I would recommend anyone interested in young people, and their mental health, to check out this podcast recorded during Kim Hill’s show on National Radio on Saturday 1st September. Kim Hill interviews Michael Carr-Greg, a psychologist who specialises in the mental health issues of adolescents. The podcast is about 34 minutes long. If you are a teacher you might also like to look at his educational resources online.
Add comment September 5th, 2007
Leo Laporte, from TWiT, calls the launch of the new Apple iPhone “the largest consumer electronics launch ever”. It certainly looks amazing - an all-in-one device: cell phone, iPod, “internet in your pocket”, camera… And, it’s beautifully designed. Say what you want about Apple, but they certainly know how to design good looking hardware. Unfortunately there’s a couple of (potential) stings in the tail: some costly data plans, limited battery life, being locked into one provider and the US$500 cost. Mind you, with the exchange rate as it is that’s not too bad!
It got me thinking about my old cell phone, a Sony Ericsson K700i. It’s been a great little work horse. Three years on and it’s still trucking along beautifully and provides an excellent range of tools e.g. Bluetooth and the ability to sync with my laptop. Its camera is fairly average but okay for those quick snaps and the video is alright as long as you hold the phone as still as possible.
Something really exciting about cell phones is their ability to be used in the classroom. Stephen Heppell discussed this at the last Navcon I saw him present at. As he said, cell phones are found even in the most remote parts of the world. They are the most ubiquitous piece of hardware that teachers can access. It’d be hard to find a teacher who doesn’t have access to a cellphone! Yet, not many other teachers I know ever use them in the classroom, despite me often encouraging them to do so.
Here are some ideas that you can use your cellphone for:
- recording audio
- photographing spontaneous learning situations
- videoing learning experiences
I have used my phone for all these things and it’s been so easy. The students have recorded interviews with others in the school, I’ve recorded them speaking about their learning on trips (capture the moment!), and then we’ve used bluetooth to send files to the laptop. In the past we’ve published those audio files via podcast and on the class blog.
I’ve used the camera on the phone when there has been some exciting learning and my digital camera has been unavailable (flat batteries, the next door teacher has it) and then shared those photos or video via the data projector. One memorable time we did this, I took short videos of the students learning rugby skills with the Auckland Rugby guys. I uploaded the videos to my laptop, renamed them and then shared them (out of order) with the class on the projector. The students were asked to discuss the activities they were doing for oral language and then, to support writing, I asked them to sequence the activities. This really motivated and excited the children. They love to see themselves on screen! None of these activities relied on having awesome quality pictures, sound or video. The students could see clearly what they were doing and were completely satisfied with the quality.
Disadvantages for using a cellphone in school time:
- the potential for students to access private information.
- the “portability” of cellphones - they’re expensive and you don’t want them to get taken.
- the policies of the school in which you work - do they allow teachers to use cellphones during class time?
- the potential for mixed messages to be sent for kids - it’s okay for the teacher to use their phone in school time but it’s not okay for them to use them.
What happens at your school? Are you making the most of the piece of technology in your bag?
Add comment June 26th, 2007
Simon has posted the second part of Ian Jukes presentation over at his blog. Click here to have a listen to the second episode of Edcast. Thanks Simon!
I’ve enjoyed reading all the comments about the previous post of the Ministry of Education’s Microsoft Agreement, or lack thereof, in the case of Mac schools. Keep ‘em coming! You may enjoy listening to this podcast from National Radio recommended by my brother-in-law about the agreement.
I have been wondering about the idea of using Parallels on a Mac and Vista as a way to get around the licensing agreement. Are Mac schools eligible to get Vista for free from the Ministry? If so, would they then be able to get the PC version of Microsoft Office to use at school? Is this just getting too convoluted? Parallels doesn’t cost that much and there are other reasons to run it on a Mac network, such as, using MUSAC. I have Parallels installed on my machine and have been waiting to get Windows up and running (I’m still trying to decide whether to do XP or go Vista). It’ll be good being able to access both platforms.
The podcast mentioned above also covers the use of other types of search engines, including Quintura. Quintura for Kids looks really cool. They describe it as a “visual find engine”. Along those lines there is also Grokker which is worth checking out. Both are good alternatives to using Google and work by presenting the search results in “clouds” or as a “map”. Both also have the option of the listing search results in the standard kind of way.
While Google has become all encompassing, I don’t believe that it serves our younger students well as a search engine because it’s particularly text heavy. In the past I have used Yahooligans quite successfully because it’s visually more interesting to students and the content is more tailored their needs/reading levels. You have to watch out though because it does have the latest “cool” stuff on there e.g. movies, games, and the search tool is somewhat secondary.
And in a last, unrelated thought, webcams are a mixed blessing. It may feel as though winter is upon us but the lovely folks at the Metservice aren’t able to share any beautiful snowy pictures of the ski-fields just yet. Poor Cardrona and Whakapapa look a bit… forlorn. Let’s pray for a cold snap before the school holidays!
