So Much to Learn...So Little Time

The Isle of Wight Conference 2008

Integrating ICT into the MFL classroom:: Book now for The Isle of Wight Conference! via kwout

This years MFL feast at Nodehill Middle School, sees yours truly being asked to impart his knowledge and wisdom...

Joe's got me working hard with 2 sessions and a round table on the Saturday and one session on the Sunday. I shall firstly be examining reasons why teachers should be using blogs and podcasts in their classrooms in a session entitled Free Your Mind and Your Class Will Follow. (Those of you who like funk will maybe recognise that I have adapted a a classic Funkadelic song title here)

My other session is enttiled From Pod to Vod (no funky vibe rip off title here) and I will be looking at using Quicktime Pro to quickly edit movies and then posting them to the web using blip.tv. I am hoping to show various methods of capturing video that could all be used in class with minimal effort. If I have time I also intend to show how to create resources that kids can use on their mobile phones.

As at SLF the other week it's also going to be great fun meeting up with some colleagues I know only virtually.

IOWconference IOWconference08 joedale

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Yours Truly Glowing on Edtechroundup 5

Edtechroundup is a regular online meeting of educationally, tech-related minds. Just about every Sunday a group of tech interested teachers get together, usually via Flashmeeting, to discuss technology and its place in the classroom.

Last Sunday I took part in a special edition where the topic under discussion was VLE's (Virtual Learning Environments) and GLOW. It was special because we were recording for a podcast. Much of what was discussed looked at how VLE's are being adopted in England, which despite my not having any experience of a VLE was fascinating. I particularly enjoyed the insights from Ian Usher, who works for Buckinghamshire LEA.

However I got my chance, to bang on about GLOW. It's actually an extremely difficult concept to explain, and I'm not sure that I did it justice. But here's your chance to assess how I did. If you want to go straight to the Glow bit it comes in at just after 30 mins.

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What is Glow via animoto

I'm really quite a lucky boy. Having just got back to work the boss told me I'd been picked to attend a GLOW conference at the Stirling management centre for 2 whole days. Ok it meant me getting the train at 6.20 yesterday morning, but at least I got a chance to write my reports.
Anyway this conference is about sharing people's experiences with GLOW. But you haven't used it, Adam, it's not in school yet? True, but I now have a very good idea about what it is and what it might be able to do...more later.
Yesterday afternoon we were tasked in groups to come up with an ad for GLOW. Our wee group decided to use animoto, especially having just received an educators code giving free access to make full length videos (Leave a comment with your email and I'll share it or alternatively email [email protected].)
We used screenshots from colleagues glow pages (thanks to Caroline and Theresa) plus some GLOW images from the glow team's presentations, plus some photos taken on the day (and evening.) We recorded vox pops to the question "What is Glow?" and composed some music garageband. Uploaded it all to animoto..et voila.

And here's a second version just using animoto tracks

Technorati Tags: glowscotland, animoto

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Motivating learners - Embracing New Technologies for Learning

On Saturday 19th April Aberdeenshire Council's Education, Learning and Leisure Department hosted a CPD event at Meldrum Academy, called Motivating Learners - Embracing New Technologies for Learning.
The idea behind the event was for teachers to acquaint themselves or update their knowledge of the new technologies that are available out there with the potential to enhance teaching.

I was fortunate enough to be invited to present a seminar. My focus was Blogs and Podcasts. I would have liked to be able to host a hands-on session taking teachers through the recording of a podcast, but that wasn't a possibility with the available facilities so basically I looked at reasons for both students and teachers to blog, reasons to incorporate podcasting in the classroom, some resources available to make podcasts and finally examples of podcasts / vodcasts produced by myself and/or my students.

Unfortunately due to the time limits I was unable to show the delegates who came to my presentation the examples of blogs I'd hyperlinked into my presentation. With that in mind for those who attended and any of my readers here is the pdf file.

