Adventures in Teaching and Learning

This post will hopefully cover straightforward video sites as well as more interactive audiovisual sites. Once again, I have asked my PLN (Personal Learning Network) of other “educationalists” and “edtech” folk at Twitter to share their favourite sites, which I will hopefully share with you here. I’ll start with a few of my own:

YouTube – Probably one of the most well known Web 2.0 sites. There is a lot of inappropriate content, as there is anywhere, but don’t be put off – there is a vast amount of fantastic content as well. If you are an RE teacher, then from my skattp profile, you can find links to a group for RE teachers and to some other accounts that I find helpful. I am sure there are similar groups for other subjects.

TrueTube – There some excellent (British based) videos on here that would make great debate starters. TrueTube hopes that young people will make more equally provoking videos and share them on the site. I have written about TrueTube before, here.

Teachers’ TV – An excellent resource for CPD; the site also contains videos that can be used in class. There are also groups and forums that you can take part in.

TeacherTube – Videos by and for teachers.

Animoto – Upload photos, choose from a selection of Creative Commons music, and Animoto will produce an audiovisual presentation for you.

Xtranormal – If you can type, you can make movies. An easy way for a teacher to make a starter video, or for a student to produce an ICT-based piece of homework.

VoiceThread – You could add this as a way to introduce a topic, by uploading a picture or video, then recording a commentary while using pens to highlight key points. Or, you could upload students’ work, and other students can then comment on each others’ work, as a form of peer assessment.

GoAnimate – A fairly easy way to produce short animations. These can then be hosted on a video site, such as YouTube or TeacherTube.

Voki – This is an easy way for you, or a student, to animate a message without having to record your face as well as your voice. You normally need a blog to host it on.

Audacity – An excellent tool that can be downloaded for free. Easy to use to record and to transform voices as well. The voice can then be added to vokis or other videos.

There are some good primary examples on this Demo Primary School site, based in Falkirk. Thanks to @mvass for producing it, and to @johnmclear for drawing it to my attention!

I will add more later, as I receive more suggestions!

I have asked my good friends on Twitter what Web 2.0 photo tools they recommend, in preparation for a CPD session I’m giving in a week or two on the use of ICT in RE teaching. Here are their (and my) recommendations:

Flickr – I think the number one choice of most. Worth paying for. Which reminds me, I need to pay for the next year. Anyway, I think it’s well worth it. It’s about the only web tool I don’t even hesitate to think about paying for. It’s about £12 a year. I use it constantly, and have about 5000 photos stored there at the moment. I think. (Supported by tweets such as @creativetallis, @davefoord)

Compfight – Strange name, great way to browse Creative Commons Flickr photos.

Flickrstorm – Another way to browse Creative Commons Flickr photos (thanks to @mtechman).

Photo Sharing Web Tools – A whole list of good Web 2.0 tools for photos. (@mtechman)

Gazopa – A way to search for similar looking photos (and, I think, videos). (@mtechman)

Cool Iris – “The fastest way to browse photos and videos”. (@victoriaellis has been going on about this for ages!)

Big Huge Labs tools – A variety of fun things to do with your photos (@victoriaellis)

ImageChef – Customise photos and clip art (thanks to @dominic_mcg).

Tag Galaxy – Visual way of honing in on just the photo you are looking for by gradually being more specific in the tags used (thanks to @dawnhallybone)

It’s amazing how many more photo and image opportunities, tools, applications etc there are now compared with two years ago. There are still many of the sites that I thought were fantastic when I first found them, but I think as I have become busier, and the amount of time I have to spend online has decreased, I have become more particular with which sites I use. It is good to have a reason to find out what I might be missing out on in the wider world of Web 2.0, and it makes a huge difference that I now have Twitter to help get more precise and focused recommendations. It’s also good to see that Flickr continues to be popular!

If I have missed out your favourite photo tool here, please leave a comment and I will update this at some point!

Went on another excellent Philosophy for Children course on Friday and Saturday. It was about putting into practice what I had been introduced to during the previous course with Will Ord. We had three “enquiries” during the two days, where we had different techniques modelled to us, eg of starters, generating questions, thinking time and reflections. Many of us had had a brief intro to P4C before. It was a really nice group; I hope we can continue to share ideas for stimulii etc.

I have tried out some of the techniques with two classes this week so far. I read The Gruffalo to my years 9s. A few said they weren’t babies, but others obviously enjoyed it. Then each student shared a word that the story made them think of: scary, big, ugly, funny, stinky, strong. We then looked for links between these words: strong and scary, ugly and scary, big and strong. Then we moved on to formulating questions: a few students asked questions using the linked ideas. Eventually, using our felt tip pens, we voted, and chose the question, “Why, if you’re strong, are you scared?” (Or, why might a strong person feel scared?”) I thought this was quite an insightful question on behalf of my students (this is a lower ability set), and would have been interested in seeing how the conversation would have continued if we had had more time. As it was, there was some discussion relating to people using intelligence to scare others and hinting at fear of the unknown, although not quite in so many words.

