MrWarner.com

As I mentioned in a previous post, I originally signed up for delicious without really knowing what to use it for. I was happy with saving bookmarks within my web browser, which were then synced across my computers and mobile phone using .Mac syncing. However, after exploring the social bookmarking aspect of the site and adding more people to my delicious network, I am now using delicious on a daily basis to find and retrieve useful websites. I’ve even installed the bookmarking software Pukka, which allows you to post new sites to multiple delicious accounts, without leaving the site you are bookmarking.

This is the Pukka interface… a simple window which pops up whenever you want to add a new bookmark:

This post is an explanation of how I’m beginning to use delicious more in my own classroom, and how I’m hoping to extend its use across the school.

Delicious in my own teaching:

One of the tags I use the most within my own delicious account is ‘emw‘. When the children come into the classroom at the start of the day, I usually have a photo showing on the Smartboard, with a question or an activity for the class to try. This is their ‘Early Morning Work’ (hence emw). This might be linked to a topic that we are learning about, it might involve something creative, or it could be aiming to develop the children’s thinking skills. If I find an image which I think might be useful for this, I tag it with ‘emw’ and use the Notes area of the bookmarking options to add the challenge / activity which I think the children could complete. When planning for the week, I can then just copy the picture, along with my notes, onto my Smartboard slides.

One of my regular sources for ‘emw’ photos is the Crooked Brains blog, as it has a wide range of photos, some of which are extremely weird and wonderful! The Problem Pictures site is also a great source of probem-solving and mathematical photos.

Another tag that I use a great deal is ‘iwbgames‘. The sites tagged with this are usually fun games which the class can play together on our Smartboard. These are generally used as a treat, or at the end of a busy day. Some of the children have picked up on my use of delicious to locate these games and have gone home and bookmarked my ‘iwbgames’ delicious page so that they can then play the games at home, and get a head start on the new games that I add!

Some other tags I use regularly:

• class8 - At the moment, I am teaching my 8th class at my current school. So, anything I want to try with that class, I also tag class8. If I’ve used something with ‘class8′ and I want to try it again next year, I’ll change the tag to class9.
• podcasting - Having produced a school podcast for a number of years, I’ve been involved in training for others who would like to start. When doing this, I often recommend that people explore my podcasting bookmarks on delicious.
• subject.topic - If I find a useful site which is linked to a particular topic, I’ll try to bookmark it with a ’subject.topic’ tag. For example, my World War 2 bookmarks are tagged history.worldwarii, and sites with Tangrams are tagged maths.tangrams. I find this system really helpful when I’m in my classroom trying to find relevant sites. It also means that my tagroll is much more tidy!  

On our school’s network, we have ‘Shared Favourites’ which are all saved in different subject-based folders. The staff regularly add new sites to these, which is fantastic. However, these are now quite cluttered. They are also tied to our internal network, so they cannot be accessed outside of school. Therefore I’m hoping to transfer our bookmarking system to delicious during the next academic year. When I was first considering this, I asked around on Twitter if any colleagues already used delicious in their schools. Thanks to John and Tom for their replies:

Having seen that others were using delicious across their schools, I decided to give it a go. So, I registered a delicious account for school and imported our ‘Shared Favourites’ into it. Unfortunately, Internet Explorer refused to export our Shared Favourites, so I had to add each one manually!

When the children open their Internet browser at school, their home page is currently our school’s website. I thought about setting the home page to the new school delicious account. However, I don’t feel that a list of hundreds of links would be very child-friendly, especially for those with younger age groups. So, I decided to set up a new start page on our school site, which uses the linkroll and tagroll features from delicious. Here’s a screenshot of part of the new page:

By using special tags in our delicious account, I can highlight a small selection of new sites for children and teachers, which are automatically updated as I find and bookmark them. I also thought that adding the tag roll to the bottom would allow staff and pupils to then explore the delicious account easily. This could be very useful for research purposes in the classroom. For example, I can ask children to use the sites tagged ‘tudors’ to support their History work, rather than having them aimlessly searching online.

Regular visitors to our school’s site will see the normal home page. However, when inside school, children and teachers will soon see our new ‘Start Page’ with the delicious links and tags. This address is also quite easy to remember so hopefully others will use the page outside of school as their own starting point for our new online bookmarks.

While writing this article, I’ve also thought about using a ‘today’ tag to give children quick access to sites which are relevant to that day’s lessons. They could then use these bookmarks to extend their learning at home.

I’ve given one other member of staff the password for the school’s delicious account at the moment, and they have added a number of useful sites. As time goes by, I’ll ask others to help add new sites and slowly introduce it to the rest of the school.

