Day 2 PIL Global Forum

The day started even earlier than planned. That's why the agenda is written on to remind me.

During day 1 I had meet and spent some time with the group of teachers I was working with.

My group are from left to right are Alinazim from Azerbaijan, Tahmeena from Pakistan, Saba from UAE and Kara from Sweden (Below). Unfortunately Jenny from Bolivia (and her translator, Daniela) didn’t make it to Washington.

These were all amazing educators in their own right. They had already won the national and regional forum competitions for their Virtual Classroom Tours of there projects.

We are called SERC 7. The name is from our visit today on our Learning Excursion. We were group 7 heading to Smithsonian Environmental Research Centre – SERC.

First though the was a keynote from Microsoft’s VP for Education, Anthony Salcito. Ollie Bray has a great post on this and it was a very powerful mood setter for the event.

Off to buses with our groups. Once we had found them…

The Learning Excursions were a range of information gathering trips. Some groups went to the Zoo others went to the Gardens. We one of 8 groups that went to SERC.

SERC is about an hour outside Washington. In fact its in another state, Maryland. We had a stunning drive out of the city on a beautiful clear autumn day. Due to the time in travelling we had lunch on the buses.

At SERC we had a background talk on what the work i that's done. One thing that really caught my attention was the Distance learning programme.

SERC have a mobile video conference (VC) broadcast unit. This means they can broadcast to any internet connected classroom in the world. Having used VC extensively I know that is is a very powerful media. Much more powerful than TV or YouTube as the pupils involved can ask questions and interact. Something more schools could take advantage of.

We were give several options to go and look at; from building an Remotely Operated Vehicle to getting out in a canoe into the bay. The group decided we would split up and cover as many of the activities as possible.

I attended a topic called Environment Builders. This, it turned out, was looking at demonstrations and doing a few activities looking at how animals have an affect on the environment.

For example, we used the SERC (Soon to be) downloadable resources on jellyfish body design to conduct an experiment about the affect that different body types have on the water temperature layering.

Then a sampling exercise to look at how the Scientists estimate what the populations are in the bay. Using mixed beans and statistics

and a final exercise on the affect of different types of plants and animals have on the amount of light.

We I liked about these exercises was that none of them required high tech equipment or resources but demonstrated real effects and phenomena in very real and practical ways.

It was then a few minutes breathing space as the groups gathered and I could actually take in just how beautiful the environment was that day….

…but no time to dawdle, it was back on the coach to talk with our groups as we headed back into Washington. This was a slower run as we  hit traffic. Therefore we were late for our next mentor session.

An Introduction to Coaching

Coaching and Mentoring is something we have been doing on Islay for several years. In fact only a few weeks before Mathew Boyle had done some work with our senior pupils on this.

To me this something that is a vital skill for all learners. A shared understanding of the language and process  of learning and be able to have positive conversations about learning.

I was surprised at how many of these great educators had not done any courses on this or were even aware of it.

On the timetable it shows that we had sometime………. actually we had homework. We had to go to our team members and apply the skills we had jut been looking at.

The feedback from lots of the Mentors was that teams got a lot out of the coaching conversations. In fact they wish they had had the conversations right at the start of the event as they made them think. Some even restructured the talks they gave because of the Coaching conversations. That's the power of these.

In the evening I decided to go with the group of mentors for dinner at Old Ebbit’s Grill rather than go with the national groups for dinner. I wanted to get to know people outside the formal sessions. This is exactly what happened. About 14 of us had a fantastic meal and amazing conversations about all sorts of things.

This was also the first time I had the 2 bottles of Whisky with me to share. A Bottle of Bowmore 18 year cask strength and a 16 year old Jura, also cask strength. The idea was that they would go further.

Everyone was very impressed. In fact our waiter for the evening, Kevin, was allowed to taste them. He had the most amazing descriptions of them for the group. A natural born poet I feel.

Conversations continued back at the hotel in all sorts of ways and in all sorts of topics ……….

Pre work and travel

A few weeks before travelling to Microsoft Partners In Learning Global Forum I had attended three livemeets. These set the scene for being a Mentor and also set some collaborative tasks to get the mentors working and talking together.

