesting ways to use the interactive whiteboard and the family has since grown to include, tips for Google Earth, Google Docs and the most recent Pocket Video Cameras. It has been great to watch them evolve as people get in touch and I add them to the document and they make their own edits.

Here is the family photo

My intention from the beginning was that there should be many authors of the presentations and that teachers and school staff could happily take the resource and share it with their colleagues. As it is in a simple presentation format it seems to have been successful in doing that.

In total we have collated 100 101 suggestions, tips and ideas for the classroom! (I can’t type quick enough and people keep adding more ideas!) It is fantastic to be part of that collaborative effort to share what we do.

The most recent on pocket video cameras seems to have really hit a rich vein of classroom ideas – so far 29 ideas have been shared by people all over the world and I only started it 3 days ago. I haven’t had chance to add an idea myself yet! Perhaps this wealth of ideas illustrates the power and potential of video in the classroom – which isn’t particularly new but pocket video cameras give us, and the children we work with, much easier access.

Who knows what the next 100 ideas will be about but I hope that you can be part of it – please take some time to take a look through some of them above, let me know if you have used the presentations with your staff. If you want to add an idea to any of the above presentations just let me know your email address and I will add you as an editor.

Our class had a very enjoyable numeracy lesson today in which they were further exploring nets of 3D shapes and developing their ability to visualise them. We used SMART Notebook on the class laptops to help record our work as well as Google Earth for our shape of the week.

This week we have been exploring nets of 3D shapes and for the lesson’s “Shape of the Week” starter I had Google Earth running with the Pyramids (Egypt) placemarked – we zoomed, from right out in space, into the location of these great monuments. (I still love the awe and wonder of that, so do the kids!) It was a good link with our Ancient Egyptian history topic. I had switched on the 3D Buildings layer and I panned and moved about the modelled pyramids. We then spent some time talking about the properties of square based pyramids, their nets and the pyramid family in general. I scribed their ideas straight onto Google Earth using the SMARTBoard pens and annotated the pyramids. I good start to the session.

For the main part of the lesson and the independent task I wanted the children to visualise the top and the bottom of a net. Which face in a cube net does not move and which would become the top of the cube? So we combined the practical use of Clixi with a SMART Notebook that allowed the children to easily recreate and record the nets.

I shared a notebook file on the network, which the children accessed and opened on their own laptop. The children were working in pairs on their numeracy tables. They made the possible nets with the Clixi and then generating the same net in the notebook from some infinite cloned shapes I had setup. I then wanted them to colour the top RED and the bottom GREEN to show they understood how the net behaved when folded. The technology was not complex but it allowed them to quickly recreate the nets and show what was needed – less time was spent recording due to the technology. Which meant that more time was spent visualising how the net worked, exploring the Clixi nets they had made and discussing the possibilities in their pairs.

I was really pleased with the progress made throughout the lesson as the children discussed and explored the nets of cubes, cuboids and pentagonal prisms. I was equally impressed, however not surprised, in the successful way the blended learning resources worked – how they complimented each other and how the no frills technology began to become invisible amidst the learning going on.

In my science lesson this afternoon we used Google Earth, Google Docs and Twitter to help us get a better understanding about how day length varies across the UK, and an insight into the differences around the world.

As part of our introduction to the concept of day length I used Google Earth and the sun/shadow layer to illustrate the movement of the Earth’s shadow. We played the animation for the day and talked about what we could see in the way it moved.

What did Google Earth do to enhance the lesson?

• This tool allows you to control the Earth’s shadow – that is a powerful simulation in the context of this lesson.
• The timeline at the top of the screen shows accurate timing of where the sunrise/sunset is during a given 24 hours.
• You can play through 24 hours of sunlight and darkness in a matter of seconds.
• It offers children a global perspective on day and night – and yet in the same moment you could be focused in on your school and explore it on a more local level.
• If I was to continue this unit further I would consider a more prolonged and individual use of Google Earth and simple data sets of sunrise/set times. This would provide the children the link between the times and a visual representation of the Earth’s shadow.