It’s early days yet, but I’m hoping that this will be a good way of sharing sites, which doesn’t limit us to our internal network, and which will allow teachers and children new ways of finding (and saving) useful sites in all areas of the curriculum.

Do you use delicious at school? I’d love to hear your own ideas and experiences!

July 8th, 2008 | Tags: bookmarks, delicious | Category: cool sites, school | Comments (8)

After my first post about the Flip Video Ultra, I received a few requests on Twitter asking for my thoughts about its use in an educational setting. So, I’ve taken the gadget into school this week and shared it with other adults and pupils to find out their opinions, and begin exploring its potential.

The adults that I have shown it too have all said “Wow”. They’ve all been impressed with the size and quality of the device. The built-in USB connector and onboard software have also been seen as a great positive.

Today, I used the Flip with my class for the first time. I started by asking two of my Year 5 children (aged 9/10) to try it out. I didn’t explain what it was, or show them how it worked, but they figured out what all of the buttons did within the first few minutes. They had great fun recording each other, trying out the zoom, and recording things from different angles.

Uploading:

Although this isn’t something that we would normally need to do, they also succeeded in uploading a video of one of my pet rats (which I had previously recorded) onto Youtube. I was really impressed at how easy they found using both the Flip and the built-in software.

On a separate note, the Youtube quality really doesn’t compare to the actual quality of the video. Here’s the original, with reduced dimensions to make it fit more easily here.

Recording performances:

After spending some time playing with the camera, we then tried it out with the rest of the class. Over the course of this week, the children have been writing scripts for a puppet show, based on a sequel to ‘Finding Nemo’. The children made simple stick puppets, and performed on our stage:

As you can see, the Flip simply stood up on the table. It will stand up very well by itself, but we used blu-tac to hold it in place it in case the table was knocked accidentally. The children then held their puppets above the edge of the table, keeping the action in between the two rulers, which we used to make sure that everything could be seen on camera.

This whole process was incredibly easy. My normal process for recording video in class is:

• Find video camera.
• Check it is charged… if not, find charging cable and wait for it to charge, or use it with charging cable trailing across the floor (following health and safety guidelines, of course!).
• Find a DV tape which doesn’t have anything important recorded on it.
• Set up tripod near the back of the room so that all of the action can be seen.
• Choose someone to be a camera operator. This person would then stand with the camera, looking at the action, but blocking the camera’s screen from the view of the rest of the class.

With this Flip, this process was simply:

• Stand it on a table (with some blu-tac!)
• Turn on and press record.

An added benefit with having the camera on a table, right in front of the action, was that the rest of the class (who were sitting around and watching) could see both the live performance and the image as it was recorded on the Flip’s screen. Although the screen is admittedly quite small, this still enabled everyone (even the ones at the back of the room) to take the viewpoint of the director / cameraman, checking to make sure that the puppets could all be seen on screen, and that the puppet performers didn’t accidentally appear in view.

Having watched a few of the children’s videos myself, the picture and sound quality are very good. Their voices can be heard clearly (even the ones who were tucked under the table!). The colours are really vibrant, making the children’s puppets stand out. The children haven’t watched their recordings yet, but I’m sure they will play perfectly clearly on our Smartboard.

Now that it is so easy to make video recordings in the classroom, I may well ask the children to watch and evaluate their own performances next week, with a view to carrying out a second recording. This will give them a chance to reflect on their work, and make further improvements (e.g. keeping fingers out of the shot, using more accents / expression in their dialogue).

The ability to take still photos from the video is another bonus, and again the picture quality is fine for the needs of a primary class (in my opinion):

One of my only concerns about the Flip is the USB connector. It’s extremely handy, but I am a bit worried about it getting snapped / bent when it is plugged into a laptop (especially if I’m using the laptop on my lap, as I do quite frequently). I suppose that’s not an issue if you take care, or perhaps use an extension cable, but accidents do happen (does that make me sound really clumsy?!).

A few other potential uses:

• School trips - a fantastic way of recording and reporting on these experiences, although will the one hour recording time be enough for a full day out of the classroom?
• Interviews - great for Literacy work, and the ability to watch recordings back to gather information / answers.
• Impulse recordings - in the past, I have occasionally thought “Wouldn’t it have been good to record this activity?”. Now, we can just grab the Flip and record without having to set things up in advance.

Overall, I’m really happy with the Flip Video, and although it was an impulse purchase, I’m definitely pleased that I bought it. I can see myself using digital video much more in the classroom (especially after being inspired by Tim Ryland’s work yesterday). Setting up and using the Flip only takes seconds, so it’s going to make my life as a teacher much easier too.

