MOOCs

Massive Open Oline Courses

Great discussion yesterday with tutor and students from OU on MOOCs and the enormous variety of short courses to be had for free from:

EdX  https://www.edx.org/ with courses from Harvard, MIT and Berkeley among others
Coursera https://www.coursera.org largest provider yet
Udacity https://www.udacity.com/  Forcomputing courses
Codecademy http://www.codecademy.com Also computing
Udemy https://www.udemy.com/ There is a charge for this one

All the courses are delivered with video by academics from the universities. All the above are American but soon to be launched is FutureLearn http://futurelearn.com/ headed up by the OU with several other UK universities.

Futurelearn will bring together a range of free, open, online courses from leading UK universities, in the same place and under the same brand.

T211 Saturday School

Brilliant work by T211 students designing a range of chairs. They started by modelling plasticine to represent a 'warm', 'fun' or 'aggressive'.

 

Next they modelled 'fluid'

 

 

Then they combined and manipulated into a chair design and discussed characteristics to join up into a range



Beetlejuice Range

Tung n' Groove Range

Apple Conference Jan 30th 2013

Great conference from Apple on Macs/ iOS on mobile devices and SEN. I never realised that there were so many built in features to support disabilities- not just built in dictionaries, voice feedback, summarising of large chunks of text such as a report off the Internet. Look in the ‘Services’ menu

In Safari I didn’t realise you could clean- up the screen of additional information/adverts etc and just retain a report and have voice feedback.

On iOS devices – iPad, iPod touch and iPhone schools have been using the voice over for tests instead of TAs as readers. We saw how the iPad can be fully accessible for blind pupils and those with physical limitations for touching the screen.

Check out http://www.apple.com/accessibility/

 Very useful links:

National Centre for Accessible Media: http://ncam.wgbh.org/

With Apple they have put together a guide to making accessible books using ibook Author http://ncam.wgbh.org/about/news/creating-accessible-ibooksfor free download

Apple Distinguished Educators (ADEs) have published in iTunesU: Creating Inclusive Learning Environments. Lots of advice including Apps. See: App Wheel for ASD; Mobile Learning Padagogy Wheel and Special Needs Padagogy Wheel

     

This Blog

Having lost all the posts for the last four years I am delighted to say that I have managed to retrieve some of them thanks to the advice of Matti who responded to my cry for help on-line. I have managed to retrieve the html coding and 'fiddle ' with bits. Below is an assortment of posts - not dated or in the original order but they remind me of what I was working on over the last four years.





 Blogs 2009- 2012 in no particuar order

 Blogs from 2013 onwards

                                   

Hounslow Hold On to Sports

This is a collection of a few of the posts. The project ran from September 2009 to the completion of London 2012.

Most information can now be found at: http://www.thehots.co.uk/ and http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=T-vpEBeB-UI

Inspired by the successes of Teaching and Learning Scotland - using computer games-based learning to promote successful learning, effective contributors, confident individuals and responsible citizens,

we are planning a cross-borough Wii Challenge.

Each school will enter a team from their own school heats
Each team will need to research how to be the best team. They will need to find out about:
· The trainer
· The dietician
· The Physio
· The press / pr manager
They will need to complete some paperwork:
· a description of muscles which may be used during the Wii Olympics
· a training schedule for the athletes
· an eating plan for the athlete
· a press release/ biog of the athletes
· training timetable to compete in the Wii Olympics
Entrants can choose to compete in any Wii Sport. The team will practise their sport in school, to the agreed timetable. They can compete for a place in the finals, hopefully at the Watermans Theatre, if they have completed the paperwork.
It would be really good to get some professional athletes / trainers on board to advise our students
In terms of timeline- Project Starts in September/ Deadline for submission December/ First Heats begin in January/ Finals in Summer Term
This project aims to fit with the Cultural Olympiad that the Watermans Theatre is involved with.

_________________________________________________________________________________

Hold on to Sports is hotting up in anticipation for the London Olympics and in its third year. This year we have primary, secondary and special schools taking part as well as the Youth Service. Over 2000 young people. Next month we take 65 enthusiastic young people on a double decker bus around the stadiium ending up at the View Tube making models of the stadium. Prizes for the best one.

We took this photos during our risk assessment tour last week.
If we can get the funding we are planning a torch bearing walk with all our participatng students through Hounslow.

__________________________________________________________________________________

Brilliant day yesterday.

