THIS BLOG IS MOVING!!!!

Soon we will be moving this blog onto another domain and onto our own servers so we can enjoy all the other features and benefits of wordpress…. polls, more multimedia, podcasting, etc.

You can get a preview of the work in progress and update your blogrolls and feeds at: http://blog.prometheanplanet.com

Schools and Creativity

Professor Ken Robinson writes about creativity and learning and his keynote from the TED Conference has started to acquire cult status among the creative community. His story will resonate with many of the musical or artisic ilk – and it is hard to not be touched by his final message about a young dancer.

While some may disagree with his views of schools, special needs and behaviour – it is well worth the 20 mins to see what he has to say:

Teaching Programming with Alice on an Activboard

If you want to teach computer science principles to kids – do try and check this out…

http://www.alice.org

From here you can download a free program from Carnegie Mellon Uni. that lets you create and control objects and characters in 3D worlds.

It is clearly very powerful for teaching the fundamental basics of computer programming (if you do not know about geeky, programmer type things like classes, events, properties, variables, parameters, functions and methods – you will after an hour or so with Alice). Being completely visual it helps make complete sense of the basics of programming – and is stunning on the Activboard – it really make kids want to jump up, interact with it and make it all work….

For example, in one scenario there are characters such as a Pharoah (such an object is called a Class) and in that class are all the bits that make him up – e.g. Head, Body Limbs, Crown, etc. With a combination of drag and drop and pull down menus, all operated easily on the Promethean Activboard we could program the Pharoah to do almost anything…

There are even special ‘methods’ such as ‘think’ or ‘talk’… so that it can be used to create an interactive storyboard like a movie.

Within minutes, seven year olds had mastered the basics and created their first adventure. The software even lets you save your work as a webpage so others can see it and see the code that was used. Here is the first attempt (for some reason the speech and thought bubbles are not working as we expected online – but they will in your class). You can also see the programming used on the web page

http://www.zen57329.zen.co.uk/Pyramid_Adventure/Pyramid_Adventure.html

You may need some extra plugins to download to view it, but the webpage has all the details and they are fairly straightforward.

Interesting use of Activboard, Activslate and Activote in HE Art and Design

Leeds College or Art and Design (where Damian Hirst first threw a dead sheep off the roof in the name of Art!) has taken on Activclassroom technology and found a range of very interesting ways of using it in a HE context.

Already a leader in innovative use of learning technology – the college have their own Private Second Life learning island – they have innovated in their deployment of the Promethean technology and looked at how the technologies can work together. They have even developed a “Virtual Activboard” and response system that has proven immensely popular among the many educational institutions using Second Life as a collaborative Learning Environment.

A key idea has been in making the Activboard part of the student’s “creative toolkit” – providing focus groups and teams with a “shared digital surface” to brainstorm ideas on to storyboard ideas. Critiques and peer review of student work – a key element of the learning process – is greatly enhanced with Activboard’s 96″ Widescreen display and great use is made of the screen recorder and annotation tools to capture feedback from the group and lecturers live and make them available online for on iPods for student review minutes later.

Much of their work is blogged online and  there is a great example of an Activboard being used to control an immersive 3D environment using the pen and students describing the design decisions they made at the DDM Collective blog.

Annabeth Robinson at LCAD highlights the value of “authentic feedback” – She says; “The screen recorder makes for a clear capture of the whole critique – everything from the voices, demonstrations and questions is captured so that students have a far richer report on which to base their responses. A paper critique is open for subsequent interpretation and misinterpretation. Capturing the group discussing the work live, digitally is a massive benefit for learners.”

Handheld Learning 2007

One of the key events of recent years has been the Handheld Learning event. Focusing on mobile learning with devices and the opportunities presented by ubiquitous access to the internet, it raises and explores many issues that educators will have to deal with in coming years.

I was lucky to be able to present at this event with a Promethean colleague and we ran a workshop that covered all the ways that the Promethean Activboard could work with devices. Many of the ideas in the blog made it to the presentation – using images from phones to using the Activsoftware on Ultra-Mobile PCs (UMPCs)

As well as the technical tricks and techniques some other interesting Promethean technology was presented – incuding the ‘VR’ versions of Activote – basically Activate that floats on the screen of a laptop, PC, UMPC or Nova5000 student computer.

