Gideon Williams, Director of ICT at Perins School, hosted a development day for ICT in his school involving all the key stakeholders from inside and outside the school:
Getting giddy with IT
Gideon (at the start, discusses what has and hasn’t happened from past planning)
Teachers (transforming learning – at 40 minutes, 1:1 notebook project at 2:14)
Pupils (about 2:40, well worth a watch)
Moodle hosts Synergy (Moodle, Mahara and building communities – starts at 00:16)
Local Authority (EduLive, what it provides and how it works – starts at 1:15)
Result is a quality day of CPD improving the shared vision with everybody seeing all the ideas for moving on and getting feedback on what already exists. I thoroughly recommend a watch of this honest insight into a school genuinely working hard to embed technology into the background of its learning practices.
I just sent this email to the teachers in my school. I am feeling a little uncomfortable with it. What do you think?
Much hype has surrounded the iPad. Overpriced. Limited in what it can do. An iPod Touch Xtra Large. All true. We bought one for my eldest’s 18th to accompany him to Oxford. One happy boy, I mean, man. It is a lovely device to use.
Well, here’s a little bit of the deal that I know.
Apple keep the iPad limited (major limitations = view one app at a time, no phone, no file explorer) so they can keep their pricey devices segregated. In theory there is a reason for each person to have an iPhone, an iPad and a Mac (Macbook or iMac or mini mac). This is so they keep you buying, should you be bothered to spend your cash that way. All these devices do similar things but, as Mary Portas would put it, they are all clear about their point of difference. Steve Jobs is quite aware that this will change over time as the iPad gets more powerful.
Apple computer products are successful because they do fulfil the hype. They are easy to use. Pick one up and give it a go.
Anyway, should you happen to part with £429.00 of your precious pennies over the summer (that is the cheapest one) you might like to think about bringing it into your classroom. Teachers all over the world are blogging about iPad use in the classroom at the moment. [quiet aside: by the way, if any of you would like to set up a blog to reflect on and share your classroom practice, do let me know if you would like some help] Some UK schools have bought iPod Touch class sets and are having great fun discovering the educational advantages they afford. Felsted School are buying a class set of iPod touches instead of a virtual language lab. Bizarre but true (£4,000 vs £40,000). They will be sacrificing some core functionality but equally engaging all involved with creative uses.
Also, Apple are not the only player in the game. Many Primary Schools have seen the advantage of using Nintendo Wii in the classroom. If you would like to go and see class sets of Nintendo DS being used in a classroom, I am sure I could sort out a visit within the M25.
But the point Barnes, come on!
When you are googling over the summer, have a quick search for some exciting techie activity you might like to do with your pupils next year and Google it. See what comes back. If you like the look of it send me an email. You never know where it might lead.
Will I be buying an iPad? Maybe.
Dai
Is it over the top? Simply trying to spread a little summer curiosity. Let me know if you think I’ve been a bit foolish.
This morning my school were lucky enough to be visited by Barbara Stone and Westley Field from MLC School in Australia. They talked us through their use of technology. It was very impressive. Westley showed me photos of children in the playground busily chatting away over their macbooks. It’s an independent school and every pupil is required to buy a macbook when they join the senior years.
They relayed the importance of WiFi to their technological development. They moved from PCs to macs as a school, all at once. They just worked better. Their budget is not as big as the equivalent state school in the UK. They have been creative. A flavour of this is that all school bought macs are replaced every two years. They sell the used ones with one year warranty remaining so they are still worth some capital cash to be invested in the upgraded equipment. Similar to what any tech savvy does with their personal kit.
They embrace creativity. Lessons are given to an entire year group with all timetabled teachers present. Pupils then turn to their tables (in the same large, relaxed open-plan space) and choose their tools to get on with the work where they decide is best for them. Teachers jump from table-t0-table (not limited to just their class) providing help and guidance where needed. Mobile phones are actively encouraged in class (facilitating photos mainly as all comms are available on their macbooks). Books play a huge part in the school and the libraries are seen as the hub of all knowledge and learning.
