ICT in my Classroom

I came across this great little Maths game – thankyou Sandaig Otters. Lots of Japanese text so no instructions.

All you have to do is choose three spheres that add up to 10 before they scroll off the bottom of the screen, if you get a total that is greater than 10 you lose part of the life at the bottom. You can make other numbers by combining smaller integers. It would be a great little starter for a maths lesson to get the kids brains working – works really well on the IWB.

Back in December I posted about my thoughts on investing in a pool of laptops for classes at school. Well it has been nearly 5 months since those initial thoughts and since then I have managed to pin down the make and series of machine we want and I have a much clearer understanding for the sort of resource we want.

The most important thing for me is the variables that may affect their performance in the classroom and I want to pre-empt these so that the classteachers and children can confidently turn to the technology when they want. The 16 SMARTBoards we have were installed after many weeks of intense research and price hunting. It has been much harder to find the right hardware with this laptop project, for a start. There are so many machines to choose from.

The problems that I envisage (from experience and advice):

• Battery life – can they be used successfully throughout the working school day? Do we need spare batteries?
• Wireless strength – we have an old building that is not particularly conducive to wi-fi.
• Ongoing maintenance – how will problems be dealt with when we only have a part time technician?

Our SMARTBoard project had far fewer variables than this one and so far there has not been a single problem with the SMARTBoards, in what will be 4 years of use this coming December. I want that sort of reliability from the laptops. Inevitably there will be problems, and I am not daft enough to think it will be all plain sailing – I just want to solve them, or at least anticipate them before they happen. Hopefully my considered choices now will help smooth the user experience when and if we finally purchase some.

I say “if” because I was brought back into reality after reading Stephen Hall’s post ‘Laptops are a Costly Mistake for Schools’. It was such a contrasting view on laptop projects and I am curious as to the reasons that such schemes have been considered a failure. I believe that at my school our approach is slightly different in the sense that the children will have limited access within school hours, they will not be taking the machines home. We are looking into this technology as it is part of our ICT vision not to directly address standards – as I have stated previously:

We would like our children to have a uninhibitied personal choice when to use technology; whether that be a calculator or sharing an online spreadsheet on a laptop.

I just sometimes think looking at standards or levels or grades or percentages is the wrong thing when deciding whether the project has had an impact. They did it here in the UK with interactive whiteboards. The impact is so much wider.
Not many tests are taken on laptops are they?

A few months back I was lucky enough to stumble upon Ben and Joan’s Podcast. Predominantly about the use of the SMARTBoard in classrooms, but often branching off into the wider world of Web2.0 etc I really enjoyed listening to the show.

Ben asked me after an initial contact to share my experiences through a series of interviews and so far they have casted 2 out of three, take a listen and let me know what you think. (Show notes from SMARTBoard Lesson Podcast site)

Episode 71:

Our Interview:

• Tom Barrett, Assistant Headmaster at Priestsic Primary and Nursery School, shares how he uses self created video of handwriting & the video cast of how to use audacity and create mp3s for SMARTNotebook. He also talks about if the SMARTBoard is out of date.
  • Tom’s Professional Blog: tbarrett.edublogs.org
  • Tom’s Class Blog: priestsic6.learnerblogs.org

Files:

• SMART Notebook File: Audacity and Notebook.notebook
• PDF File: Audacity and Notebook.pdf

Download SMARTepisode71.mp3

Episode 64:

Our Interview:

• Tom Barrett, Assistant Headmaster at Priestsic Primary and Nursery School, shares his lesson about using the SMARTBoard to create interactive board games. He also talks about the process of implementing SMARTBoards in his school.
  • Tom’s Professional Blog: tbarrett.edublogs.org
  • Tom’s Class Blog: priestsic6.learnerblogs.org

Files:

• SMART Notebook File: Measures Mayhem.notebook
• PDF File: Measures Mayhem.pdf
• SMART Notebook File: Multiplication Mayhem.notebook
• PDF FileMultiplication Mayhem.pdf

Download SMARTepisode64.mp3

It has been a whole month and more since I last posted to my blog. You may be wondering why? Well it has been a busy few weeks since the Easter break, so much going on. My son, George, is on the very brink of walking for himself and he seems so small and vulnerable when he stands there on his own. He of course had his 1st birthday at the end of April which was great fun, and most of my time out of school has been taken up marvelling at his daily progress.

As for school – well it is busy as ever. We are nearing the crunch week of SATs exams with my Year 6 children and needless to say we are busy revising and getting ready. So what role does ICT have when it comes to this time of the year?

Well we have continued to use ICT and specific websites to support the children in their revision of the key subjects, especially maths and science. As you may have already seen from a previous post, we are using Turning Point voting keypads to work on our fast mental recall of times tables and on Friday we completed a 50 question (5000 point!) mega test on our 6, 7, 8 and 9 times tables. The children get so motivated, it is great fun.