Today, I decided on the spur of the moment to carry out an enquiry relating to abortion with my year 11 class. Some interesting questions, but in this case the time taken to generate the questions might have been better spent simply starting a discussion of my own choosing more related to the exam topics. Interesting to observe and evaluate these different situations. Am hoping to run an enquiry tomorrow with my year 8s; they were not quite ready today but I did go over some of the ground rules with them. I’ll see!

It’s the end of the year, the time when people reflect on their past year and set resolutions for the new year. So here are the reflections. Resolutions may – or may not! – follow.

January – Made a snowman! Will that feat be repeated this Christmas? Saw Doris Lessing at the Southbank Centre.

February – Loved Sweeney Todd the Barber with Johnny Depp and Helena Bonham-Carter. Earthquake. Had an excellent FairTrade Fortnight Sixth Form RE Conference, which involved baking, football, FairTrade prizes and taste tests, as well educational input from different departments.

March – Enjoyed a lovely Holy Week and Easter Triduum. Discovered the National Gallery. Led some blogging inset at the Marist School – hope everyone is getting on with their blogging! Summarised some of the many excellent teacher and student blogs out there.

April – Collected my marked dissertation. Heard the sad news that Steve Sinnott had died. It snowed in London. Fiona, a friend from home, visited, and had fun being tourists in London, visiting the British Museum, Tower Bridge, Tate Modern and others. Samson and I watched the London Marathon. My friend Bridget got married. Appeared, with my Year 7 class, on Teachers’ TV.

May – The weather improved dramatically. Saw Chris Rock at the O2. Found the Awesome Highlighter website (which I haven’t really used, so I’m posting this here to remind me!). Spent ages surfing the net and writing about the applications I found there. Enjoyed meeting up with the TTP second cohort to talk about my experiences of Web 2.0. Started some classes on Web 2.0 for teachers at school. Took my Year 9s to the National Gallery as part of a Learning Outside the Classroom project.

June – Discovered Wordle! Presented a session on blogging at the Sixth Form Conference. Visited the Thames Barrier. Went to the Anthony Clark’s ordination as a deacon.

July – Samson’s book, The Jive Talker, was published! Read the reviews here, and buy a copy from Amazon here! The second cohort of the Transformation Teachers’ Programme had a lovely meal. I graduated with my Masters (MA in Education: Teaching and Learning) from Middlesex University. Weather was still very hot and humid. Enjoyed the Doctor Who Prom. Started making videos of clouds, taken using my camera and a tripod. Enjoyed lots of balmy evening walks during the summer holidays. Went paddling at the V&A pool. Bliss. Visited Westminster Cathedral to take photos for the department. Finished the month with the launch of the Jive Talker at Rivington Place.

August – The Jive Talker was published in North America (and can be bought on Amazon here). Discovered the Thames Cruiser. Went to a wedding reception. Enjoyed the Beijing Olympics Opening Ceremony, and then fulltime coverage, all day, every day! Went to Brighton for the day. Went back home to Scotland for a holiday. Met my little Canadian cousin for the first time. One particularly good day was when we travelled through Fife, visiting the Deer Centre, and my old university town of St Andrews.

September – Celebrated my birthday. Back to school! Very busy, but in a good way. We attended the launch of the New Art Exchange, where Samson was taking part in the opening exhibition, Next We Change Earth.

October – The term did not get any quieter! I became Acting Head of Department, so even more work! Visited East Dulwich for the first time, with a family friend. Visited the Saatchi Gallery. Enjoyed teaching my Year 7 Integrated (Humanities) Curriculum about China. Saw Toni Morrison at the Southbank Centre.

November – Went to the Diocesan Heads of RE Conference. Found PhotoBox and Fotonauts. Went to Martin Creed’s flat/exhibition in Brick Lane. Enjoyed Quantum of Solace. Collected together a lot of different Advent resources. Very excited about the election of Barack Obama, as were all the pupils at school.

December – Have enjoyed meeting up with friends, and look forward to meeting up with more friends and family over the next few weeks. We had a lovely carol service today at school, and I am delighted to finally be on holiday! My camera has pretty much given up over the past few months, so I’m hoping to get a new one to record many of the exciting and interesting events that I expect to experience throughout 2009 – starting with the birth of my first niece or nephew!

Thank you for visiting my blog, whether for the first time today, or regularly over the past year, and I hope to be able to share some of my further adventures in teaching and learning, particularly involving Web 2.0, over the next 12 months. I wish you all a very peaceful and joyful Christmas and a happy New Year!

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Emm … I’ve just seen it on TV and wow, it was great! Yes, I’m obviously talking about that Scottish victory last night against France. I’ve been trying to find it on YouTube, but with no success so far – fortunately I turned to the TV at just the right moment to see the ball sail from McFadden’s foot to the back of the net over quite a distance. The Independent’s report is here.