Free Your Mind and Your Class Will Follow

Alternatively here's the slideshare embed.

| View | Upload your own

 

Blogs and Podcasts - Free Your Mind and Your Class Will Follow

What Kind of Teacher are You?

Are you this kind of teacher?

Or are you this kind?

Images courtesy of Alec Couros from his Doctoral Thesis, Examining The Open Movement: Possiblities and Implications for Education, and were originally uploaded to Flickr by Alec. 
Thanks to Mr W. for bringing them to my attention.

May I be so bold as to suggest that if you are reading this you are probably a networked teacher, or on the way to becoming one. I find myself more and more a networked type and I have to say it suits me down to the ground. I have never thought so much about my job (vocation?) ever, and have never had so much contact with fellows world wide; at this particular point in my life when due to my ruptured discs I am not in my "Typical Teacher Network" it is really quite comforting and stopping me wallowing in too much of my own pity.
For example I was ironing a few clothes on Sunday ( I can still do a bit of work) with Twitteriffic chirruping in the background and Ewan wanted some contributions for a piece he was in the course of writing. I had a few thoughts and so did a few of our mutual followers. You never know I might vaguely recognise something he writes in The Economist.
Yesterday I caught a tweet from Lucy Gray asking for examples of presentations showing good practice in Global Ed. I sent her a link to one I did for our Welwitschia Partnership...lo and behold I discovered she has set up a whole network dedicated to Global Education.Fantastic.
One BUT though. I put out a tweet for any GLOW monitors to ask about their role. Nary a tickle. Glass half full version, non of them are online tonight. Glass half empty version...they don't know about Twitter...oh dear, better not utter my true thoughts.

All hail the network.

Technorati Tags: Aleccouros, networkedteacher, network, adamsutcliffe,

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Ready for la rentrée

In actual fact I won't be. Still laid up with my prolapsed discs and looking like surgery (according to the chiropractor)
However never let it be said that I have stopped working. I have a great S4 French class, most of whom I have taught all through school. Just in their moment of need their favourite teacher isn't there...me that is. Due to the supply situation in the 'Shire there is no MFL teacher to fill in so they have a really nice lady who unfortunately isn't a French teacher.
Now I would dearly love to really put 2.0 tech to the test and deliver the odd lesson via my apple and the pc in my room, but this ain't possible. So in order to give a helping hand I've put together this wee presentation to assist with the prep of a folio piece. I will be posting this on the departmental resource blog along with written details.
How nice am I...more likely how frustrated at being out of the loop.

Click To Play

Technorati Tags: teaching, learning, technology, french, languages,

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Non-Web Applications I Use - Part 1

This is going to be a biggie. Please have patience. (This also my first use of ScribeFire)

I've been meaning to do this for a while, as a follow up to the post I did back in October about web tools that I've used. The purpose of this post is to look at the computer based apps I use day to day or in putting together special projects. Unfortunately for you PC users I use a MAC so most of them are mac-based, however I'm sure there are PC versions of some things.

So here we go. To make it easier for me I'm just going to list in alphabetical order, as I go through the applications menu.

Audacity
A great, FREE audio editor. You can record directly to it via your computer (use internal or external mic), voice music whatever you want. You can also import audio files from other sources such mp3 recorders etc. Once your sound file is in the editor you can cut, paste copy etc until you have the sound file you want. You can also import copyright free music from various websites (google podsafe audio and see what it comes up with. Now to export your file as mp3 (the most commonly used and recognised form of audio compression) you also have to download and add a Lame 3 encoder. You only have to do this once and instructions come with the download. Click here for features, here for screenshots and here for tutorials. If you use a variety of different computers there is also a portable version which you can download to your usb drive and use on any computer. Here is the mac version.

My aim is ensure that at least one suite of the new pcs in school has Audacity uploaded to enable the students to use it in school. Asked for it ages ago, but we only have one technician and then I've not been there.