Add comment June 10th, 2007
Simon and I have been working on the idea of co-creating a podcast for a while now, since we (kind of) met at Learning@School earlier this year. We’ve been working collaboratively online to set up a regular local podcast - somewhere we could share ideas about ICT, professional development, and any other issues arising that interest us as teachers in New Zealand. Our aims are more eloquently stated in the introduction of the first podcast. And here it is!
Edcast Episode 1: Understanding Digital Kids Part 1
Simon had the great idea of approaching Ian Jukes to see if he could record his recent presentation in Napier. Ian kindly gave us permission to do so. This episode is about 1 hour 28 minutes long.
From Ian Jukes Website:
“Ian Jukes has been a teacher, an administrator, writer, consultant, university instructor and keynote speaker. As the Director of the InfoSavvy Group, an international consulting group that provides leadership and program development in the areas of assessment and evaluation, strategic alignment, curriculum design and publication, professional development, planning, change management, hardware and software acquisition, information services, customized research, media services, and on-line training as well as conference keynotes and workshop presentations.”
Thanks to Simon for recording, editing and publishing the first Edcast. Our website will be up and running with show notes and links very soon.
Add comment May 23rd, 2007
I’m not normally one to grumble BUT…
What is with PowerPoint having difficulty with audio files? The help file says it supports all sorts of different audio files:
“Types of sound files that PowerPoint can use
You can insert sounds in the following formats:
• Audio Interchange File Format (AIF, AIFF, AIFC)
• Apple QuickTime Movie Sound (MOV, MOOV)
• Apple System Sound (SFIL)
• Apple System Resource Sound (RSRC, rsrc)
• CCITT A-Law (European Telephony) Audio Format (ALAW)
• CCITT U-Law (US Telephony) Audio Format (AU, SND, ULAW)
• Microsoft Windows Waveform (WAVE, WAV)
• MPEG Layer 3 Audio (MP3)
• Advanced Audio Coding (AAC): MPEG-4 Audio
• Musical Instrument Digital Interface (MIDI, MID, KAR)”
Yeah, right. I’ve made a few presentations in my time and putting audio in just seems to be unreliable.
I opened up my presentation from Learning@School to edit for tomorrow and tweak to suit the new audience, a new group of teachers I haven’t work with before. I changed the Master for my slide design and then clicked through to View Slideshow. When it came time to click on the audio files (which had worked perfectly well at the conference) there was nothing happening i.e. no audible audio! I had the same kind of issue last year when doing a different presentation on podcasting at uLearn06. The technician assigned to my room couldn’t get it to work either. We deleted the file, re-inserted it, made sure it was a compatible file type, checked the sound was not on mute (that would have been embarrassing) and all those sorts of thing, but no luck.
The process I go through to insert audio goes like:
Insert - Movies and Sounds - Sound From File…
I’ve also tried adding the audio files to my Gallery and trying Insert - Movies and Sounds - Sound From Gallery. I’ve tried saving and restarting PowerPoint. Has anyone got any solutions? Have I overlooked something perfectly obvious? Perhaps it’s just time for a therapeutic tea break?
After last year’s experiences Keynote seemed like a good option. Being a Mac fan it made perfect sense. It’s pretty nifty to use but then I couldn’t figure out how to have multiple audio files on one slide. It seemed that you needed a slide for each file and the options for playing said file were more limited than on PowerPoint.
I do have a backup plan. I have made a playlist in iTunes with the audio files in the correct order. It’s not as seamless as having them embedded in your presentation but at least they’re organised and ready to go. iTunes won’t fail me… touch wood.
1 comment March 27th, 2007
I’ve been trawling through more David Warlick stuff and happened across my lovely friends at Pinckney Elementary and it seems that they’ve been learning about “Telling The New Story” too. Here are their notes. It’s great to be able to read several versions of the notes taken from the same presented material. Here is another link to Simon’s notes based on the presentation in Rotorua two weeks ago.
The Pinckney Elementary guys produce their own podcast called Geek-ed, which I have thoroughly enjoyed over the last 10 odd months. They are being their own authors, musicians, artists of content.
Based on listening to their podcast, Diane and I set up our own podpals with my 2006 Year 3/4 class. My kids sound so kiwi, their little accents are just too cute. Their learning was so exciting and they loved taking part in our cross-cultural exchange.
I love how you can create and maintain virtual relationships online. I love how you can connect and start to create your own network/community, give and receive comments from others. It makes it so worthwhile when you get feedback, knowing that someone is reading or listening. I had been wondering how you compete to get your audience’s attention and yet here are examples of networks that all synchronise in a beautifully natural way.
One last thought before the weekend, I know I’ve mentioned it before, but there is value to be had from starting a local podcast featuring NZ teachers. So, hands up who wants to do a weekly podcast? Leave me a comment and I’ll get in touch. We could do it over Skype. It doesn’t need to be restricted by geography. I am excited!
1 comment March 9th, 2007
I have just rediscovered one of my favourite pieces of software called Sound Studio, available from Freeverse, the people who make Comic Life. I gave up using this back in the day when we swapped over to OS X on school laptops because it was unstable in the new operating system. That was incrediably frustrating because it seemed to be the best app for editing music quickly under Mac Classic OS. There have been times since that I’ve lamented the lack of a simple app that could edit music easily because sometimes Garageband is just not what you want/need.