In pairs the children worked in Google Docs on a set of sunrise and sunset times for UK cities. They used a simple formula to help them calculate the differences and so work out the day length in hours and minutes. They then looked at ordering the cities according to day length.

What did Google Docs do to enhance the lesson?

• The children were able to share document ownership of the day length calculations.
• Docs remembers to save the progress regularly – data loss is very rare.
• Children’s completed spreadsheets were “handed in” to me to review by sharing with me as a contact. The docs will then appear in my own list and I will get an email message too.
• I was able to model on a shared copy of the document displayed on everyone’s laptop screen. The changes that were made were updated in real time on their copy. When they went to make their own copy the modelled examples were part of their own.

As a longer extension to this task I asked on my Twitter network to provide some real locations for my children to research and find sunrise and sunset information for. 

I have used Twitter in a similar way in the past and once again I was thrilled to get so many responses that challenged my class. The locations were from right around the globe – India to Australia, from Thailand to Scotland. As an extension my class chose one or more of these locations as they appeared in my replies window on TweetDeck, and found out the day length.

What did Twitter do to enhance the lesson?

• Real data, from real people in real locations. I would just explain a little about the person Tweeting if I knew them. Real connections.
• Purposeful challenges from real people.
• It may only be a short 140 characters from those who contributed but it provided a hugely engaging task that made us think beyond our shores.
• I cannot think of any other tool that would allow me to connect to so many teachers so easily.
• The contributions were from so many different parts of the world that it provided us with day lengths that we could compare and contrast with our own. 
• The teachers that connected with us naturally asked other questions and challenges that allowed us to explore other things. 
• It provided the whole class an opportunity to think, if only for a few minutes, as global citizens.

It was an great hour or so and I believe the tools we chose to use to support our learning were the correct ones. I was of course pleased to see the children engaging with Google Docs so effortlessly, it is just part of what we do now.

Curiously Google have altered the process of creating a copy of a document, removing the “Copy Collaborators” step. This caused us no end of headaches when sharing a doc with many students, as they in turn copied the document and also the 60 collaborators. You can imagine the burgeoning number of copies! I hope our efforts to share what we did contributed in a small way to that development. 

Every teacher should use Twitter, not only as a networking tool to help them learn – but in regards to connecting to the wider world to support learning. It is easy, it is fast and in my opinion peerless. Thankyou to all of you who contributed to the lesson with your messages – I hope that this post provides a context for your contribution.

Our week of storytelling in Google Earth has finished however I wanted to wrap up my reflections on working in this way. In this post I look back over the process and review the benefits you will reap and any challenges that you may face in implementing a similar unit.

A piece of Google Earth storytelling is definitely manageable within a week (5-6 hours) and in that sense is very flexible. The completed outcome from each child was a set of 6 placemarks that included:

• An embedded Vocaroo audio snippet of a rehearsed and planned piece of the story from James’ point of view.
• A written sentence that was a second draft of that first audio clip. An improved version that built in the language work we had done as a class to support the story.

You can see these two story elements in this screenshot of a child’s work.

If you would like to hear the audio, see the other 5 placemarks and the work as a whole then you can download the KMZ file here. During the week I worked with a supported literacy group and here is the audio work we completed together.

Challenges of digital storytelling in Google Earth

• Saving - this has been the biggest issue for us as the children will encounter temporary files saved locally in Google Earth. This is especially true when working on different laptops over a period of days. As the placemarks were the same, it led to confusion. If I was to do another unit of work with GE I would ensure that the children save work with their name included and I would also purge the local files at the end of every session. Another option is to explore the use of Google Maps.
• Uncertainty - as with most applications the more confident you are as a user the more you will get from it. Google Earth has a lot going on with various menus, folders and windows. The children often ran into a sticky spot if they could not find the item they were looking for or generally felt unfamiliar with the layout. If I was to repeat this unit again I would probably ensure there has been equivalent hours put in before hand that doesn’t just orientate them to the basics but allows them time to work with files, saving and the various layers of information. This would raise their level of confidence, consequently the layout of Google Earth would not be a hurdle to better storytelling.

