What a great find! The audio below was made by Marlene – the Depute Head at Carronshore Primary (where I’m seconded from). She’s talking about her first experience at a TeachMeet event.

I made a small change to the embed code to increase the size of the widget – but it worked fine the way it was.

Have a listen – it took minutes to upload the mp3 file and receive the embed code via email.

“ Well that was ok –  but I could probably have spent that time doing something more productive”

I know that I’ve attended quite a few of those sort of CPD sessions in my time

I wanted to hear the, ” Thanks for that – I feel that I could use some of these ideas tomorrow in my class” type of comment. I was delighted, therefore, that this was exactly the reaction I got from the last two sessions I provided. The first session was on Digital Storytelling. I’ve included a slideshare version of the handouts I provided for the session. 

Producing something like this before a CPD session helps me to focus on what it is I’m trying to portray – the theory behind the practice sort of research. Being seconded, however, means that I usually have practical examples to show. The short ’story’ below, for instance, was made by the primary 7 children after a class trip. They were faced with a number of potentially dangerous scenarios and this helped them to become more aware of  water safety, fire safety, first aid, safety with animals, food safety, etc.  When we returned to school they were asked to use the pictures taken during the day as prompts to remind them of what was learned. A digital story resulted …. well it wasn’t what we called it at the time – but it almost fits the definition??

Untitled from Education Services on Vimeo.

 This was just one of the examples I was able to show. There are lots more on our class blog ….perhaps another good reason for keeping a blog – a record of what has been covered / learned etc. in class

One of the things that surprised me during the CPD session, however, was the interest in my wordle pic I’d used on one of the powerpoint slides:

 We spent a fair amount of time exploring http://www.wordle.net/ and looking and the great possibilities for interesting ways of using it in class.

Because of the interest shown, I made sure that ‘wordle’ was included in the next CPD session on ‘motivating learners through the use of freely available online tools’. I decided to focus on just a few so that they wouldn’t be too overwhelmed.

 The handout for that session is included here.

I sensed that the teachers were interested in what I was saying and, as a result, I went off on a tangent (once more!) and introduced them to a number of other tools. At the time, I worried that I was going too fast too quickly and had possibly bombarded them with too much information – I even pointed them in the direction of  http://cooltoolsforschools.wikispaces.com/ . I think this is a fantastic resource, but can find it overwhelming sometimes

At the end of the CPD session I was  pleasantly surprised again, though, by the feedback – especially the verbal comments as people were leaving. A few of them stopped to thank me, and the impression I got was that, although they felt a bit ’snowed under’  they valued the many practical examples of how I’d used most of the tools mentioned in my own practice.

We discussed how children as young as Primary 4/5 stages are now using social network sites like Bebo and MySpace. These sites are not accessible to children in our Local Authority. Staff members, however, can access the sites after bypassing a warning message that they can proceed to the website at their own discretion. Although twitter was also mentioned, it was more in a ‘while we’re on the subject’ sort of sideways conversation. 

When I came home, however, I was surprised to read Anna’s new post about twitter  and her thoughts about how ” it’s becoming the new bebo,myspace etc“. I’ve since been followed on my own twitter account by seven of my ex Carronshore bloggers and this has got me thinking about social networks in general.

When I received Anna’s request to follow me on twitter (my account was locked for a short time – but that’s another story), I thought long and hard about the ethics and whether or not this was acceptable. I remember creating a Bebo account in the past to allow me to keep tracks on my No.3 son while he roamed about Canada on a gap year. At the time some Primary 7 girls must have tracked me down on there and I noticed the requests. I (tactfully?) explained to the girls that this would not be appropriate …. so why the change of heart now that the same thing has happened on twitter?