I’d love to be able to buy one (or more) for each class at school. Watch out Hollywood… my class will be knocking on your door very soon!

July 4th, 2008 | Tags: flip video, review, school | Category: gadgets, school | Comments (8)

Wow! Have you ever had one of those days which completely refreshes you, gives you lots of new ideas, and makes you want to get straight into the classroom to try something out? I had one of those days today.

I was lucky enough to have a day out of school visiting the Kent ICT conference. This was a chance for me to find out more about VLEs, and to explore any new and exciting ideas / products available. The highlight of the day though, and the bit that I was looking forward to the most, was definitely the afternoon session with Tim Rylands.

The morning:

I spent some time in the morning finding out about different options for our yet-to-be-chosen VLE. If I’m honest, I didn’t really know much about the facilities that they offer, and how they can help the teachers, parents and pupils within our school. After trying a few out, and looking at different suppliers, I definitely feel more knowledgeable, although I know I still have a lot of research to do. Some of them looked very interesting, although one that I saw didn’t look very child-friendly and was definitely not something that I would like to introduce at school. I won’t mention names for fear of being ‘Belshawed‘.

I also spent time in the morning finding out about some interesting ICT projects which other schools have got involved with, and hearing from JANET about video-conferencing opportunities. We use VC mainly within our History work at present, but this is definitely something that I would like to extend across the curriculum, and make links with other providers that we haven’t connected to before.

The afternoon:

I’ve heard quite a bit about Tim Rylands, mainly through his work using Myst to inspire children’s writing. So, I was expecting an afternoon hearing all about that and learning how to start using the software in my own classroom. However, Tim’s presentation only touched upon Myst relatively briefly, and he mentioned lots of other great ideas. I’m going to try and record some of these ideas here, along with my own reflections, if only so that I don’t forget them!

• Using video to record children reading / performing their own Literacy work - we often record children’s playscripts as these naturally lend themselves to being performed and filmed. However, I don’t often ask children to perform their other writing on camera. It only really leaves the page when they might read it out to each other in class, or they may read each other’s work. Some of the recordings of Tim’s Myst work with children (using background images and music) were very powerful, and they really brought their writing to life. Definitely something to try. The Flip Video and CuePrompter look perfect for this.
• Using Quicktime VRs to stimulate discussion and explore ideas (with Tim’s suggested link to Panoramas.dk). We’ve made Quicktime VRs as part of our ICT, but I’ve not actually used them in my own teaching.
• ThrillerWhizz - A fantastic tool which generates titles for stories. Lots of fun can be had with this!
• Half-Portraits - I’ve tried this idea a number of times in Art lessons, but this could also be attempted on screen. Get the children to crop a digital photo of themselves, and then complete the other half using drawing software of their choice. Older children can select which program would be most suitable for this task.
• Making iPod Scrubs - These look quite complicated initially, but I’m dying to try it out!
• Adding editable text boxes to Powerpoint slides, so that children can watch an embedded movie and make notes / answer questions based on it, all whilst in full-screen presentation mode.
• Using The Hat to make random selections… enter in the names of your class, and let it choose one / two or more children at random. The audience were all very excited to see our names spinning around on screen, as the lucky person chosen won themselves an Asus EEE. I can imagine myself using this free software at school on a daily basis.

Tim’s presentation style was excellent… he seemed incredibly keen to share as many ideas as he possibly could with us, using lots of humour along the way. His use of Powerpoint (and Powerpoints within Powerpoint) was very effective, with not a bullet point in sight! Tim has posted his blog entry about his visit, with lots of links and extra ideas. 

All in all… a really enjoyable day. I can’t wait to get back to school tomorrow! 

Image: ‘IMG_8118‘ - www.flickr.com/photos/18374272@N00/183503927
Image: ‘Myst games collection‘ - www.flickr.com/photos/14714189@N00/2502055857

July 3rd, 2008 | Tags: ict, literacy, myst, tim rylands, video-conferencing, vle | Category: cool sites, gadgets, school | Comments (3)

After writing this post about online services that I use regularly, I received a discount code for JungleDisk, which is one of the tools that I mentioned. To request the code and get this fantastic software for half price, email mark@teachingideas.co.uk and I’ll send it back as soon as I can.

I only have limited numbers of the code to give away, and they won’t last forever, so get in quick!

Update: These codes have now expired. Sorry!

July 2nd, 2008 | Tags: backup, jungledisk | Category: cool sites | Leave a comment