Faceborked

Although I started this blog with the main intention to discuss Interactive Whiteboards, I would also like to use it from time to time to discuss other aspects of ICT.

I would like to have a little rant, if I may, about Facebook. Now I joined Facebook a few months back, initially with the idea that it would be a kind of Friends-Reunited kind of thing, or a way of keeping in touch with friends and family. And in that respect it's quite handy.

But there are several things that annoy me about it..

1. Viral Facebook applications. I have friends who sign up for just about every application there can be - from ninjas to jedis to pirates to what kind of celebrity/Simpson/household appliance are you?. And when they sign up to this, they send it to every single friend on their list. Now I then get a request to add the application, but there is no way I can see a sneak preview of the application unless I add it and give it access to my profile. They are bloody annoying.

Problem is, there's a whole new etiquette in play. And I am to polite to send them an email saying "stop spamming me"

2. Facebook Hoaxes. There are several of these doing the rounds. For example;

OMG, hit FORWARD if you want to see who looks at your profile the most. All you have to do is Forward the message and hit Ctrl F4.

or

Attention all Facebook membeRs .
Facebook is recently becoming very overpopulated,
There have been many members complaining that Facebook
is becoming very slow.Record shows that the reason is
that there are too many non-active Facebook members
And on the other side too many new Facebook members.
We will be sending this messages around to see if the
Members are active or not,If you’re active please send
to other users using Copy+Paste to show that you are active

This is the Facebook equivalent of the old "Bill Gates will give a dollar for every person this email is sent to" hoax which thankfully I haven't received for a while.

When I used to get hoax emails in the past I always referred the sender to Snopes.com which is a fantastic way of checking on all these hoaxes. I just despair that people think that forwarding an email will somehow reveal some new software feature.

Taking a look at some of my friends' message walls reveals they are getting this same message several times a day. One forwarded it to 280 of their friends! These messages are in essence a benign virus being propogated by people. The "virus" doesn't do any actual damage but like spam email the system is beginning to struggle under the sheer weight of all these useless messages flying around.

Basically - if you get one of these a) check that its a true and b) do not forward it on. Let it die.

3. Chain Mail Messages. Basically the same as above. These crappy messages that tell you to forward it on to 10 friends to get good luck or you will die/have bad luck etc etc. Chain Mails are an evil thing and I wish people would stop forwarding them on. They prey on people's superstitions and fears.

Like the hoaxes, please let these die. Don't forward them on

4. How many walls do you need? I had a wall, a super wall, a fun wall and could probably get a load more walls too if I wanted. I liked the idea of a simple wall I could leave messages for friends on. But then one got a super wall and left messages for me on that. Unless I joined Super Wall I couldnt read them. So I joined. Then someone joined Fun Wall and left messages for me on that. So I joined that. It's getting out of hand. And the bulk of what is left on there is the same old stuff that used to just be sent in an email. It's got to the stage where I have taken most of my walls down.

I guess a lot of this makes me sound like a boring old fart. But I just wanted to get some of my frustrations off my chest. And I haven't even started on the privacy aspects - and the fact that I get told about every message friend A sends friend B, even if I have no idea who Friend B is.....

Social networking can be a very effective tool. But it's a bit like the Wild West out there right now, and is in need of a little taming before it can be really useful.

Whiteboard Tips Presentation

Just wanted to flag up a great initiative by Tom Barrett who has produced a presentation about whiteboards using Google Docs.

Google docs allows a number of users to collaborate on a single document over the internet, which has a great many implications for how we work and share information. You can produce text files, spreadsheets and PowerPoint-style presentations.

The idea behind the Tom's presentation is simple - users are asked to give a tip for using their interactive whiteboard. You can read his thoughts about the presentation here.

Starting with 1 page, the resource has grown amazingly. Currently, there are 31 different tips for using your IWB. Most are general tips and a few are Smartboard specific.

