marlyn.moffat

It only seems to crop up at this time of year. Reporting! It’s as well that our format does it as you go! Save! But do you make a backup, somewhere else? The hard drive in the staffroom is there for that very purpose. A teacher had almost finished 29 reports and her computer which had been playing up, previously, though she had not notified, and continued to use, despite its erratic behaviour, crashed and gave up the ghost, big time. (A white screen with blue strips.) It would not shut down or, after the removal and replacement of the battery, start up independently. Because of the screen it was impossible to tell if it had started up from a system disk. It did start up holding down T, while linked to another with a firewire cable, so her work folder and her reports were retrieved, but the reports were corrupt, presumably because she was working on them at the time of the crash. I copied them to a couple of other machines and got the same message and was instructed to use ‘recover’, but that was not an option. So I dashed down to Springbank Distillery and borrowed their copy of File Salvage, but that didn’t work. It recovered the damaged file.

Then the ‘Eureka’ moment. What if there were other options on the Filemaker menus in the full version of Filemaker? Open it from within Filemaker, put in on my old Masterclass machine? And lo there were! The magic word ‘Recover’. Result! One thankful teacher who had spent over 25 hours, working, but did not value her work enough to back it up, till it was apparently lost! And all would have been totally lost if the format created in Filemaker had not been saving for her already. I explained to her, it was not me she should be thanking, but the person who introduced me to Filemaker. I should have thought of trying that first!

So reports…Backup… backup ..backup and don’t dare moan if you don’t, and something goes wrong! Set your programmes to save every five minutes and save some grief. This teacher was lucky that the format she was working on did it for her.
Hey, we’ve all been there!

Anybody watch it? I only discovered it recently. So what, you might say? Well, amongst other interesting stuff,  they review resources and websites, show snippets and children using them. So what did I do in My McCrone time today? Watched TV!  Well for some of it. The Primary ICT prog was interesting. Ok some it exemplified my pet hate of showcase ICT ( there is a difference between this and showing examples of good practice, subtle though that difference might be, but it can give you ideas) as compared to, this is what we really do. Quite good to feel I was up to scratch with what they were talking about and was doing something right, though! Today they were having a look at an online publishing site for children where they can place their stories, and the ones voted for are published in an anthology,  a real offline book. Many of the programmes are online and can be downloaded for CPD sessions, from Teachers TV. Have a look, why don’t you?

Oh and…..

Birmingham City Council have many excellent whiteboard resources and links to lots of others. So there’s no need to reinvent the wheel till you’ve had a look, there, too.

Primary 3 did this on the whiteboard this afternoon. Great fun!

The question arose from my observer as to whether or not I was being best used, showing a class copy and paste, when surely their teacher would know that. Fact of the matter was, she didn’t. She didn’t know the shortcuts AppleC AppleV either. She also admitted that she did not know you could take bits from copywrite free sites like scran. She had been in a variety of schools over a period of years and had missed out on a lot of ICT support. However, an honest sincere educationalist she is, and is trying to catch up and has been very appreciative of any help she is given and follows it through in her classroom.

I’ve asked her if I could blog about her comments, to explain that there is an assumption that all teachers, because of CPD and INSET opportunities, now have mastered basic skills and to substantiate my belief that it is simply not true, yet. It’s not always about reluctant older teachers. It’s sometimes about hardworking folk wanting to be sure they are doing the right thing by their children, and unsure about how to do it. So here are her comments.

‘I use the interactive whiteboard almost daily, because you showed me how easy it was with a class and the children are quick enough to help me when I don’t get it right. I’m not afraid to let them help now and it’s good for them too.’

‘I didn’t know what my class were already able to do and I was limiting them. It was great to have a chance to watch them in action, without feeling responsible. I could see who was needing help and I felt good being able to help them. ‘

‘I’m really pleased  to have focus and relevant tasks for them to do, especially since they now know how and where to save their work. I always saved to the desktop before, so I could see it.’

