To support the presentation, I created a wiki with useful information and links. Feel free to take a look around, and let me know if you have any suggestions:

wikisined.wikispaces.com

Two other sites I recommended were Animoto (used to make my intro video) and Commoncraft (whose ‘Wikis in Plain English‘ video provided a valuable addition / explanation).

Thanks to everyone who listened to my ramblings… I hope that the session was useful to you!

Day 6  - Travelling together with our wireless mouse and interactive whiteboard, we visited Voltaic, looking at the unusual structures and exploring the caverns. As we looked around, the children gave ‘running commentaries’, explaining what they could see / hear / touch / smell and describing how they were feeling on the way. This was a fascinating experience, and it was really interesting to listen to the children’s descriptions, which were really insightful. I’ve not tried anything like this before, but this is certainly an idea that I hope to try again… maybe asking children to commentate on places (using sites like Panoramas.dk or Gigapan.org) or films with the audio switched off. The children then enjoyed the flight in the airship and used some wonderful vocabulary to describe this part of the game. For their independent activity, they were asked to add a wide range of punctuation to an unpunctuated piece of text (which described the airship flight in Voltaic). However, this was cut short because of an unexpected visitor… something that happens occasionally in schools!

Day 7  - Today, we travelled to Amateria and had a brief look around. The children were intrigued by the theming of the area and noticed the change in weather too, giving the game a different atmosphere. Our main focus during this lesson was the ‘roller coaster’ ride around the island. The children loved this part of the game and watched the ride a number of times, thinking of words and phrases to describe the journey. They then wrote a paragraph (and in some cases, much more) to explain how they felt as they sat in the chair, were about to press the blue button, and were then taken around on the ride. Their descriptions were excellent, and this activity really helped them to express the movements and feelings in their writing. We recorded some of the children reading their work, using Garageband (adding sound effects from the game as a backing track), and these were added to our wiki. During the afternoon, the children also had an opportunity to create a new, hidden page on the wiki, trying out the different options and adding text / styles / images / audio / links on their pages (in preparation for next week’s work).

Day 8 - Today, the children were given a chance to edit and improve their descriptions of the roller coaster journey around Amateria. They were encouraged to think of ways of making each and every sentence even better, using (amongst other resources) our class collection of ‘Amateria’ vocabulary / phrases (created at the start of the lesson). A lack of time means that it is sometimes difficult to give children a chance to reread and improve their work, so this was a really useful exercise which certainly had a positive impact on the children’s writing.

Day 9 - Over the past 8 days, the children have had lots of experience describing new environments and exploring action / movement. In today’s lesson, I wanted the children to have a chance to write a story ending (in preparation for our work next week). So, we skipped to the end of the game, travelling to Narayan. After exploring for a while, we met Saavedro and discussed how we might get out of the situation we had found ourselves in:

• Saavedro has the book that we need,
• Although there is an airship outside, we are both trapped on Narayan because of the force field that surrounds the entire area,
• Saavedro doesn’t want to harm us (at the moment!). He had a chance to, but he walked away.

The children were challenged to write the ending of the game, thinking of a way of encouraging / forcing Saavedro to give up the book, allowing both us and him to return to our homes. Their ideas were really inventive and this was another valuable exercise, as the children already had the main framework of the story and simply had to think of an exciting way to bring these events to a close. In the afternoon, as a treat, we explored the Age that we had missed out (Edanna), looking at the unusual plants and creatures that inhabited the island.
 
Day 10 - As I mentioned in my previous post, I was hoping that the main outcome of our project was to collaborate on a class ‘Myst-style’ adventure game. When I first came up with the idea, I thought that this was something that we could do using Powerpoint, adding text / images / audio, and using action buttons to let the reader ‘move’ around the game. However, it soon because clear that a better way of trying this might be to use a wiki, as it allows the children to collaborate online simultaneously. Using a wiki would also be an easier way of publishing our work to a global audience. In today’s lesson, we planned our adventure, which I hope would follow the style of the ‘Choose Your Own Adventure‘ books I remember reading when I was young.