You can see the presentation here. And if you want to add any tips, get in touch with Tom to get access rights and get to work!

Equation Balancer

I've produced a new Smart Notebook file to help with balancing equations.

The atoms at the top have been infinitely cloned so you can drag down as many as you require to show how many atoms there are on both sides of the equation. The arrow and plus sign can also be cloned.

You can download the file from the Think Bank website here. Look in the chemistry section.

I'll make versions for other boards soon. I did try making a Lynx version to test the software, but it kept crashing every 2 minutes so I gave up in frustration.

ShooFly

One of the highlights of the BETT exhibition for me was ShooFly. This is a small independent company, their stand was tucked away upstairs at the exhibition, but I was really impressed with the quality of their resources.

They have already won several awards, and last week also received some interesting news coverage which has helped to raise the profile of the company.

A lot of companies are beginning to produce electronic resources to be used on Interactive Whiteboards. But a lot of these are either the equivalent of a powerpoint presentation or bigscreen games. Both of these have a place in the market but what ShooFly have produced is something that is much more than this.

At a basic level they produce big books or animated stories using Flash to provide the interactivity. These on their own are great and some of them, especially the secondary resource Angel Boy is amazingly atmospheric and visually brilliant.

But what you also get with ShooFly resources is a massive bank of additional material for the teacher to use. Smart Notebook and Promethean Flipchart files of the book pages as well as clipart galleries of all the images used which can be used in any application. They also come with a teachers guide and activity pack that puts the resource into a cross-curricular context with links to many other subjects.

Shoo Fly Pie | Free Downloads via kwout

They also have a website called Shoo Fly Pie which gives some free resources which you can download to use on your own whiteboards. Well worth a visit.

My particular favourite is the one that caused all the fuss in the press last week: The Three Little Cowboy Builders. I had never seen anyone attempt to make a 3D PopUp book on an IWB before, and it works brilliantly. The story is very funny too with the Three Little Pigs building their houses before the Big Bad Housing Inspector comes round.... great stuff.

Heart Animation

As a former Biology teacher I am always interested in nice animations that can be used to demonstrate biological processes.

Thanks to Science Video Resources for posting this article about a nice heart animation. You can see the animation here.

Looking at the site that hosted this animation, I tracked back to the main teaching resources page. It's worth taking a look at that too since there are links to some other interesting Biology animations and movies such as Mitosis and meiosis.

On a related note, Science Video Resources also posted another link to a resource that shows circulation in different vertebrates, that is also quite interesting.

Tips for using your whiteboard

This list is based on the one originally produced by the Review Project a few years back. Sadly their website is no longer active so I will repost it here since it's a handy list of things to consider.

1. Make sure there is plenty of space both in front and to either side of your whiteboard so that you can move around it and access all parts of the screen easily. It helps to be able to stand to the sides of the board to minimise shadow and to be able to face the class without being dazzled by the projector.

2. If you can, install wall mounted speakers. This means that sound is of better quality and carries better across the classroom.

3. Use a font type and size that can be easily seen at the back of your classroom – Arial, Comic Sans and Sassoon Primary are recommended fonts for schools. Check your presentations are legible: stand at the back of your classroom and see if you can comfortably read it.

4. Try to use background colours other than white – pale pastel colours improve legibility and if you have a problem with glare from windows without blinds, try using black/dark blue and using white or yellow for writing. Avoid distracting backgrounds.

5. When viewing a website, if you press F11 on your keyboard it will remove all the toolbars at the top of the page, displaying your webpage in a much larger screen, making the site more visible. To bring toolbars back, press F11 again.

6. Look into using a wireless keyboard which can be placed near your whiteboard for times when you want to add text. This saves dashing back to your computer each time you need to enter text. A wireless mouse may also be useful when you want pupils to interact with the materials on the board without the disruption of moving them around the room.

