Challenge Machine

If you have not come across it, the challenge machine is a web based way of easily creating quizes that can be done online. You can challenge classes or friends or anyone and you can rack up points scores. Here is a simple example...

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Change Management

Having spoken to a Headteacher about the challenges of embedding learning platform use in a high school I feel I have more clarity about the scale of the issue.

It is massive. Schools and in particular high schools are large organisations - pushing through change is difficult because of the inertia such behemoths possess. Management books speak of the different types of people that have to be dealt with to effectively manage change and give advice on changing the culture of an organisation. In schools however the people you as a leader are trying to change are effectivly the gate keepers and the sales people who will promote the change to the 'customers' or 'pupils' as we may still affectionately call them.

School leaders are rightly protective of their staff and students, consious of change fatigue and work-life balance and may balance the potential benefits of a dramatic change in classroom practice with the possible consequences to morale of divisions in the staffroom.

To look toward the future and make brave decisions requires school leaders who have a clear vision of the benefts learning platforms can make to their learners.

WYSINAWYG

Go on, guess what it means?

Ive been realising something over the last few days as I have used a variety of online tools claiming WYSIWYG functionality. (I will spare their blushes). I have encountered the following;

• mysterious duplicate snippets of code appearing in widgets on websites
• undisplayable images creating blank spaces on the screen and masking other content
• pages veering out of printable area in browsers
• random colour changing

Browser and plugin differences obviously are partly to blame but one does get the feeling sometimes that the editors were designed for the web as it was about 5 years ago. They just can't handle the volume of linking and embedded code that is the norm these days. Arcane, forgotten early html formatting rules still apply in some of them that dissapeared thankfully with Frontpage.

I don't know.

'What you see is not always what you get'

5 Learning Platform Quick Wins

What are the easiest ways to make a beneficial difference to a school using a learning platform?

Top five suggestions (in no particular order) that require little or no additional work....(IMHO)

1. Communicating with staff by email, IM, online notice boards, cover lists, school calendars etc - no more pigeon holes or students carrying notes round the school.

2. File storage - cloud computing - no more memory sticks left at home (or school), easy access to school documentation.

3. Communication with students and between students - e.g. electronic submission of work,class blogs, forums, wiki's, even chat and IM as well as good old email.

4. School 'portal' - a common homepage for all members of school community accessible from inside or outside school

5. Celebrating success - publishing examples of student achievement electronically.

All of these can be done without having to generate any new content or even having to digitize things that are not already in an electronic format.

What do you reckon?

Picture log in to the Learning Gateway

Many children (and adults) waste lots of time trying to remember passwords for all the websites they sign up for. An alternative that can be useful is picture based log in. Have a look at this screencast to see how it could work;

Capture your screen in seconds

21st Century Learning

I am exited about 21st century learning. I am not sure I understand it properly yet but am trying to get my head around it. The problem is, I have been brought up and trained as a teacher using a very different model of curriculum and I am having trouble letting go. Having been bound by perceived QCA dictats and inflexible, results based planning for so long - I think I am starting to breathe fresh air.

I think there are opportunities for learning platforms to do what the name would suggest and support the delivery of 21st century curriculum. Providing tools that facilitate personalised learning and put students and the creativity they desire at the heart of their learning. I am hopeful that learning platforms can be a tool that will motivate learners and give them access to knowledge whilst also giving them a means to learn.

Snow and opportunities for learning platforms

As I opened the curtains this morning and the new day greeted me with usual blizzard I had a thought. As school leaders struggle with their responsibilities on days like this - health and safety of their students in school against missed learning opportunities. What if they didnt have to oppose one another?

What if schools could say: the school buildings are closed today - learning will be happening solely in the learning platform?

It is possible I think. School communities would have to be in the habit of regular electronic communication. LP use would have to be embedded. All (or at least most) classes would have to be using the LP regularly. But it would remove some of the pressure schools are under in these exceptional weather circumstances we find ourselves in.

Learning platforms and speed

Further to the comments I have made before about the 'click and wait' syndrome when people are using the web to present something to me is another consideration;

What effect do webpage load times have on usage of learning platforms?