The image above shows the structure of our adventure. As a class, we will write a beginning for our story, with Saavedro stealing another book from Atrus, and then asking the reader to go and get it back for us. The reader will be able to make a choice, allowing them to travel to one of three places. When the choice was made, they would read a ‘mini’ adventure which will be written together by two children. I gave the children a simple structure for their part of the story, requiring them to produce:

• an introduction, describing the Age the reader has travelled to,
• a problem for the reader to encounter,
• a resolution, where the problem is fixed!

After the resolution, the reader will then be given another choice, taking them to a new part of the adventure and to some writing by different groups of children. Some groups (J–>O) will add a final ending to their story, giving the reader a clear (but not necessarily happy) ending!

The children planned their part of the adventure today using 2Connect (based on a simple template that I had prepared). Next week, we will spend our time drafting, editing and improving each section of the story. These three parts (along with digital copies of the children’s sketched / painted artwork) will then be added to the wiki with hyperlinks so that the reader can travel through the story, making the relevant choices along the way.

That’s my plan anyway… I’ll know by this time next week if it was successful!

Other thoughts:
 
The children’s enthusiasm for our work has continued to amaze me. After two weeks of Myst-related lessons, they are as keen as ever for Literacy to begin. This enthusiasm continues long after we have finished ‘playing’ that day’s part of the game, and they then go on to start any independent / group activities. They’ve even been asking me when our Myst display will be updated with new Ages and their suggestions for descriptions of each place.

If I’m honest, I’ve felt like we’ve dashed through the different environments this week. We could have spent a whole term using Myst for our Literacy work, looking at each place in great detail. However, there are many other units of Literacy that we have to cover, so there isn’t time. I wanted us to finish the game this week, allowing us to concentrate on making our own Myst adventure.

It will be interesting to see how things go next week…

Today, I was looking for an online brainstorming tool. I know that I’d seen some in the past, and I thought that I had saved them in my delicious account. However, I couldn’t find them anywhere.

So, I posted a quick message on Twitter asking for suggestions, and within minutes I had four replies with a selection of relevant sites to try:

As I knew that these sites were all recommended by real people, it saved me a great deal of time searching through the millions of results on Google, most of which were not appropriate. Thanks to everyone who replied. The sites that were suggested were all really useful, and had a wide range of features:

• bubbl.us
• Mind42
• Mindmeister
• Exploratree

I’m keen to explore them all and think about how these could be used in the classroom (especially as most of them have collaborative options).

On a separate note, what are we supposed to call ‘mind mapping’ nowadays? Brain storming? Thought-showering?

I know that many other teachers have used Myst before, so this is not a new idea to many other schools. However, for me, it’s a completely new way of inspiring children with their Literacy work, and I have been extremely pleased and impressed with the results so far.

The Internet has lots of forum messages, blog posts and mentions of research which explore the use of Myst in schools, but I couldn’t find many plans which which might help me with starting point for ideas. The only plan I could find was kindly emailed to me by ’soapboxgirl’ on the TES forums. Having looked through the information available, I decided to spend half term last week playing the entire game (using a fantastic walkthrough to save time), and then begin creating a three week plan which aimed to meet the needs of the children in my class, whilst making the most of the wonderful characters, settings and puzzles within the game.

There are many ways that the game could be used within schools, so other teachers may use the game to achieve different objectives. However, I’ve outlined and reflected on our activities below, as it may provide a useful starting point for others, or simply give some ideas.

In terms of practical arrangements, we only had one copy of Myst, so we played together as a class. The classroom lights were turned off, the blinds were drawn and we turned our classroom into a cinema for the ‘gaming’ aspects of our lessons. This really helped to build up a fantastic atmosphere within the classroom. I sat amongst the children with a wireless mouse asking questions (what might be behind that door? how could we describe this landscape?) and guiding their thoughts and ideas. The children really became absorbed in our progress, and it was wonderful to be able to work through the puzzles together. I had already played the game before, but it certainly felt like I was playing the game for the first time again, as we explored in the classroom.