Flipcharting on a Samsung Q1 UMPC

A Q1 is an ‘ultra mobile PC’ – basically a tablet PC that is slightly smaller and that runs a full version of Windows XP…

With a battery life of around 2 hours it has not quite got the stamina for a whole day out of the class – but for a focussed hour or two it is perfect.

Because the Q1 runs a full version of Windows that means it can run the full version of Activstudio and Activprimary – creating what is perhaps the ultimate PC based student creativity tool imaginable for your Activclassroom. Better still, everything the kids make is completely compatible with your class based setup and ready for sharing with the class as soon as you get back – saving hours in managing files and file formats to make a class display.

Here’s what we did – we created a ‘digital worksheet’ as a group activity on the Activboard for our field trip to the River Lune.

Task 1) We used Google maps and the Activstudio camera tool to snap an aerial view of the bridge where we would be starting our trip into the flipchart. A quick note asked the children to draw the bridge using Activstudio’s pens and drawing tools and mark the location where they made the drawing on the map.

Task 2) Invited the children to explore the use of the Activstudio sound recorder and digital camera (the Q1 does not have a camera – but pics were easily bluetoothed to it from a mobile phone and a Fujitsu Siemens EDA) to describe what they found at the riverbank.

Task 3) Involved visiting Ruskin’s view in Kirkby Lonsdale and reading the plaque there. Acting in role – they had to pretend to be John Ruskin, declaring, at the end of the 19th Century the view to be “the greatest in England – and therefore the world!” using the information on the plaque to add detail to the characterisation.

Finally the children were asked to list what they liked about taking the mobile computer on the fieldtrip… It was clear that the full range of tools and multimedia organisation features of the Activ software made a big difference to the speed and range that work could be done – the simple to use sound recorder being particularly noted but one final comment was – “Paper has no batteries to run out!”

Highly recommended… and extremely motivating for the children. Their capability with the technology is astounding.

If you can use Activstudio – then this is an easy way to get kids working independently with mobile learning technology. It only takes a few minutes to mark up flipchart pages with tasks and ideas on the Activboard and transfer them (using Bluetooth, a VLE a USB stick or something like RedHalo) to the Q1s

Google Docs – Live Document Collaboration on your Activboard

This neat video (a lesson idea in itself) highlights how the latest Google docs application offer a way for students in a classroom with net access and an e-mail address can collaboratively create a document on the Activboard.

After the lesson – the students can continue the activity, perhaps collaborating with each other at home (the Google Docs has a secure chat room built in) to construct a presentation for when they next get together as a group.

Google Earth looks skyward!

Google Earth needs renaming…to Google Galaxy.. The latest version lets you view the sky above as well…

Search for constellations and stars, animate the orbit of the planets – or if you are feeling ambitious – perhaps simulate how early navigators used stars to cross the oceans!

For those of us living in the Northern Hemisphere a visit ‘down under’ can be surprising – I remember my first night camping at Mount Cook on the Southern Island of New Zealand – and waking up before dawn to an amazing starfield I simply had never seen before… It was like I had stepped onto an alien planet – no familar ‘plough’ pointing the way north!

Take it from me – you ain’t seen the milky way if you have not seen it from there!

Now I can relive the experience on my Activboard!

EDAs and ‘Beaming’ files in class… blending personalised and group learning

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!

Mothergooserocks – ‘Kids at the speed of creativity’

I found this and just had to post it… Nursery Rhymes done in the style of Sting (Stung), U2 (Me2), Madonna (Mad Donna), etc.   The site has a few online examples you might want to bring up on the Activboard for a different take on ‘music time’…

http://www.mothergooserocks.com/contest/mad_donna.htm

http://www.mothergooserocks.com/animations/head_and_shoulders.html

The Heads Shoulder’s knees and toes – is possibly the funniest thing I have seen this month…. watch out when George Bush joins in!