ICT in my Classroom

I thought that I would reflect on what I have managed to do so far this half term with my class – it seems that we hit the ground running headlong into this web 2.0 thingy.

I have really enjoyed working with the children on the class blog – as one child said to me it gives them a voice. The sort of resources we have used are exciting and have minimal learning curves – they have been applying their ICT skills in real contexts. This is what it is all about (well to me anyway )

But I have also challenged the kids with stuff like embedding code into our wikispace – they have coped amazingly well.

So what have we done in the last 7 weeks:

Quikmaps - used this throughout our local history work, we basically geotagged old photos of the town. We added code to placemarks in Quikmaps, we then embedded the maps in our class wikispace. (Wow that sounds hard, but my Year 6’s did it)
READ MY PREVIOUS POST ABOUT IT
Bubblr - in our Literacy we took Matilda photos from our Flickr account and made a simple comic strip of them and added simple speech and thought bubbles. We embedded these in our wikispace too.
READ MY PREVIOUS POST ABOUT IT
Blogging - we started our class blog and the children have really enjoyed it. At least once a week I do a lunchtime blogging club so kids can get online and write / comment and visit other school’s blogs.
READ MY PREVIOUS POST ABOUT IT
Wikispace - we have used this space to share our literacy writing and the work we have done in other subjects. I published the backing music for a song they were learning in music for example.
READ MY PREVIOUS POST ABOUT IT
Local Live – we used a shared collection to add points of interest around our town. This worked extremely well with one login too!
READ MY PREVIOUS POST ABOUT IT
Google Earth – This has been a regular feature of the half term and I am sure will continue to be. We have explored where news stories are from, visited Rome, Paris, London and Athens. We like to look at our Geovisitors and locate them on Google Earth. I have used Google Earth in my maths lessons.
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Mayomi - a lovely simple Flash based tool for mind mapping that we used to support our maths and literacy, easy to navigate and well presented. Cannot directly link to the map though when finished.
READ MY PREVIOUS POST ABOUT IT
Flickr - I have added photos, images and screen shots to our account and found it invaluable for the kids to make the most of some web 2.0 apps (like Bubblr) I have found the notes a simple success. ( I have also explored it as a photo resource for upcoming curriculum areas and it is amazing)
READ MY PREVIOUS POST ABOUT IT

Editgrid - we have set up an online space to share investigation results. Hopefully it will help the children better appreciate fair tests and reliability of results.
READ MY PREVIOUS POST ABOUT IT
…that’s not to mention using digital cameras to record our science and our SMARTBoard work.

So what is next – more of the same…?

I think I shall set myself some simple targets and you can hold me to these before Christmas (as long as Santa still comes )

• Continue to apply the successful applications across the curriculum I have already used, so they are not just one offs.
• Setup a session when the children moblog. (could be interesting!)
• Explore parental permissions so children can take more photos and blog with these.
• Setup a more structured daily blogging routine, children blogging in writing partners.
• Answer: does having a world wide audience / platform really make a difference to the standard of the children’s writing?
• Spread the word: get at least one other class in school blogging.
• Get the children writing with TiddlyWiki.
• Develop more international links via blogging etc.
• Do a simultaneous science experiment with another class somewhere in the world.
• Use Flickr notes more.
• Look into purchasing a cameraphone for blogging purposes. (Will I need to change blog hosts?)

So there we are some simple targets…well i will reiiew these again at Christmas.

Following a comment from Sally on the “My Quikmaps Lesson” post I thought I would quickly explain how to add images, video even Bubblr strips to a placemark.

1. So you have made a new map and you have added a placemark > What next?
2. Find an image stored somewhere online. For the images I used in my local history lesson I used our class Flickr account.
3. Copy the location or url of the image – in Firefox you can just right click and “Copy Image Location”.
4. Now navigate back to the placemark on your map. Make you have clicked on it to open up the balloon – and that the cursor is blinking at you in the space.
5. If you just paste the address it will not display the image because you have not told the map to retrieve anything. So you need to add in a little code.
6. All you need to do is ensure the URL is encoded with the highlighted parts in the example below.

   
   (No spaces between the = and the url)

7. Now close the balloon and click SAVE IT (bottom right hand corner) When viewing the saved map if you click on the placemark it should open up with an image inside.
8. When embedding video or other media – just look for the “Blog This” option, Gand paste the generated code straight into the placemark balloon. Google video can be added pretty easily in this way.

Hope this helps. Let me know how you get on.

Thanks to Doug Belshaw for making me get on and write this after he pinged my Bubblr post. There are people who are reading my blog

My Bubblr and Quikmaps idea is essentially an extension of a History activity I did with my class of Year 6 kids – they added photos to a quikmap placemark, we then embedded them in our wikispace (see my post about the lesson)

Bubblr is a comic strip creator – once these have been made they can also be added to a Quikmap placemark. See an example I made quickly here.

They can also be emedded into a class wikispace like this one.

All you do is click on BLOG THIS after you have published the Bubblr strip – then copy the first set of code and add it into a placemark in Quikmaps.

I have noticed that Bubblr works much better with Internet Explorer than my usual Firefox – so I would recommend to switch to work with it.

The Google Educators site has gone live and the article I wrote has astonishingly been included They even pushed the boat out and put a picture of me on! Here is the article…

Teachers speak out

Online mapping technologies now play an integral part in my teaching toolkit. Google Maps has allowed many developers the access to a high quality mapping resource that has then spurned mashups or other applications. Quikmaps is a great tool taking advantage of Google Maps at its core – notes and placemarks can easily be dragged onto the map and even images and video footage can be inserted using simple html. These maps can then be saved and even embedded into a class wikispace. We have been exploring our local history and a key activity for my Year 6 children (10-11 year olds) will be to place historic photographs of our town on a modern map. This can be easily achieved through the use of Google Maps and Quikmaps.