This proved to be rather difficult for me as these took place twice a day to cover the globe but on my local time they took place at 6am and 4pm. I couldn’t get access to the live meeting at school as the live login is blocked. I did make it home for one of the 4pm times but I had to attend (Is that the right word?) the 6am meets. Fortunately these did not involve me being on camera so I could be ‘relaxed’ about my image. The last one though took place after the clocks changed, and yes you guessed it, I arrived for the end of the meeting.

I enjoyed using OneNote 2010 hosted on Skydrive to collaborate with others and answer some questions. The really interesting part is OneNote web apps and live sharing on that.

 

Getting too and from Islay can be an adventure. Yes we are 2 hours on a ferry from the mainland and yes that ferry is over 2 hours drive from the nearest city (Glasgow) but by plane its less than 30 minutes to Glasgow. And that's what I did on the morning of Saturday 5th November.

A chilly but bright day and a stunning flight across from the west. I could see right up into the highlands with its high ground covered in fresh snow.

I still had another day to go before I headed south. Some last minute shopping like a new kilt pin to go with my new kilt.

I was fortunate in that while I was in Glasgow I had the oppertunity to attend a Teachmeet. This was teachmeet EPA (Enterprise Practitioners Association). This was a great event bringing a whole load of new people to TeachMeets and then to Twitter. Loads of great ideas as always at a TeachMeet.

I spent the night visiting my Father and set off to Glasgow airport on a very foggy Glasgow Airport. Several flights were already delayed. I was very nervous as I checked in. I needn’t have worried my Heathrow flight was on time as the aircraft was already on the ground.

So far I had been traveling on my own but I had planned to meet up with old friend Ollie Bray. Ollie was attending the Global Forum as a judge and was traveling to Heathrow from Edinburgh. I was also going to meet 3 other people traveling from the UK that I had never met before. I knew I was going to get on well with everyone when we arranged to meet in the bar. Though I must admit that myself and Ollie were sitting on one side of a wall while the others sat the other side of the same wall and it took a while to realise what was happening…….. it did set a tone.

If you want to get involved with the Partners In Learning UK go to http://uk.partnersinlearningnetwork.com

What the Wiki!

Over the last 3 weeks I have been helping develop the beginnings of a Wiki based around the use of the Samsung Q1 UMPC in Education. This is growing quickly but it need more people involved even if its to ask about what different people are doing with the technology.

http://jamessamsung.wikispaces.com/

Technorati Tags: islay, education, samsung, UMPC, Q1, wiki

Google Sketchup of Islay House Square

We have been using Google Sketchup for quite a while now. Here is an example of some of the work.

 

Video: Islay House Square in Sketchup

The work is all the S1 pupils from one class. The pupils split themselves into groups. They decided on what they needed to do. They got the plans of the square and shared the work out amongst them. They worked out the sizes from the scale on the plans (1:400). They asked if they could go and visit to take photo's of the elevations. Transferred the images over onto the PC's and started to edit them-They wanted to remove the people and the cars they didn't want. They took the images and used them the create the textures.

6 of the year went to the Young Engineers Conference in Glasgow last Friday and while their they took the different models of the various buildings and placed them into a single model and created the animation. They then exported the animation as an AVI file and made the video in MovieMaker.

All this before they get a hold of the UMPC's!

What do you think?

PS I am giving presentation on this at SFL (SETT)

Technorati Tags: sketchup, islay, argyll, education scotland, education, google sketchup

Other changes - Multi-age classes

As part of the changes in the Age and Stage restrictions we have also decided to review how the classes are made up.

Traditionally subjects have been taught as a single age group but multi level in courses. Here, because the school roll being 250 (Yes, that's all the age groups form S1 - S6) we were either getting very small classes at a single level or a very wide, multilevel range.

We started to think about this and came to the conclusion that we could teach classes at a particular level and leave the age open.

Therefore when we removed the age and stage restriction we opened up classes to any age. This means that in the 1st layer classes have mainly S3 and also some 5th and 6th years.

Next year, now that the S3's have completed the first 5 courses, S3 and S4's will be selecting the same level of courses. By the end of S4 they will have completed 10 subjects before moving onto either Higher courses or more courses at the appropriate level, or a mixture of both.

This has created more space in the timetable.

The social side of mixing age groups would be a major issue in a larger schools but in a small school this almost disappears as the pupils mix naturally.

