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:
From Slide 6 onwards, the presentation looks at projects at the CLC with Secondary Schools over the last three weeks. Details of each day of these projects can be found in the Session Reports section of the website (http://www.wolverhamptonclc.co.uk/blog/sessionreports)
Project 1 - The Northicote School Space Project
- Zamzar.com (www.zamzar.com) is used to convert files from one format to another. One educational use of the Zamzar service in the extraction of videos from YouTube (which is generally filtered out in school). To extract videos from YouTube, simply paste the url of the video into the website. Once the video is converted, Zamzar send an email to your designated email address with a download link for you to download the converted video. I used the site to extract the “Top Gear turn a Robin Reliant into a Space Shuttle” video from YouTube.
- Del.icio.us (http://del.icio.us) is a service for social bookmarking. Users can store, tag and share their bookmarks online. Del.icio.us also allows you to explore other users’ favourites, finding related sites that other’s have found useful
- Creating a Scale Model of the Solar System (http://www.exploratorium.edu/ronh/solar_system/)
- Senteo voting system for rapid assessment (http://www2.smarttech.com/st/en-US/Products/Senteo/)
- Skype (www.skype.com) - as used during our online video link-up with Dr. Matt Kenworthy - is the leading internet telephony tool. It can be enhanced by using tools such as Call Recorder to allow the recording of conversations.
Project 2 - Parkfield High (Bilston) Web Design Project
- Diigo (www.diigo.com) is an online tool for social annotation and bookmarking. Using Diigo, a group of students can colloboratively annotate a webpage or online document (e.g. in Google Docs). Tom Barrett, a Primary Teacher in Nottinghamshire, has written about his use of Diigo for Narrative Response with his class here (http://tbarrett.edublogs.org/2007/10/29/using-diigo-for-narrative-response/)
- The Jing Project (www.jingproject.com) is a tool for recording screencasts and annotated screenshots. The tutorial videos I recorded during the sessions with Parkfield High (Bilston) are linked to from my “Web Design Resources” post.
Project 3 - The King’s School Digital Imaging Project
- Flickr (www.flickr.com) is the best online image sharing application on the web. You can upload, share, annotate, comment on images, and map them to their location using Yahoo Maps. If a set of users tag their images with a unusual, unique tag, you can then find all of the work connected to a particular project by simply searching for that tag.
- Slideshow of the King’s School images is here - www.flickr.com/photos/17957693@N08/sets/72157603195842665/show/
- Picnik (www.picknik.com) is an online tool for editing uploaded images or images from Flickr - think of it as Photoshop Lite on the web.
Other information / ideas / links
- RSS (Rich Site Summary / Really Simple Syndication) is a technology to allow web users to stay up to date with new content on their favourite sites without having to visit them individually to check. Probably the best explanation I’ve seen of getting started with RSS is the video here (http://www.commoncraft.com/rss_plain_english).
- “The Long Tail” is a term coined by Chris Anderson to describe the move from a world of “hits” to a world of niche content distributed via the web. I’ve written an article of the implications of Long Tail thinking for education here (http://www.wolverhamptonclc.co.uk/2007/10/16/the-long-tail-in-education/)
- A revised version of Bloom’s Taxonomy including “Creating” as the highest order skill - http://projects.coe.uga.edu/epltt/index.php?title=Bloom’s_Taxonomy
- Marc Prensky, author of “Don’t Bother me Mom - I’m Learning” - www.marcprensky.com. You can also see Marc’s talk at Handheld Learning 2008 at http://handheldlearning.blip.tv/ (scroll down the list of sessions on the right hand side - fourth link from the bottom).
- Podcasting is the creation and distribution of audio (or sometimes video) files via the web. Users subscribe to content using RSS (see above) so that new episodes are automatically pulled down onto their computer for playback or syncing to an MP3 player. Parkfield High Tempest podcast can be heard here (search for “Parkfield High” on this site). Tools for creating audio podcasts on Windows include Audacity (free) - http://audacity.sourceforge.net/ - and Podium (very easy, not free) - http://www.podiumpodcasting.com. Mac users have GarageBand, installed on any new Mac, or available as part of iLife (http://www.apple.com/uk/ilife/)
- Examples of Wolverhampton podcasts at www.learning2goblog.org
- Stop-frame animation tools include Giant Screaming Robot Monkeys (free) - http://www.giantscreamingrobotmonkeys.com - for Windows and iCanAnimate for Mac - www.kudlian.net. Highfields school geography animations are on the CLC site (search for “Highfields animation”).
Dr. Who Adventure Days
- The idea of using computer games to stimulate creative writing borrows heavily from the work of Tim Rylands (www.timrylands.com)
- Game was created in MissionMaker (www.immersiveeducation.com/missionmaker)
- “David Tennant” was created using Crazy Talk (www.reallusion.com/crazytalk/)
Other things to mention
- Box.net for sharing files on a blog / website
- Slideshare (www.slideshare.net) for sharing your powerpoint presentations on a blog / website
- Lindsay showed the “Shift Heppens” powerpoint presentation - http://www.slideshare.net/jbrenman/shift-happens-33834. Download it here - http://www.slideshare.net/jbrenman/shift-happens-33834/download.
