Masterclass participants from Renfrewshire are meeting today in Abbey House along with those who have recently attended SETT as part of the Glow group. The aim of the meeting is to reflect on SETT (including teachmeet06) this year and to look at plans for the coming session. This include Glow training, ICT staff development opportunities and the upcoming ICT showcase on Tuesday the 20th of february.
The presntation used as the stimulus for discussion is attached.
glow for Masterclass 11-10-06.ppt
October 11th, 2006
This was my first time at SETT. I will definitely try to go back in future, even if it is just for the twilight sessions. I went to seminars on eTwinning, Blogging and Motivation within a Curriculum for Excellence. I heard keynote speeches made by Lady Marie Stubbs and Peter Peacock. I caught most of David Weinberger’s lecture ‘Everything is Miscellaneous’. I also managed to look around the trade stalls. My day ended with attending Glow: The National Perspective.
Glow looks like an exciting prospect for the future with endless possibilities for communication and collaboration between teachers, pupils, parents and other school staff.
I found the ideas from the eTwinning seminar interesting. I hope to try this with my class. It sounds like a great way for children to learn about other cultures and countries in a meaningful way by communicating with real children and sharing experiences. It seems like a very motivational way to encourage children to use ICT with the security of knowing that partner schools have been checked out.
I found the seminar on Blogging too brief. It did however give a little bit of a taster into some things that could be achieved by blogging. I liked the idea of using it for book reviews as this could be an interesting way to do what can sometimes be seen as a tedious task. I also thought it sounded like a manageable way to start. I will however need to find out more about security and setting up passwords and so on.
Lady Marie Stubbs was an inspirational speaker. I am now keen to either read her book or watch the film that has been made to tell the story of St Georges School. She acknowledged that the job of a teacher is, at times a difficult one, and also that change can be frightening and difficult. She reminded us that ‘dreary stuff’ like targets are only part of it. We have to become ‘wards of the key that unlocks the child’s mind’ , we are purveyors of hope and should believe in dreams.
September 25th, 2006
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
Started off at Ewan and David’s seminar on Creating Communities where Bebo was discussed. It is meant to be for over 13s but many children of 8 use it. The least used feature seems to be blogs with children preferring to make comments on other blogs, post pictures of their favourite bands and photos of their friends. But most of all they seem to crave the attention of having as many online friends as possible.
We were shown an example from Sandaig Otters of how to get your class blog read by other people and John Johnson talked about what he does with his class. Posting a request for help generates visits to your site. John had also put posters in local shops advertising a school field trip and this had created an online community of parents through the blog who had never spoken to each other before.
Every child at Sandaig had written a verse of a poem which the P7s blogged for the younger ones. This picked up lots of comments online which they printed out and gave back to the writers. This blossomed into another project where an American teacher asked to do a collaborative project making up a play based on the poem. She then sent the play and props to Sandaig for the children there to put on – a great collaborative project! http://www.sandaigprimary.co.uk/pivot/dream_dragon.php
Later went to the TeachMeet
(photos at http://www.flickr.com/photos/edublogger/sets/72157594289391549/ ) where Pam McDowall from Inchinnan and I were inspired to think about setting up a collaborative blog for Beginners’ French in our schools. Pam has already started her own personal blog.
September 21st, 2006
