So Much to Learn...So Little Time

Voice Thread

Jumping the gun a bit here but I have been looking at an exciting application.

Thanks to Clarence Fisher on his K12 Online 2007 presentation, during which he mentioned something called VOICETHREAD. With this application you can upload pictures, documents or videos etc, record voice or type text to accompany them, record or type comments on other presentations and also share them.

Here's my skitch of one of the threads.

Uploaded with Skitch!

Here's the url of the thread.

Just off the top of my head the possibilities of this in an MFL classroom are endless

• what's in pencil case (whole class)
• account of past holiday with photos
• visit to doctors etc, etc

What appears great about this for using it in school is that one account can have many identities, so kids are safe, it allows the whole class to participate and as an educator you can upgrade to a pro account for free.
I have not actually used it yet so I am basing this post on what I imagine and my past experience at looking at this sort of thing, but it seems to be something I will be trying out very soon.

Wasn't going to write about rugby, but...

Here's my tribute to tonights heroics by the boys with the red rose. Courtesy of generator blog. This is fantastic...not the words perhaps but the idea in general.

An Englishman in Scotland

For a man with a very Scottish name Kelvin MacKensie really has made a fool of himself this side of the border.

Obviously as a former sun editor, sense and dignity do not figure highly as personal characteristics, as opposed to narcissistic self-aggrandisement. How can someone on such a high profile show as Question Time come out with such generalised comments, that, as an English man working in Scotland, I find insulting to the extreme. Has he forgotten all the oil wealth that has left this Scotland to fund the South East?Where would English football be without the influence of Scots: Ferguson, Shankly, Paisley to name but a few. What about all those Scots in Westminster, you can't say they have lacked drive? Gordon Ramsay...not entrepreneurial?

He has obviously not visited a school in Scotland recently and seen the extraordinary work going on to encourage the development of enterprise skills (including social enterprise), which can only bear fruit in the future.

I for one am proud to work in a country which has one of the best education systems in the world and has some of the most forward thinking educationalists in europe.
Sorry Kelvin, you are wrong and extremely ill-informed. Not something you should expect of a former editor of a national newspaper...but then again when we remember your editorials post- Hillsborough...'nuff said.

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/scotland/glasgow_and_west/7041128.stm

Plans for the future

This last term has been hard for many reasons, some personal which I am not going to reveal here some work related.

For most of this term I have concentrated my activities out of lesson time on organising the visit of our african partners to the cluster, then my back gave out for some reason and I have been signed off for 2 weeks. First doctor's line ever and I found it a bit embarrassing to ask for...must be my methodist work ethic! However all this has meant that i have not been producing podcasts with kids or any of the kind of stuff that I have got into.

I hereby vow that this will change next term for I have a plan

• I have started to put together a list of all the web / IT related sites / applications I have actually used or have looked into and intend to use (this will come as a later post when I've done) and I'm secretly impressed with myself
• Its about time I got more colleagues on board the web 2.0 revolution so I want to do a twilight (or lunchtime) CPD for those who want to see what can be done..in a kind of TeachMeet stylee...CAN I BORROW THE LOGO FOR PROMOTIONAL PURPOSES? I have the vague idea that at first it may just be me sharing and showing but then more colleagues would get on board ...why not try to do something for us poor teachers up north who can never get down to the sexy teach meet events in the central belt.

THIS IS MY SOLEMN VOW TO YOU DEAR READER. (My way of thinking is that if I write it down (especially publicly I will eventually get around to doing it)
 

This month's SEJ

Thank you, thank you.

This months SEJ contains some interesting stuff, in particular because the articles relate to topics which I am interested in. Firstly let me send a big hurrah and thank you to Larry Flanagan (new EIS Education convenor) for his article on assessment. A few weeks ago I wrote about the ridiculous situation we found ourselves in with regard to our STACS results and how pointless I find the whole exercise...entirely my opinion by the way. Larry says he found it depressing faced with

...a set of decontextualised statistics [that] had been manipulated into various tables which, in many cases bordered on being meaningless

He goes on to say that it's not the stats in themselves that are not worthwhile just the purpose(s) for which these figures are sometimes used. In some cases they seem to become the be all and end all of a school's success.
I agree wholeheartedly with Larry's  assertion that it is not our appearance on a list which motivates teachers but our relationship with our students.  When it comes down to it each August we look at the individual results of our students and reflect on how they did basing our decisions on our relationship with and knowledge of said pupil.

 

Uploaded with Skitch!

2000 and counting

Not in the same league as some of you but...

Uploaded with Skitch!

A Curriculum for Excellence Encapsulated

A film of an event which perfectly (in my mind any way) encapsulates the ideals of ACfE.

As part of our connecting classrooms visit the pupils of TGS, Gordon Primary and Rhynie Primary put on an evening of Scottish entertainment for our guests from Namibia and Ethiopia. The result was a fantastic evening highlighting not only our students' talents but their willingness and confidence to go onstage and show off their own culture.

• successful learners - each one had to learn something and perform it under the most stressful of circumstances
• confident individuals - each student strode onto stage as if they were seasoned performers (which many actually are)
• responsible citizens - students were asked to take part in their own time for the benefit of their schools and the partnership
• effective contributors - how much more effective could they have been, not only in their performance but also in the delivery of various aspects of their own cultural heritage.

This event was also a very physical representation of multi-establishment co-operation between two of our feeder primaries and ourselves and it showed the encouragement of leadership coming from the students.

Forget "Stop Making Sense", Sign O' The Times, or "Elvis : That's The Way It Is" this is the best concert film of all time. Courtesy of schooltube.

Sorry, had to take the film off line as permission to film didn't specifically mention posting to internet.

Welwitschia Partners visit

Last week was insanely busy.

We welcomed our partners fro Lalilbela and Windhoek to our school for the first time and the week was a whirlwind of activity. Rather than write about it again click here to read about it in the partnership's wiki.

Let me add however that I am rather pleased with my use of varied applications to spice up the pages.

• animoto video
• slideshare slidecast
• flikr
• embedded teacher tube vids
• flickrSLiDR

Great fun...but lots of time. (So maybe there was a reason for the damaged disc in my spine...so that I would have to stay at home to do this...in pain)

Skitch

Been waiting ages for this.

Finally got invite through for skitch. Basically a mac based application for sharing screenshots etc...but its a lot more. Heres a sample.

Uploaded with Skitch!

Here's a vid which can tell you far more than I can.

PS forgot to add, I have a grand total of 2 invites to the beta. First 2 comments with email address. (You need to be using a mac for this application)

S1 Voki's

Been messing about with Voki's assessing their use for encouraging speaking. Those that recorded seemed to enjoy it.
Here's my Dubya voki. Spot the untruth. I have it on good authority that this is the first time the esteemed leader of the free world (dripping with sarcasm here) has actually spoken a foreign language.

Get a Voki now!