The trial version is free but you only get a 10 launches, the cost to purchase runs about US$80. I would have bought it in a flash a wee while ago, and I might consider still doing that. It is not an expensive piece of software.
The best use I found for Sound Studio was editing music and mixing music together for school shows or dance routines. You can import audio tracks from a CD, add fades-in/out and cut/copy/paste as you would in any other piece of software. You can immediately transfer all that knowledge about using any other software, such as Word, to using Sound Studio. The website also recommends it for podcasting. I can see the advantages of having such a simple interface that runs quicky, specially on some of those lower spec-ed iBooks/MacBooks. The first iteration of the MacBooks, with 512mb RAM, were sooooo slow. This would surely be a much more pleasant user experience than using Garageband in those circumstances.
Add comment March 6th, 2007
I have had lots of positive comments about this Web 2.0 video that I used in my podcasting presentation last week at Learning@School. Several teachers have emailed me to ask for the link and mentioned they’d like to use the video in their feedback to staff about the conference. Is definitely worth watching and hopefully will spark off valuable professional dialogue.
Add comment March 2nd, 2007
Learning@School, once again, was a great conference. There’s something different about this conference to uLearn. I wonder if it’s just that it’s at the start of the year and people are fresher or see more opportunities to implement ideas in the coming terms? With uLearn in the holidays in September/October, perhaps people are starting to become tired and think that Term 4 doesn’t present many opportunities to initiate new programmes. Perhaps there’s not the motivation/energy to get excited at that point in time? Anyway, Learning@School07 was very enthusiastically received by everyone I talked to.
First up I went to see some primary teachers presenting on TalkandWrite with Skype. The software allows you to interact with a piece of text over a Skype connection. The schools involved were sponsored by Sitech and had access to $1000 tablets which the students could use to write on. The younger students hand-wrote rather than typed, as it was easier for them. The older students discussed and edited the work by typing on the piece in a different colour. The students were in two different schools.
I was quite excited by the technology so went to search out cheaper options for the tablets. I found a Dick Smith branded one for about $80. I wonder how good they are? Either way, it looks as though both students could type in different colours. I’m going to mention to some colleagues that they should give it a go. As always, you have to ask, what is the purpose, what difference does this technology offer to the students’ learning. I’m still wondering if there is a significant difference between doing this and getting students to peer conference via traditional means.
On Thursday I had my presentation and it seemed to go very well! We had a 90 minute session in the morning, which was mainly me speaking, and then a lunch break. The session after lunch was a hands-on session and I was excited to see people come back early from lunch to start playing with the software. We were looking at Garageband to record podcasts and as there were PC people there too, I mentioned Audacity. A couple of people who had their laptops downloaded Audacity so they could practise straight away. It’s great that at ICT conferences all the networking etc is ready to go, and those people really benefitted from being able to download Audacity and play around with it rather than Garageband.
The only thing that I’m really disappointed about is that I missed seeing David Warlick do the keynote on Thursday morning because I was setting up my room for the breakout sessions. People were really buzzing about his keynote (and later, his workshops) so I am going to download his presentation notes from his website. Apparently, his keynote will be made available on the Learning@School website soon. Funnily enough, we both showed a Web 2.0 video in our presentations and I discovered that David Warlick runs the Education Podcast Network which is the main portal I recommended that teachers in my workshop access Educational podcasts through. Hopefully sometime in the future I will get to see David present in person.
Rotorua was as lovely as always and the new Energy Events Centre was a fantastic location to hold this conference. I managed to catch up with current colleagues and touch base with a number of new ones from around NZ. It was particularly interesting listening to the guy from Telford Rural Polytechnic discuss tertiary distance learning and the difference it is making in Otago. Working across a large physical area and smaller population presents challenges and opportunities we don’t have to contend with in the city.
A leisurely drive back in the sunshine on Friday afternoon capped off a couple of busy days. There’s always an incubation process needed after a conference so I shall put up more ideas/thoughts after some thinking time.
7 comments February 24th, 2007
I have been putting the final touches on my presentation for next week’s conference “Learning@School07″ and was researching to find easy ways for teachers to deal with the technical side of podcasting i.e. hosting and RSS. Some friends suggested PodPress which seems to be a plugin for WordPress but to be honest, that’s probably a bit technical for your regular teacher. I know that teachers will just want something easy and quick to use. I went and did a search for free podcast hosting and turned up switchpod.com and mypodcast.com. Switchpod offers a small free service but mypodcast.com looks fantastic - much like podomatic.com and as easy as using Blogger.
I’d really love to initiate some sort of regular local podcast something like Geek-Ed, where we’d have a panel of teachers/facilitators to discuss topics. The podcast could work as a way for diverse people to interact, perhaps some cluster lead teachers would like to share ideas and ease into presenting. It could be a way we measure changes over time, report for milestones for the cluster etc. I’ll have to bandy the idea around next week (along with my brand spanking new business cards!) and see how interested people would be at doing this.
Add comment February 16th, 2007
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