TeachMeet NEL09 Part 2

2DIY from 2Simple. Simple enough for year 1 to use. Children creating their own games and taking great pride in seeing them published on a school website. Great piece of software.

2Simple also looking at the potential of augmented reality. This really is cutting edge.

Now the raffle - I never win anything, but the cause is great. £550 raised for the Cuban school.

Tom Barrett: "Mr Barrett, I have got glue on my laptop"

Technology used right along with traditional classroom tools. "Giving children a permanent technology choice in the classroom makes a huge difference."

Using GoogleEarth - "...most engaging tool out there." Using Vocaroo with GoogleEarth to plan a journey in a story. Setting location marks and adding notes to tell a story in snippets.

Using IM applications in class. Most popular online tool with children.

Sharing bookmarks with kids using delicious.com. (Something Cleveland Junior and Becontree Primary are already doing).

Twitter used in class - only 95% thought he was bonkers. 5% less than last year.

Edith - Year 9 student. Does X=Y?

Talking about technology tribes and Digital Natives. Am I Native or a Bridge? Am I young enough to be Native? :o)

"Young people are helping their parents catch up (with technology)"

Are we challenging students (Natives) enough? Recent OFSTED report says no.

Ollie Bray (www.olliebray.com): Maps, Mashups and Milkfloats.

Games based learning and using Wordle.net

Using free online tools to engage children.

www.geogreeting.com

GoogleEarth - showing the world spinning. Children start to have geographical conversations.

Task in a bucket (location lotto!) - pull a location out of a bucket and fly there on GoogleEarth from your school location.

www.bighugelabs.com (be careful how you type that!)

Thanks to the organisers for a fantastic evening (Lords!), and thanks also to all the sponsors.

TeachMeet NEL09 Part 1

Oh dear, I’m at TeachMeet NEL 09 at CEME with my Mac and every intention to blog live. CEME obviously doesn’t like Macs. I can see the Network but I can’t connect no matter how hard I try. So I am reverting to Word and cut and paste!

Next problem: Which room do I choose? I want to see quite a lot of these speakers but they are all in different rooms!

Rats!

Ok I’m in the main hall. Not sure if this is the right choice for me. Can I float?

Tom Whitehead: Fruit faces - use technology to be inclusive.

Oh, that's better! Finally connected to the Internet and breakout rooms moving into main hall.

Leon Cych: Speaking about BBC Learning Open Lab. He is developing a resource showing teachers using different web 2.0 resources.
Also interesting to know that Leon is passionate about Second Life as a learning environment.

Andrew Trimble: Using digital audio to enhance literacy. Pupils recording their play script dialogue. Demonstration of how to transfer their files on to computer ready for podcasting.

Jerome Monahan: Active approaches to everything.
Where hast thou been sister?
Killing swine.

Wonderful sight - a room full of teachers doing actions to text from Macbeth!
Aha! Leads to video conferencing - Global Leap.

Debbie Forster: Computer Clubs for Girls. www.cc4g.net Aimed at getting girls interested in IT. Starts from primary school. Now introducing boys! Pack going out to secondary schools www.bigambition.co.uk

Money raised by raffle goes towards rebuilding Celia Sanchez Manduley School in Cuba which was destroyed by hurricane Ike in 2008.

Break now. I need some food and a beer!

A New Lease of Life

I finally got round to buying my first ever scanner today. It is something that I've been thinking about for several years, but never quite got around to.

Since I started to edit the school website I have thought it would be good to be able to have the ability to scan documents like the school menu, so that I could add them to the website from home. Not to mention that it is handy to be able to scan books or pages of books for use in various lessons. Of course, that is all work related and I could use the scanner at school. However, I have a large stash of colour and black and white negatives and I have wanted to be able to convert the best of these into digital images for some time now. Obviously then, my scanner had to have film scanning capabilities.

I decided on a Canon CanoScan 5600F. I wasn't sure what to expect, quality wise, with the film scan. My test scan is below. It is scanned at 4800dpi. I was pleasantly surprised by the crispness and colour of the image.