7. If you are going to use a website in a lesson, add it to your Favourites / Bookmark it and then you can access it quickly and easily without typing in complex web addresses. Or add it as a hyperlink to a page in your whiteboard presentation.

8. Try and create documents where you do not need to scroll up and down – instead of 3 paragraphs on one page, add 1 paragraph to 3 pages. Space your work well to leave room for annotations and comments, which can be retained if you do not need to scroll up and down the document.

9. Get the whiteboard software put onto your home/staffroom computer so that you can prepare pages in advance of the lesson without having to be at the whiteboard. Save the files onto USB stick to bring into school or email to your school account.

Mercury Messenger

After travelling through space for 2 and a half years, the NASA Messenger probe has now arrived around the planet Mercury and is starting to send back images of the planets surface. The NASA Messenger website looks like the place to be to see these pictures as they are processed.

The site also contains many animations and movies of Mercury that would be great to use in a Science lesson on your Interactive Whiteboard.

For Students via kwout

Rub and Reveal

Here's a quick idea for using an interactive whiteboard. It could be a lesson starter, or form part of a plenary or could just be used throughout the lesson as a quick check on what the students have learnt so far.

This is something that always goes down well when I demonstrate it in training sessions as it is so quick and easy to do, but can be used in a range of different ways.

Watch the video here.

How do you do this?

1. Use the text tool to type some text on the notebook page
2. Use the pen tool to draw over the top of the text to hide it (you may want to make the pen thick and match the colour to the background)
3. When you are ready to reveal the writing, click on the Eraser tool and rub out the pen to reveal the text hiding behind it.

Another way of hiding the text could be using shapes to hide the text which can then be moved away or deleted when you want to reveal the word.

How might you use this?

This could be used as the example in the video for hiding labels on a diagram, getting the students to label it, and then revealing the correct answer.

It could also be used to hide the answers to questions given to the students on the screen.

A photograph could be completely covered in black pen, and then the eraser used to gradually reveal parts of the photograph, asking the students at different stages what they can see and what they can infer from what they see.

This is also a quick way of producing missing words activities - type or copy/paste in a block of text and instead of having to go through and delete the missing words and add spaces, just cover each word you want to take out with white pen. It's also easier to reveal the correct answer too.

if you want the Smart Notebook file with the above example of labelling David Beckham in French, then click here to download it.

(Footnote: apologies to any readers from across the sea if I keep calling it the rubber tool on the video. I try to call it the eraser, but over here we call it the rubber. I do know that word has different connotations over where, but just put it down to English eccentricity and go with it!)

The Plenary Circle

Here's a simple idea for using an Interactive Whiteboard for an end-of-lesson plenary activity. It's a very simple slide to produce;

1. Draw a circle and fill it in.
2. Lock the circle to the background.
3. Add text boxes with keywords from the lesson around the outside of the circle.

And thats it. At the end of the lesson, get different pupils to come to the board and pull in two words to complete the sentence "I have learned that...." For example "I have learned that body cells contain 46 chromosomes."

Every pupil should have some thinking time first to think of several combinations they could use before calling pupils to the board.

This could be made more involved by "chaining" the words so that one word is left behind for the next pupil to use... but this means more thought has to be put into the words provided by the teacher in the first place.

If the room layout makes it difficult to get the pupils up to the board easily, then it may be worth investing in a wireless mouse that can be quickly passed around and allow them to move the words themselves.

I have produced a quick video about this activity. You can view it here.

The Smart Notebook and Promethean file that includes this activity can be found on this page. Scroll down to the Biology section and download the Mitosis and Meiosis lesson.

Why change?

A little history first. Back in 1998/1999 the school I was working at The Cornwallis School, in Kent which was just starting to flex its muscles as quite a forward-thinking establishment in terms of its use of ICT. Our school was a pilot school for the Microsoft Anytime Anywhere Learning (AAL) project in which we gave 2 tutor groups or year 7 students a laptop each. When people were told we were kitting out 60 kids with laptops there were a lot of raised eyebrows and doubters that the scheme would have any benefits.

