On Monday afternoon, I participated in a session at the CLC on the ongoing transformation of the Key Stage 3 curriculum. I led a session on using technology to enhance learning and teaching. Lindsay Coleman, Secondary Headteacher Consultant, delivered a session on current eLearning initiatives in Wolverhampton. Finally, Rebecca Orszulan from Trinity Primary School shared some of the exciting work going in the school, work which has just seen the school being awarded the Runners-Up prize in the prestigious BECTA ICT Excellence Awards in the Best Whole School category.

After my session, a number of people asked if I could email details of the websites and software I had mentioned. In the best tradition of Web 2.0, I decided to publish them here instead! Where I’ve given an external web link (i.e. other than on the CLC website) I’ve written out the url in full, so that a printed version of this post will be a usable resource.

The presentation

Here is the presentation:

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While teaching Web Design to Key Stage 4 students, I’ve spent a lot of time this week with The Jing Project, TechSmith’s new (free, for now) screen capturing software for both Windows and Mac. From their website:

The concept of Jing is the always-ready program that instantly captures and shares images and video…from your computer to anywhere.

I’ve used other screen capturing software to record tutorials to share with students (Adobe Captivate, for instance) but nothing I’ve seen has anything like the ease of use of Jing. It’s so easy to use that I actually recorded tutorials as I demo-ed ideas to students. Here’s a quick run through recording a screencast with Jing:

Jing sits silently in the background, ready to record:

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Wikipedia is a great (OK, unbelievably incredible) resource, but as anyone who uses it regularly knows, not all of the content is entirely suitable for educational use, either because it is more adult in nature, or too complex or expansive to unpick for school use.

Now we have the 2007 Schools Wikipedia Selection, a collection of Wikipedia articles that would amount to a 15-volume encyclopedia, handpicked for their relevance to the UK National Curriculum.

It’s worth pointing out that the articles have not been completely rewritten for school use, so the language and terminology in them is still aimed at a wider audience. However, they have been checked and tidied up, “cyber-vandalism” has been removed, and they aren’t editable by the Wikipedia community, so will stay “as is” until the selection process is repeated.

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One of my favourite applications for Mac OS X, Comic Life, has just been released for Windows XP / Vista. Comic Life allows students to create comics, how-tos or picture albums by combining together digital photos with speech and thought bubbles, text, and authentic comic-style layouts and fonts. It’s great fun and almost impossibly easy to use.

Pricing is US$24.95 (about £12.50) for the “Standard” version and $29.95 for a “Deluxe” version with more fonts, templates and styles. There’s a free 30-day trial available for download, so you can test drive it for yourself.

• Comic Life for Windows

Updated - pricing for education is better still:

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During the pre-conference workshops for Handheld Learning 2007 on Wednesday, I attended the session by Dan Sutch and Lyndsay Grant from FutureLab on their innovative pilot projects with handheld devices. One project they discussed, called MobiMissions, was based around students creating mini-games on their mobile phones, which they then shared via a website with other students in the same geographical area. Students played the games created by their peers when they arrived in the area for a given challenge (as detected by GPS), or when they socialised with other students involved in the project.

In reviewing their own pilot project, FutureLab acknowledged that the project had been too small (only 15 students) and too short (only 5 weeks) for students to publish truly absorbing, geographically-specific challenges with a good chance that other students would engage at a more than superficial level.

In the post-seminar Q&A, I made the point that the small size of the project had also prevented the students from exploring “The Long Tail” of their interests in creating challenges. In a larger version of the mobiMissions project (say, a nationwide version), students could make games based around more niche interests they have - the music of a particular underground band, or machinima, or manga . . . . someone out there, a student in another part of the country, would share their interest and would engage with the game in the manner intended by the author.

All of which has got me thinking about the “Long Tail” in Education. So what is the Long Tail? Why is it important to our students? And what are the possible implications for educators?

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