‘Thanks a million for creating these links. I wouldn’t have known how to start looking for things they could do online. It’s easy now. All we need to do is login and click. Terrific.’

‘I hadn’t seen Clicker or Kidspiration before and because you picked out the bits that fit our project the resources are so simplified. So, since they are now on all the machines we can use them easily.’

‘File endings were gobbledygook, before.’

‘I couldn’t see how I could  ‘ICT’ my planner, so thanks a mill.’

‘I was used to having a couple of computers in my classroom and the thought of dealing with fifteen at a time terrified me, but the children handled them so well, I feel better. They knew how to deal with the problems better than I did.’

‘We’ll be ready for you to see what we’ve done in 3 weeks time’

Hey that’ll do for me!  One small step for man and ….well you know that quote!

This afternoon I had to do an observed ICT lesson, with a class other than my own. The idea is that I am in a class, to take the stress away from the teacher, such that he/she might see how things are handled when they go wrong, and how it might be overcome, without her/him feeling that she/he is failing, and that they might pick up on a wee something they themselves did not know. It also gives teachers the opportunity to observe their pupils in action, see who needs most support and builds their own confidence too.

While today was basically about copy and paste for P4/5,  it showed them where they could copy and paste from and  save to, for their project about animals. It also led them into various ways in which they could add to their paper free project, unless their teacher needed printed material to display. They will later , in class with their own teacher further explore the materials I have prepared and left in their folder. So we looked at a checklist of what they could do in their pairs. Minimized the window and at the end of the lesson examined the list again and changed what they felt confident with. The outcome will be that they, having collected material, will pull it together in a flipchart to use on the Promethean board, to show the class. We had a look at scran and how easy it was to get images, too.  They did well!

I included in the folder, on their desktops, suggested tasks, a list of online resources, with prepared links, and books and CD’s for offline use. I’ll be back there, in three weeks to see what they have gathered. Hopefully there won’t be lots of stuff lying about on school machine desktops, ‘cos they’ll now be confident about where to save it to.

As to what their teacher felt about the lesson…..That’s another whole post.

The link from the toondoo guru Rajendran led me to jambav.com, an Indian site with some simple things that might be of use for those working with children on the autistic spectrum. There are some errors there, busy, full pages, though there’s the ability to generate your own worksheets, and pre5 and infants might find something of use, too. It’s free.
The weblinks page was useful, and pointed me at some sites I had not explored previously. Just for fun , for the children at home, Disney have an interactive site with printable activities, including making cards and and posters, using their characters. Another with online colouring activities is www.coloring.com. Good clean holiday stuff for my children’s age group.
They also listed one of my favourites at enchanted learning. You can get masses from this without having a subscription.

I then had a look at literacy centre, which says the letter names instead of the sounds but has 2 good infant/pre5 tools for shape and learning colours.

Oh and meant to mention….have you caught the sparklebox bug yet? If you are a pre5 or Infant teacher, it’s deadly. So watch out.

The last one I checked out was readingrockets, which had strategies and support for reluctant readers and I’ve got 3 this year, so there were some useful notions there.

Not much of a surfer, ordinarily, but it helps when I am led.

This toondo thing has got me!

If only we had reliable online access (It’s on it’s way) Will this be blocked in school? Time will tell! Could add to sound files eh?

Try some text first.

when things are small enough to fit in your handbag? My first connection with a computer was in 1970, when I spent two days placing pixel by pixel, a yellow line into the Commonwealth tartan at Gallowshield’s college of technology and two whole rooms of electronics stuff ( think of the old Bond films) whirred into action for about 5 minutes with every click. Then looms whirred into activity and produced fabric quicker than the design had been created. So engineering was faster than electronics in those days. Look out for my input at the Commonwealth Games!

So, on Friday, I received, this little baby. Neat wee mic and speaker. Children will relate to this.
I

I’m not sure I know enough about how to use it for the things I believe it could have a real purpose, but I know a man who can help. And yes! I have found a tutorial online, but I printed it, to have it small enough to have in my handbag too! ( Beside my ebeam)