I’ll try to analyse my thinking here:

• My Bebo site was set up for personal reasons and I was a bit taken aback when the girls (very innocently) requested to follow me. We had shared exchanges online before via the class blog and their individual blogs, as well as this blog, but crossing that line to a ’social network’ site was  definate ‘no no’ at the time. The very thought of us exchanging correspondence out of the public eye just seemed instinctively wrong to me. Actually, it wouldn’t  have made a difference if the sites were public – I would still have felt uncomfortable.
• My twitter site, on the other hand, was set up initially for CPD purposes. A quick look back at my twitter account origin reveals that the people I first followed were already authors of educational blogs. I was a regular reader of  John’s, David’s, Neil’s, David’s and Ewan’s among others and they were all twitter users, so I thought I’d give it a go.
• I was amazed at the CPD opportunities that twitter offered and blogged about it on a number of occasions on here. And it may even have been similar CPD prospects that helped me decide (not lightly, I might add!) to allow the ex Carronshore bloggers to follow me – and why I feel comfortable following them back.
•   I feel that I know these students well. When I received the ‘follow’ invites from Anna, Nina, Bethany, Rhiann,  Jaydean, Marc and Ryan I remembered the Blog posts and wiki stories we shared. I’ve blogged on a number of occasions about the change in the classroom climate that was brought about by this sharing. There was a level of trust involved in the set up – but the advantages outweighed any risks
•  A significant difference between bebo, etc and twitter is that twitter is somehow more accepted in educational circles. Twitter is less likely to be blocked by Local Education Authorities…. and even the CPD Scotland Team encourage its use :-)

Anyway, it seems that Anna has started an ’ex Carronshore students’  blogging trend …. I hope it continues. It would be great to read more posts from them

 I’m now three quarters of the way through my secondment as an ICT Curriculum Support Teacher (the title has been changed to ’support teacher’ from ’support officer’ recently – I think I prefer the new one). During this second half of the secondment, I’ve felt much more confident addressing adults during CPD sessions. This was one of the biggest challenges in the early days.

Undoubtedly, one of the reasons that I feel more comfortable in this role now is because I have more ownership over the courses and activities on offer. Although I was able to introduce some new CPD courses during the first year of the secondment (almost all of these were a direct result of being introduced to new websites and ideas via twitter, by the way!), many of the courses were inherited. This was mainly due to the timing of the interview, as it was necessary to have some courses in place before a candidate for the post was chosen. In fact, apart from the job of supporting staff in developing their school website and maintaining the Virtual Teacher Centre (both the pupil and the staff side), everything else has been designed by me – and I’ve really appreciated opportunity!

 As well as offering CPD courses on setting up and sustaining class blogs and raising awareness of free online tools to enhance learning and teaching, I’ve been involved in a number of interesting projects. One of these is an on-going pilot project with a group of children in a local primary school. I’ve set up ePortfolios for them, and in February I have a meeting with the Art Department in their feeder High School to discuss the possibility of developing this in to something that might help the primary/secondary transition stage. Hopefully, other departments will get involved as well. It’s very early days, but the eportfolios also have great potential for formative assessment, as well as self and peer assessment opportunities. Difficulties of setting up effective Personal Learning Plans may also be addressed. I do realise that, for this to work properly, it needs to be an Authority wide initiative. A long term strategy is required …. but it’s a start

Off On A Tangent!

….. just because it’s my blog and I can

It still amazes me that I’d scarcely heard of a blog until just over three years ago. I’ve written on here before about how I set off on a journey that would change my approach to learning and teaching. The journey also gave me the confidence to allow children to take more of a lead in their own learning. I’ve copied this brief summary from elsewhere on here:

• First I created a Class Blog so that I could give the pupils an audience for their work
• Very soon after creating the class blog, I realised that it was important to allow access to the children’s own work so I created a wikispace for the class to post their writing
• This didn’t work well, because if we all logged on and edited the space at the same time, problems occured (a “someone else is editing this space” message)
• I later discovered that Wikispaces will set up separate username and passwords for students if you email them the information required
• Soon I wanted the children to have their own blogs, but still have control over how they were used. I learned that East Lothian could help me set up individual blogs .
• The next session, I managed to safely set up individual blogs on my own ……  I found out about the ‘Gmail+’ trick. For example, If you have a ‘yourname@gmail.com’ account, it’s possible to create lots of new blogs using that same e-mail address. You can do this by creating new blogs with a ‘yourname+student1@gmail’ , ‘yourname+student2@gmail’ etc.
• One advantage is that, although the pupils have admin rights, the teacher can also login to the blogs at any time.
• Another advantage is that any comments appear in the teacher’s gmail account – even although the children can moderate them, the teacher has a record of what has appeared
• It’s quite easy to keep track of what is being posted on the children’s blogs by using ‘google reader’, or something similar

