'sharing'
It’s Monday morning and I have checked the final figures for the ICT Showcase on Tuesday evening. We have 180 teachers booked with another 20 or so guests including parents and some folks from outwith Renfrewshire. All the final details should be in place. The evening will be videoed so we can create a DVD for all those who couldn’t get there on the evening. The audio should go on the website and here pretty soon after it has been recorded. Wireless conectivity should be available for anyone wishing to blog on the evening (let me know if this is you!). The accomodation is all sorted, the tea, coffee and cakes are all ready and we have the programme is all in place. David and Ewan are prepared (well so they tell me!). I think we are ready to roll.
If you are coming to Gleniffer tomorrow night then I look forward to seeing you then. If you are not, then why not!
February 19th, 2007
One of the presentations at TeachMeet06 last Wednesday related to digital video editing on-line. This is a slant on digital video that I have never thought of. What do you do if you don’t have a Mac with iMovie running? The answer may be editing vido on-line. This wiki has been set up to explore some of the on-line services designed for the purpose. The three services highlighted are Jumpcut, Eyespot and VideoEgg. Have a look and see what you think. One of the claimed benefits of on-line video editing is the sharing of the results, a bit like flickr.
September 25th, 2006
The first seminar I visited at SETT was with Ewan Mackintosh – Web 2.0 (or 5 things in the live web which will engage your learners and why blogging isn’t one of them). The five things were: 1. The web gives your students an audience for their work beyond just the teacher, their peers or the school. The amount of people viewing their work could reach into the tens of thousands. 2. Teach students to exploit the technology they own. The example given was the mobile phone. Students have an electronic organise, camera, video camera and access to the web at their disposal. Also with bluetooth students can easily share information with each other. The question was asked – Are we as teachers prepared to have students use mobiles in class as part of the learning/teaching process. 3. Make sure we are using new-new technology (using new technology with new teaching style) not the old-new technology (old teaching style with new technology). Ideas for changing your teaching style were: have the students give ideas and plan how the content will be learned or have students decide what they would like to produce by the end of the topic, i.e. a radio programme/pod cast. 4. Technology can aid in differentiating tasks in the classroom. A language based task could be linked with producing a pod cast. The idea was put forward that if you introduce complexity then children can choose to make the task as simple or difficult as they want. 5. Create don’t do. All learning should feed into the end product and IT can support this end. It was suggested that with IT it shouldn’t be that learn=teach=teacher but learn=working it out=co-worker (teacher becomes the co-worker).
Some of the points brought up in this seminar have implications though. The use of mobiles in class needs to be structured and clear guidelines put in place. Also the big M word, money. Money to subscribe to sites, buying hardware and software. Also the time. Realistically I know alot of these things will take time to set up.
I felt that there was a large range of ideas put forward. I would love to try some of the ideas in my class. I was thinking though, I have a P2 class what could I do. However, I would like to explore the capabilities of P2 in using a variety of technology. Also I really like the idea of blogging as a classI like the idea of the student having access to a large audience and I believe this would increase motivation. I just thought it not possible down the school. However, reading the entry before about Sandaig Primary school and how the P7 students enetered the work of the infants classes into the blog has made me think about the possibility of working on a blog with my P2 class in collaboration with a P7 class.
September 25th, 2006
I thought it would be a good idea if I were to round up the session with a short report of where we have got to with ICT in Renfrewshire. I have no doubt I shall miss things out but most of the main things that we have done should be here. Please let me know if I have missed anything important!
I took over the ICT remit last September. Prior to that I had been working on areas such as citizenship, race equality, vocational education and curriculum flexibility since joining the advisery team in 2003. It was really good to be able to start off with a staff tutor who knew what she was doing. Ann Crawford has been a superb support to both myself and all our schools over her time in the post.
Ann has continued to support schools through the extensive training catalogue as well as on-site support, monitoring and developing school websites and groups such as MasterClass. Of course the development of the use of digital video and digital animation has been hugely valued by all those who have had the chance to be involved. The video festivals at Lapwing Lodge have all be great (even although it always rains!) and the day on digital animation with the Masterclass group was super fun.
As the session has moved on the development of SSDN has become an ever increasinging part of the landscape. We have now got to the point where we are ready to sign the customer agreement and have a fairly extensive implementation plan in place. As we move into the new session we have identified four pilot schools and we aim to be involved in a fairly extensive piloting programme throughout the next session. Watch this space for more details. Training in the use of SSDN to support and enhance learning is clearly going to be a big issue and one of my tasks over the summer is to develop the training strategy. Perhaps I should use the East Lothian model and put up a wiki for folk to put in their own ideas.
One of the big moves this session has been to start to look at curent and emerging technologies in relation to what is sometime called Web 2.0. Using the C in ICT is becoming a major focus in relation to the way we use ICT to enhance collaborative learning, focus on different learning styles and involve more people in the use of ICT in learning. This blog is part of that development. The aim being to communicate more informally with all those involved in the use of ICT in Renfrewshire. At the most recent ICT co-ordinators meetings David Muir from Strathclyde University gave a presentation on many of the tools associated with Web 2.0. This included on-line bookmar systems such as del.icio.us, photo sharing such as flickr, blogging, podcasting and wikis. There is plenty for us still to explore and it is hoped that John Johnson from Sandaig Primary will be able to attend the next ICT co-ordinators meeting to talk about pupil blogging. Even more exciting is the plan for an evening seminar in February 2007 where the whole area will be showcased. Watch this space for more details.
So at the end of the session we can look back at a lot of areas of development and on to a lot more in the coming one. I wish everyone a very happy holiday and look forward to working with you again in session 2006/07.
June 29th, 2006
This blog is slightly different from usual as this has been posted from Flickr. I used Flickr to upload and organise a series of photos that I took today at the Roukenglen Gala day. Having tagged the photos I then used the “blog this” to create the text entry here. The entry is then sent directly to my blog. I also geotagged the images using Geotagr. All very clever.
June 17th, 2006
Renfrewshire ICT Blog
We are running an experiemnt to see how useful it would be to keep teachers informed about developments in ICT in Renfrewshire.
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