Benefits of digital storytelling in Google Earth

• Visual - beginning with such a rich visual stimulus as Google Earth imagery gives the children such a different experience of storytelling then what they are used to. In this unit we benefited as a class not being straight-jacketed to a written, paper based plan. We were free to roam and explore the imagery we had, there were constraints that we agreed, but the plot was there in that imagery waiting for us to tease it out. 
• Control - the children had control over the way they explored their story. They moved, tilted and zoomed, they controlled how their journey looked to them. I walked around the room during the week and they were all exerting this control over how the narrative space looked to them. I suppose in a small way this personalises the journey for them. 
• Discovery - we began with a single location, a place I believed would be good to tell our escape story. It needed that decision, but from there we decided as a group what would happen. The snakey line you see in the example files or images could have easily taken us in another direction. The children discovered the elements of the story we included. In the first sessions we explored the local area in pairs and the children noted and discussed possible places of refuge. One child shared with us, by zooming in on the SMARTBoard, the building yard that we eventually chose to hide in as James. At that point int he lesson we had not even decided which way to turn from outside his house – but it was clear that the yard would provide us with lots of opportunities so we included it our escape. Let the children find their path, their journey – let them discover what is out there and allow the plot to be formed as you go.
• Embedding Media – Google Earth placemarks allow a whole host of media to be embedded in support of your story. We have added a simple audio player but you could easily have some drama work filmed and uploaded to a video hosting site, then embedded. That would be a great extension to what we have done and not too difficult either.
• Geotagged Narrative – beyond the huge variety of imagery children have as a starting point the sense of making your narrative happen in situ really appeals to me. You have to consider the tense that you work in, however the combination of narrative types in one place is a huge benefit to working in Google Earth. You could have written, spoken, filmed and drawn media all in the very location it is occurring.

On Thursday I had the opportunity to head down to London to take part in the Amplified’08 event held at NESTA HQ. In addition I was grateful to also be able to attend the MIrandaMod2 unconference at the London Institute for Education.

Network of Networks

The amplification of voices is the intent for Amplified08. Voices that have already come together in their own social networks, to meet face to face and take the use of social media in their fields of work onto the next level. I was in the company of about 200 other professionals who passionately believe in the power of social media, in one form or another, to change what they do. I was pleased to meet Drew Buddie and Leon Cych and between us we flew the flag for education in amongst this wider group. 

The session topics were sketched out on the wiki and after a brief introduction by Toby Moores and NESTA we huddled around a whiteboard to find the location for the conversations. I attended a session called “From conscripts to followers – new forms of leadership and organization” that sprung up from a blog reaction by David Terrar to Seth Godin’s book Tribes. I listened to the group talk about current workforce models and how social media has a role to play, how communication streams are different then they were a year ago and how it is possible to utilise them.

I explained to the group that I work with 30 social media experts everyday and then said I was a primary school teacher and that the children were ten. I asked what will the large corporate world do when my class are ready to get into the workforce? I discussed some of the online tools we use and the fact we have a Nintendo Wii in the class and some of the ways we have already used it – I explained that when I talk to the children on their terms and engage with them in a place that they know and enjoy, there is an instant community of use. The children know that I am aware of the ways they use social media and other technologies – they appreciate that it is OK to talk about it and enjoy it.

As with many of these events, or certainly what TeachMeet was built upon, the corridor conversations were also amazingly valuable. After the session I talked with Graham Stewart, Euan Semple and Anne Marie McEwan about the future of Amplified and what might happen. I referred to the fact that I left Glasgow and the TeachMeet at the Scottish Learning Festival feeling inspired and empowered to organise an event of my own. We talked about the level playing field those who use social media are standing on – we can all publish, have a TV or radio station or be a journalist. 

I hope that in supporting each other social media and the wider use of online tools can be further leveraged in our professions. I believe that TeachMeet and the wider edtech community in all their glorious guises can exemplify how to use these tools in an open way. The way that we share how we work and our successes is not the same in the corporate arena. It was a privilege to encourage people to think about education in their discussions and all the good that goes on. May the voices of teachers continue to be heard loud and clear.

