i see tea

Wallwisher.com: sticky note online collaboration

Name WallWisher

Teachers sharing ideas about leadership in schools

URL http://wallwisher.com

What is it?

An online pin board that everyone can pin things on. Allows teachers and pupils to collaborate on one web page.  Double click the web page to add a new note. Fill in your name and enter your text and links to relevant websites including videos. Good for whole class. No sign-in required to post messages, but accounts quickly created (good idea for teacher to keep a library of their walls).

Opportunities

• Quick text ideas (160 limit per post)
• Share instantly
• Add links
• Embed videos on screen
• Create your account to store a library of your walls
• Embed into your VLE (Bernard) so pupils can view posts from within your learning course

Barriers

• Moderation of posts
• Fake identity (classroom management issue – demerit, detention – and you can delete any post)
• Free, so may get turned off or charged for at some point; but whilst it’s free, why not make the most of it?
  

  Rhavine (Y9) put a video link on his post. Plays on the wall.

Basic guide

1. Create account
2. Build a wall
3. Share URL with pupils (link on Bernard or VLE, or email them or tell them)
4. Moderate
5. Can be used in an ICT room, but at it’s best when pupils access it outside the lesson and at different times.

Cost FREE

Frequently Asked Questions http://www.wallwisher.com/faqs

Video tutorial (TeacherTube on YouTube)

Examples

I did this with a Year 9 class: http://www.wallwisher.com/wall/nethistory.

Image at top of page is of this wall: http://www.wallwisher.com/wall/leadersleading.

Reviews

Free Technology For Teachers

A librarian

19 Interesting Ways to Use Wall Wisher

Thanks to Doug Belshaw for the heuristics of this post

Email productivity

Delete me, I dare you...

Here are some tips you might like to help you manage email fast and forever (and yes, they do include the delete key).

http://five.sentenc.es/ (very brief justification of five sentence rule, also leads to the more efficient two sentence rule – how low can you go?)

or

http://elearningstuff.wordpress.com/2007/10/01/dealing-with-e-mail/ (video is one hour lecture – watch if interested. It’s a good lecture.) Good quick advice in this post:

# Delete or Archive

# Delegate

# Respond

# Defer

# Do

Other Tips:

1. Good email signature (not so relevant for internal mail in a school, except for your phone extension)

2. Edit the subject line of your email reply to give the response e.g.<— Yes (or no?)

3. Don’t be afraid to be brief: aim to further or complete the conversation (you are not being rude, just efficient)

4. Use decent grammar and capitals but don’t create literature. Any more than two/three minutes and you should be creating a document or blog post for future reference, or using the phone or going to see them.

The delete key is not always the answer. But your time is precious so respect it by not writing long emails, and so will I.

Reply in comments if you have any other ideas.

Image CC: http://www.flickr.com/photos/thetruthabout/

With assistance from Doug and James

Spreeder: teach pupils (or yourself) to speed read

I came across SPREEDER via @Documentally on twitter.

It strikes me as an excellent tool to get pupils reading large quantities as well as helping them to learn to speed read it may well be great for learning. People often complain reading on screen is a chore and many people print long documents to read hardcopy.

A comprehension test of any content would be well served in all subjects by this delivering the text via spreedr. Just drag the bookmarklet into the links on your browser, select the text and click to start. Or, copy and paste the text into the spreedr window.

In class, this could spark an element of competition which may help improve pupils productivity. It certainly helps me read a lot faster.

Have a go and let me know what you think.

Let all pupils customise their browser NOW!

I have had quite enough of teaching ICT and using web2.0 tools in the classroom with pupils

Image: CC seokchanyun on flickr

using a locked down web browser, Internet Explorer 7 in my school. The software is locked and a clean image on every computer in the school. Therefore, if a pupil saves a bookmark on one machine it is not available on another. So, the answer is to use a browser that can remember who they are. Firefox with plugins springs to mind as the browser of choice. We use Firefox on staff laptops and some teacher machines on site. I use Firefox and Google Chrome on my home machine. It is worth noting here that Chrome is developing lots of plugins and catching up with Firefox in this regard but it also a lot faster and I will look at this as an option.

