Head in the Cloud

On Thursday I attended the launch of a report from the Digital Classroom Teaching Task and Finish Group at The Senedd in Cardiff. Entitled "Find it, make it, use it, share it: learning in digital Wales" the group's report set out what they think Welsh Government and many others should do to introduce, embed and promote the use of digital technologies to enhance teaching and learning. The group was set up by the Leighton Andrews, Minister for Education and Skills, as an external task and finish group to consider which digital classroom delivery aspects should be adopted to transform learning and teaching for those aged 3 - 19. Leighton Andrews, Minister for Education and Skills In particular the group was asked to consider: how high-quality, accessible digital classroom content could be developed; how National Grid for Learning (NGfL) Cymru was used, and whether there was a more effective way to deliver its aims; whether and how a cloud-based content deliv...

After mentioning ThinkQuest in my last post I thought I'd post this video we made a couple of years ago about how ThinkQuest (Think.com) is being used across our authority.

Another day spent looking at web based tools, this time it was Schoology . Schoology is according to their web site " is the ultimate way to manage lessons, engage students, share content, and connect with other educators." It's seems to me to be a combination of online elearning tools, course management in a Facebook type interface. From what I can see it's a free service for individual schools to use, but there are costs associated if we wanted to run and organise this from the local authority. I really liked the look and feel of the interface. Easy to use, clean and some very useful tools. Some of the features are probably aimed more at secondary schools but I think it could still be used very effectively by KS2 pupils too.  Why am I looking at this? Well, the online tool that we have been promoting across Newport for the last 7 years or so has been ThinkQuest.  ThinkQuest is a free, online teaching and learning environment developed by Oracle and run by t...

Spent most of the last couple of days trying out ELGG . For those of you who have never heard of it, ELGG is an 'open source social networking engine'. We are looking at different tools that will allow various groups of users to interact. The eventual aim is to find a suitable tool that will allow the creation of communities of practice, something along the lines of our current online ICT coordinators network. This particular community has been developed in Moodle over several years, and has worked well for us. However we now feel that there are better tools out there for the social interaction that we require. We have also gone back to look at Joomla for developing our web presence, and 'plugging in' suitable interactive tools. It's interesting to note that a popular social interaction plugin for Joomla, which has everything we need, doesn't have a moderation tool which would be essential to building up an open community that we require. We've emailed th...

iPads in the classroom improved T4L - ICT - TES Quite an interesting discussion on the use of iPads in the classroom in the TES ICT forum. Suggestions given on apps that schools are using. Also comments along the lines of "you can add all the bells and whistles but makes very little difference unless the teaching and learning is good and to make a change you need to change the style of teaching not the equipment!"

A colleague pointed this website out to me yesterday. Voki is a free website that allows you to create animated avatars for use on websites, blogs, and from what I read can be embedded into Powerpoint too. Haven't checked it out fully yet but it is aimed at teachers and students. The website announces "Create speaking avatars and use them as an effective learning tool. Motivate students to participate, improve message comprehension, introduce technology in a fun way, utilise Voki as an effective language tool.." There are lesson plans on the website and ideas on how to use Voki in the classroom. Reminds me a little of Crazy Talk which another of my colleagues loves using in the foundation phase classroom. As they say on 'Blue Peter', "here's one I made earlier"

Still interests me...

I spent the last two days working with my literacy advisory colleagues and a group of primary school teachers. This working party was looking at the use of the 'moving image' in the primary school classroom, devising some ideas for teachers in using BFI DVD resources and also other film clips. There was also quite a lot of discussion about the use of YouTube around copyright, comments, adverts, and general use in the classroom. I could talk about the copyright issues all day, so we'll leave that issue to one side for a moment and concentrate on the other areas of discussion. Our authority is quite forward thinking when it comes to YouTube and therefore all schools have access to it unless individually a school wants it blocked. But I do realise that in many local authorities across Wales YouTube is blocked at the local authority level, stopping schools having access and this has become quite a discussion point in recent meetings I've had with colleagues from across Wal...