MirandaMod2

Drew Buddie encouraged me to attend the second unconference organised by MirandNet. It was a quick dash up the road with Drew from NESTA but was a real pleasure to attend and once again exciting to hear about the innovative work going on in classrooms. I was thrilled to also get a chance to meet Dai Barnes and Daniel Needlestone who I have enjoyed talking to in the EdTechRoundUp meetings.

Loosely organised but with a tighter rein then, say a TeachMeet, we had a range of speakers from across the education sector. Leon Cych was in charge of the video stream that went out on UStream and he monitored the chat and twitter feeds as well.

I had a little unplanned stint talking about multi-touch interactive devices and what the future may (already) hold for classroom technology. Rachel Jones the head of education at Steljes (who kindly supported the event with some money for the food and drink) spoke to the group about future classroom designs and how the SMART Table could play a part in collaborative learning. I look forward to working with Rachel in the near future to help ensure the most is made of the SMART Table and to explore the possibilities it and the Durham project brings to the classroom.

My planned talk to the group on the use of Google Earth for writing began with me tipping a laptop on it’s screen and sliding it underneath a visualiser. We had to improvise as my laptop would not connect to the projection system. I talked about the work we have been doing this week in class and how we used the visual support of a location in Google Earth to define our story. It was fun being able to talk and showcase what goes on in my class and another opportunity to reflect on my practice.

Dai Barnes took the floor and talked with great passion about his students work with Alice and Mindmeister - he also did an amazing impromptu demo of how to embed a Google Form in a Moodle page. After the event Leon, Dai, Drew and I had a pint and continued the conversation. Thankyou to MirandaNet for having me and it would be great to attend the next if I can.

Overall it was a great day of sessions, conversations and learning – there was so much to reflect upon and it was inspiring to meet my network face to face. It only serves to strengthen those connections and inspire you further.

In today’s literacy lesson, the third in our Google Earth storytelling unit, we made the leap from audio or spoken parts of the story to some written work. 

The use of the mapping in this story has provided us with a structure through the escape route we chose and also it has provided us with a rich visual stimulus for story content. The bushes James has to break through in his bid for freedom have caused scratches and bruises and ripped his clothing. The building site we have seen has caused James to be covered in dust and mud. In our story he hides between two large lorries and we stretched out with our senses (Jedi style!) and saw workmen chatting on a tea break, heard drills banging into the ground and the smell of diesel fumes from machinery. All of this has been generated from studying the satellite imagery in our story location.

Over the last few days we have been working on generating a bank of good vocabulary for the escape, which we have on our WOW WORD display. Through discussion and thesaurus work we have gathered lots of verbs and adjectives that have already proven valuable for the children to use in their stories. We have also tried to generate lots of different alternative sentence openers – many of the recorded audio sentences began with “I”. We used the verbs we had generated and coupled them with adverbs to generate powerful sentence openers. Again these are displayed on the wall for the children to see and use in their work, and in fact many of the improvements made today included many of the examples you can see.

Today the children used this language work to improve the sentences they had begun in their Vocaroo audio. Underneath the code for the Vocaroo player they added <p> for a paragraph and then wrote an improved version of their audio. We encourage them to make small changes to the original sentence, so just add a WOW word or begin the sentence in a more interesting way.

Here is an example of what one of the placemarks looked like and a second image of what the same item had included in the placemark properties. You can listen to the audio for this example here. The children coped well with writing in this way and had no problems with the coding as it is so simple.

The combination of audio and written text has allowed the children to really improve their writing. I have always been very encouraged when the children have used Voicethread and I think that a technology based audio element can be a powerful way to scaffold the writing process.

I believe that in this unit there have been a few ingredients that have contributed to improved storytelling:

• Google Earth’s imagery provided the class with ample inspiration for what to be creating in their story – they could see and explore it in front of them. They were not looking at a piece of paper and trying to drum up something.
• The confidence and comfort that they have with the main character and the background to the story.
• A clear and purposeful backbone to the tale – James is escaping.
• An agreed escape route. The whole class can then discuss the various moments in the escape. The sharing and peer support is vital.
• Easy audio recording has provided the children with a quick avenue into generating story content. There is no password/login/signup/complex method/knowledge/skill barrier to using Vocaroo. The children were recording their ideas immediately.
• Audio and text situated on the image at where it happens in the story brings, often disparate, storytelling elements together.

