Livebrush – another painting application
Thanks to Cali Lewis on GeekBrief.tv for mentioning an application that I just had to go and check out once i saw it.
Livebrush is another free paint package, that should work well on an IWB. The size of the brush stroke depends on the speed you drag across the page, the faster you go the broader the brush stroke.
It runs on the Adobe Air platform, so if you can run applications like Tweetdeck then you should be able to run this no problem. Some school networks might block this though, so check if it’s OK to install.
It’s free, but there is a “pro” version for only $10 that gives some extra features. Check out Livebrush now.
I love these kind of applications. If you want more IWB tools for Art then check out my links on delicious at: http://delicious.com/dannynic/art+iwb
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Making Music with the Myna Sound Editor
I’ve written about Aviary before. If you haven’t seen it, Aviary provides a suite of online tools that allows you to take screengrabs and edit / host images. For free.
Twitter has been buzzing this week with talk of their latest addition to their application suite. They’ve called it Myna, and this time they are entering the world of music and audio editing.
Again, the application runs in a browser window – so nothing needs to be installed on your computer. Just visit the Aviary website, click on Audio Editor and off you go.
The software allows for multi-track editing. A wide range of audio loops are provided in different musical styles from Rock to Electronica.
In addition you can import your own sound files and also record your own straight into the application.
Using Myna, it would be very simple to produce your own Podcasts or music mixes, much in the same way that you could with Audacity or Garageband.
Once saved – you can “Mixdown” your creation and share it with others via the Aviary site. This would be a good way of hosting your podcasts, which can sometimes be tricky. Aviary provides a link to the hosting page, or you can use an embed code to put it into your blog/VLE.
Like this:
Myna is free, but you can upgrade to a pro account for $25 or so.
I’m very impressed so far. And will be interested to see how many people make use of this instead of something like Audacity. I do like the free music samples which can give students a very quick startup time if you just want them to look at how to mix different tracks together.
Here’s a quick guide that Aviary put together to demonstrate Myna:
Myna is well worth checking out. And the rest of the Aviary suite too. Go take a look now! http://aviary.com/
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What happens when you give children an iPod Touch?
I had the pleasure of meeting up with Leon Cych at Teachmeet SUKE last week, and he was telling us about the great things he’d seen when a class of kids were given an iPod Touch each.
Here’s his video which shows more:
You can view the video at Blip.tv here. The movie was filmed at Burnt Oak Junior School, Bexley, Kent.
The class have been using a class set of iPod touches for a couple of weeks. The video interviews the class teacher, headteacher, and students about the experience.
What comes across is hoe motivated the students are when using the iPod touches and how quickly they adapt to the new technology and focus on learning rather than playing. You can read more about the project at Leon’s Learn 4 Life blog.
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Digital Oscilloscope from Aartpack
Here‘s a nice simple resource that could be used to teach Sound and Waves in Science. There are several sites that show oscilloscope traces when looking at sounds, and this is another one. It’s produced by Aartpack, and they call it a Digital Theramin – named after the staple musical instrument of 50s sci fi movies (wikipedia info) 
What I like about this one is its simplicity. Plus it would work well on an interactive whiteboard to show how the shape of the sound “wave” changes as the pitch and volume changes.
Click the Menu button to show the options, and set it so that the Sine Waveform is set to a value, and the other 3 are turned off (no scale), like this:
Then if you click anywhere on the screen, a sine wave will be drawn and a note will be played (turn up your speakers!)
If you drag your finger/pen to the right the note will get higher and the waves will get closer together. Likewise drag your finger/pen to the left and the pitch will get lower.
If you drag up the screen the note will get louder, drag it down the screen and the note will get quieter. The amplitude of the sine wave will reduce.
This would be very nice to demonstrate sound waves at KS2 or Ks3.
The only drawback is that there is no way to set it up so it works without having to touch the board. I’d like to have seen a mode where you could place a button on the screen, and move that button up/down left/right to change the note. That way you could let go of the board to address the class and keep the note playing/displayed. I’m pleased to see it will resize to full-screen so you can make the resource fit the entire whiteboard.
There are more complicated settings that you can play with if you want to do some more advanced stuff, but the sine wave feature alone makes it a very handy bookmark to have for your Sound lesson! You can access the digital theramin/oscilloscope here.
There are other interactive resources on the Aartpack website too. It’s worth looking around the whole site to see what they have for your subject.
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TeachMeet SUKE – some links from the night
So I have had the weekend to digest the great event that was TeachMeet SUKE (09) held at the impressive Hop Farm, Tonbridge (below). Traffic problems on the M25 and A21 nearly thwarted my plans to get there. A 1 hour journey took me 3 hours! … thankfully I left very early with a plan to help set up, so I did get there in time, but missed the set up.
There were some fantastic ideas being shared – and if you want a full summary of all the sites and the tools used, then Mark Warner has written a handy summary here.
I gave a short, last minute talk about two tools that I’ve been playing with. One was Prezi and the other was the super countdown timer at Classtools.net, which I have written about before. The direct link to the Prezi I demonstrated is here.