This is very much a quick summary. Please feel free ask questions

Technorati tags: islay, school of ambition, eduation, ACfE, education scotland

Architecture Centre Network -ACN

From Blog Pics

At the end of this month I am off to London. Myself and Tassy Thomson from The Lighthouse. We have been asked to run a workshop for Architecture education staff from around the UK.

This is not the first time myself and Tassy have worked together. In fact we are old friends.

The invite came about from working on a workshop last summer in Finland courtesy of The Alvar Aalto Institute. Where we developed resources to allow young people to explore the built environment. I suggested using ICT (no surprise) to record what the young people experienced.

Therefore we have asked to give examples of cheap ways of using ICT to work with young people.

One thing I am keen to do is to get the pupils on Islay to get involved. I have ask 3 pupils to demonstrate the use of sketchup/Google earth via Video Conference and a bridge to the Internet.

Tassy has suggested getting the participants to come up with an educational project proposal using the skills introduced during the workshop and getting feed back from the pupils on Islay. I think this a great idea. It has several outcomes. The first and most obvious is that the participants will take away some real and practical but to me the idea of pupils on a Scottish island telling people in London how to do something and having their opinion listened too is a huge psychological switch. This will boost the confidence of the pupils and make the big city people think wider in how and who they work with.

The app's we will introduce are:

 

Sketchup 3d modeling app which can place buildings into

Google Earth

Picassa Cataloguing app but has some simple image editing

The Gimp full blown image editor – Shame about the name

Audacity – powerful sound editor

Freemind – mind mapping app

Photostory – simple app to create sound, image based video

Westpoint Bridge Design – engineering bridge solutions

Pre installed Windows

Moviemaker

Pre installed Apple

GarageBand

iMovie

and

Useful websites no particular order

http://www.handheldlearning.co.uk/ General use for using mobile ICT

http://www.createascape.org.uk/ Great to start off on how to

http://www.geolit.org/RockvilleCSI/ Cemetry Scene Investigation Pupils investigating their own community

http://www.enquiringminds.org.uk/ I love this way of working

http://www.spokenword.ac.uk/padova.php Picked this up at BarCampScotland

http://bridgecontest.usma.edu/ Bridge engineering site

http://www.teachers.tv/ Lots of uses to link to the curriculum

http://www.creativecommons.org.uk/ understanding creative commons

http://www.flickr.com/ of course!

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wiki A great example of a wiki

http://www.wikispaces.com/ a space to create a starting wiki Maybe for the participants on the day

 

So what have I missed out on? Anything I should add in?

 

Technorati tags: islay, argyll, education scotland, architecture, education, ACN

UMPC Text Entry

I have found some great video's from Craig Pringle from New Zealand. It shows some of the use of text entry on a UMPC

Another interesting thing which I picked up was in PC Pro Magazine. A small filler on the fact that the writers at the magzine have been buying Graphics tablets to use with Vista PC's. The reason for this is that Vista has tablet ability built in. Therefore they get full inking with a cheap graphics tablet

 

Technorati tags: islay, inking, education scotland, umpc, tablet PC

IHS Web Site

I have Just uploaded a load of revision materials to the IHS website.

Some are zip filles with loads powerpoints and word files inside them

Some are web pages such as Ray Husthwaite's excellent Biology note's

Some are PDF's

I hope they are useful

BarCampScotland - Chaos theory in action

Its taken me a few days to digest this and reflect on it.

Last weekend I was in Edinburgh for Scotland's first BarCamp.

Its a very interesting concept. Get lots of people together and let them go for it. Survival of the fittest. Loudest voices get heard. Please feel free to add other cliche's.

As a naturally reticent person (Yes I am! and stop laughing) its not a position I am fully comfortable with. Having said that I really enjoyed the events.

I say events because really their were 2 events running. One was a Techy one. This had lots of people speaking a fluent language. This is a language which I know the pigeon version of... I speak pigeon Geek. The other event was based around teaching & Learning. This firmly where I placed my talk. I should also apologise to DigitalKatie for over running my part of our shared slot.

The presentation seemed to go down well. Here are my slides

These 2 events did over lap at times. I witnessed this first of all with Robert Jones neatly switching the emphasis of his talk on Scotedublogs to the full language of Geek on Rails.

Another place I witnessed this crossover happen was in Tess Watson's presentation on Glow. Afterwards we got talk with some guy's (Sorry I can't locate them in the Wiki) who are developing access for youths in Glasgow. They instantly saw that Glow could provide that space for them.