Day 1 - As an initial introduction (on a day when I was actually out of class at a conference), the children discussed types of computer / video games that they play outside of school, and identified / described the characters and settings that can be found within these. The children also looked at a number of (carefully chosen) characters and locations from Super Smash Bros, which were used as a stimulus for ideas. They then created a special vocabulary book for use within our ‘Myst’ topic, and these have been a fantastic resource for our work later in the week.

Day 2 - We watched the introduction video to Myst III, with the audio on mute. This allowed the children to focus on what they could see in the film, and try to build up a picture of who the main character was. They had some fantastic ideas and were intrigued by some of the items on Atrus’ desk (particularly the large pink crystal). They also spotted the photos of other people, and tried to work out who they might be. We then watched the video again with the sound turned on, and used this additional information to build up our understanding of what the game might be about. The children then produced some mind maps which showed what they already knew from the videos, as well as their predictions about Atrus, his family and the storyline of the game.

Day 3 - After watching the introduction movie again to refresh our memories, we began exploring the rich environments within the game. We looked out over the desert and mountains in Tomahna, and the children recorded words / phrases / sentences in their vocabulary books. 

They were really keen to record as much new descriptive vocabulary in their books as possible, and I was impressed at the wonderful expressions that they came up with. We then turned a little to see the lush greenery within the Atrium, a complete contrast to the scene that we had just described. The children noticed lots of small details which I had completely overlooked when I first played the game, and it was fascinating to see them trying to work out where we ‘were’ and what we had to do as we played the game. As we looked around the game, Catherine (Atrus’ wife) appeared and introduced herself to us. Some of the children thought she was friendly, but others were a little more suspicious and felt that they couldn’t trust her, as she was a little too nice.

As an independent activity, the class then wrote a descriptive paragraph about the desert / mountain scene, the atrium, or about Catherine. Again, they produced some really impressive writing, which showed how much they had observed from exploring the environment together, as well as some great Literacy skills. The children were desperate to go through the door and enter the study, but that would have to wait until tomorrow! 

Day 4 - In today’s lesson, we spent a considerable time looking around Atrus’ study, browsing through the books, the items on the shelf and the desk, looking at Atrus’ note and observing the tapestries on the wall. Again, the children were able to piece together lots of little pieces of information to develop their understanding of the background story. One skill that our children sometimes struggle with is ‘inference and deduction’ and the game really allowed children to practise that a great deal. They used all of the visual clues within each setting, information written within Atrus’ notes, and any audio information provided by the game (in the form of music changes and sound effects) to develop their ideas and make predictions. It was wonderful to see them all working together to build up their understanding of this shared journey.

The children then completed some Literacy activities linked to Atrus’ note, identifying particular vocabulary and types of words used within the letter. Some groups also thought of questions they might ask the characters if they had a chance, in order to further develop their empathy skills, and to help them find out more about the storyline within the game.

After sharing and celebrating the children’s work in the plenary, we finally looked at the Releeshahn book in the study, met Atrus, and then saw the sudden and dramatic arrival of Saavedro. This really captured the children’s attention and they were desperate to continue… however they had to go off to assembly!

Day 5 - After a swooping flight over J’nanin (where the children were swaying as if they were riding a roller coaster!), we spent time looking around the island (following Saavedro up to the top of the observatory, discussing how it felt to be standing on the beach, winding our way down the staircase to the lake, meeting a small furry animal who the children fell in love with, and then looking at the strange objects at the bottom level of the observatory). The children then produced another descriptive paragraph, using similes and metaphors to describe the places they had visited.

Displays:

Throughout the week, we have also been building up a display in our classroom, adding new characters and locations as we discovered them in the game. Many of the children’s descriptions have also been added to this display, as a way of celebrating their work, and also with the intention of producing a collection of vocabulary which we can use in the coming weeks. As the weeks go by, this will grow with the addition of more locations and new words / phrases.