We took 50 young people from Hounslow as part of the HOTs project for a trip around the Olympic Village. They included primary school pupils, secondary school students, youth council members and scouts. All earned their places through great sporting achievements, services to Hounslow and fantastic work on HOTs

A number of features made an impression. For example the self ventilating velodrome with rain catching roof - most eco friendly bulding - and the constrution of the largest Macdonalds in the world

We then went on to the View Tube for lunch and teams constructed their own designs for stadiums. They had to support at least 60,000 people - each clay ball represents 10,000 people.

 

I Dream of Learning

This was a project from about 2010
Some of the links will no longer be live

I Dream of Learning is a competition that has been running across Hounslow.

Teams of pupils have been visioning what they would like their learning environments of the future to look like. They have been thinking about the different ways they like to learn and how new technologies can support their ideas.

This process will provide ‘Student Voice’ to influence our work in Hounslow on Building Schools for the Future: http://www.teachernet.gov.uk/management/resourcesfinanceandbuilding/bsf/ and the Primary Capital programme: http://www.teachernet.gov.uk/management/resourcesfinanceandbuilding/Primary_Capital_Programme/
The teams from the winning primary and winning secondary schools will each have £30,000 pounds to invest in developing their dream environment, thanks to the support of capital money from Hounslow's two City Learning Centres

The winning team from the primary schools are from Strand Junior School. They are now building up their vision, which incorporates an exterior and interior learning environment with 24/7 learning in mind. Parents and the comminutiy are involved. The winning team of 3 pupils from Year 6 is expanded to represent Years 3, 4, and 5. These pupils are working on their vision in consultation with myself and with the CLCs.

The students are trialling new technologies to inform the development of their new experimental learning zone. They have been working with RIBA and the V&A researching how buildings influence use and how our vision of learning must influence design. We will be experimenting with colour, lighting and furnishings to support learning.

The process will be repeated with the secondary school winners. The entries are now in from the secondary schools. The external judges have a hard decision deciding on the winners.

__________________________________________________________________________________

Fifteen pupils from Strand Junior School took a trip to the V&A to help them build on their ideas for designs for their new learning environment, their prize for coming up with brilliant ideas on ways they would like to learn in the future.

We were met by Catherine Duncumb, V&A+RIBA Architecture Education Officer, she spent the day with us and created a wonderful investigative learning journey. Every pupil was engaged throughout the day from Year 3 up to Year 6.

We spent the morning thinking about functionality, construction and impact. We investigated how space is designed with a purpose in mind and how shape, light, texture, materials, access and dynamic focal points are all equally important.

In the afternoon we thought about all the spaces we had seen, what worked well, what didn't work so well and what we really liked. The pupils were then able to think about the design features they particularly wanted to consider for their own learning environment back in school.

Their ideas included: dramatic lighting, colours that were fresh, warm and welcoming, and features that made an impact like the 'Swarm' chandalier by Zaha Hadid.

They liked the use of stripes, comfy chairs, changes in texture between wood and concrete, and they liked natural light and water features.

_________________________________________________________________________________

And the winning team for the secondary phase of the I Dream of Learning Competition is.... Lampton School, with runners up Gumley House School and St Marks School.


We had a fantastic prize-giving event at the Waterman's Theatre in Brentford. The winning team members all received Sony PSPs with cameras- thanks to ConnectEd and Feltham CLC - runners up received ipod shuffles and stereo arm clocks with ipod docking thanks to Feltham CLC and Computer Warehouse.


Now the really hard work begins as the winning team expands to involve others in their school, in order to help them develop their ideas into an experimental learning zone for real.

They will have help from experts and will consider how we like to learn and how this influences design of learning spaces. They will consider how the way a space is designed will influence whether it is used successfully and they will think about the importance of movement and light and how furnishings influence use of a space. They will also develop their thinking on how technology can support learning, with the help of Hounslow E-learning and Feltham and Brentford CLCs. The winning ideas can be viewed at http://www.clcfeltham.co.uk/bsf_pcp/entries.html. See also a posting on the NCSL web site by Lampton teacher, Juliette Hepple, describing the exciting design.
http://future.ncsl.org.uk/News.aspx?ID=166

Resources

Some resources I have used and liked in the past. I see I include Scratch for making games at the bottom - I'm experimenting with Kodu now http://research.microsoft.com/en-us/projects/kodu/

Cool Tools for Schools is good place to start looking

Lesson Starter

Bing – The Microsoft Bing start page is great. Every day a new high quality picture from around the world is used for the start page. You can use the image for discussion and hidden in the images are clues to where the place is in the world - an interactive class mystery.