One thing I miss while on secondment is the relationships that are built up with children in your own class. So I was delighted, recently, when Anna contacted me on ths blog by leaving a comment on my last post. She’s now in second year at High School, and has decided that she would like to start using her blog again. It was a simple enough task to transfer it over to primaryblogger (where there’s loads of space and a guarantee of no ads). I’m really glad that she wants to do this, and I hope she doesn’t mind me quoting one of my favourite blog posts. Anna wrote this in primary 7 (two years go) and it still makes me smile ….. and she kept her promise of writing her ‘thought of the day’ posts regularly. She also inspired others in the class (including me!) to keep their blogs going at the time: 

 ”Well basically I’ve decided that I would like to have a future in blogging! I think that blogs are interesting and fun to write things on rather than writing something on paper. My thoughts for today are that blogs are a great way to learn, they are more interesting than doing something on  paper. When I’m older I think that I might do something to do with computers. I’m going to be starting a thing on my blog called thought of the day! Thought of the day is when I write a post about something I have realised, thought or discovered on that day.”

So thanks to Anna’s decision to take up blogging again, she has inspired me (just like before) to write a blog post. It always feels like work at the time, but it certainly helps – me anyway – to stay focussed  

I worked with six children (3 girls and 3 boys). During my first visit I tried to explain the advantages of having an ePortfolio. However, researching lots of  published information is one thing – but how do you convey that to 9/10 year olds? After I’d spent some time trying to get the message over in a way I hoped they’d understand, I asked them to go off with one of the school’s mp3 players with a built in microphone and produce a welcome message for their (so far empty wiki shell) ePortfolio. The children were familiar with the voki site and were able to create their characters and then upload their own mp3 file.

Here’s Maryam’s voki – unfortunately voki.com was down at the time of writing this post, but I have a desktop version that I’ve uploaded elsewhere. I’ve learned to be prepared

 I was satisfied that they had grasped the general idea and during my next few visits we discussed and planned more aspects of the ePortfolios, such as what pages to include and what the content should look like.  But, of course, building an ePortfolio is a long process and we’ve barely scratched the surface …. but it is a start I’ll put a page on the Carronshore blog with links to the ePortfolios.

Meanwhile here’s a link to Jaimey’s ePortfolio.

 I’m pleased that the Art Department of the local High School are keen to be involved and have asked me along to their next departmental meeting to talk about the experiment. It would be great if the discussion area of the ePortfolios could have input from them (at the moment, it’s just the children themselves – and me).

I was also asked to go along to talk  to the L.A. Assessment Group today. I wasn’t sure what their knowledge was. I made a powerpoint presentation to try to show what I’ve learned about ePortfolios so far. I even tried to ‘wow’ them by uploading it to prezi as well

Here’s the presentation. I hope they ‘got’ it?

It was great to see it all coming together as people worked very hard behind the scenes to make sure that everything was just as it should be. Katie  John Cassie Rich Peter were all beavering about two hours before ‘kick off’. A mention needs to be given to the staff at Carronvale House, Larbert . The venue was great and we couldn’t fault the service and value for money

There’s loads of other people to thank, too. John deserves a special mention for doing a brilliant job as M.C. The presenters were all great – and Con had us laughing in the aisles as he entertained us with his singing during his talk on how twitter is a great tool for CPD

A great big thank you again, too, to all our sponsors ……..   and the loan of the Smart Board from Steljes was just brilliant!

Unfortunately I didn’t get round to timing my presentation (and probably blethered some unnecessary nonsense as well)  so I only told half of the ePortfolio story that I’ve been working on with a small group of P6 children recently.

I suppose that making a 7 minute presentation requires similar skills as the art of  summarising what you want to say on twitter? I still struggle to join in with twitter converstations because I usually fail miserably to get points over in just 140 characters.

Here’s the gist of my presentation from TeachMeet Falkirk. It’s followed by some snapshots of the children’s ePortfolios …. and an explanation from one of them as to what he perceives an eportfolio to be about.

Play the presentation below to hear the Primary 6 perspective ………. ePortfolios in Plain English?

At the time of publishing this post, there’s only just over 1 week remaining until the first Falkirk TeachMeet! This is a follow-up to the previous post I wrote about what has been involved in the organisation of the event. A few of us are meeting up at the venue this Thursday to have a think about practical issues such as plug point locations and seating arrangements and general agenda issues.