I ask because of a blog I read about some research google have done that says that for every half a second on the load time for their search results they get a 20% drop in traffic.

Wow. Most learning platforms in use are much slower than google. Maybe one of the ways to increase adoption in classroom is to ensure speed performance is a high priority when evaluating learning platforms?

Content is King?

Is it really? That was the moniker of web 1.0 Without killer content websites died away, they were used as sources of factual info as much as anything else. While that is still true to an extent, the advent of web 2.0 has meant interactivity above all. Want people want to do is communicate and collaborate.

Of course that fits right into the educational agenda. The internet is not a textbook. It is not reliably edited, nor is it tailored for a particular course, nor is it ever exactly at the right level. Stuff isnt always easy to find. What the internet can do really well is to facilitate meaningful communication. Look at Facebook - all the people we keep in touch with more than we used to. In a learning context the power of this is in the connections that can be made. The germs of ideas that can be nourished.

Think of teachers moderating forums on a topic after directing students to evaluate a range of web sources. Think of mobile learning; podcast mashups put together on a whim after a topic for fun by a student that becomes a vital part of GCSE revision.

Content is filtered (obviously), communication rules.

Problems with video editing

Was trying to help a school get some footage from a camcorder onto a Windows PC in a file format that MS Moviemaker can understand. This was not as easy as I first anticipated due the film being supplied to me on a small DVD-R. One of those ones that are about 2.5 inches across that I havn't seen used in anger for about 3 years.

Problem number 1: how to read the DVD. My laptop wont take those small disks. Found an old USB DVD writer from the dim and distant (6 years ago - before they were commonly put in desktops and laptops). Success. Footage on hard disk.

Problem number 2: ripping the DVD. Now, I am not into this really so I fell back on VLC an excellent piece of software that can norammly reencode stuff into the format I would like. Would it have it? Nope. It would read the difficult VOB files from the DVD ok and convert them into what it said were mpeg2 or wmv files - Moviemaker was resolute in its refusal to play them however. After about 2 hours of headscratching and web research I came accross Quick Media Converter for Windows. Drag and drop - all kinds of conversion. Easy peasy. Thought I had it cracked.

Problem 3: getting a headache now. Video footage not in sync all the way through with audio. Fooled me for a while until a teacher complained because it starts out ok but then goes off. Back to the web for research and found that this commonly happens using a particular encoder of video. No solution.

The Upshot: I've spent too long on this already really and am out of ideas. Have to apologise/wildly justify myself to the teacher concerned. Suggest throwing money at the problem etc etc. Still got a headache.

Any ideas?

Another labour saving web clipper

Grabbing screenshot images is a common task - resizing them and saving them and publishing them can all be chores. Again, one for the macheads but looks like a little tool called Skitch may be able to help. It is very powerful, is a free signup and comes with online storage and sharing spaces so is all web 2.0 and all that. Check out the thumbnail below. It can integrate with iSight too.

Uploaded with plasq's Skitch!

It is made by the same people who produced the excellent Comic Life, Plasq. I can see lots of times when this would be useful for integrating web clips into a learning platform. Perhaps you just want a thumbnail of what a website looks like to use as a link instead of text? Skitch could do it for you. There are many possibilities.

BETT Finds

Was at BETT last Friday. Trends seem to be for web based graphic, audio and video editing- a couple of finds;

Creaza - does a few things, making cartoons, simple video editing etc. Some online stoorage. Says it will integrate with learning platforms in the near future. Worth a look. I'm still thinking about how to actually use it in the classroom.

Truetube - Does your school block youtube? Truetube may be an answer. Upload and edit video online. Moderated content, all of educational value. Website not working well as of 20/1/09 but looked good in demo at the show. I think it was a BETT category winner. WEBSITE NOW FINE 27/1/09

Any other good stuff??

Preventing presentation probelms

I have been frustrated recently when I have seen a number of presentations given about software. The products themselves have been fine but there have been many situations where the presenter has been talking..

"and all you need to do to publish this blog post is.....--- click, wait, nothing happens---- it will just be a second, I think the internet is slow today ---wait longer, awkward silence----- ..just a moment, perhaps if I try it again --audience shuffles and whispers to one another-----...."