Audio hijack
Does what it says on the tin, records to record any audio on your mac. If your macine can play it, audio hijack can record it. With the pro version you can create podcasts containing music clips and skype / iChat recordings. You can record your vinyl or cassettes and have the recordings sent direct to iTunes. You can even record from multiple sources. As yet I have only used this once to record a skype chat with Joe Dale. The sound quality seemed fine. I think though that I would like to investigate the pro version further, I wonder whether it can't be used to record input from multiple microphones, then I could use it to record conversations with more than 2-3 voices and upload to garageband to edit.

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Disc Label
Lets you produce labels, covers, case inserts for cds and dvds that look seriously professional. It can import track lists and track info onto your design. You can use pictures from iPhoto and it is LightScribe compatible. Used it to produce  cover for the fundraising DVD I produced towards end of term, for the schools chosen charity, Spinal Injuries Scotland.

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(Photo copyright Slacker)

DVD Player
It plays  DVD's!

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Griffin Final Vinyl

A piece of software that comes with Griffin's iMic. The iMic is a usb audio adapter that allows you to connect your mac or pc to any sound input device. Along with Final Vinyl this device allows you to convert your vinyl and cassettes into mp3 files. Compatible with GarageBand, iMovie and Final Cut Pro. This could be useful to back up some of the older cassette based resources we have in the department.

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GarageBand

I love GarageBand. It is so easy to use and yet so powerful and great fun, and that's just the podcasting element to it. I've not even made a serious exploration of the music-making side. I've made podcasts, vodcasts, enhanced podcasts, imported from iMovie etc etc.  Well what is it. Its a recording studio on your mac. If you are so inclined you can record your own music by linking real or software instruments (as I say I haven't gone into this yet). With the newest version,'08, there is the Magic GarageBand function which can help you get started. (Here's one I did for a film I made about Huntly Cricket Club).
I really do enjoy being creative with this application. I like the recording process, the way it handles, how you can add images to reflect part of an audio recording (enhanced podcast) and I'm just beginning to discover all the effects and fun things to do with each track. What I love most of all are the included loops, sounds and melodies (all without copyright) contained in the package. I enjoy trying to find the right piece of music to fit the mood. All in all its my favourite toy. Tons better than audacity. Apparently the closest windows app would be mixcraft.

       

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I can Animate
THE animation tool for Mac. Used mainly for stop motion animation (think Wallace and Gromit). You can capture from a digital video camera or a web cam. Clips can be exported to iMovie. You can create animations by drawing within the app and you can also make time lapse films. I've tried stop-motion and time lapse, both of which are time consuming but still fun. Before using I Can Animate I tried a couple of other similar apps (iStopMotion and Frame Thief)
Both of these were fine to use but I Can Animate just felt more instinctive (and I didn't have to pay for a full version..ha!)
Tell me what you think:
Swordfight (Frame Thief)
Murder Most Fowl (iStopMotion)
But my favourite is this one
Yanick Gets His Hair Done (I Can Animate)

I would like to use this in class but the time it requires I just don't have. It's something I'd like to get kids to look into doing at home to get them creating something to which they can add some French. I had thought about an animated pencil case.

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iDVD
When I first got my own pc one of the things I wanted to was transfer stuff from mini dv cassette to dvd. It seemed as if I had to download and mash up all kinds of different apps (either that or I was just daft and didn't understand what I was doing) and it just didn't come together. Then I got the PowerBook from school...
iDVD segues so seamlessly with all the other iLife applications that even one with my lack of nouse got it. Making a dvd is so easy with iDVD. It has some lovely themes, especially the new ones, which sing and dance and make everything look professional.
You can put together a dvd from scratch by choosing everything from themes down to the buttons, you can make a Magic iDVD where you just choose your theme and add your desired media or you can create a dvd direct from your digital video camera and the application does everything for you.
My one gripe with iDVD is that it seems to take an age to swap between themes and options. The new version is better and it now tells you how long your project will take to encode (a long process.) At the end of the burning you also have the option to burn another disc without having to encode it all again.