Photo by debaird
Attribution-ShareAlike License

In our writing sessions today I took both classes, all 60 Year 5 children, over two sessions and we continued and completed our work begun yesterday. The children were completing the task of adding 6 audio recordings to the correct placemarks in Google Earth, please see Part 2 for details of the process.

This post is concerned with some issues that have arisen from working with Google Earth and some classroom strategies I have found effective during my work with the application.

Consolidate

There is no better way for children to be successful then to have time to complete their tasks – today was a chance for them to consolidate the process they had begun yesterday and to once more practice embedding code in the Google Earth placemarks. All too often we want to rush the children onto the next great thing, it was useful today to take a breather and just ensure we had done a good job of the audio we worked on for our escape story.

Although a powerful and popular application, Google Earth is not used daily and so some children struggled to find their way around the different task panes and views. Having more time allowed them to become more confident. 

As both classes were running into difficulties about what they could or could not see. Often they would think that all of their work had gone, or it has just disappeared – when in fact the placemark had just been unchecked in the Places window. Today I consolidated their basic understanding of the task windows and how to switch between them. I demonstrated the different possible views you could have within the Places window – and pre-empted some of the possible problems based on situations that may or may not have already arisen. 

An issue that is well worth knowing about prior to working in Google Earth on a class laptop set is that of multiple content. For our escape story we have 7 placemarks and a path that loads up and is visible – when another child begins their own work another set of the placemarks is loaded up. Today some laptops had 3 sets visible. Children were saying they could not right click any of the placemarks but they had not realised (as the placemarks are identical) that there were multiple placemarks on top of each other. Again I reinforced checking only those placemarks which you need to be visible in the Places pane.

Empower

One of the disadvantages of working in Google Earth is that it is intended to work on a local level – as in the placemarks and items saved in My Places remain on that machine. This causes every laptop to have a different looking Google Earth Places pane, which naturally leads to some confusion. It is worth spending some time keeping on top of what files should and should not be there. My children would be using different laptops everyday and it is unfeasible to try and work with the same one everyday which would have been a time sapper of an organisational problem. Saving work is a little tricky due to the nested nature of the placemarks and content, however this is what we had to do.

I gave myself a good slice of time at the end of each session over the last few days to walkthrough the saving process with both classes.

1. Any opened work from a network drive will begin life in the Temporary Places folder.
2. Find the main folder for your work, all of your placemarks should be below it in a list. Select it.
3. Right click this main folder to bring up the sub-menu.
4. Click “Save to My Places”.
5. The folder moves up and out of Temporary Places.
6. Find the main folder for your work again. Select it.
7. Right click this main folder to bring up the sub-menu.
8. Click “Save as…” or “Save place as…”
9. Navigate to your network folder.
10. Name the file appropriately so you know what it is.
11. Save.
12. If saving over the top of previous work allow it to replace the older file.

Your talent scouting has hopefully provided you with a great location for your class narrative and perhaps you have even plotted the journey the main protagonists will take during the tale. What’s next? Today we continued our Google Earth storytelling as we added audio to the placemarks. 

In my opinion children’s writing, whether digital or otherwise, can be greatly improved through the use of purposeful  speaking and listening activities about the narrative prior to doing any individual work. Photostory and online resources like Voicethread provide us with a great set of tools to allow technology to further impact in this process. My aim in planning this unit was to include audio within the children’s Google Earth placemarks, I wanted their rehearsed, spoken parts of the story right in the place it happens.

Noel Jenkins must have been on my wavelength as at much the same time he posted on the excellent Digital Geography about the use of Vocaroo and audio notes in Google Earth. Vocaroo is simply ideal for classroom use and it could not be any easier to use. No login or sign-up, no profile or saved content – just hit record and then grab the code to embed elsewhere. Here is how to add audio to a GE placemark.