The other key mapping tool is Google Earth – which I have used in a range of subjects. From writing diary entries for Dracula to calculating the area of a car park in Las Vegas it engages the children with the quality of the imagery and offers such a wealth of information. We even have been plotting the location of comments on our class blog ( http://priestsic6.learnerblogs.org)

Both Google Maps and Google Earth play important roles in helping me deliver high quality and engaging educational activities with my children.

Tom Barrett, Assistant Headteacher, ICT Subject Leader Priestsic Primary and Nursery School, Nottinghamshire, England

It has been a busy day for ICT in my classroom today – ususally is on a Tuesday as we have our time over in the ICT suite. Anyway I will try and explain everything we did.

Google Earth – Where are we today?
Did this slightly differently today as I explained to the children I had found the location of some people who had commented on our class blog. So I started looking down on the earth from afar and very slowly zoomed into Sydney and Canada respectively. We then looked closely at Sydney and loaded a 3D model of the Opera House and the Harbour Bridge – we even zoomed onto the bridge and panned along it, on the model there are even tiny cars and bikes – I said to the kids it was a good way to start the day – driving along Sydney Harbour Bridge!
Mayomi
Used this great visual mindmapping tool/site today to explore what we had learned so far in our 2D Shape work. Really simple to use when combined with a IWB and wireless keyboard which I used today.

Unfortunately there is no way to embed the map into your own site which would be great so I am going to explore whether I can hack some code to embed the mindmap into a wikispace.

RSS / Newsfeeds for Headlines
Just mentioned this today as we have been looking at newspapers and a journalistic style in our work. I had seen something on a blog before about it, but I just explained what RSS is and how we can get newsfeeds really easily. I think that it is very important to explore how different literacy and news is today – not just broadsheets and tabloids anymore, but a more fluid style of news that is much more personalised.

I just used the “Latest Headlines” bookmark on my Firefox toolbar to show them, we then just guessed from the headline what the news story was about.

Also briefly looked at Headline History which is cracking site I hope to use agin this year.

Quikmaps and our class Wikispace
I was a really happy bunny this afternoon as I knew that I had set my children a challenge, and they rose to it so well! Basically my Year 6 children had made a Quikmap (see previous post about the activity), powered by Google Maps, and then embedded the map into our class wikispace. It looks great! Take a look over on the history pages on our Wikispace. Scroll down and wait for the maps to load – don’t forget to click on the placemarks to see the work the children have done and why it is under History.
It also helped me to understand some of the practical problems that occur when you have lots of concurrent authors of the same space. Look out for some details soon.

I spent most of today attending an INSET day at Highwood Player Infants School talking to them about using their IWBs which they have just had installed.

Many thanks to everyone at the school for inviting me and making me feel so welcome I hope that some of my ideas provide a springboard for your school’s IWB development.

Apart from the resources I planned to discuss we spoke about and used a range of other material. Below I have tried to record most of those thoughts from the morning:

• Artrage 2 – a fantastic art package ideal for the use on the interactive whiteboard. Look out for more on this soon, here on my blog as I will be introducing the use at my school and planning some training.
• Microsoft Local Live – we looked at the school and Highwood Player had really clear imagery from the “bird’s eye view” setting. Would be useful to look at before short walks or local area studies.
• Quikmaps – Another mapping site that allows you to scribble and add placemarks. Again would be to look at before short walks or local area studies.
• BBC Little Animal Activity Centre – we had a read of the animated books and phonic activities.
• Google Earth – just mentioned this briefly but a wonderful tool that I am huge fan of. Read the rest of my blog for more information.
• Topmarks Educational Website Search Engine – very handy when looking for something specifically aimed at schools.

Please follow the links above to the relevant sites.

Further down my blog, you will have to scroll a bit, there is the notes from the session with the links from the images. Please feel free to print these and use in school.

Notes from session (handout)
Ferry Halim Guidance
Powerpoint of Year 2 Instructional writing work (ordering digital images)

I would really appreciate it you could take some time to leave me some feedback about the training session – scroll to the bottom of this post (or the one further down) and find the word “Comments” click on it and leave me your thoughts.

I really value your feedback and remarks so that in the future and can take them into account for other similar training sessions. Thanks again.

Wow – what fun we had, this one really challenged the kids. Basically I wanted them to embed a historic photo of our town from Flickr into a Quikmap - they had to locate where to place the photo using some simple clues I gave them. A great Geography / History / ICT activity. Quikmaps seems to work differently in Internet Explorer then in Mozilla Firefox – in my class we use Firefox, but in the ICT suite we have IE installed, I might change that. The interface with the buttons seemed a little laggy and not as smooth and there were even problems with the appearance of the icon pallette.

The children soon managed very well and everyone used some code I had saved in a word document (like this] but I soon realised as I was explaining the above that we should take one thing at a time. So we just saved our maps – Quikmaps was obviously bombarded with maps in one account so struggled with the high traffic and I had a few Quikmaps – “OOPS APPLICATION ERROR” messages and was a bit concerned that the kids would lose there work. But they saved and as we used the back button and then saved again we had loads of duplicates. I contacted Ken over at Quikmaps and he said there were approx 54 maps from about 18 workstations!!, anyway we will be posting our maps up soon on the wiki so watch out.