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PBwiki Tutorial - 2

Welwitschia Tutorial 2 - Editing an Existing Page

Pbwiki tutorials

For some time now I've been meaning to teach myself how to make a screen cast.
Due to my current situation (displaced lumbar disk) I have found myself with time to spare. So to kill 2 birds with one stone I thought I'd put together a series of short tutorials to help our Connecting Classroom partners access and use the wiki I have started to publicise and share our partnership's activities.

Had a few problems to resolve first though:

• I wanted to use Jing because the image quality seems to be excellent, but it kept cutting out after 2 mins, and I found out there is a 200mb limit which isn't all that large.
• Ended up using iShowU which is mac specific and although image quality isn't what I would really like it serves its purpose...(I've now sussed how to improve the picture quality so the video below is a new version)

I also finally got to use mousepose which is a funky presentation tool for macs.
I then imported the film to garageband and added some background music.

Then uploaded to blip.tv and copied the embed code.

Easy peasy really...once you know how.

Response to Derek Wenmouth's k12 Online 2007 Questions

More from me on K12 Online 2007.
I am so glad this conference has been taking place during our half term holidays because it has meant that I have given myself time to watch / listen to some of the presentations. I've got through about half of them so far and am still interested.
For the purposes of this post however I wanted to respond to the questions posed by Derek Wenmouth at the end of his presentation entitled: "Holding a Mirror to our Professional Practice".
This keynote looks at the issues surrounding the use of emerging technologies in the classroom, and ways of trying to make the use thereof as invisible as possible, but he looks particularly at how we should reflect on our use of these technologies.
It is all well and good trying to use blogs, podcasts, wikis etc but the outcome must be that students learn what they are supposed to learn, which is usually dictated by a curriculum.
At the end of his presentation Derek leaves us with a series of questions to enable us to reflect on our own practice. He asks us to chose the one question most appropraite to ourselves...I'm a swot and have answered most of them.

    •    What are the mirrors I am holding to my practice?

not enough at the moment. I think the time is approaching when I need to stop looking forward all the time and just take stock of some of the things I have done in class recently and try to analyse how effective I have been and how much the students have learned.

    •    Who are my mentors WHO I RELATE TO REGULARLY?

I suppose my mentors are my colleague language teachers when it comes to the actual teaching of the languages, however i feel as though there are few, if any, colleagues in school who could sufficiently mentor and coach me on how to integrate emerging technologies in the classroom. There appears to be very little discussion on, or use of these technologies in my school. Every one is waiting for an INSET on them...I am not a "dIgital native" as the generation we teach are supposed to be. I only started to use computers in 1995 when I started teacher training (but it wasn't part of the course). I have learned and developed through my own interest. No INSET or course can provide you with the training you need because the training as we know it doesn't exist. Most of my training and mentoring comes from my blog reading and comment writing and TRYING STUFF OUT...AND FAILING

What is my professional reading?

        Blogs, blogs and more blogs. I have to admit I was never a good reader of academic material...not enough crime or horror in it for my reading tastes, but since my discovery of blogs I have never felt more up to date and in tune with educational thinking. Blogs are immediate and I can, if I wish, comment on what is written. Until just over a year ago I honestly only really spent time reflecting on my practice when Annual CPD review time came about. Now I'm doing it all the time.

What communities of practice do I belong to?
The blogosphere I suppose


DO I HAVE A BLOG?
You're reading it

What about my rss feeds?
Numbers growing on a weekly basis as reading leads me to new people.

When was the last time I observed a lesson?
I have not done this in a formal sense in along time but I often observe my MFL colleagues at work  if I need to visit their classroom.

When was my last presentation?

Done 2 main presentations in last 8 months Communicate.07 and 'shire and city In-service. Really enjoyed doing them and actually felt I was contributing to other colleagues development (thanks to feedback received), but actually done lots of assemblies and such like recently.

Well that wasn't too bad. All of this reflection leads me to the idea that I should really get myself together and go for Professional Recognition with GTCS.