Next academic year I am going to look into the procurement of another set of voting keypads. Turning Point is a simple, effective technology using Powerpoint that I like. However Smart Technologies, the manufacturer of Smart Boards, have developed their own voting system called Senteo. When I last visited the BETT show in London SMART were wielding the Turning Point system on their stand and I remember asking the question if SMART were going to develop their own so that it integrates with SMART Notebook. They clearly have.

So do we go for Senteo or Turning Point?

It looks like the Senteo devices will be more expensive to buy than the TP keypads. I have also seen some decent offers for buying a class set of TP keypads and getting the second half price. This purchase can also be done through the E Learning Credits budget which is useful.

I suppose the question is whether or not the new SMART devices will bring new features (they have an LCD screen allowing greater feedback and flexibility) that provide value for money.

I would be most interested in any initial thoughts from colleagues who have had the opportunity to use both systems and may be able to shed some light on the advantages and disadvantages of both.

[googlevideo]527229311038655361&hl[/googlevideo]

Well this is my first trip into the vibrant world of podcasting – but luckily I have had some friends to help me along the way. I am happy to say that I am part of a group of international teachers who have setup NextGenTeachers.com we come together to talk about current issues in the classroom and hopefully give some timely advice that arises from the varied work we are doing.

It is a fantastic opportunity to hear the current practice and thinking of teachers that are making the most of the latest technologies.

This first show has all of our introductions and some information about how you can get involved. We end up talking about the use of interactive whiteboards in schools and mull over some points about their successful use and implementation.

So how can you listen? Well 3 different ways:

1. Here is a link to the mp3 file – International Voices Podcast Show #1
2. 

3. Use the GCast player in the left sidebar.

Take your pick…
Take a look over at the NextGen site for the show notes and links that are discussed.

I would love to hear what you think of the show…

So as I currently write this I am installing the new SMARTBoard software and I have just reviewed the current state of the product that was displayed at BETT. The Interactive whiteboard has hardly changed since I dusted off a boxed one in a corridor way back when I was training.

I do remember setting that board up in the Year 3 class I was working in and thinking that it was truly the most impressive resource I had used – I have since been in 2 different schools and been charged with the implementation of many IWBs. So I bought into the idea. There are many schools in the UK and I am sure across the world that have not had IWBs installed. It seems to me to be a slow process of integrating a decent technology.

So what’s next? I think that sometimes schools wait too long to have technology delivered to them – to wait for the next bandwagon to come along. I don’t think that the IWB can be taken much further than it already has. Software has changed, yes. What devices we can attach has changed, yes. But what about the interactive technology we use. That is pretty static. No doubt that over time things have been manufactured to a greater standard, with more reliability etc. But when you watch Jeff Han demonstrate at TED Talks a new interactivity, perhaps we should be investing our efforts there.

Recently I wrote about my experiences with Philips here and then here, but it was early days with my blog and I assumed that it slipped under the radar of many of my readers. I hope that you might take the time to read it and comment.

So from my experiences with Philips and watching Jeff Han I believe that perhaps we are looking at the wrong model of car. Indulge me in this analogy for a moment.

So the IWB is an old 2002 model car, and every year there has been a growth in sales – way back then the model had all of the latest features and was “cutting edge”; now the same model has had a paint job, a few bolt on extras like a new exhaust and ways to plug in your mp3 player – but the car itself has not changed.
They are still selling but they haven’t really changed. As drivers our gaze has been fixed by these glorious new additions and the fact that so many other drivers were buying them. Governments even waded in to buy the cars in bulk and then distribute them to new drivers. Of course there are excellent drivers out there – no question, but has the actual car we are driving changed in 5 years? So whilst all this is going on in a factory in Holland or in the US somebody has questioned the design and created the next evolutionary step…

I suppose the question is: how long will it take us to wrench our gaze away from one technology and open our eyes to the possibilities that are emerging elsewhere?

We have SMARTBoards at school and one of the new features of Notebook 9.5 is the lasso screen capture feature. Just click on the camera icon on the toolbar.

In our newspaper work we have been looking at the differences between direct and reported speech. A simple activity that involved the screen capture tool was that we went to the Newsround website and scanned news stories for examples of the different speech. A child then chose the lasso capture tool and lassoed (!) the part of the text, this is then captured into the notebook software and we sorted it into a table.
I have also used this tool in the past when exploring shapes in a photograph (like of railings) the children can draw around the shapes they see – these are then captured to Notebook. It is then possible to sort the shapes into different groups, triangles, quadrilaterals etc because the clipping retains the properties from the photo. In the past you could only do a square around the shape so it was more difficult to organise them after they are captured via their properties.

Here is a movie (WMV) from the Steljes site of the tool in action.

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.

Today I asked some of my children to use a scanned example of a newspaper article in Flickr and add notes to it. Basically they were finding examples of language features that we have annotated in a more traditional way in their books. What I like about Flickr notes is the fact that there is still an unobstructed view even with annotations. I may continue this with text types throughout the year.

Click on the picture to see the notes.

I asked individuals to work on this using the SMARTBoard – then I cascaded this down to others by asking the child who has just completed an annotation / Flickr note to explain how to do it with another cild and so on.