Learning, Teaching and ICT

 In ‘Take 1′ of this topic, I set out to reflect on why the Carronshore class blog managed to survive successfully for 2 years … while some other class blogs seem to fail.

I want to add some more here about Jamie’s ’secret’ gift for writing!

After he posted his story on the wiki, everyone in the class wanted to know where he got the idea from. It turned out that, as well as being an avid reader of certain types of books, he regularly logged on to his computer to play the online adventure game of RuneScape. More and more of the boys in the class logged on from home and became members.

Thomas was one of those persuaded to give it a try and I remember him writing about it ….. and I’ve managed to locate what he wrote (almost 2 years ago now?). It can still be accessed HERE.

The boys in the class took to writing about it in their spare time. They made little notebooks by stapling bits of scrap paper together, and regularly compared drafted stories. I tried, unsuccessfully, on a number of occasions to have the site unblocked at school (after much pleading by the boys). It’s a pity we weren’t able to make more of this great opportunity to motivate.

We had previously had some success with Samorost after having read about the great results blogged about by Kim (I think we’d have been able to experience the atmosphere much more had access to a whiteboard been available …. unfortunately, I’ve never had the luxury of having one in any of my classrooms).

Well …. that was yet another trip down memory lane I’ve just realised, though, that this particular example demonstrates that even then there was a merging of the online / offline classroom, and that giving the children an online voice had an impact on the informal learning …… just as was demonstrated a year later when I studied things more closely when collecting evidence for my dissertation!

I see that Cassie has just given primary 5 L/W children a wikispace too. She also discovered this great site. It looks super – I’ve used it to leave a message for the children in her class …. hoping it works …. fingers crossed

 As the number of class blogs continue to rise in Falkirk, I’ve been contemplating why it is that some blogs go on to be very successful … and some just peter out (a few more blogs could have been added to the ‘Falkirk Blogs’ list in my sidebar, but they didn’t survive beyond the initial ‘first post’ stage).

I produced a powerpoint presentation to demonstrate ‘reasons to blog’ with classes. I’ll try to include it below ….. true last minute edublogs style

More recently, however, I’ve reflected on my own attempt at maintaining a class blog and why it has managed to survive successfully for 2 years now. I think it might have had to do with the fact that I had a definite focus for having a class blog? I wanted to use it as a vehicle to improve the children’s writing. Our original Blogger blog still has the ‘About Us’ statement in the sidebar – still accessible HERE

I’m glad that I still have access to the original class blog, because it reminds me of how important it became to give the children their own space to write. I wasn’t comfortable enough with the medium in the early stages to give them their own online space, so we shared a wiki. I set it up and we shared a common username and password …… an exercise in trust as the children were encouraged to log in at home.

It was from home that Lisa posted her Two Stars and a Wish post on her wiki space. We’d been experimenting with the idea of assessing our own writing and the writing of peers using the formative assessment strategy of awarding 2 stars and a wish

We even made our personalised ’2 stars and a wish’ templates … I think this might have been Danni’s? (this link goes to her own blog …. I eventually found a comfortable way of doing this thanks to Don who pointed me in the direction of David)

One of the stories that Lisa peer assessed belonged to Jamie. Jamie was (at the time) a popular, quiet member of the class. He didn’t seem to ‘shine’ when it came to writing …. until I saw his entry on his wiki page! If I hadn’t seen him writing it up in the computer suite, I’d have accused him of plagerism

Some of it is included here:

 Laughing In The Face Of Death

His face shone dark in the moonlight, while his coat lay torn slowly floating in between the reeds. His shirt was dirty and wet. The dark waters that lay behind him gave him the appearance of a demon or a dark shadowy creature moving in the night. His sheath was well padded and worn away because of constant usage, it had three diamonds encrusted in it. It had a gold rim and a thin copper lining wrapped around it. This lay on his back but it never wieghed him down as it was as light as a feather. He had black boots on and they were half-covered by his camouflage trousers.
He walked on at a normal pace when he heard a purring noise, after a while he ignored it and carried on his stroll. He heard it again. He was watching a certain bush knowing that there was a creature behind it because of all the wierd purring noises. the world stayed as still as a stick insect as they lay eyes on eachother there was more rustling then the beast came out, a tiger that was as orange as sunset heading speedily at Kai. In reaction Kai drew his sword from his sheath and took a deep slash at the tiger’s leftpaw then stabbed it twice roundabout the same place the tiger had gave in to the pain and there it lay dead……

You can read the rest of jamie’s story HERE.

Before I press ‘publish’, I have to admit that going through the process of writing this post has raised some important questions for me.

 Is my own qualitative research (a case study methodology was chosen) really less valuable than Jaye’s and Derek’s as suggested?

I wouldn’t know how to quantify my ‘story’

I think I’ve got Calameo working on here now – but the important ‘view full screen’ tab is the only one not working  

Oh well … I’ll put a link to the ‘working doc’ on the Falkirk VTC area HERE

Here’s the ‘full screen not working’ version on edublogs …. hopefully

I’ve spent a long time avoiding posting on this site …. not sure why

Happy to see that edublogs seems to be up and running again, too.

Anyway – I’ve been VERY busy in my new post. We’re about half way through visiting each of the ICT co-ordinators in their own schools and it’s great to be able to help out with school websites. Almost all schools have moved over to Schools-Online and I’ve become comfortable with the set-up.

I was happy to discover that it’s possible to embed files using html codes, and this has meant that I’ve been able to allow staff to access some CPD courses online via the Falkirk VTC staff website. For example, courses on Blogging, Podcasting and Comic Life are all online. I’ve uploaded some ‘How To’ videos on to the site as well.

Last week, however, I learned (while delivering a course!) that it’s not possible to upload more than one photobucket video to schools-online sub pages – each video appeared to upload ok, but when I clicked on the sub-pages during the actual presentation, all we got to see was the first video over and over again

Luckily, a bit of ‘thinking on my feet’ led to me logging on to my actual photobucket account and we viewed the videos from there …. phew!! I’ve since hosted them at schooltube … things seem to be working fine now

 I’ve also been experimenting with other ways of showing the videos. Sliderocket, for example, allows you to easily embed videos within an already uploaded powerpoint slideshow. It’s also very easy to resize the uploaded video by just dragging from the corners (the same way as you would with a pic here on edublogs). Hopefully this link to the falkirk vtc site will work to show what I mean (the video is on the second slide – a work in progress).

Click HERE to find out if it works

I’ve also found that powerpoints hosted at Google Docs can take an age to load in some schools. A better option seems to be Calameo. Check it out below. It’s also possible to upload and share large pdf files. I tried it out with my 98 page dissertation and it showed up fine at work … unlike scribd which, like Go-Animate, can be hit or miss (dreaded bandwidth issues?).

I’ll do the usual edublogs thing to embed html codes … just have to press ‘publish’ and can’t check it works before I do that so fingers crossed. Let me know what you think of calameo (if it works) – check out the option features as shown in the image below, too!

 Didn’t work

I’ll try again!