After asking this question on a blogpost about bectaX, a former student of mine (Fauz) replied suggesting portable apps on issued memory sticks. I’ve used these before and they are excellent because they enable you to take your computer with you on your memory stick. Cool. However, not cool enough really, but then Fauz sent me another message suggesting using the portable apps version of Firefox saved into the pupils home drive on the network. This seems like an excellent solution. It would not matter which computer the pupil logged into, they would be able to navigate to My Documents, find the Firefox Portable folder and launch their customised browser with their passwords and add-ons saved and installed to enable productive web work with multiple sign-ons. The excellent plugin called xmarks would mean whatever the pupil did on Firefox at home would sync with their version at school.

Single sign-on is a great idea but is a big system that needs lots of implementing. As far as I can work out, this idea would work now and be easy to implement for free.

Let me know if you think it wouldn’t work, or I’m missing something?

It will also be interesting to see if my school’s tech team object. Are you a techie – WDYT?

BectaX: the end of the beginning or the beginning of the end?

Attending BectaX gave me a bit of a buzz. It was a privelege to be invited. (Thank You @tombarrett)

The agenda was to see where we need to go next to advance the use of ICT in education.

Professor Xavier took this! Click to see more.

Speakers were lined up from education, media and industry. Lots of movers and shakers present. Creative explosions were the order of the day. ‘Where might this merry dance lead us?’ I w[o]ndered lonely as a cloud (great pun? probably not) …

I have discussed the issues raised at BectaX with FutureLabs, the TDA, NAACE, the DCSF, the SSAT and more – I have thoroughly enjoyed these conversations. The conclusions were more-or-less the same: generate some kind of portal of teaching practice, the number one destination for all teachers looking for inspiration and answers. By teachers, for teachers.

A common response to such a proposal (from those more in the know than I am)  is that it has happened before with the decommissioned NGFL (http://ngfl.gov.uk/), which now re-directs you to Becta Schools (http://schools.becta.org.uk/). Part of the NGFL was the National Strategies. I thought these were marvellous. As an ICT teacher I was invited to work with other ICT teachers – a revolution as I started to work with teachers of my subject and I was provided with resources that had been tested and improved in the classroom and I was free to adapt them. Yippee-eye-ay! Genuinely very good. Other than that I have recollections of NGFL talking about digital brain and dragging broadband into schools and receiving credits for software. I have been in the private sector for four years and therefore lost touch with current progress on this front. I am aware of RBCs and various Grids for Learning around the country but I am not really sure what they do.

From here (national strategy stuff delivered at my local CLC) I went to FutureLab and  Moodle which took me to MirandaMod who introduced me to twitter and from there EdTechRoundUp, then TeachMeet and from there the world. There are a lot of people I have to thank so I won’t name them – suffice to say I can pinpoint five or six people whose responses to my online exploration were very very important to me. I hope they know who they are.

I share this because this is my hub of all things teaching.
Is that what BectaX was asking for? The big key that unlocked my door was building this network of educators. I forged this. I said the right thing at the right time that got me sufficient attention to keep me moving forwards – like a frontiersman racing for the land near the creek on which to stake my claim – it was mine.

If BECTA puts together a hub it will be great for some people. I need something teachers can go to and find inspiration, true enough, but they have to be able to find it easily. But, having said that, I love my network and it was not easy to build.

What I would like from BectaX?

At the end of the day I hogged the mic and said it was important that:

1. Becta produced documents that outlined the importance of open internet filtering in schools. Get rid of the porn and other stuff that offends a classroom but do not ban blogs just because they have some indecent images on them. Let the teacher and the Pupil Acceptable Use Policy handle this.

2. Petition OFSTED to make this benchmark a requirement for being an outstanding school. This way Headteachers and LAs will have to pay attention and it won’t be little old me fighting to take the risk.

3. Write a document that insists software should only be locked on a network if it is essential to the health of that network. By this I mean internet browsers. If I cannot use my plug-ins to bookmark and retrieve and search and access my tools then I am unproductive. Why is this any different to the kids. I do not need an expensive single sign-on system. I need to be able to customize my browser. The question for me is what is the best way to do this on shared computers? Roaming desktop? Virtualised desktop? I’m not in the know about this.

BectaX was fun. It is always great to meet up with the people I work with online because I am genuinely very fond of them. I hope some constructive work ensues that builds on BECTA’s already impressive collection (VLEs, technicians, leadership). I have used some of these and they are very helpful to any school. This is where the value of BECTA lies in my opinion. BECTA could, however, develop into something more (funds allowing).

My apologies for heckling Tom Barrett via twitter – imagine having everyone in the room check to see if your flies are down???