Our Myst wiki:

We’ve also tried using a wiki to record some of this vocabulary. This is the first time that I’ve used a wiki within the classroom, and things went quite smoothly. You can see some of the children’s work at our Year 5 Myst wiki. The benefit of using a wiki is that the children could add their own descriptions, and then help improve each other’s work online afterwards. We also looked at their work using the interactive whiteboard and suggested improvements, which were then added simply by editing the pages online. I don’t think that the wiki currently shows the best of the children’s Literacy work, because of their slow typing speed, and the limited amount of time that we had to work on this. 

Other cross-curricular ideas:

The game also has lots of cross-curricular potential. We have tried creating some new ‘Myst-style’ landscape pictures, which could be used in a future project (see below). I also bought the Myst soundtrack on eBay, and I could certainly imagine using this for a music project (although I don’t think that I’ll have time for this right now).

Final reflections:

Our Literacy lessons this week have certainly been a new, exciting and thoroughly enjoyable learning experience for all involved. The children have become incredibly engrossed in the game, and our explorations of the island are something that they all look forward to. I have lost count of the number of times the children have asked “Are we playing Myst today?”. They have also been asking where they can buy a copy of the game themselves, so they can play at home!

The results of the Literacy work have also been impressive, with some wonderful descriptions and incredible vocabulary used. Every child has ‘wowed’ me with something this week, whether that be the inclusion of a particularly inspired simile, the use of a highly effective word or phrase to describe something, or the mention of the smallest details from the game which only they noticed as we played.

In the coming weeks, I’m hoping to build on our success so far, exploring new locations within the game, developing other aspects of Literacy, as well as adding new material to our class display and wiki. Ultimately, I would really like the children to be able to make their own ‘mini-Myst’ style adventure game, combining their Literacy and Art work to create something which allows the player to make choices, which then affect the outcome of their adventure. This may be far beyond what we can achieve within the next few weeks (especially with Christmas rapidly approaching), but it’s definitely something I’d like to aim for!

It’s time to stop blogging, and start planning for Week Two!

Rodd Lucier has suggested 20 ways of using Wordle (which I found via Simon Mills’ fantastic blog). I’ve tried one of these ways above… this Wordle shows the history of completed tasks from my Toodledo list. As you can see, I take backups seriously!

Simon has also posted his experiences of using Wordle in the classroom. This looks like another useful tool to try at school.

I decided to base these three lessons around the short animated film ‘El Caminante’ which can be found on the BFI Story Shorts DVD. The sequence of lessons began with us listening to the soundtrack of the film without watching it. The children listened to the entire soundtrack, trying to pick out sounds and clues which might help them to work out what is happening. The film doesn’t have any speech, so it forced them to listen carefully to the noises they could hear, as well as the style and pace of the music, to work out what was going on.

The children’s ideas were shared, and we then listened to the soundtrack once more, pausing at appropriate points and discussing what the people might be doing, and what action might be taking place. After sharing some fantastic ideas (many of which were very close to the actual plot of the film), the children watched the film and we talked about their opinions of it.

The next day, we used Voicethread to bring some of the characters to life. As previously noted, the film does not contain any speech, so you have to watch closely to work out what characters might be thinking / feeling / saying. Before the lesson, I had created a Voicethread containing 10 slides, with each slide showing a different image from the film.

I asked the children to look at each scene carefully, and then imagine that they were one of the characters shown in the image. This might have chosen to be the main character (El Caminante himself), or one of the other children / people who were involved. They were asked to imagine how that character might be feeling at that point in the film, what they might be thinking, or what they might say to others around them. They then added these to the Voicethread, using text or voice recordings. This was the first time that they had used Voicethread, and it was also the first time that I had tried using the tool with a class, and I was extremely pleased with how it all went. The children had no problem logging on, switching identities, or adding their comments, and their imaginations went wild, with some wonderful, very carefully considered thoughts / speech for the characters shown on screen. They were all incredibly motivated by the task, and they worked for a considerable period of time adding their ideas to the site. At the end of the lesson, we browsed through the Voicethread, sharing each other’s work and discussing the different interpretations that everyone had for similar images.

