marlyn.moffat

Have you heard of voki?

marlynmoffat — Fri, 30 Nov 2007 23:38:00 +0000

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!

Ducks to water.

marlynmoffat — Fri, 28 Sep 2007 19:59:08 +0000

On Wednesday afternoon I took some primary 3 children over to the local nursery. Our mission was to show them how to use their recently acquired portable Promethean board. The primary 3 children were amazing in their interaction with the wee tots. They altered their language to a level that the tots understood. They showed them some of the tools on the board, and how to play with Musical monsters. One wee chap, after a moment or two said “I knew I’d be good at that!” Aged 3…and do you know he was…..confident little individual. Curriculum for excellence not necessarily required there eh? Other tots drew on the board, handling the stylus in a way they can’t ordinarily handle a pencil. My wee peeps felt great about themselves and the nursery children took their input readily. Nothing held any fears for them. Ducks to water!!

Well well well! SLF

marlynmoffat — Sun, 23 Sep 2007 22:33:05 +0000

It was two days of learning. By the end of it you just can’t absorb any more. I went to hear about some good stuff. Talked to some knowledgeable people, particularly at the Teachmeet unconference, found out what some companies can do in terms of cost for schools when the authority is prepared to support. But the saddest thing was, I was all fired up to get the biz where AIfL meets Curriculum for Excellence and ended up having both of them explained to me. I know about both. What I was hoping for was to find the meeting place, and what might help in the classroom. What I didn’t want to do was to fill in 10 questions at the end of a seminar that had already over run, with the people sitting next to me and suggest ways I could use in my classroom. That, it seems is the problem that many thinking class teachers have. They want to know they are doing the right thing, but don’t know what is going to be perceived as the right thing. They, like me, were waiting for someone to tell them. AifL without some of the buzzwords has always been my modus operandi. Curriculum for Excellence and wider thinking in terms of planning I have done for years and caused grief to my head teacher, when it was not popular with the powers that be, but she is now cool with it, ‘cos it’s ok for me to be a thinking professional, now. I just wish that presentation had had more oomph, enthusiasm and encouragement, for those who are less sure than myself. There were a lot of young teachers there . When I lose that oomph, I give up teaching.

Of course it wasn’t the last post!

marlynmoffat — Thu, 21 Jun 2007 22:37:40 +0000

But for those who followed it through, all two of you, thank you! I know now that I write this blog and friends read it and I understand that it does not appear to be utilised anywhere else for the purpose for which it was intended. I also know that many who read regularly, don’t comment.
So why do I continue? Well there are now three more teddy blogs in Scotland, now, though sadly they are being written by teachers, not children, but a lot of the underlying activities that took place to create our teddy blog, are taking place too. So more children are getting the enthusiasm and other skills that came out of the project Morag and I did last year, and talked about at SETT, and that seems to be where the knockon effect came from, judging from some of the mail I have received. The teddy blog continues to get hits and that convinces me of the value of blogging at all.

The last post!

marlynmoffat — Tue, 05 Jun 2007 23:02:41 +0000

Further to Chris , Andrew and Groanin Jock

My last post.

Where’s my moby? Get me on Skype? Be in touch somehow . Find me on Google. I’ll find you. You have history! Email? OK! Write me a letter, ‘cos you know my address, and if you don’t, I don’t need to hear from you, or do I? Mmm

Primary 3 evaluating software.

marlynmoffat — Sun, 03 Jun 2007 22:54:24 +0000

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!

One of the best bits of eLive, Teachmeet!

marlynmoffat — Sun, 27 May 2007 22:39:39 +0000

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.

Frustration this weekend.

marlynmoffat — Sun, 27 May 2007 22:18:54 +0000

I have been trying to post on my own and other blogs, following my terrific meetings etc at eLive and because edublogs is currently unattainable (has been all weekend) the feeds don’t work, on any others, so I am blocked. I get url error. Can’t post on my own blog either. Wish I could turn this waste of time into something more productive. It was to have been about sharing and communicating. I’m now wondering what was so bad about Blogger or Typepad that we could not have used it. Are we just using these blogs because they have ‘edu’ in the title? I know there is work going on to resolve the problem, locally, but meantime, I want to skweem and skweem.

Garageband

marlynmoffat — Fri, 25 May 2007 22:43:15 +0000

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.

Did you know?

marlynmoffat — Fri, 25 May 2007 22:22:09 +0000

From the Edinburgh eTeam I learned that there is a tiny adaptor available for toys, lights, bubble makers, in fact anything that has a straight on/off switch, and runs from batteries, for children who can only access with their switch pad. Cause and effect technology for children with special needs. Costs £7 from Granada Learning.