Sharing the Addiction

In my last week in my job as ICT advisor, I had some time free and so offered to do anything in classes that teachers wanted. Stu put his hand up and asked if I could spend a session with his class while he worked with podcasters as part of his action research project. I was quite keen to get into a classroom again and, of course, I couldn’t help but try an ICT tool that I have been mucking around with for awhile – VoiceThread. It turned out that the session time was during maths and I could get the laptop pod so I decided to put together a problem solving VoiceThread and give it a go. Generally, it went really well but there were some issues as well so I would adjust the activity if doing it again. Here is a summary of my thinking after the session:

What went well

• The problems were aimed at the right level and I think it was definitely worth the effort of popping them into Comic Life to ‘jazz them up’ before exporting them as images and uploading to VoiceThread.
• I had previously set up 10 identities called ‘Group One’ etc on my account and this meant I could have the children working in groups of three using one of the identities.
• I was able to be logged on to 10 different laptops on my one account and we could even all add to the same VoiceThread slide at the same time using the different identities (I was trying to stretch VoiceThread to the max and it coped well).
• I had embedded the same VoiceThread on 10 different pages of a wiki so that everyone could work off their own copy in their groups. This worked extremely well.
• The children were extremely motivated to use VoiceThread and many even asked if they would be able to set up their own accounts at home.
• Some children persevered with working out problems for almost a full half hour and showed higher level thinking skills.

What could be improved

• The children were told they needed to work out the answers to problems before being able to record but many were so keen to get onto VoiceThread they rushed the problem solving just so they could record. This meant that many of the answers were not well thought out. Next time, I think I would have a paper version of the problems and the children would have to show me they had worked to figure out an answer before being able to get a laptop to record their strategies.
• Some children recorded silly comments just to listen to them back and have a laugh. Even though they deleted them, this wasted time. By having the paper version as I said above, I think this would go some way to resolving this issue. I would also lay down some ground rules at the start and point out that anyone not following these rules would be working all the problems out on paper and not using the laptops at all.
• There was too much background noise in the recordings. I might try to control the noise levels more or have the recording area somewhere a little quieter.
• I didn’t know how to make the doodle tool stay solid so it kept fading out making it hard for the kids to show all their working in time. I know now that you click on the big white circle in the middle of the Doodle tool circles so this would make things much easier next time!
• I couldn’t seem to upload any images for identities or otherwise when I was at the school. I think this is something to do with the school firewall so it is a good thing I got it all set up the night before. I did try bringing a picture across from my Flickr account and this worked fine so I would advise teachers to have all their images banked there for the kids to use as a workaround.

I did really enjoy working with the kids and still think it was a very worthwhile activity. Anyone can use this VoiceThread and add their own working out strategies so feel free to do so! Many of the problems still have not been solved correctly. Stu has also blogged about the session in his class blog which you can also go and read.

Tags: maths, VoiceThread

Yesterday, I had great sessions with Petone Central staff. In the morning, myself and two staff members worked with their media team. I gave the children and the two teachers a snippet of video to play with and some still images. What was really interesting about this I told the kids to just try and figure out how to use the software without me ‘teaching’ it first. I busied myself with trying to sort out the video camera problem (unsuccessfully!) and so I didn’t have a chance to intefer and take over. They picked it up so quickly and were ‘fearless’ when trying things out. I couldn’t help but notice that this is quite different to working with adults who generally prefer to rely on being taken through things step by step (at least until their confidence grows). I am determined to try and get staff more comfortable with ‘having a play’.

I have started a new wiki (yes – yet another one with tips for different software packages and downloadable notes I have made for each piece of software. The site can be accessed from here.
I was meant to run a workshop on Kidpix in the afternoon but ended up looking at some of my favourite new discoveries instead when the networked version of Kidpix on the computers at the school failed to open correctly – ahh the joys of technology. One of the things I talked about is an online application where you can easily make online diagrams. The site is Gliffy and you register for free to use it. It is such an easy to use format – again I think it could be really useful. This is a rather lighthearted practice diagram I made when I was testing it out:

Today I have been working at Muritai School. I have been working with all the teachers from one syndicate at a time which has meant that all of the teachers in the syndicate get a chance to have the time and space to discuss how to best use ICT and they all come away with the same message which I think is a really good way to do things. This obviously requires a lot of relievers so has its drawbacks but is a really useful way to work.

We focused on using ICT to support both the Yr 3/4 syndicate and the Yr5/6 syndicate. The year 3/4 group are planning to focus on dinosaurs looking at how the changing environment effected them. I suggested one great website could be ‘The Earth Floor‘ which has a great section on how why we no longer have dinosaurs.
There are also other dinosaur links on my website. The syndicate are planning to use Kidpix to illustrate dinosaur poems. As the focus is on oral not written English, the children will illustrate poems by other people and record their voices onto the slides.

The Yr 5/6 syndicate looked at how ICT can be used to support their upcoming ‘Take Action for Air’ topic. The syndicate decided that they wanted to use mindmapping tools for the children to collect and organise their information onto during the course of the unit and then use video to film the ‘Take action’ part to make into a movie. We explored using an online mindmapping application that is extremely easy to use and can be accessed from anywhere called ‘Mindomo‘.I think this application has a LOT of potential and is something I have just discovered recently.

The teachers felt that they really needed to teach the kids how to search the web so have decided to teach structured lessons in the suite on this. Stu Devenport had some excellent posters for working with kids on search tips and evaluating websites (which he has offered to let me have a copy of and I’m sure he’d let others have them as well).

Other good places to get tips on searching are: the Google help centre, Berkeley University (not very kid friendly but very detailed) and Fact Monster (designed for kids)

Want a list of great search engines to try? Check out this exhaustive list. Other interesting search engines other than Google to try are Clusty which organises your search results into topic areas, Librarian’s Internet Index with reliable and safe links, or Ask for Kids for searches guaranteed to be safe for kids. Dogpile says it takes the best search results from a number of search engines.

Sites that give advice on evaluating websites include the Berkeley university site.