My class of 30 9/10 year olds went through this process today as we explored the 6 placemarks in the story we wanted to use for the story. I wanted to keep these the same for everyone so that we had some control over what people were doing and so that we could also share ideas amongst the class. They found the process simple, the audio is not great, but it is so easy to do it’s worth it. The Vocaroo site held up very well with 30 children working on it at much the same time.

It was a great lesson and the children will have some more time tomorrow refining their audio and perhaps adding a second piece of audio improving and building upon the sentences they did today. I worked with a small group of boys on a shared story – we had so much fun telling parts of the escape and adding chicken sound effects for the location in the last image above. I encourage you to give this a try and the clear potential for a huge variety of stories situated in Google Earth is boundless!

The next steps will be to refine some of the audio as I said and to begin to add some written text in the placemark that is scaffolded by the use of the Vocaroo recordings.

This is part 2 of a series of posts documenting our Google Earth Storytelling unit.

This is a series of posts about the use of Google Earth as a platform for my students to write. It was first inspired by the 21 Steps by Charles Cumming highlighted by Ewan McIntosh in a seminar at the Scottish Learning Festival.

For a while I have been keen to take advantage of, and further explore, Google Earth for writing and this series of posts will document the unit we are currently running in our classes which is a piece of a wider digital narrative jigsaw.

Be a Location Scout

I wanted to dispense with the written plan for this unit and begin with a location and journey that could be plotted on Google Earth. For a while I thought about coming up with a fictional context for our work but in the end I decided that the amount of work we had already done on Roald Dahl’s James and the Giant Peach would give the children comfort and confidence. 

The first step is to find a suitable location in Google Earth for your writing context. I was looking for a house on a hill, near to the sea, that in the story was owned by Aunt Sponge and Spiker. It may feel like a needle in a haystack but really you are spoilt for choice! You have to become a location scout for your upcoming writing, and spending a little time finding the right place will pay dividends.

I soon decided that we were going to write the story of James escaping from his Aunts’ house and the surrounding area needed to provide a location for the story. I found a location with a small town at the foot of the hill and realised this was ideal. Take a look at the house in this Google Earth file.

This is the file I shared with my class – they opened it and explored the surrounding area for possible escape routes. We discussed as a class suitable hiding places: old buildings, bushes, cattle sheds. The children highlighted these on the SMARTBoard so we could share them as a class. With more built up areas the layers of information you can add in Google Earth could aid the children’s discovery of plot ideas.

It was important for me to continually bring it back to the fact that we are going to tell the story here, in Google Earth, this was our planning. We were exploring possible plot lines together and I would discuss possible sentences with the class – this helped them to focus on the escape story. The children responded really well to the visual, spatial idea for planning a story.

Plot Your Story’s Journey

The next step for us was to plot the escape route for James and I wanted the children to explore this themselves. After a brief demonstration of how to use the path tool in Google Earth the children went off and plotted ideas for escape routes on their laptops. It was liberating for the children to be planning their story in this way – I witnessed lots of speaking and listening as they talked through escape ideas and situations that might arise as the Aunts give chase.

To maintain a clear class focus we worked together to plot a journey from the house to James’ eventual escape. As we plotted the journey James would take on foot away from the house we made decisions on the fly about which way he would turn and which places he may stop and hide – all of the time picking up on ideas or locations the children recognised. The location was helping us define the story – the children were not just trying to dream something up.

A building site in the town offered us a great opportunity for escape and we even stopped and hunkered down between two parked lorries. I zoomed in and talked to the class about what they could imagine seeing and hearing – we spoke of the dust and mud on the large tyres and the sound of workmen nearby. All of which I hope will enrich their writing.

The building site led to an idea for his escape and as a class we decided that he would not continue on foot but conceal himself in a nearby lorry, which would eventually drive away from the Aunts and take him to safety in the next town. You can see the journey we plotted in this Google Earth file.

The children will now be adding audio to the journey and begin to talk through their escape stories. It is clear from this example that the opportunities for children’s fiction being inspired by and driven by a location is huge. It should be an interesting week of work with the class.