SWGfL Regional Conferences

Well, what an amazing couple of days it’s been. Two fantastic conferences with plenty of great content, fantastic classroom practice and inspirational and motivating speakers. Here’s my run down of what caught my eye and any relevant links.

Both conferences heard from Professor Tanya Byron – who is proving to be an assets to all of us here in the south west (and the across the country) for her common sense approach to how we can use technology safely. She is meeting with the Government and wants to know what you want her to say. Email her and help shape the future of ICT in schools – have your say! Read Merlin John’s excellent report on her speech here.

Bristol’s conference was closed by Sir Bob Geldof KBE who spoke of his passion for language (sometimes colourful!) and how education needs to inspire and be relevant to students. He told delegates to start making noise about changes in education they’re not happy with but to offer alternative solutions to the Government rather than just complaining about problems. See the local press’ write up here.

Both conferences had a wide range of speakers and I was delighted to be asked to speak at both (I Don’t Feel Like Writing and Writing with Light). Here’s my thoughts on the seminars I attended:

Torquay
Press your button – NOW! – Richard Marsh
Richard (headteacher at Stoke Damerel Primary School) gave us a very honest and practical session on the use of pupil response systems (voting devices) to engage pupils and provide a more personalised learning experience. I liked his idea of using a rolling presentation as children arrived at the start of the day to collect data which is then used to tailor future lessons.

Protecting Your Professional Identity Online – Ken Cornish
Ken provided a lot of advice on how to ensure teachers and other staff in schools are not compromised by their actions online and suggested where some boundaries ought to be. Ken’s put together a great page of resources here.

Early Experience with SWGfL Merlin – Nick Harman
Nick is from Oldway Primary School and he lead us through his experience of introducing Merlin in his school. It was interesting to compare Nick’s approach with that of schools I’ve worked with. Some common themes were to make use of children to train others and to create content. Certainly the clubs pages proved to be popular.

Professor Kevin Warwick "The Bionic Man"
Kevin is always fascinating to listen to and he is more than committed to his work since he has had multiple operations to insert electronic components to explore the role of technology in supporting human functions. Take a look at his website.

Doug Dickinson
Doug is always a joy to listen to with his easy going manner exploring, questioning and discovering what technology’s role is in education. Doug’s put together a useful page of material and here is his blog.

Bristol

Developing Cross-Curricular Themes with ICT – Simon Squire
The Eat-a-Meter project is not only a fantastic project to encourage children to think about Healthy Eating and food production, but Simon showed what an important role ICT had in supporting children’s understanding. Take a look at the project’s page here.

"They flush your head down the toilet!": Busting Transition Myths with ICT – Jon Gallop & Nicola McHugh
This was truly a great session since it made me think about transition in a new and interesting way. Year 6 children heading to Marlwood Secondary School are given a Brainbox (we got one too!) with activities and resources that work together to help children understand their learning styles and help break the ice in their new school. This is all supported by ICT in particular the use of Merlin to allow children to ask questions and support each other.

Stop Killing your Students with PowerPoint – Jacqueline Hicks
Jacqueline very effectively showed the main ways PowerPoint is misused. She gave examples of good and bad practise and there were many nods of recognition from the audience. She also shared her fantastic list of websites. Take a look here and add useful ones of your own.

Primary ICT comes of Age!

Today we reached a milestone – 21000 hits! Time for a little celebration I think!

Google Maps in 3D

Google is pumping a lot of energy and resources into its online mapping applications. In the UK we have recently had Google Street View rolled out across most of the country. This provides a fascinating view of the world – a moment frozen in time that we can explore.

Now Google have added the 3D world of Google Earth to online Google Maps and called it “Earth View”. You will need to download and install the Google Earth Plug in. Once that’s done you get an additional button labelled ‘Earth’ which fires up an embedded Google Earth view of the area you’re looking at. The same navigation tools are available to you (zoom, rotate, pan, tilt etc.) as well as the 3D building layer. This provides a truly immersive experience.

Now that virtual field trip takes on a whole new dimension as you explore your chosen area through a map, through satellite views, through Street View and now 3D view – just don’t get lost!

Microsoft WorldWide Telescope

One of delights of teaching is sharing those “wow” moments with children. Teaching all about the Solar System is hard because it can appear so abstract. Microsoft Telescope gives us plenty of “wow” moments and shows breathtaking images of our universe in an easy to navigate 3D environment. At its simplest, you can fly around the solar system taking a close up of the planets as you go. Think about those sequences you see on science programs – now you can have your own version on your IWB which your class can control.

The solar system is shown initially in “real time” but you can speed this up to show the Earth’s rotation and how this relates to the moon and sun. In addition to children holding basketballs and tennis balls above their head, this brings a tricky relationship to life!

You can also explore the surface of Mars, zoom in to the stars, see amazing images taken by the Hubble telescope and take guided tours.

