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.

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!

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 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.

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…!

Toady, I thought I’d draw your attention to two new ways Google is experimenting with searching. Both these come from their Google Labs department which tries out new technologies for a while before launching them. In this trial period they are useable, but you have to be understanding if they’re not as slick as other applications.

The first I want to share with you is Google Squared. This is (I think) a very exciting way to search for information from multiple sources about multiple (but related) topics. For example, if you’re doing some work on the Wives of Henry VIII, you might want to know all the wives’ key dates (birth, death, marriage etc). You can search for each wife individually and find the information, copy and paste it somewhere before moving onto the next wife. Google Squared is a much cleaner way of doing this kind of search.

If I enter “wife Henry VII” into Google Squared, I get presented with the following table:

Cleverly, Google has built a table around it’s regular search, found common elements in the results and used these as column headings. You then refine your search by removing unwanted results (e.g. Jane Seymour the actor) and changing the column headings (e.g. adding date of marriage). Google then rebuilds the table accordingly. You can then export your results as a CSV file or put it into a Google Spreadsheet.

The second exciting Lab product I want to share with you is a new way Google approaches image searches. Many teachers and students use Google Image search a lot, but the results are based on the popularity and number of links to the images’ associated websites. Great when you want to know what something or someone looks like, but not so handy when you have a particular image or type of image in mind e.g. images of fruit against a white background to use on the IWB.

Google Image Swirl returns a results of a search (e.g. Fruit) showing you the images grouped by similarity. You then click on an image you think is similar to what you’re after and Google then shows you more images of a similar nature. You can repeat the process as often as it allows you to which is dependant on how many images it finds.

Please remember that any Google Image search may return images not detected by your internet filtering settings. Also Google Image Swirl doesn’t yet accept all search items. I believe this swirling idea grew out of Google’s other Lab idea Google Similar Images.

Christmas Star by brockvickey on Flickr.com

As the Festive Season really gets going, it’s time to post the now traditional list of online Christmas activities. Enjoy!

www.northpole.com – an attractive site with a good range of activities, including a teachers’ section. There are adverts to the side of the site.

www.freechristmasgames.com – not as attractive, but some good activities. Teach the children the basics of Mah Jong!

www.merry-christmas.com/games – lots of games here. Supported by adverts.

www.primarygames.com – a really comprehensive collection of games. Navigation a bit muddled and adverts to one side. However, attractive flash based activities.

www.woodlands-junior.kent.sch.uk - Woodlands Junior school is a favourite site for many teachers and their Christmas page is no exception!

www.squiglysplayhouse.com – a good selection of games and other activities on a simple page. Adverts and games may link back to host site.

www.activityvillage.co.uk – a collection of printable resources. More of a site for teachers than children.

www.apples4theteacher.com – another teachers’ page with links to many activities and other sites.

And don’t forget our other Christmas Activities page. I’ve checked and updated the links.

As usual, please check the sites before using them with children. Webpages do change and although I’ve taken a look at them, I can’t accept any responsibility if you encounter inappropriate material by following these links. As with a lot of sites supported by advertising, it’s a good idea to have your pop-up blocker enabled. Enjoy and Merry Christmas!

Let’s do a search for, let’s say, dogs. We enter “dogs” into the search box, hit enter and get a list of sites. If you look at the top of the list there’s a Show Options button. Ever clicked it? Go on, be brave! The list that then unfolds contains a few hidden gems. You can narrow the search results by type (video, news etc) or time, but it’s the views that interest me.

Under Standard view you have the option to show Related Searches, show a Wonder Wheel or a Timeline. Related searches just gives us the information we usually see at the bottom of a Google search page, but the Wonder Wheel is an interesting feature. It presents connections between related searches and your search term as an interactive diagram. Click the different nodes in the diagram to see how searches can branch out.

The Timeline

is handy view if you’re researching information about a historical person or event.

You can click any section in the timeline to zoom in on that time period. Want to change the time range? Click Search other dates above the timeline to enter new start and end dates. Alternatively, click the date links below the timeline to see results that mention that particular year, month, or day.

I’ll post a few other hidden features of Google in the near future, but I’ll finish this post with a great free resource from Google itself. If you want to learn more about how searching works and become a more efficient searcher, Google has published a set of lesson plans. These are well worth everyone looking at and would form the basis of a series of lessons for KS2 pupils (but they would need adapting to suit the age and ability of children). They can be found here.

In my constant quest for finding quality tools for free, I’ve come across Aviary – a collection of image tools, all beautifully designed and easy to use. The cornerstone of the collection is Phoenix a desktop image editor, perfect for those quick photo-editing tasks like cropping, rotating and touch-ups. Because it’s web-based, it’s always to hand and it loads really quickly. It also supports layers which is fantastic if you’re combining images.

Also in the collection is Toucan, a colour editor. This allows you to explore how colours are related and look together. Great if you’re looking at colour wheels and colour theory as part of an art project.

Other tools include Peacock, an effects editor (tricky to get the hang of to begin with, but great fun once you get going); Raven, a vector editing tool (comprehensive and easy to use). Finally there’s Falcon which allows you to mark up images and make easy screen captures.

Falcon is the application I use the most. If you’re using Firefox as your browser, I strongly suggest you install the Falcon plug-in (Talon) since it give you the power of this handy tool while you’re browsing the web. It’s great for making, cropping and saving screen captures. Yes, it has replaced Cropper as my preferred method for doing this!

Finally, a very handy trick is provided by Aviary. If you’re wanting to capture part of a webpage just type Aviary.com/ in front of the web address (URL) in your browser’s address bar. Try it!

Finally, why the bird theme? Apparently, it’s creation on the fly…!