Quikmaps lets you doodle on Google maps - draw lines, add smilies etc

Generating tools

The generator blog helps you to find generators you may find useful

Here are a selection (thanks to Ollie Bray for some of these):
cooltext generator
wizard text generator
newspaper generator
photo flying flag
smoke signal generator
education jargon generator

Wordle generates “word clouds” from text that you provide. The clouds give greater prominence to words that appear more frequently in the source text. You can tweak your clouds with different fonts, layouts, and color schemes. The images you create with Wordle are yours to use however you like. You can print them out, or save them to the Wordle gallery to share with your friends.

Pictures

Gimp This is an excellent piece of photo editing software – similar in features to Photoshop.

Blibs Just upload your photo and you can add special effects including animation effects

Tuxpaint This is computer art software designed for children.

Flickr Enables you to store pictures or do a search . Just search a keyword, select the pictures you want and click slideshow for an instant lesson starter

Photosynth This program enables you to make a 3D representation of a location - e.g. your classroom with all the displays, or a visit to a place of interest - it also has a search facility for you to find 3D representations of places relevant to your lessons

Autocollage - Just select all the pictures you want to use from a folder such as 'My Pictures' and the program does the rest

Picasa This program also allows you to creat a collage, turn photo into films and to create slideshows

Design and send your own e-cards with this simple to use program suitable for Year 1 +

Deep Zoom – This programme I discovered through Ollie Bray. It is a way of layering pictures without loosing the overall quality. Here is an example of a lesson starter by Ollie Bray, teaching geography in Scotland: http://www.blip.tv/file/1889767/.

Stuart Balls has created tutorials on using Deep Zoom.

Animoto creates videos from pictures. A classteacher in East Lothian made this great video to send home to parents to show them what the class had been doing

Comics

Comics are a great way to get reluctant writers writing and to help pupils to understand structure and sequencing as well as use of speech.

Pixton and Comic Brush are both free and web based

Animation


Monkey Jam Just drop in photos in order and the software does the rest, or create pencil and paper stop motion animations. It is extremely simple to use.

Another free web based resource is GoAnimate. to create cartoons and animations really easily.

Google Sketch Up
A free 3D modeling package from Google is currently being used in lots of Hounslow Schools.

For example, St Marks

and Strand on the Green Junior School

Google Earth

Google Earth tips and tricks:spinning the globe, measuring distance and the historical imagery layer.

Communication

Another site I found through Ollie Bray is Wallwisher which allows the user to place 'virtual post-it notes' onto a web page. A Geography teacher from Glasgow set his class the task:
"You are allowed ten minutes research time. After this, share one fact (or more) with the class about the Amazon rainforest that you didn't know before. Credit your sources (e.g. Found in wikipedia)"
Students then had to post their fact on the class wall wisher site as homework and credit the source where the fact had been obtained from.

Computer Gaming and Control

Scratch - create and share games. This supports much of the primary curriculum for control technology and is useful in secondary schools as well. Play some of the example games, then try adapting one before launching into your own game design.

Stories

Storynory has loads of audio stories for free. There is a link at the top that tells you about the translation tool for a selectin of languages for your EAL pupils and the ability to highlight text as the story is read

Sebastian Swan books for Key Stage 1 and resources for teachers

Thanks to Simone from Feltham City Learning Centre for a couple of great links

Blabberize is a fantastic tool for making pictures talk

Create your own music with JamStudio

A few more great links:

Weebly for buliding your own web site really easily - and they host it as well

TubeChop for editing films on You Tube

 

Free games on the Web

I am glad I have been able to retrieve a record of some of the resources I liked to use in the past

Free games on the Web to aid learning
If games are set as homework, screen shots help to give feedback on results.
If you know of any good games, please email me



If you are teaching the IT Specialist Diploma (Year 10/11) you will need business strategy games. Try Roller Coaster Tycoon 3. The free download provides all you need, whilst limitting the opportunity to spend all the lesson designing rollercoaster rides.





You can download Chocolatier free for one hour, enough time to source raw chocolate, find hidden ingredients and secret ports and sell on. This can be done for homework with the assessment work done in class.



Less demanding but just as much fun is Gazillionnaire based on galaxy trading, exploring new worlds and making your fortune

For primary pupils Lemonade allows them to buy the ingredients to sell lemonade as street vendors - with an eye on the weather. This game is on the CoolMaths games site, which has plenty more to choose from.

