PicLits Gallery

PicLits was really very easy to use with students last week. They had great fun exploring and combining the words and photos. We used a class login and there were no issues at all. I just made sure I changed the password after the session.

Here are some of the results.

[Show as slideshow]

[View with PicLens]

YouTube Investigation

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

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

Inset Kids

Will Richardson has been on the road this year and wonders:

…. why we aren’t inviting kids to these conferences or workshops as a way to keep the presenters (myself included) honest, number one, but also to help teachers understand the realities of their worlds.

I think this is an important issue for conference and training organisers to at least consider. Students and teachers learning together and from each other – there’s a novel idea. Surely, it must be possible to come up with a construction that could work… Communicate06 gave a glimpse of the potential of engaging students at a training event.

Adding a few 7 year-olds to conference proceedings would soon make the presenters engage with reality and the ‘unconference’ format;-)

Social Software – Ban don’t think!

What dynamic is at work when schools or LEA’s take unilateral decisions to ban sites like YouTube without even consulting students (or teachers for that matter)?

Toss out a few negative soundbytes based on unbalanced media coverage and harp on about ‘duty of care’ and the decision is soon justified. Often though, there is not even a decision that anyone, in this era of transparency, can challenge or track. Where are the lists of sites published that are banned so that they can become an agenda item on the school council or at a staff meeting? Evaluating real websites for their suitability for task would be a purposeful learning activity for both teachers and students. Identifying, weighing up and avoiding potential risks while enjoying the benefits of a website is a creative challenge that faces everyone. Going through this process as a school community offers ownership of internet use decisions, something that is sadly lacking in many schools.

And what do students thinks about this state of affairs? Nothing! They do not care because it simply confirms to them the increasing irrelevance of their formal education to their everyday life. Whatever!

Pivot Animation

I was browsing Alison Mitchell’s Mulhall’s British School of Amsterdam Senior School ICT blog and came across Pivot, a simple but very effective stick animation software. Sometimes the most simple software is the most fun. Loads of creative fun to be had with this. I think I am going to organise a Pivot Animation Competition. It would be cool to see what everyone else created. Click on the thumbnail to see my efforts.

What teachers make…

Taylor Mali is one of my creative heroes and his poem ‘What teachers make‘ has served me well at speaking engagements over the last few years. However, it was time to move on and perform some other stuff. What better way to bow out than with a performance (if you can call it that) at the top of the Valluga, at 2,809 m the highest point in the Arlberg mountains in Austria. It was so quiet up there that I felt I just couldn’t rant loudly so just let the performance slip away peacefully.

I always enjoyed a love-hate relationship with the performance of that poem. I love the poem itself but hate how it caused me to ‘corpse‘ on a regular basis. The only time I really ‘nailed’ it to my own satisfaction was at the Communicate.06 Conference last year. The last time I performed it though, I couldn’t even get out of the first lines and had to bail out completely. It was a sign! So – farewell my friend and on to poems new!

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