Thankfully, others had stepped in almost as soon as the wiki had been set up with offers of help:

 Sinclair Mackenzie   organised a Flashmeeting and posted on the wiki that an edit will be made available for replay immediately after the event. So far 8 people from far-flung areas of Scotland - and at least one other from the other side of the world - are going to be able to take part during the event – and many others will be able to easily access it later via the replay.

On the evening, the Flashmeeting will be run by David Noble

Katie Barrowman has organised a Glow Meet - I’m not sure if that’s the first time that this has happened during a TeachMeet event?

Because of all this technical stuff going on, I was asked to find out things. I popped along to the venue and here’s what they told me: 

I think it all means that the flashmeeting and the Glow meet can go ahead?

Fingers crossed

But there were other decisions to make about our first Falkirk Teachmeet. For example, John Connell questioned the insistence that all presentations should be based firmly in classroom practice in this excellent blog post. Before reading this, I hadn’t actually thought too much about the rules and regulations involved when organising a local TeachMeet event. It was comforting to be able to call on the other helpers so that we could make collective decisions. We felt that we had to make our own rules to suit our unique circumstances. The majority of the Falkirk Teachmeet attendees are new to the concept and only heard of it via an email that I had permission to send out to all schools and various groups.

We decided to change the three of the normal rules:

•  Those who wanted to attend the TeachMeet after reading about it in the email were asked to simply reply and I added their names to the wiki. We didn’t want them to feel they had to sign up directly to the wiki, in case they saw as it as a barrier to attending if they were not familiar with editing online spaces.

• When we noticed that some of the ‘new to Teachmeet’ attendees were signing up to give 7 or 2 minute presentations, we decided to limit the number of presenters. It’s great to see that these new people are volunteering to share their stories of what they’re doing in class and it didn’t seem right that they might leave their first TeachMeet without having had the opportunity to present.

• The third decision was to bend the presentation rule that states, “everything must be happening in a classroom now“. This rule appears on the TeachMeet wiki in the organise your own section and the page was last edited by Ewan McIntosh (one year ago according to the wiki history tab?). The rule appears to have been interpreted to mean that ’YOUR TALK MUST BE ABOUT EXPERIENCES OF WORK IN CLASSROOMS.’ … well, that’s what was copied and pasted by someone on to the Falkirk TeachMeet page and very recently on to the new East Lothian page. On the face of it, therefore, it seems quite controvertial to allow people who are not currently in class to talk ……. and to talk about about things that are not actually happening right now. But in our defence, the decision was made by something Ewan said when he commented on John Connell’s post mentioned earlier:

“…….Perhaps what’s required additionally to the realists’ innovations of TeachMeet is that equally essential headspace to think what would happen if? Let’s call it DreamMeet. You must talk about things that are not happening in classrooms We could have some fun reversing some of the TeachMeet constraints, and it would give me an excuse to put my head back around this particular unconference’s door!”

So – I hope that what we manage to do with Falkirk Teachmeet ‘09 is to have a mixture of things that are happening in real classrooms right now …. and a bit of that ‘DreamMeet’ proposition thrown in for good measure:-)

It’s now 2 months since I wrote a post about how I was ‘toying’ with the idea of arranging a TeachMeet event here in Falkirk – and a lot has happened in that short time. In a couple of weeks, almost 60 people will come along to Carronvale House to take part, and many teachers from Falkirk will have their first experience of this new style of CPD (some of them have also volunteered to share teaching experiences with others in a 7 minute presentation).

I’ve been reading on twitter that others have also been contemplating organising a local TeachMeet, and some have asked me about the practicalities of planning such an event.  This post is a summary of how the initial idea developed.

When I mentioned the possibility of having a TeachMeet in Falkirk, Cassie Law was very keen. She’d already attended the TM Student edition (where she gave a 7 minute talk) and was sold on the whole idea. Later, we mentioned it to another Falkirk teacher, Richard Olyott - so then there were three

Soon after that, a colleague at work suggested that the idea might be of interest to the primary ICT co-ordinators. We meet with the representatives from each primary school here three times a year. Initially, I was a bit concerened that they’d think that the notion was a bit bizarre … teachers giving up their own free time to attend a CPD event that had been organised by other classroom teachers. I came up with the idea, however, of introducing them to two great free online tools that I suspected they would find useful in their classroom practice at the same time – that way, if TeachMeet wasn’t for them, they’d have gotten something out of the short presentation. The two tools were Prezi.com and the great random name picker tool (traditionally used at all TeachMeets) – both did in fact prove to be a success as they went down a treat