Inspiring classroom (or a new word) practice.
They have done quite radical remote work with the Broken Hill (<— great school site, pictured above, worth a read – check the planning section, there is even a ‘Teacher voice’ link) outback school (where MadMax was filmed).
Before they left, Westley asked to update the schools twitter account with a comment: http://twitter.com/mlcbrokenhill.
Now, I am not saying blueprint for the future. They are an independent all girls faith school, and, consequently, have many things blowing in their favour. However, Barbara has been a Headteacher driven by vision for 20 years and the work they are doing looked very impressive. What can I (we, you, me) learn from it?
Westley left stating five key things to sort out that encompass every problem he has ever encountered:
Many thanks to the legendary Leon Cych (@eyebeams) without whom this would not be a video. PS there was no camel so it goes on longer than the usual 7 minutes.
The answer my friend, is blowing in the wind.
Using technology in the classroom, using it for learning, is an endeavour that engages some teachers. Others do not find it particularly enlightening – they don’t get bitten.
I remember training a music teacher in the ways of Moodle over two years ago. Since then he has not used it for anything other than revision lists and other three line whip orders from above.
Two weeks ago he came to me with a dilemma. The new Music GCSE requires pupils to identify different sections of 12 pieces of music, most of them classical. A recent internal assessment revealed that his class of non-classical musicians were struggling with the basic identification: e.g. they had to listen to 10 second bursts of a Mozart Symphony and place in a certain section of the whole symphony (e.g. exposition subject 1). Not easy for an unfamiliar ear. So, he asked me what we could do to help them. His solution had been to write a booklet and put the music files on a CD.
This is how we rolled:
Split the audio into the ‘identification’ items using audacity.
Upload the audio files into a folder in a GCSE Music Moodle course.
Build multiple-choice quiz questions with the choices being each of the identification categories for that symphony.
Access the audio file URL. Course files >> right click audio file >> properties >> highlight >> copy.
Paste the URL into the question HTML box
Edit the HTML code to make the URL text white so it will not display
Edit the feedback text and set which answer is correct
Save question
This gave us a multiple choice question with the audio automatically embedded as a mini MP3 player and the seven answers underneath with radio buttons next to each possible answer.
The teacher then was able to create new questions:
Open (edit) the existing question
Edit the title
Change the link to the next audio file
Amend which answer was correct
Amend the feedback accordingly
Click ‘save as new question’.
He did this with no further support from me.
The result of all this was a Moodle course whereby he could easily create quizzes for the pupils to do every week, and repeat and repeat. Moodle keeps an eye on progress and even tells you which question each pupil got wrong. There is a progress bar (3rd party block) so pupils can see if they have not done something. There is a quiz block that displays who is doing best on the quizzes. The teacher has also displayed the directories to the audio file folders enabling pupils to go and listen to the pieces without doing the quiz. Equally he created directories for the presentation files he had used with them in class.
The reason this was such a win for me is because the teacher already had the ICT skills to do this stuff. I showed him how to do everything once and he picked it up. His motivation was a genuine desire to help his pupils learn. We couldn’t come up with any other potent solutions.
The last thought that springs to mind is about Moodle itself. Could any other VLE do this? The answer my friend, is blowing in the wind. When a teacher needs something and technology provides the solution… hey presto!
Next up he wanted to be able to use music notation as the answers to multiple-choice questions. I showed to print screen, edit in a graphics application and upload to Moodle in a table. We were not able to display the text next to the radio buttons so we created a table with each image labelled. The pupil would then choose the correct label from the answers displayed.
One thing leads to another…
‘How many years can a mountain exist before it is washed to the sea?
How many years can some people exist before they’re allowed to be free?
How many times can a man turn his head pretending he just doesn’t see?
The answer my friend is blowing in the wind
The answer is blowing in the wind.’
Bob Dylan Blowin’ in the Wind 1963
Welcome to my blog
I am an ICT teacher, a Google Certified teacher, and an e-learning enthusiast. If you think I can be of any help, feel free to contact me via a comment or twitter.