As part of the introduction to parents and staff, the Deputy Head gave a presentation that contained some excellent quotes from teachers and educationalists down the years complaining about every new development such as paper, fountain pens and ballpoint pens. It was a very effective argument ;)

I was reminded of that presentation the other day with a post on the blog Learning is Messy. I must learn to trawl archives before posting, because much further back is another post with all the quotes the Deputy Head used.

I'm going to repost them here since I really like them, and I am using this blog partly as a brain dump for myself so I know where to find things in the future.

Students today can’t prepare bark to calculate their problems. They depend on their slates which are more expensive. What will they do when their slate is dropped and it breaks? They will be unable to write!”
Teachers Conference, 1703

Students today depend upon paper too much. They don’t know how to write on slate without chalk dust all over themselves. They can’t clean a slate properly. What will they do when they run out of paper?”
Principal’s Association, 1815

Students today depend too much upon ink. They don’t know how to use a pen knife to sharpen a pencil. Pen and ink will never replace the pencil.”
National Association of Teachers, 1907

Students today depend upon store-bought ink. They don’t know how to make their own. When they run out of ink they will be unable to write words of ciphers until their next trip to the settlement. This is a sad commentary on modern education.”
The Rural American Teacher, 1929

Students today depend upon these expensive fountain pens. They can no longer write with a straight pen and nib (not to mention sharpening their own quills). We parents must not allow them to wallow in such luxury to the detriment of learning how to cope in the real business world, which is not so extravagant.”
PTA Gazette, 1941

Ball point pens will be the ruin of education in our country. Students use these devices and then throw them away. The American virtues of thrift and frugality are being discarded. Business and banks will never allow such expensive luxuries.”
Federal Teacher, 1950

For proper attributation, these quotes are apparently from David Thornburg’s book Edutrends 2010: Restructuring, Technology and the Future of Education (1992). There is another good blog post over at The Fischbowl that makes the same points.

This argument was taken further by Ewan McIntosh over at Edublogs over the recent news that a teaching union wanted students not to bring gadgets into school and stick with a pen. While I can understand that shiny new toys can be a distraction and there's a chance of bullying and having them stolen I can also see the benefits of embracing these technologies and putting them to good use.

I don't use a paper diary, I use my (rather battered) PDA. I set reminders to do things on that or on my phone. I have a poor memory for some things, so if I want to remember something (a web address in an article or the details of something I see while out shopping - I use the camera in my phone to take a picture of it to remind me later. I dump web addresses and good websites onto Del.icio.us or onto my forum. I use the technology to help me, why can't we educate the students to do the same?

I don't think I have much more to add to the debate that Karl and Ewan have already eloquently said, only to say I agree with their sentiments and to ask what if we had listened each time someone resisted new technology? Would we still be using slates and chalk?

Smart 10 @ BETT

Steljes ran a competition. Wear a Smart Tshirt around BETT and win prizes.

Then gather round the stand at 3pm.. they were mobbed :)

Improving my range

I've very much been a Smart and Promethean person when it comes to IWB's. I have occasionally had to train users on other boards such as CleverBoards and Hitachi/Cambridge Boards. I've always found the software for those two lacking, but I have usually been on older versions since I use whatever the school have installed at the time.

Thanks to some very nice people on the Hitachi and Sahara stands at BETT I know have copies of the latest versions of Lynx (for Cleverboards) and Starboard (for Hitachi) and I hope to be able to get my head around these in the near future.

Both have come a long way since I last saw them, and I would like to be able to develop some of my existing resources into these formats since it seems there is a lack of resources out there for users of these boards.

Watch this space, but it may be a while before I get a chance to do it.

BETT was great by the way. Just got back, and getting my breath back. Going up there again tomorrow afternoon. Write more later.