The Prezi I made to introduce the TM concept is included below:

 At that time, there was no date set for a TeachMeet event in Falkirk. At the Scottish Learning Festival TM in September the three Falkirk ‘pioneers’ met Nick Tait and Peter Graham, two other interested Falkirk teachers. During an interval the participants were asked to make a promise to do something as a result of having attended that TM. We publically announced on twitter  that the Falkirk event would go ahead on the evening of one of our November in-service days. The following day, Nick Tait posted the details on the TeachMeet wiki and the challenge was issued – there was no going back!

After that, we spent a couple of evenings discussing things on Twitter and decided that the best thing would be to meet up again in person. One of the items on the agenda was a possible venue -and finding the ideal place was proving to be the biggest challenge. Just before our October break, however, I telephoned Carronvale House in Larbert, a venue that Falkirk Council have used in the past for their annual ICT Fair. On paper, it appeared to ‘tick all the boxes’. It’s about a 10 minute walk from a train station where trains arrive directly from Stirling, Glasgow and Edinburgh (some people from Glasgow had already signed up on the wiki and had requested that the venue be close to a train station), is minutes drive from the motorway, has wireless and wired internet connection, charges half price for evening hire, provides food, has a ‘bring your own bottle’ policy (and even supplies the glasses).

One of their rooms was available for hire that evening, so after consulting the others via email, we decided to just go for it and book it there and then ….  and worry about paying for it afterwards

During the October break, I emailed Anne from Steljes and asked if there was any chance of sponsorship, and on the same day that she got back to me, Con Morris from the National CPD Team got in touch via twitter to say that they were also going to provide sponsorship. Ross, Louise and John have agreed to support the event as well.

Ben was  interested in attending a TeachMeet event after hearing about the notion via a conversation with Tom Barrett . I discovered this after reading this twitter post by David Noble:

David’s reference to the fact that some of the people originally involved in getting TeachMeets going would be attending the Falkirk event motivated me to ask  John Johnston to chair the Falkirk TM and I’m ‘mega pleased’ that he has agreed to do this. It’s also great that my line manager supports the event and gave permission for me to contact all Falkirk schools via email.

It’s been quite a journey organising the first Falkirk TeachMeet and this post has only told half the story -  I’ll publish now and save the rest for Falkirk TeachMeet Update – take two

Before I meet with the children, I need to decide on the purpose for the ePortfolios, and what sort of template design would be appropriate. I’ve already decided to use the basic PBworks academic workspace with the children because they are familiar with the layout so don’t need instruction on how to use it. The children are also familiar with a number of free online tools and how to embed these in to a wiki. As I’m not based in the school at the moment, I think it’s important that a teacher there is involved in the project. The class teacher isn’t familiar with using any type of online spaces, but Evelyn W, who is currently teaching art in the school has just begun to look after the Carronshore Blog, and is keen to be part of the ‘experiment’.

Before deciding on the structure of the ePortfolios, I’ve done a bit of background reading (again) and come up with some ground rules for myself. These ideas are taken from a variety of sources and are not listed in order of importance:

• The first page should contain an overview of the eportfolio and provide an explanation of the overall goals.
• Reflection should be the ‘heart and soul’ of the ePortfolio
• Be wary of  learners focussing to much on technology skills, thereby puting less emphasis on the content
• Guidelines as to what is to be included shouldn’t be too prescriptive
• The children should feel they have ownership of the ePortfolio
• There should be a structure in place, but this should allow freedom for creativity
• The learning takes place in the constructing of the ePortfolio, rather than in the end product
• Children need to be introduced to the concept and given clear reasons for constructing an ePortfolio
• Children should be given regular and useful feedback on their reflections

I also think it would be beneficial for me to revisit my own experience of using online spaces with upper primary stage children. These spaces were not ePortfolios – but I think that parallels can be drawn.  At the time, background reading helped me to gain a clearer insight and the thoughts that follow have been influenced by; Buckingham, Stern, Lafferty, Green and Hannon – and others………….. that’s the disclaimer bit (I’ll not refer to them individually here).

