I have been having a great few weeks since my last post…
We have immersed ourselves in the ‘mobile learning’ agenda over the Summer break – and armed with two Fujitsu-Siemens EDAs, and a mobile phone with a camera we set out to see what approaches and ideas we could discover that we could apply with the Activboard for when term time came round.
In a previous post we had been discovering ideas for student phones.. but these EDAs really take it to a different level.Some of things we have been doing…
- Setting a series of tasks to do ‘in the field’ – the kids tick ‘em off as they complete them (they loved this and have not tired of it yet!) – and it beats a clipboard and soggy, ripped photocopy sheet anytime in the coolness stakes.
- Interviewing people (audio or video).. default 30 second time limits really focussed the conversation
- Photographing specific things in ‘photo scavenger hunts’,
- Drawing maps and diagrams of ‘real things’!,
- Setting waypoints and points of interest using GPS then estimating and working out distances between places,
- If we were near home or a WiFi hotspot – getting online to use Google maps or to answer questions as they arise… (we now know that Quinine comes from the bark of a tree – courtesy of Wikipedia – as we sat in a restaurant pondering what was it in tonic water that apparently had something to do with preventing malaria and my son says – why not find out now!)
All I would add though – is that the device itself does not magically make them start thinking of things to do with it… It was clear that without guidance and set tasks – kids see little use other than playing ‘Bubble Breaker’… The role of the teacher is most definitely safe! But what was surprising though was how often they were the ones who prompted us when we should use it to solve problems and questions as they arose as we travelled around…. ‘Why not use Google maps’ (when I got lost in the car), ‘why not go online’ – when we were intrigued by a rather bright and colourful caterpillar we found (apparently it was a tussock moth) – The kids were thinking ‘mobile connectivity’ as the norm – I was still having to remind myself!
So back to the Activboard – armed with a memory card full of stuff!
Wow… Bluetooth rocks… if used appropriately!
I have used a Bluetooth slate in the past and was pretty unimpressed with the performance in the classroom - it would suddenly decide to stop working or would have seconds where it would just go really sloooooowwwwww – but clearly the real benefit with Bluetooth is quickly and easily transferring files between devices. Pairing the EDAs to the laptop connected to the activboard was effortless.. and a simple click would see a file beaming its way to the screen.
What really made this so great was sending the incoming files straight to the Promethean Collections folders… When an incoming beam was detected – you are prompted to choose a location – just choose the Documents > Promethean > Activstudio3 > Shared Collections – and everything beamed to the PC can be found in the AS resource library for instant use in flipcharts – neat! The pocket painter app was particularly powerful – kids can create their own drawings, images, concept maps, etc. and simply beam them to the board as images… ready to drag and drop into the lesson.
Of course – with the Activboard working with devices that allows kids to contribute content – a whole new pedagogy is revealed… by beaming work to the board – THEIR work becomes the focus of discussion, group tasks such as making a flipchart magazine become easy – EDAs can get all the image and text work done independently and a few minutes beaming files – and you can organise all the content in a flipchart!
All those Export options in Activstudio suddently come into their own too… save the flipcharts as a powerpoint or PDF and you can view it in alls its glory on the EDA.. Go to Google Maps and focus on an area for a fieldtrip.. annotate a path on it using the activpen in desktop mode and save the combined page as an image – beam it – and on the EDA the kids have a simple map to follow!
The future is not personalised learning, with no class or group work – it has to be a clever blend of these amazing technologies!