Pictogram and Jing

This was my first attempt at using a piece of software called Jing to record a mini-tutorial. The software worked pretty well and was quite painless. There's not many features, it records an area you choose and you can have a microphone on or off. That's it. But it's simple enough for me. it gives you a free video hosting account with Screencast to host the video on, or you can choose to save it and host it yourself.

It also takes screenshots, and the pics in the Art Attack post below were taken and automatically uploaded to Flickr using Jing.

Anyway, the best way of getting a feel for a piece of software is to use it in anger so I've made a tutorial that shows how you can very simply set up Smart Notebook to create a pictogram using the Infinite Cloner tool. I love using the Infinite Cloner for things like arrows to label diagrams and suchlike. Every time you click on an item it will be copied over and over again. it's great to do with images of coins for shopping tasks - drag out the coins to pay for an item that costs £1.63 or whatever.

One issue with Jing is that it seems to render the video actual size. So capturing a 800x800 area still produces a 800x800 video with no options (that I can see) to scale it down. Obviously putting that size video in my blog would totally bork the layout. So I'll just link to the video for now. I don't know if I am missing an option somewhere, so I'll have a play.

Until then click here to view the video.

Smart 10 Beta released

Looks like they've finally released the Beta version of Smart Notebook 10. The placeholder download page now seems to work and I managed to download something ;)

Haven't installed it yet. As far as I know it won't run alongside Smart 9 so I will have to remove the old version. I may try it out on an older laptop first to avoid messing up my desktop.

Visit the download page here.

The Notebook software 10 beta version is available until February 29, 2008, so you have plenty of time to get hold of a copy and evaluate it. Don't forget to send your feedback to Smart via the feedback forms to help polish the final release.

If you are going to download this, please be careful. This is a beta version and so will still contain bugs and will probably crash and freeze on you. You can't install it on the same computer as your Smart 9.5 install without taking the old version off first. Files made with the new version will probably not be able to be opened with 9.5.

I would suggest you install this on a different computer to your main PC that you usually use on the SmartBoard or use for lesson preparation. Only install if you are keen to play with the new features or want to help with the testing of it. Don't expect it to be release-ready.

Art Attack

The other day James, over at Teachers Love Smart Boards, linked to a great online drawing package called Imagination Cubed. Basically its a drawing program that runs in your browser. This is great as it can be used on any brand of IWB irrespective of the software you use on your board.

I'm a scientist, not an artist but I've always enjoyed using art packages on the IWB. I used to play with packages like Painter and Photoshop. Drawing with a mouse, or even a graphics tablet, is a real pain and it is so much easier to be able to paint with my fingers! After all an IWB is only really a HUGE graphics tablet!

A quick trawl around the web led me to a few other interesting drawing packages. There are a lot of them out there covering a range of painting styles. And the best thing is they are free! I love Photoshop but it is rather pricey!

A really nice one is Brushter, which is an abstract painting package. You can choose from a wide range of brush styles and different paint effects. Autocolour chooses a different colour paint each time, which should sound annoying but actually can give a nice abstract effect. You can even click an Auto button and have Brushter generate an abstract image on its own while you watch! Here's a little something I knocked up:

Another one I quite liked is ArtPad. It's much simpler than Brushter and only gives one style of paintbrush. You can choose colours, size and opacity though. Like Imagination cubed you can replay your painting from start to finish.

Finally, there is the much simpler online Colouring-in pages at TheKidszPage.com. You can choose from a range of different line drawings to then colour in. Again this is not as powerful as the Brushter one, but foundation pupils will love colouring in the pictures with their fingers!

Animoto

Thanks to Ewan at EduBlogs for linking to a great little resource called AniMoto. It creates professional-looking video slideshows from your photos. I am too tight to stump up for the full version yet, but I have been playing with the free version that lets you make short 15 second clips.

Here's my first video. It's taken some of my photos from my Flickr stream showing my ski holiday last year. It took about 5 mins to set up and about 5 mins for the whole thing to render. I like the finished result though.