Every primary 7 pupil was given the opportunity to personalise their individual blogs. The children chose their own theme and created avatars. This helped them to gain a sense of ownership of their on-line spaces - they were allowed to play and experiment with them.  They were, in fact, testing out different versions of current and possible identities Up until then, the main audience for their online spaces was themselves, but they were also eager for peer approval during that stage.

So - when setting up the ePortfolios for the primary 6 children, Time will need to be given so that the children can customise their wikis. There won’t be as many themes to choose from, but they will be able to use various online tools to help them establish ‘ownership’. For example, activities such as making vokis and designing weemee characters might be useful here.

 Once their new online spaces were ‘designed and furnished’, the children were free to choose the content of their blog posts and wiki writing. The informal learning that took place happened primarily by means of experimentation rather than by following external instructions and directions.

Although, the ePortfolios will be more structured than the blogs and wikis were, the children will be involved in the planning stage so that they can have a say as to what that structure should look like, and as to what sort of content should be included. 

  Guidance was given by providing a sense of online audience by submitting comments on the children’s posts regularly. Offline, new interesting posts were shared with the children. This had the effect of influencing the others to add to their own blogs – often on a similar subject. They acted as role-models for each other. The children were asked if sharing their online writing in this way helped them to get to know each other better:

• “In our blogs, we’re allowed to write about what we  want to write about, so we’ve got to know each other better”
• “Some people in class don’t talk very much, but I can read their blogs and find out more”
• “I feel as though I know my friends even more now because of what they write on their blogs”
• “I like when we read the stories that people in our class have written on their wikis, and how good they are”
• You get to know what peoples thoughts and dreams are through their stories on their wikis”

By adopting a similar approach, I hope that it will provide opportunities for reflection and self-assessment …  key ingredients for building successful ePortfolios. I also hope that this sense of audience will increase motivation.

I suppose that an important difference between the blogs and wikis that I’ve used with children in the past and the ePortfolios that we’ll set up soon, is the clearer motive for creating them. This  will be discussed at the outset. Goals will be set initially to help establish a sense of purpose.

I hope to have my first meeting with the children next week and when I get the ePortfolios up and running, I’ll give a wee update as to how things are going at the TeachMeet Falkirk event next month!

“Thanks for the response to my students on using mobiles in school (see http://is.gd/42taB) Anyone else want to add their thoughts?”

When I visited David’s post, I was reminded of a post I’d put on the Carronshore blog a while back (2007!). I added a comment to the discussion:

“Interestingly, I once asked a primary 7 class what good uses they could think of for using a mobile phone in class. They brainstormed in groups and we came up with this ‘bubbleshare’ presentation (I’m hoping the link will work when I press the publish button).

http://carronshore.edublogs.org/?s=mobile+phones

I’m so glad I found your post, because it reminded me that I only have a short while left to rescue the children’s pictures before Bubbleshare disappears …. I also noticed that the actual bubbleshare ’show’ has been viewed 12568 times. I’ll think it deserves to be put on another webspace and shared again ”

When I logged in to Bubbleshare, I saw this message:

Following the instructions, however, wasn’t as straight forward. For a start, I couldn’t find the “Download album” link – and, anyway, I wasn’t really that bothered about rescuing the pictures, but I liked how we’d summarised each poster in the speech bubble comments. Then I thought about using Screentoaster to try to retrieve our efforts … after all, 12560 views must mean that the slideshow was useful to quite a few people . I did try using the SMART recorder tool, but screentoaster is better quality, and has the added bonus of allowing users to upload videos to their own site, so there’s no need to find another host. Once it’s uploaded, the embed code is available. So here’s our rescued ‘Mobile Phone For Educational Use’ video – well done Primary 7 (class of 2007!)

We have quite a few presentations hosted on Bubbleshare that have had 100’s of views and a number with 1000’s, but there was only one other that had hit the 12000 mark like the ‘Mobile Phone’ one, so I decided to save it, too. The quality is maybe not as good as the Bubbleshare ones, but as JV took these pictures, they’re safely backed up at home .

Although niether the Bubbleshare or the newly saved Screentoaster ones capture the moment as clearly as the originals do, I’m pleased that so many people viewed the presentation. It was a great teaching moment when I shared them with the classes at Carronshore the day after the eclipse.