I heard about it at Teachmeet, the unconference after the e live Conference in Edinburgh and have played about with it, creating characters to give the children some amusement and occasionally instruction and tried to place a wee demonstration here but couldn’t embed it at all. It likes blogger though, so I left a demonstration on my old blog . ( Tongue firmly in the cheek) Like almost everything else there are educational possibilities. Thus far I can at least see how attention grabbing it has been for the children, and no harm has befallen them. The sound recording is slightly bitty, but there is potential for the children to do their own writing, characterisation and soundtracks. Best of all the firewall lets it happen!
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I’ve done this for a while now. They tell me what they like about it, what they think they can learn from it, what stage they think it is for, too easy for them , too hard etc. So I take their advice and offer it to the stages they suggest and they watch the others use it and then we take their comments. We have bought, over the years, much software with good educational purpose, which has largely lain unused and is now unable to be used, due to advancing operating systems. I’m sure other schools have done the same. It’s partly because the staff have not had opportunity to explore the potential, and don’t allow it to be used, so I now believe, give it to the children and they will explore and explain. Staff can then see its relevance for purpose and will enable its use. Sometimes that’s all they have to do…allow!
So this week Primary 3 have looked at some of the things I brought back from eLive.
Beep from Sherston, they decided was fun and way too easy for them so would be best in a P1 classroom, but they would like to show it to primary 2 to see what they thought. So I set it up on Wednesday such that they could show it to them. P2 enjoyed the fun, bright colours and activity, but said it was easy for them. Well, nice for Sherston to know they were right when they suggested age range 3-5 for this and excellent feedback to primary 3 to know they had evaluated accurately. They thought it was important that it worked interactively on the whiteboard, because the wee ones could draw with their fingers on the Smartboards. Hey!
They also had a look at Flobot, a Sherston newbie. They thought Level 1 in the teacher options was just right for them, ‘cos they’re smarties, but that level 2 might go all the way to primary 6. This is a simple to use control programme. And hey ho Sherston suggest its levels would be level A-D.
For the most part, I now advise against buying software with a limited educational focus, unless required by pupils with ASN, preferring as I do, things that can be applied in any cross curricular context, or can be found online already, but to have the children pick out learning objectives, for others, from things they enjoy doing, can’t be bad, eh?
There was much more this week but folks don’t read long postings!
This might sound to others like Geekmeet, but not a nerd in sight, just a group of people interested in taking technologies forward in classrooms and talking informally about how it might happen. The fact that it is informal and involves some food and wine and comfortable sharing of experience means everyone has something to share. We met where there was wifi, so we could show and tell. Primary, secondary, subject specialists, retired from teaching communication enthusiasts and technical folk were bonded in common respect. The discussions ranged from proper use of the apostrophe and correct grammar in children’s blogging to scratch. I had gone looking for something that might replace the old Logo and that was it! It’s free from MIT.
I’d played about with it but didn’t know it was so easy till I went to Joe Moretti’s seminar. He showed me how to disregard the complicated bits and has tutorials and help on his website. So today I tried it out with my class of P3 , and lo, it took them ten minutes them to get it. If you want to try it out, I’d suggest the use of headphones. The results were terrific. The peer group told them what they thought would make it better and they went away and sorted it,then told me when they were ready for performance. I felt ineffectual doing inventing stuff in music previously, because it mostly was to do with percussion. Now we’re groovin’ and movin’. Ewan blogged about this great presentation more fully.
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.
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.
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.
After my online tutorial from Andrew, from which I had to take notes to remember (old age) I went about setting up some feeds, and much later discovered that I had already done so the last time we spoke of it, ( so that really is old age) I was just not using them, not having been blogging much for reasons previously explained. Anyway, what I think will be more time saving is the ability to follow conversations. It’s taken me most of the evening to get to grips with both of these, but will save me several others, to do different and more necessitous things. Only one didn’t work, because, as I now know, I was logged in with an alter ego.
After school, introduced the staff to poisson rouge, a great wee cause and effect site I picked up from Morag. Great for children with ASN too. Designed for younger children , my P3’s choose to use it in golden time even now. Non verbal, you burst bubbles and hear baby gurgles. It tickles at every area of the curriculum, and is a great introduction to the touchy aspect of the Smartboard. I passed it on to a friend in a pre five unit in East Renfrew and she enthusiastically reports on the outcomes of her tinies in a computer suite, with their wee legs dangling from the big chairs.
Anyone who know me will always know that there is an afterthought that was previously to the fore! We’ve ordered an eBeam which claims to turn any flat hard surface into an interactive board, so another experiment is about to take place. It means that almost all of our classrooms can have interactivity for much less than a board setup would cost. £345 I live in hope!
I was looking for a reasonably priced digital recorder, having been using a Marantz (great, simple machine) on loan till now, using it a lot but not publishing much, webwise, so suggested to my boss that a top of the range ipod, would do the business, more cheaply, and the children will relate to it, more easily.
I had the best time spending this windfall, hoping to give our teachers what they need, but we all now, have to encourage our Head Teachers to maintain the impetus, by refreshing the hardware from this year, because it will not happen again, or at least for a very, very, long time.
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