I’m going to undertake a full evaluation and investigation of YouTube with my children and students to canvass their ideas and views.

[kml_flashembed movie="http://youtube.com/v/hMLX68MHVtw" width="425" height="350" wmode="transparent" /]

This short video was uploaded directly from my mobile phone. What fantastic opportunities… and I managed to do it without happy-slapping anyone!

I’ve used the Academy Awards or Oscars a number of times over the years as a stimulus for writing, discussion or research. Students are motivated by the subject and are generally able to see through the materialism and recognise the place of such awards in the whole scheme of things.

A class could easily host their own awards, making up worthwhile categories, displaying the nominations on a blog or wiki and evaluating and using some online voting software to collect the opinions of the community. Design and create your own virtual oscar-like trophies and certificates to be awarded virtually or at a student-prepared event.
Once the nominations are in then the local press can be contacted as can the agents of any nominated celebrities/authors etc. This makes for a purposeful bit of research – best done in advance by the pupils. I reckon many in the public eye would be delighted to be nominated and would respond – probably not in person but you never know!

Like the UK Honours System that recognises any merit and service to the nation, your awards don’t have to be limited to the famous. Local community research would throw up a number of worthwhile nominees that could be honoured.

When the results are in a press-release should be prepared and sent to local newspapers and radio. Certificates should be sent to the winners with an invite to visit your school. Get the pupils to write speeches, to perform, to make food, to change the staffroom into a VIP Green Room!

Dave Severn came to my ICT group in person today and caught me in one of my better moods. He gave me some encouraging opinions about my Liverpool photos from yesterday and went on to guide and inspire the group to create photos. We are also leading some staff training sessions together. And he is meant to be my student …

He also made my car look pretty cool as well.

I first came across Barbara when I had just started blogging at the British School of Amsterdam. I think Sarah Lohnes or Hector Vila pointed to her. Her work was and continues to be ground-breaking. Many talk a good blogging freedom with students but few have the tenacity, creativity and trust to make it really happen effectively. Barbara is the real deal.

For me personally, her keynote at blog.ac.uk was music to my ears. She passionately talks of the benefits of blogging because she has seen them with her own eyes and experienced them. There is no substitute for that. The transcript of the talk is here.

Her rallying call:

I have to stop hoping that anything can change; instead I must go about getting the work done. Inside. Where it counts. We edubloggers have to get our acts together, as you are doing here by gathering at this conference, forming communities amongst ourselves to lay out the direction. We’ve got to get the word out, show models, examples, proof—that means everyone of us needs to blog, to participate in such groups as teachersteachingteachers.org communicating about what we are doing in our classrooms and why—when things work and when they don’t; we must pull our colleagues aside and talk about the complex of new literacies and how they intersect with the old, about connected learning ecologies, about creating bridges and bonds within and between our communities. We must listen as much as we talk. We must reach out to one another. We must risk failure.

Whether it falls on deaf ears remains to be seen, but I for one am immensely grateful for having heard it firsthand!

(It was good to google Sarah and Hector to see what they’ve been up to. They are still rocking!)

Scottish CILT’s 2006 Communicate.06 Conference was an exciting day of technology and teaching. One hundred foreign languages teachers and advisors came to build on their use of technology – whether to make links with partner schools, to inject new forms of creativity into the classroom, or to learn a new skill such as making a blog.

I thoroughly enjoyed myself, presenting my keynote live from a blog instead of using PowerPoint. I created the posts in draft beforehand and chose which to publish in turn. Perish the thought – I actually had to think during my presentation It was a great way of modelling the versatility of blogging as a tool.

I’ll find it hard to present any other way now. I love the idea of people being able to comment straight on to your presentation slides posts, either at the time or later. It allows a conversation to start and continue after the conference is over.

Actually the most striking thing for me is the fact that the conference is not over. The Saturday session was just the beginning of the support that will see many projects spring to life and be supported by the workshop leaders over the next few months. So often good ideas heard at a conference drain away in the reality of a classroom full of students on the following Monday morning, like water being poured into sand.

However, the MFLE is a platform for folks to receive support and ask questions to ensure that the projects get off the ground and flourish. Furthermore all the proceedings were podcast so people who were not there in person can also take part in this ongoing unconference. Ewan McIntosh, who did a brilliant job organising and presenting, has written about the conference from his perspective.

I also got to meet John Johnston of Sandaig Otters fame. He demonstrated that welcome combination of the down-to-earth and inspiring when chatting to folks about blogging and podcasting. Lynne from Tobermory was cool in the blogging session as well. David Muir whose blog I have enjoyed reading over the last months was also there and won a fiver for a blurry photo

You can view the present state of my presentation blog over here. I have switched the theme into post-presentation mode. Click on the thumbnail to see what it
looked like yesterday.