Two things I really wanted to share here were demonstrated by James Barrett (twitter / website) which had a particular interest to Primary school teachers with IWB’s.
The first is a Whiteboard Dictionary taken from his ICTgames website. There are two versions one for KS1 and one for KS2. This is a visual bank of keywords, that pupils can click through.
The other was Premiership Words from the Kent NGFL website. A visually attractive and different way of using word banks and keywords with pupils. Neat.
A Delicious feed of websites shown on the night has been set up. You can view it here: http://delicious.com/tmsuke as well as watch the Flashmeeting replay here. You can also still access the TMSUKE wiki here.
Thanks to Stephen Lockyer for organising the Teachmeet. My company – Think Bank – was very proud to have sponsored the event. It was great to meet so many people that I had shared ideas with via twitter and blogs. Lovely to meet you all in the flesh.
Here’s to Teachmeet SUKE 10 (and also hopefully one day a TeachMeet Essex too)
Update – another write up, and some great videos from the night can be seen on Anthony Evans’ blog here.
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Did You Know 4.0?
The new version of the Shift Happens / Did You Know video has been released on YouTube. This one focusses on the changing media landscape.
Some interesting information here. Thanks to Karl Fisch and Scott McLeod for this latest version.
I think the shift to pocket devices is the most interesting. I use my Nokia N95 a lot to check my email, but I only use it on a few websites. Mainly to check football scores, twitter and facebook. It’s very tricky to log into sites using predictive text, so I avoid it.
But having played with my wife’s new iPhone, really shows how it could be done. I thought the N95 was cutting edge when it came out, but thats nearly 2 years ago now. It’s much more of a portable personal communication device – with easier text input, better browsing etc.
More and more students will be bringing these powerful devices into the classroom. How do we harness that technology? Should we make them switch them off? Or make use of them?
How pointless is a filtered school network when the kids can access any website they want in the playground? (I once heard a teacher state that there was more bandwidth being used in the playground than in the rest of the school)
We should be teaching and promoting responsible use of these devices. Yes there are risks of them being stolen, of students filming/photographing teachers and each other in inappropriate ways. What are your school policies for dealing with this?
Here’s a great blog post by Mark Prensky: “Should a 4 year old have an iPhone?“. Makes you think. My 4 year old niece loves my wife’s iPhone. She took to some of the games really quickly. She loved animal snap These kids are going to grow up with these devices in their pocket, in a much more connected world that we ever had when we were growing up.
How do we make the best, appropriate use of this tech? And educate safe use? I’m not proposing any answers here, but it is something we need to be addressing. We’re supposed to be preparing students for the future, but we seem to be doing it by living in the past and pretending this techological shift isn’t happening.
For some more interesting facts, the 2.0 version of Did You Know can be seen here. and also check out the Did You Know Wiki.
(And yes, I have a month to wait and I can upgrade to an iPhone. I could do it now but 02 never seem to have any in stock!)
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They Might be Giant Scientists
Following on from my post a few weeks back about Here Comes Science – the CD of Science songs from the band They Might be Giants, here’s another song from the CD. (via @BadAstronomer).
The song is called “Science is Real” and it would a good introduction to Science, or a good way to start off a discussion on scientific thinking
The CD is available from Amazon.com (and Amazon UK on import)
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TeachMeet Kent / Sussex 09
Just another reminder that if you are a teacher in the Kent/Sussex/South London regions then you really should consider attending TeachMeet SuKe on Friday 18th September.
It’s taking place at the Hop Farm, Paddock Wood, Kent on Friday 18th September from 7pm. (Map Link)
Like other Teachmeets it’s the usual mix of short presentations by teachers using technology in their classrooms. It’s a great chance to see what other teachers are doing – and maybe even share what you have done too! There will be a TeachEat meal after the event too.
You can find out more, and sign up, at the TeachMeet Wiki here. They are still looking for people to present so put your name down if you have been doing something exciting in the classroom that you’d like to share.
Hope to see you there!
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ActivInspire 1.2 Upgrade Now Available
News on the Promethean website that there is a new upgrade for Active Inspire. Version 1.2 is now available to download for free for all Promethean users (and also users of other IWBs)
Features include improved support for Visualisers, Dual Pen capability and some improvements to searching for resources from the library.
ActivInspire V1.2 now supports the creation and execution of Self-Paced Question Sets, available for use with ActivExpression devices.
The Screen Recorder now lets you record only an area of the screen, rather than the whole screen.
How to Upgrade
Existing ActivInspire Users
Upgrade through your ActivInspire dashboard by choosing View -> Dashboard, then select Configure and Check for Updates. It’s a 36MB file which you can then download and then run to update your version.
New ActivInspire Users:
Download the full version of ActivInspire from Promethean.
More about it here, on the Promethean Planet website along with the full patch notes.
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About Me
Danny Nicholson : Educator, Science teacher, ICT Consultant, PGCE lecturer, Author and Web2.0 / SMART Masters/ Interactive Whiteboard Trainer. Contact me for any training requests. 
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