Learning and Teaching in Scotland has a great selection of games for all age groups on their Glow Games site. Great for homework activities

Classic Sim City is useful for teaching about towns, cities and settlements - build your own


Ordenance Survey Map games are good for homework. There are action games, logic games, jigsaw puzzle games, teaching resources and help for homework




Fantasy Farmer you have a plot of land and start buying animals crops and machinery. You have to feed the animals, look after the crops and watch the weather!





Stop Disasters Simulator - Can you protect the world against floods, volcanoes, earthquakes etc?

Sim Sweat Shop - What is it really like to work in a sweat shop in less economically developed countries?

PSP and Games Based Learning

We used PSPs in a unit for the hearing impaired and a special school for profound, severe, and multiple learning difficulties

Using the Sony PSP

ConnectEd have advised us on introducing PSPs into our schools including those with units for hearing impairment The Feltham CLC has a number on loan to schools. Norwood Green Junior School are using them with students with hearing impairments

ConnectEd have a number of videos on their site on using the PSP in education (well worth watching if you are thinking of introducing PSPs into your classroom). The PSP will connect to the Internet and you can use it with a camera. Pupils can video themselves in character or interview each other or grandparents, e.g., for history projects.

You can download graphic novels and E-books . For example, free ones include Classical Comics that are available in differentiated levels

and Manga Shakespeare for a modern take

You can run Sums On Line and impact on SATS results

Using the Leapster

Lindon Bennett are experimenting with Leapsters at the moment to test how they help co-ordination, motivation and decision making as well as resposibile at home and at school

Gaming with the Wii

This was the  beginning of our thinking for the HOTs which began September 2009.

Games with the Nintendo Wii

One of the best games I have seen in the classroom is Endless Ocean

Pupils explore the ocean bed discovering and researching different creatures.
Norwood Green Junior School completed a successful project that demonstrated the positive change in attitude of one disaffected pupil. Part of the problem for this pupil was difficulty communicating ideas and describing a sequence of events. Playing the game led to imagined scenarios and improvement in creative writing.

You can use this game in many ways to support reading, writing, technology, science and art:
To explore the creatures (classification; food chains)
Keep a diving log
Design diving masks and flippers
Coral reef report - why under threat?
Guide book for the divers
Design own sea creatures - and use Crazy Talk
Write about own creatures characteristics and position in the food chain
Write about a day in the life of a marine biologist
Debate: island development versus coral reef threat

Wii Sports Resort is the basis for the Hounslow Hold on to Sports cross borough games. Contact me if you want to get involved in our 'Inspired by the 2012 Olympics' event
We have teams across our schools researching basketball, table tennis, cycling and bowling. They are doing presentations - posters, films, animations, photstories on their chosen sports - about being a trainer, dietician, and physio and they are designing kit to qualify for the Wii play off at the Civic Centre July 3rd and 4th 2010.
Or hold your very own Wii-imboldon next Summer:
Write a profile of your star - the mega wealthy number one
Create a tour map for the Grand Slam

Plan where to stay, how to get there and costs
Keep a tour diary
Bring in fitness and health

Guitar Heros must get a mention. I don't think any school in Hounslow has used this game yet but there is plenty of learning and fun going on in Scotland. They have generously uploaded lesson plans and resources . A transition project is described in detail by Ollie Bray. It has been so successful it has been expanded across the whole authority gaining awards along the way.

Gaming with Nintendo DS

Around about the same time as the previous post, several primary schools and Griffin Park Learning Zone were looking at using the Nintendo DS to support learning
Games with the Nintendo DS

The Nintendo DS can be used for group writing, give a starting sentence and see what they come up with - use the voting pad, talk about the characters and settings in pairs and collaborate on the board. The Pictochat facility can be used for 'Odd One Out, +/-/interesting feedback and to collaborate.

Dr Kawashima's Brain Training is popular in several of our Year 4 and 5 classes - with daily brain training to boost numeracy confidence

Cooking Mama is in use in Year 2 to encourage the pupils to look at food from different cultures, making chef hats and aprons, create recipes and to cook

Hotel Dusk A graphic novel - great for secondary pupils

Professor Layton: Play the game for 30 minuties or for homework then plan stories, scenes, dialogue, characters, descriptions etc. Watch the video

Nintendo Dogs is a favourite with Primary
Pupils can work in groups. They can name their dog, they can draw their dogs and design then collar and bedding. Pupils need to understand health and well being of a dog, budget for food and water and need to gain a grasp of place and value by earning money to buy accessories.