Learning, Teaching and ICT

I have three things (at least) to thank Twitter for recently - and I’ve been so grateful for all three that I’ve ’harassed’ myself all day into writing this blog post!

So here goes:

• First big thank you is to Jaye for the Glow mug. I mentioned on twitter that I thought it might be a good idea if she gave me one of her newly aquired hoard – and she did – much appreciated:-)

New Glow Mug! from margaret vass on Vimeo.

• Next up – a great big thank you to John McLear for helping me on twitter when I couldn’t get a photopeach story to play on Falkirk’s ‘soon to be’ new blogging platform The conversation went a bit like this:

The  Carronshore Blog home is in safe hands, I think. The promise of being free, having no ads, and speedy twitter (and email) help is just grat – what more do we need

• The number 3 Twitter rescue happened this weekend when I logged on and discovered that some twitter contacts were logging in to CANVAS . I’d forgotten my login detais, but one of the ‘twitterers’ was Derek Robertson and he sent me a twitter direct message and I was able to visit the world. All didn’t go too well on that visit

… But I got there eventually.

 Here’s some images already in the Falkirk CANVAS Art Gallery space. They’re all by the children at Carronshore Primary School - I’ve also included some others that will be added soon – enjoy:-)

CANVAS on PhotoPeach

On Friday I logged on to my twitter account to see what was happening. I’d signed up for the education 2020   flashmeeting session - but I’ll save that experience for another post

When I logged on to twitter I found (as usual) loads of  links to new sites useful for education. One of these was praising http://photopeach.com/home so I’ve been palaying around with it today. My effort looked good to me on the photopeach site … so fingers crossed that it’ll look good on here too

The Story of the Carronshore Blog on PhotoPeach

I’ve just been going through my RSS feed links and came across this post. In the comment section, David Gilmour mentioned http://xtranormal.com .

“……I started to wonder if games might provide an engaging context for storytelling, especially if there was the prospect of mocking up the result in a game-like software environment such as http://www.xtranormal.com? If so, please lob it into your project ideas pile.

BTW, as something of a a punctuation pedant, I just love the way that xtranormal.com reads your text exactly as you’ve punctuated it. That’s got to be a better form of feedback than marking – comment-only or not – can ever provide.”

I’ve used xtranormal before, and I’ve spread the word to other teachers here, but David’s comment has made me aware of the fact that it also reads the text as it has been punctuated – that hadn’t dawned on me before. Thanks David! As usual, I heard about this tool via twitter and must have then tweeted about it again, because David went on to comment:

“….I only discovered http://xtranormal.com last week when mvass tweeted about it. I should have credited her with the discovery, and for sharing it; not that she has complained, of course.”

Now that David has commented about it on Neil’s post, I see that there are a few other teachers who have been introduced to it. In the spirit of sharing, I’ll post a (very basic) help ppt. I made. I’ve also made a further help guide for teachers who want to give pupils in their class their own account, while still maintaining some degree of control over its use ……. I should also point out that there may be one or two inappropriate gesture options available, but like many of these new tools, the advantages of using it far outway the disadvantages (in my opinion!)

Here’s the very basic ‘getting started’ guide:

Xtranormal.com

This one is a guide to using googlemail to set up student accounts:

Google Trick

Last week I wrote a post about how the Falkirk VTC might be used as a vehicle to help introduce teachers here to GLOW. The staff area of the VTC was password protected until I came in to post and I’ve been thinking about its new look and feel for a while now. I’m hoping that it can soon be revamped (yet again!) and become the new Falkirk VTC Curriculum for Excellence site….. an August launch? - better get a move on  :-)

So where does Glow fit in with these new plans for the VTC? Recently I spotted this section on the LTS website and I homed in on these words:

 ”As Glow rolls out to more local authorities in Scotland, the importance of its role in driving forward Curriculum for Excellence is becoming clear.”

So could our Local Authority do the reverse and use our new Curriculum for Excellence website to help the roll out of Glow here?

I’ve had a guest Glow account for a number of months now, and I’ve played around with looking at ways of uploading vokis and animoto videos to a Glow group I’ve made  – audience of one so far

I imagine it will be a while before all the classroom teachers here will be in a position to use Glow with their own classes. Those who are keen, though, will want to have a ‘play about’ just like I did. I wondered if setting a weekly or fortnightly ‘challenge’ on the VTC might be something that could help familiarise them with Glow – and at the same time introduce them to some of the great new freely available social software tools that (with a little imagination) can add so much to the teaching and learning experience.

When I was contemplating all this, I noticed some twitter posts from Con Morris. He talked about setting some of his LTS colleagues 10 CPD challenges such as:

• finding and using images
• writing for the web
• sharing presentations
• using (or starting) a National Glow group

….. and more.

I’m not sure of the context here, but Con did say in one of his posts:

……. ‘setting LTS colleagues 10 CPD Challenges on the 11th of June that befit a national devt officer in the 21st C.’ (I hasten to add that I did ask Con’s permission to quote his twitter ‘tweets’ here!)

If I do set some challenges (with support) for teachers to help them use Glow and some of the 21st C. online tools, will it have the positive effect that I think Con hopes for …….. or will it have the opposite effect like the one Jaye described in her comment she left on a previous post?

Hmmmm – time for yet another think, I think