50 minutes of the whirling beachball of doom, till I could stand it no more, on a brand new machine. Then force quit wouldn’t work either, so resorted to force restart. Thought I must let it run. So here goes again.
Archive for March, 2007
All my hopes and aspirations for ICT in my school and Argyll and Bute primaries are tantalisingly close. We have had our hardwiring done this week but it was a very difficult experience, for staff and pupils, noise and interruptions, and had very serious health and safety implications for teachers and children, with cables all over the corridors. The only one to trip over them was the Head, luckily or should that be unfortunately. The outcome for me, is worth the inconvenience. Others don’t feel the same, because they can’t yet see what extra they might get from this. The corridors now contain whiteboards and projectors and they will not be fitted for some time because the contractor has much on his plate, as have the technicians. 350 machines they have to set up, and all the schools want them now! A broadband connection is equally important for others. So I just urge patience, despite my frustration, ‘cos we’re nearly there!
Was over at Dalintober tonight, for a CPD session on Activote Pods. The staff liked the formative assessment tool that is the Excel spreadsheet, which is generated, after a flipchart session, but they don’t have Office on their machines, so it was decided that to get it was a priority, and the head agreed. Left them some of my own charts to use and showed them how to find the shared ones, already there, and gave them promethean planet login instructions to acquire more. We made a few quickly, too, but no need to invent the wheel really. As always the comment is that when there is all that material out there, they would like to be given more time to explore what already exists.
Regular readers might notice that the theme of this blog has been altered today. It wisnae me! My blogroll is absent, too. Now peculiarly, changing the theme back and editing the blogroll, and tweaking some bits, was something I intended to do, this very night, having been using another, to rule out the possibility that the original theme had somehow become corrupted last October, which was one suggestion I had been given, when trawling for help. Again readers will know all about that. So at the weekend, having had the same problems again, with the second theme, it seemed sensible to revert, since I am now using another machine, and didn’t appear to be having the serious but intermittent problem, that was evident previously. (This all having been detailed in previous postings.) I have to say, it’s really quite difficult to take ownership, and keep trying to prepare for things going wrong, as Andrew suggested, ( I keep picking his brains when they have already gone wrong.) and then things like this happen. 
I wouldn’t normally be quite so reactionary, as my previous post might suggest, but it was after many hours of communication attempts and frustration, swopping machines and copied and pasted comments and posts etc. I just want a quick bloggyfix and that’s when I start to say things like “Working teachers don’t have time for this!” But here I am again. The Jack Russell at the trouser hems! I just have to share todays happenings.
I used my projector and old filmscreen to look at some stuff on the computer.
Got my new toy out of a 6″x6″x6″ (OK 15cm cube), wet the stickers on the back and stuck it on to an ordinary classroom whiteboard, plugged in a USB cable to my computer (too excited to wait to set up the bluetooth) and one click later was interactive. The children by then were squealling with excitement, so we experimented with various programmes and websites to see exactly what it would pick up. And of course, we had another go at Get the glass. which worked well after changing computer and location. We drew moustaches on pictures from Scran. I took a photo with my phone and Bluetoothed it to the computer, where the 7 year old sitting there accepted and it came up on the board. The first comment that followed was that it needed to be cropped, so she did, in iphoto on the board. No more lugging boards about. This thing fits in my handbag. It is an ebeam! 340 pounds worth of WOW!
Last night I tried to post a drafted comment again and got the Dreamweaver file download to desktop, and the message that said Dreamweaver had suddenly quit. So after three tries, I deleted the post tried a new one and went again redoing the links each time, which took ages, I changed computer, and this is what I got.
And this 
And this again
What am I doing wrongly? The change of machine should preclude a settings problem here. The post I had made, that would not publish, that was apparently lost, showed up tonight as a draft, and posted no problem. I have been onto the edublogs blog and forum and had emailed to enquire, the last time this happened, but have had no reply. I am beginning to think that we cannot recommend this to people. I had no such problems with blogger. Perhaps though, someone who understands the above, might be able to explain and change my mind.
For no other reason than that I wanted to see how this behaved on our new Smartboards , (No that’s not true. I thought some of the children would figure out the code for the door that had eluded me.) We tried to access Get the Glass but it was taking so long to load that we gave up, and they went home with the url to try on their broadband. So instead we had a demonstration for P2 of Eye Track from Granada Learning. It’s a very simple programme for lower school and ASN, that works well on a whiteboard and encourages memory, and observational skills, rather like Kim’s game, amongst other things and has printable worksheets for those not on computer at the time.
At the end of the day, one of our teachers who had been on my blogging course recently, came to me with a problem, regarding access to the blog she had created on that day and is now using with her class. She was trying to access from her old classroom computer using Explorer, so pointed her at Safari on another machine and it worked. Hey!! She has a P7 class and would welcome comment.
I was out at Drumlemble on Friday, for the preview of their Art Exhibition, which was the culmination of their Rich Task. The red room was very red. The art work was red, too. The masks were inspired by their visit to the Museum of Modern Art. The invited guests were highly impressed, by the huge variety of styles in the other rooms, and that was reflected in the number of ’sold’ stickers. The exhibition ran Saturday and Sunday afternoons. The children were allowed to explore their entrepreneurial sides, selling the artwork, dispensing teas and yummy home baking.
I’ve been helping out there for a few years now and I really enjoy the way in which both staff and pupils take things on board, and take them forward. I had a camera crew of 2 terrific P7’s and was back out yesterday, in my McCrone time to show the P6/7’s how to edit their films and create titles in imovie and iDVD. They were designing the CD labels and covers today.
A well rounded, satisfyingly complete, project, enthusiastically executed, that exemplified all the best potential of the Curriculum for Excellence. I’ve been very pleased to have been involved in bringing the seamlessly integrated ICT, which, as anyone who knows me will recognise as my warcry. Their blog details much of what they have been doing to get to this point.
When I see anything I think should be in the public domain being removed from it, I just can’t help it. No! BBC jam wasn’t perfect, it was a work in progress, and the sort of stuff we pay our licences for, but would be free to all thereafter. Comment and input from teachers was welcomed and taken on board. So below is the letter I sent to the 14 or so MSP’s MEP’s who have had histories in education. Oh and also sent to Education Ministers North and South. Got my links to do so from John Connel’s blog and got that from Andrew. I can’t help thinking that we have a commercialism versus progress thing with this. And after spending much dosh on software that is now useless in our school, web based stuff that we can cache, for free, seems like a much better option. So you can pass on my letter, or edit, more suitably.
Dear Sir,
As a Primary teacher and Glow mentor I wish to express my disgust at the manner in which the BBC have been forced to withdraw their Jam service. Those who have made complaint about its progress have their own commercial interests at heart and not that of education. We, in Scotland, were enthusiastic about the fact that much of its content related directly to our curriculum, saw it as a work in progress, and I personally have found that the BBC has been receptive to constructive criticism from educators, and made appropriate alteration to content. Here, too we were anticipating the inclusion of that huge body of work in our new Glow intranet, giving our teachers free access. How many other companies have done that? I feel the whole scenario requires investigation, soonest, to enable the BBC to get on with developing what could potentially be the best, most accessible resource, for schools, nationwide.
Your sincerely,
Marlyn Moffat
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