One of the most interesting talk was by Dr. Hazel Hall. She was talking about the use of Wiki's in her course's. I enjoyed David Colarusso's idea of using YouTube to share physics films (Phylim!)

One I wish I had seen was Morna Findlay's. On how to interest pupils in Computer Science.

The biggest crossover was in the Bar (Surprise, Surprise).

Talking to lots of individual's and seeing how what we are all doing can crossover. I can see so may uses for Textensor in education.

BarCamp really is chaos in action. Frustrating and exhilarating.

Technorati tags: barcampscoland, education scotland, islay, edinburgh

Wireless Projector

From Blog Pics

I have been playing with a Panasonic Wireless Projector this week.

It is a great piece of equipment. It worked perfectly with our network. Once I realised how to configure it properly (It wasn't difficult, I was a bit slow)

The only problem I have is getting Google Earth to show up over the wireless but I am hoping to have an answer to that tomorrow. I suspect its an OpenGL setting I need to find.

The way the wireless projector works with the internet (I think) is that you use the controlling PC to call a page and that page is sent to the projectors IP Address. It works well.

One question I have at the moment is, if the projector is fixed in place thn can I save wireless bandwidth by using a projector which is hardwired through the CAT5 network?

I suspect, if such a projector exists, it would mean that any media called would be transferred via the hardwire making it much more efficient.

Does anyone have an suggestions, ideas, comments?

 

 

Technorati tags: islay, school, scotland, education scotland, projector, panasonic, school of ambition

When do changes stop being Pilots?

When I talk to people about our project they usually say "So, is this a pilot?" My answer is the same, "No its not a pilot, its a change to a way of working."
As Nicholas Negroponte says at TED, we have moved past pilots. So when does a pilot shift to being a change?
I feel that we have reached a pivot point and we are ready to shift our perspective from paper with some electronic based material to electronic based material with some paper.
The plans we are putting place are all their to support education and the curriculum. Nothing is particularly new or radical.Its using it as the main delivery medium.
As I usually say say at the end of my entries...... so what do you think?
I really mean this. Please come back with comments, criticisms, observations, points, questions
thanks
Ian

Technorati tags: glowscotland, school, education scotland, argyll, islay, umpc

Conference XP

As Andrew Brown as said Collaboration is a vital component to a curriculum for excellence.
I think this is where the Apps that come with IWB's have had the biggest advantage. They have been exciting and active. Where presentations from PowerPoint have been scripted and lifeless. In the Campus Technology online Mag they talk about breathing the life back into Classroom Presentations. Its an excellent article.
The Client we have been assessing the use of is Conference XP. Though I am really excited by the whole Glow shared whteboard space.
The concept of everyone in a classroom having access to the same space at the same time is very exciting one and one of the main reasons for this project...... but not the only one.
Technorati tags: islay, glowscotland, classroom collaboration, argyll

Choosing Tablets

Tablet PC's are much more expensive than an equivalent laptop. So why not just get a load more laptops?
The reason for going for Tablets is that they are the main computer for that member of staff. The teacher can prepare work, simplify the administration, as they can do with a laptop but with a Tablet PC they can use it for a secondary job.
We decided to use the tablet to act as an interactive board (Along with a projector of course). As the teacher writes on the the tablet it appears on the screen. The teacher is not in the way of the projector and the image can be as big as the screen allows. The teacher can bring in video, sound ........ in fact anything that the interactive whiteboard can do a tablet can do as well. With the added advantage of not being limited by the size of a board.
This then makes the total cost (Tablet and Projector) less than the cost of an IWB (Interactive Whiteboard), projector and computer to run it. It also means that the technology much efficiently used. Less time sitting switched off as its used for more than one purpose.
Our next stage is to install wireless projectors. These will then mean that the signal from the tablet will be carried to the projector without a cable. Freeing the teacher to be anywhere in the classroom.
Once the pupils have the UMPC's then anyone's work can be put up on the screen.
A truly interactive, collaborative school?
del.icio.us tags: Islay, argyll and bute, Scotland, interactive white board, IWB, Tablet PC, UMPC, education
Technorati tags: Islay, argyll and bute, Scotland, interactive white board, IWB, Tablet PC, UMPC, education