While we’re talking about Scotland, I think that’s a good time to remind any readers about the Scottish Learning Festival 2007 which takes place from 19-20 September at the SECC in Glasgow. There will be lots of info – including blogs and podcasts – on their websites, and there will be updates on Facebook as well. Wish I could be there! I expect it will be really inspirational. And I am sure that, as always, Ewan McIntosh will add pithy comments on his enjoyable blog.

Now, let me get back to finding that goal …

I’m now back home, so hopefully I’ll find it a bit easier to reflect on all of today’s activities.

First of all, I’ve enjoyed chatting to quite a few people today – it’s good to be able to put faces to the names of people whose blogs I’ve looked at or whose names I’ve seen on the list. We’re obviously quite a mix of people from a wide variety of subject backgrounds and with a range of experiences in teaching and in ICT, which is great. It’s been nice to be able to help some people out with things, and I’ve appreciated help from people with some of the things that have been bothering me, or that I couldn’t do.

I found it very frustrating not to simply be able to go on to my blog, or to Fronter, and quickly upload all the stuff I have on my computer that I’ve produced and would like to be able to share. It’s understandable when you have loads of people logging on to the wireless connection at once that things are going to be slow, but I was surprised at just how frustrating I was finding it! Probably didn’t help that I am still feeling guilty at not having managed to complete my reports yet. Must be emailed to a colleague tonight, so that’s what I’ll be doing after this!

Flickr. I wasn’t in the session that covered Flickr, but I hope that now more people know how to access it I’ll have more friends on there! If you haven’t become my Friend yet, please invite me … you can access my profile from one of my photos on my blog, then send an invite from that page. You will also have access to the profiles of my friends, whom I think at the moment consist of Judy, Tessa, Claire and John. At least, I think that’s how it works!

One of the things I am really interested in will (I hope) be on the agenda for tomorrow – using blogs with pupils. Which leads me onto another reflection – I hope that now there has been some more input on blogging, more of you on the programme will be posting more … I look forward to visiting other blogs and seeing what other people are getting up to, so I can be inspired by your great ideas! Personally, the communication aspect of this course, the whole idea of Web 2.0 and Personalised Learning using forums, blogs etc, is one of the parts of the course that interests me the most. You might have realised that I love talking, whether in “real life” or on the web … I love reading and gaining fresh insights from others too! Communication, communication, communication.

I have picked up a few new ideas from the audio and OpenMind sessions. Some of it was frustrating, because I’ve already experimented quite a bit, but there’s always something new to learn, for example, how to add pictures to a podcast episode (or whatever I should call them!), and how to add extra information to an OpenMind document.

However, OpenMind did raise one of the most frustrating features for me … the fact it’s so annoyingly difficult (not hard, inconvenient more than anything) to move from Mac to PC. All those lovely ComicLife documents, Keynote presentations, GarageBand podcasts, elusively hiding on Mac, when I want to upload them onto OpenMind! It’s such a faff to be restarting the computer, memory stick in hand, saving, restarting etc.

Still loads of possibilities, though, and I’m really looking forward to the pedagogical side of the learning tomorrow.

I haven’t managed to write about the dinner yesterday so I’ve had a few comments about that! At the moment I’m learning about OpenMind, so it’s a bit cheeky to be blogging, so I’m going to stop now and listen more carefully to Judy! More about the dinner later!

I’ve particularly enjoyed using Comic Life and Photo Booth this evening … but am concerned that I can’t get any sound on crazy talk. All my plans for a talking Jeremy Bentham are going astray!

It’s been fun getting the Mac and getting to fiddle around with a variety of applications. I suppose soon I’ll need to sit down and work out exactly what I want to do as my research. I have three groups in particular that I’m thinking of. For my AS class, I think I will try to create some iMovies for revision purposes. Could be embarrassing though! Ethics is not my strongest area of subject knowledge. Secondly, my Year 7 class has major issues with behaviour … anything that might help to grab their attention away from each other and onto the subject would be great. Finally, my Year 10s … I want to support their exam technique, perhaps using the Digiboards. (Is that what they’re called?)

My other issue is that I can’t connnect to the internet at the moment! I hope I can fix that sooner rather than later … very frustrating to have to swap between two computers all the time eg when using Flickr. Hope I’m not frustrated for too long.

I’m at the CLC learning how to do lots of amazing things on my new MacBook … Very excited and I’m looking forward to trying everything out at home. I’m a bit frustrated, though, at the fact that I can’t access the internet – I hope it works okay at home! Claire has let me use her internet today, though.

We’re just being told about the task for next time. We’ve to try to use as many different software packages as possible and produce something small. Or big. Something.

So … today we’ve learnt about CrazyTalk, ComicLife, Pages, Keynote, GarageBand, Fronter, iMovies, iPhoto … I have recorded some of the talks, and need to work out how to make them into podcasts.

I will blog later to describe some of the things we’ve done.