It then gives you the code to embed it in your blog. I'm hoping this works and that below you can see the video.

Template Factory

One of the things on show at the recent ASE conference was a new website/portal called E-TC3. The name comes from Education = Teachers Collaborating, Communicating and Connecting and the idea is that this will become a portal that will house a wealth of resources for teachers and reduce the need for us to have to reinvent the wheel.

The driving force behind the project is Eugene Brunet, a deputy head on the Isle of Wight. I once did some work with Eugene on the early stages of the Eureka science scheme and was
impressed with his enthusiasm and drive. With him behind this project it could go far.

The project is in its early stages, but the bones are up there and its possible to see what they are trying to achieve. Initially it's starting with Science, but there are plans to cover other subjects in the future.

What I did really like, and is why its being written about here on my IWB blog, is the Template Factory. This provides a bank of ready-made templates for Word, Excel, Access and Powerpoint which give teachers a basic structure to then build on. There are resources for lesson starters/plenaries and many other useful files.

As I said, there's already some meat to get your teeth into her for now, but it is early stages so hopefully this portal will grow and grow and I wish them the best of luck with it.

Weather Kit

A quick post from the ASE conference to take advantage of the free internet in my hotel room.

I saw quite a lot of "interactive resources" today, but one resource I really liked was the Interactive Weather Presenting Kit from the Met Office.

It's not online, you need the CD-ROM. But you can apply for your own copy of the CD via the Met Office website.

This highly package is designed to consolidate weather and climate throughout Key Stages 2-4, and provides an ideal opportunity for the use of ICT in Geography. and Science. It uses Microsoft PowerPoint and comes with a range of master slides, four weather symbols sets, an image library and links to current weather data.

Just visit http://www.metoffice.gov.uk/education/resources/interactive_kit.html and fill in the form to get your own copy sent to you.

Talking Photo

This is rather bizarre, and quite cool. Make your photos talk. More info here.

Conference Season

January always brings with it the two main conferences that I go to.

This week its the ASE conference where I am hoping to find out what's new in the world of Science education. My focus this year is going to be Primary Science and I'm on the lookout for new software and resources. I'm keen to see how much visualisers and digital microscopes are these days. I have a cheap Digital Blue microscope and its quite nifty.

Next week its the BETT exhibition, this is the best time to see what the big IWB developers are up to - Smart 10 should be on show as well as Turning Point 2008. I'm also interested in trying to see what software developments the other IWB companies are producing and see if I can blag any demo copies to play with.

Hopefully I'll come back with loads of new ideas and a list of great stuff to share with you.

Interesting Sites

I've been going through my old bookmarks and been updating my del.icio.us list with many of these sites. I've been making a list for my Science ITT students by tagging them with PGCE, but any sites that are good for Interactive Whiteboards have been tagged with IWB. The IWB list will also appear to the right of this blog. I like the idea of del.icio.us since it makes sharing addresses of good sites really easy. Given the fluid nature of the Internet its much easier to maintain a dynamic list of addresses than just give out printed pieces of paper which very quickly get out of date or are missing new additions.

There are quite a few sites that I've added that are also worth a mention here.

One good site is ICT Games, which has many interactive flash games for Numeracy lessons. Since they are in Flash they can be used on any interactive whiteboard, or even used just with a projector.

An old favourite of mine is the Gorilla game. Hurl bananas at your opponents gorilla before he gets you!

For Science, there is a really nice free Diagram maker provided by the Association for Science Education. In addition Chemistry Diagrams gives a wide selection of clip art that can be captured and put onto your IWB presentations. Some nice animations too.

I'd also like to put in a plug for a website by a colleague of mine. Ros Milner has produced an excellent website for Art teachers called the Virtual Artroom. There are resources that cover the whole range of art teaching, but the Interactive Whiteboard area is well worth a visit to take a look at the case studies she's written.