In the following lesson, the children used Powerpoint to add text and narration to the film, turning it into an multimedia story book. The same images were added to slides in the presentation and the children created text (and also recorded these) explaining what was happening in the images.

I will certainly looking to try similar activities again in the future. Using microphones with our laptops is not something that I have tried a great deal in the past, but it certainly allows children to record their ideas much more quickly than typing, and it also allows them to add expression (and for those who choose to, add sound effects and background noises). This was a really enjoyable way of getting children to empathise, not only with the main character in the film, but also the others who appeared in different scenes.

How might I change things in the future?

Setting up the Voicethread activity took much longer than I anticipated, but this was mainly because I had never used it before with a class, and I wanted to ensure it all worked correctly. The creation of the Voicethread itself only took a few minutes, but I then spent a considerable time looking through the different options available (including privacy tools and comment moderation). In the end, I created one account for the class, which everyone used to sign-in. This account then had 30 different identities attached to it, one for each pupil. The Voicethread was public, but wasn’t shared in any directories, so only those who knew the specific URL could view or add their comments. One other problem that I had was related to our school’s filtering, but this was quickly fixed by our internet providers. I am sure that setting up Voicethreads in the future will be much quicker as I’m more familiar with the interface, and which options will work best for us in the classroom.

Have you tried Voicethread? What other subjects / topics / objectives have you used it for? I would love to know, as I’m really keen to try this process again!

As I switched to the Mac a few years ago, I no longer used either of them, and they were both gathering dust. Whilst I could have probably reinstalled Windows, I didn’t really want to go back to the Windows environment. So, I decided to give one away on Freecycle (thanks to Daniel Stucke for the suggestion), and have a go at installing Linux on the other. I’d heard about Linux a bit, but never seen it in use, or tried it for myself.

Before doing anything else with either machine, I removed the hard drives. I remember watching a TV documentary a number of years ago, which showed how old computers (thrown away in the rubbish) were being shipped off around the world where people would pick them apart, remove the hard drives, and use the information on them to commit fraud. I know that both of the hard drives in my old PCs contained personal information (including old bank statements), so taking these out was something I definitely wanted to do. I’m the kind of person who loves playing with computers, but has never really tinkered around inside, so this was a new experience that I definitely enjoyed. Poking around inside the machine was great fun and was really easy, with lots of clear instructions showing how to remove different things.

The old Dell PC was picked up by a fellow Freecycler, and I then ordered a new hard drive for the newer HP machine. Installing this was also pretty straightforward, and was simply a case of attaching two cables and then remembering how to fit it in the same place as the old one (after spending 10 minutes trying to find the screws which hold it in place).

The next task was to find out how to get Linux on this machine. I had absolutely no idea where to begin, but a quick Internet search led me to Puppy Linux. This looked like a small, fast and easy to use version of Linux which I decided to try first. I was impressed at how easy it was to try without making any changes to the computer itself. By downloading an ISO file and burning it to a CD, I was able to make a Live CD, which the HP machine could boot from, allowing me to test out lots of different versions of Linux before I decided to go for the final one.

I downloaded and tried a few different variations in all:

Puppy Linux - this was very quick and easy to use. Booting from the CD took a while because it kept asking to test different settings to ensure that everything worked correctly. Whilst this wasn’t a problem (as it was all explained really clearly), it later failed to save my profile to a memory stick, so I couldn’t use those settings again, and had to run through the same process every time I booted.

Mandriva Linux - this had lots of nice graphical effects, which looked very impressive. However, after loading a few widgets and running some applications, a number of glitches appeared on screen. I didn’t want to spend lots of time trying to fix these, so I decided to try something else.

Ubuntu - this was incredibly easy to use, very quick to boot and run, and worked perfectly first time. 

Debian - this was recommended by Bill Genereux. However, the CD I’d created didn’t boot at all, so I may have made a mistake when burning it. 