Do you recognize that? From a teaching point of view it is exceptionally disengaging. We stop caring about what it is we are learning and our mind is wandering.

So I was considering how I could prevent such scenarios in my own practice where inevitably there is the same element of showing people how to use an online service (or even just a piece of software) How can I guarantee that all link will work and all clicks be responsive?

So I was browsing Janes E-Learning Pick of the Day and one of the tools she found is called Screentoaster. No software to install, just login to the website and record whatever is happening on your screen. Brilliant! You can publish on the web or save the file - which I think is better for me, then I can incorporate it into presentations.

No more awkward silences? Well not from rotating hourglasses anyway.

BBC report on OFSTED's view of Learning Platforms

The BBC are covering an OFSTED report about learning platforms that highlights that while increasing numbers of schools are using learning platforms, hardly anyone is getting the most out of them.

Some of the problems identified are familiar: It is only enthusiastic teachers within schools who are using them effectively, meaning that curriculum coverage can be patchy. They can be used as dumping grounds for rarely used files.

There is some highlighting of positives. An important one is access to learning for the disadvataged in some way; excluded etc. This principle extends though. The agenda for the future should be learning that can happen any time of day for any learner in any place not just in the 5 hours in school lessons per day. How can this be delivered? Learning platfroms can form part of the answer. Personalised learning, again learning platfroms have much to add.

Of course getting teachers and schools to extract the most from learning platforms rather than just seeing them as something to be bought in and box ticked is a challenge but I think it is possible for the culture to change. Especially when new, exiting things become possible only when learning platforms are used effectively.

Challenge Machine

The challenge machine is an easy way to create a quiz online that you can share with others. When you log in you can rack up points for yourself and so on. It is very good. Lots of potential for students to challenge each other and teachers to set challenges for classes. It is also wider than that though and the challenges are published to all users. Uses could be to ask opinion, conduct surveys, I don't know.

My first simple challenge in below - have a go...

Carbon cost of Googling revealed

Probably best not to read this BBC news article in our line of work...

How to organise research from multiple sources?

So a portion of my days at the moment is spent doing research. New software, web services, becta documents. Some of it is online, some in digital documents and some on actual physical paper would you believe. Now the thing is, how do you put all of this together? How do you store it? How do you look at it all whether you are at home or at the office or out on the road? How do you search for that bit of information you know you read but can't remember whether it was on the web or on a bit of paper?

Well, I'm not sure. Suffering from partial information overload I was looking around for some on or offline solution. Came across Notebook (yes I am a Mac user don't hold it against me) which I have rejected before but didnt remember why until I looked at it again. The thing is I like it, but it doesnt do the whole sharing info thing very well. You are pretty much locked to the machine you are using. Ho hum. 

Perused some lifehacker articles for inspiration and found Evernote. Looks like a winner. Things I like so far;

• Free (limited but adequate usage)
• Cloud computing - all accessible via web interface as well as on software on pc, mac etc
• use web/iSight to add notes with text recognition (pretty good btw although didnt get my wifes scrawls about curtain material - she does work for the nhs though...)
• to do list incorporated
• can add stuff by email

Will  see how it goes. Check it out.

j2e

One of the first projects I am working on is to help schools use a web application called j2e.

Having had a play around with it and spoken to one of the designers I have to say I am amazed. It is a fancy online DTP type thing designed for use by children in its simplest form. Not unlike google docs in the concept of online storage of files... but these words don't do it justice. THe ability of multiple users to collaborate on documents, to export documents, to include dynamic content. Have a play around if you are in any way interested...

Here is an overview video: A brief overview

I cant wait to see it in action in the classroom.

Change of circumstances

Coming out of teaching in a large comprehensive secondary school to working for the LEA is involving a change of mindset and culture. I knew it would, but it is of course difficult to anticipate what it will be like before it happens.

My job is now as Teacher Advisor for Learning Platforms and as I get my head around that and build on my experience in using learning platforms in my own practice I hope this blog will to some extent chart my thinking.

Here goes...