You need a good internet connection to download the data. Microsoft Research is dedicating WorldWide Telescope to the memory of Jim Gray and is releasing WWT as a free resource to the astronomy and education communities with the hope that it will inspire and empower people to explore and understand the universe like never before. Click here to go to the home page.

Safer Internet Day 2010

Safer Internet Day is organised by Insafe each year in February to promote safer and more responsible use of online technology and mobile phones, especially amongst children and young people across the world. The topic for 2010 is "Think B4 U post!".

Anything anyone posts online remains there for an indefinite period and accessible for everyone. This can have serious consequences.

Children and teenagers need to be made aware that they can control their online identity.

So the advise is:

- use the privacy settings offered by social networking services.

- select friends online that you can trust.

- publish your own photos only after thinking carefully about the potential consequences.

- publish pictures of your their friends only with their permission.

To support the day the SWGfL are running a competition. Children are invited to create an E-Safety SWGfL Merlin minisite with advice, links to useful resources, discussion boards and more… or a 30 second Radio or TV commercial promoting E-Safety. See here for more details.

The release of the new Online Safety Planner – the next step for the 360 degree safe software which allows any agency working with children to validate just how safe their own internet provision is. This was successfully rolled out to schools in November 2009. For more information on this go to www.360safe.org.uk

The release of an update of the Golden Rules film, aimed at parents to help themselves and their children to be safer when using the internet. The current version of this film is available to view at http://www.swgfl.org.uk/Staying-Safe/e-Safety-Movies

CEOP has produced some great resources for KS1 as well as advice for how to support Safer Internet Day. Go to their site here.

BETT 2010

The new year once again saw the amazing and almost overwhelming BETT Show at Olympia in London. This is the annual national showcase for all things ICT and education. The event has grown from 112 stands in 1985 to well over 700 with 29,000 visitors.

After a high profile first day with Prime Minister Gordon Brown announcing the Home Access Programme, the show settled down to concentrate on its core business of showing off new products and making connections between schools, companies and organisations.

As usual, there is far too much to see, so I offer my top five things that caught my eye and made me go “Now, that’s a good idea”.

2Simple 2Create a Superstory

2Simple always have something to shout about at BETT and this year was no exception. The latest version of the ever popular 2Create a Story is an amazing blend of easy of use and high powered tools. Children can easily create interactive animated publications using a range of tools. By combining words, images, sounds and animations children can create a truly engaging multimodal text. To give you some idea of the versatility of this program, visit 2Simple’s online gallery of examples.

Zu3D Animation Software

Many schools are using 3D animation as a cross curricular tool that can both support their ICT and other subject’s objectives. ZuLogic’s program is inviting from the start. An attractive interface encourages users to get involved and within minutes you can have an animation. There are key features such as adding titles and multi-track sound with others (chroma-key) coming soon. The key winner for me with this project was the online hosting of finished films in a moderated gallery. Free 30 Trail from their website.

JIT Online tools for KS1

JIT from J2E is a suite of online educational tools specifically designed for younger learners. JIT has a colourful and friendly feel which appeals to reception and KS1. JIT encourages children to create on the web in a fun and stimulating way. I really liked the engaging animated interface that allowed users to concentrate on their work rather than the technology. JIT consists of 7 tools, Write, Paint, Turtle, Chart, Pictogram, Animate, and Mix. JIT should be ready to launch in March and will ‘plug’ into Merlin. In the meantime, go and play here.

Augmented Reality Returns

Some of you will remember BBC Jam and its AR Storymaking trial. This used Augmented Reality technology to allow children to manipulate virtual objects that could interact with each other. This technology certainly has a “wow” factor. However, no one yet seems to know what to do with it! Several companies at BETT were displaying AR experiments and were inviting feedback of how this technology might be used. SMART were looking at it for interactive 3D models for example. The DCSF have also got onto the bandwagon with Scimorph which according to the blurb is “a new 3D animated computer character has been launched to help teach secondary school science.” To be honest, I doubt that claim! However it’s a nice attempt to use this technology to engage pupils. There are teaching resources to support its use, but I did think they were clutching at straws with some of the outcomes! Also, Futurelab are looking at this technology as a way of adding information to the world we see around us using mobile devices such as the iPhone. This report (at the end) talks more about AR and Future lab, but also talks about the rise of 3D presentation technology in schools. Again, I think people are just experiementing at the moment, but with Hollywood pushing 3D and the availability of 3D TVs with out the need for glasses now available, it won’t be long before the classroom catches up!

Free Monsters!

Finally Spore, a great free resource (well it’s a demo) that I spotted on the Furturelab stand came from Electronic Arts, the games people. It’s a program that allows you to create your own monster. The application is stunning and the quality of the graphics means it’s really engaging. Children can add body parts to their basic monster, colour it and then play with it. You can get your monster to move, roar, jump up and down – all kinds of preloaded actions and emotions. Added to this you can take snapshots of your monster or even take a short video if it in action. Once it’s downloaded and installed you may need to hunt around in your Program Files directory to find the launch application. I am thinking this is a great starter to a whole host of creative writing ideas. Watch this space…!