After trying these, I decided to install Ubuntu. During this whole process, I’ve been really impressed with how easy everything has been, thanks to the clear instructions and support from everyone who helps to make the different things that I used:

• Removing / replacing computer parts was straightforward, thanks to the clear instructions and guidance from labels inside the machine.
• Downloading / making Live CDs of Linux was easy, thanks to the help on the Linux sites, as well as a quick Google search.
• Trying the different versions of Linux was fantastic, as it allowed me to have a play with the different variations before making a decision.

What will I use my new Ubuntu machine for? I have no idea, as the Macs in my household do everything that I need from a computer. However, it’s certainly been an interesting experience and something that I have learned a great deal from. I’ll keep playing with it, running updates, installing new software, and learning new things. Maybe, I’ll be able to use Crossover (given away free a few days ago) to run Roller Coaster Tycoon on it again!

Image: ‘Hard Drive - 2 Flash/Brolly‘ 
Image: ‘Ubuntu Wallpaper Plain‘

One of the tools that Tim Rylands showed at the Kent ICT conference, was ‘The Hat’. This is probably the thing that I’ve used the most since the conference. I also showed it to other staff at my recent staff meeting and it’s now being used in many classrooms across the school.

The Hat (available from Harmony Hollow) is a simple (and free) program which lets you choose random items from a list. For teachers, this allows us to enter children’s names and it will pick individuals or groups at random. By changing the size of the program window, you can get the program to create a group of any size you choose.

It’s such a simple tool, but it has been a really useful addition to my classroom, allowing me to pick individuals / groups of children quickly and fairly.

Do you know of any other simple programs like this, which could benefit other teachers?

Image: ‘boulevard of broken dreams‘

As well as giving information verbally, I created a Smart Notebook file with further information, which is saved on our school’s network, so that staff can refer to it in the future. I’ve also uploaded the file here, in the hope that readers of this blog might be able to pick up a few tips as well.

Download Staff Meeting Notebook File
(Smart Notebook required)

If you don’t have Smart Notebook, here’s a brief outline of the things that I’ve mentioned in the file:

• Independent Maths Activities - using RM Maths and TutPup.
• Using Film in Literacy - with instructions showing how to download Youtube videos using KeepVid. I also added a link to the Film for Literacy wiki, which has examples of films that can be used in particular Literacy units.
• Travel the World - using sites like panoramas.dk and gigapan.org to develop Literacy, Geography and History skills.
• Smartboard Tricks - Children sometimes have difficulties dragging objects across the board, so you can use two fingers to make them jump from one place to another. 
• Tools for making displays - Using 2Publish+ software to create banners, and blockposters.com to produce giant images.
• Typing Skills - helping children to type more quickly using 2Type, Dance Mat Typing or Sense Lang.

Which sites / applications / tools would you recommend if you were asked to run an ICT staff meeting?

Image: ‘three thirty‘

As I mentioned in previous posts, I keep a list of things that I need to do online using Toodledo. A few weeks ago, I picked up a quick tip which shows a mini version of my To Do list on my computer’s screen.

How to do this:

1) Install / use a different browser to the one that you normally use. This is so that any changes to the browser don’t interfere with your regular internet browsing.

2) Open the new browser and visit the iPhone / iPod Touch version of the site:

Toodledo - http://www.toodledo.com/slim

Remember the Milk - http://i.rememberthemilk.com

You may want to set this site as your home page, so that it loads as soon as you load this browser.

3) Shrink the size of the window to fit your ‘To Do’ list. You can also turn off any toolbars / status windows for an extra-slim interface.

I’ve found this a really easy way to view and check-off any of my tasks over the past few weeks. It means that I don’t have to keep flicking back to the ‘large’ version of the Toodledo site, which takes up space on screen, and may mean navigating away from a website which I am looking at.

As Neil Buchanan (of Art Attack fame) would say… try it yourself! ]]> http://www.mrwarner.com/2008/09/make-a-mini-to-do-list/feed/