April, 2010

Digital Learning — No Comments
30
Apr 10

Simple PPT Rule

There’s been a few ppt articles recently and one sent to me by our GTP from the NY Times. One of the articles directs my back to Guy Kawasaki’s blog (inevitable when you read anything ppt) and his  10/20/30 Rule of PowerPoint.  It should be noted that the 10/20/30 remains some of the best guilelines for ppt and would improve many middle leader meetings I am sure.

Keep your presentation to 10 slides. Keep your presentation to 20 minutes. Don’t use anything smaller than a 30 point font.

Popularity: 1% [?]

VLE and Moodle — No Comments
28
Apr 10

What’s Hot in Moodle

In reviewing the ‘plugins’ that would enhance teaching, we have recently added Nanogong and Presenter. Over the weekend I was looking for a way our students could improve their self assessment skills. Whilst browsing through the Moodle mods and plugins, what I really wanted was some community was reassurance. Moodle is as diverse as its users and was confident I would find at least a few checklist type plugins, but I would have appreciated some Moodle crowd-sourced feedback.  I supposed I wanted what was HOT in Moodle….. so I asked Moodle HQ and they answered….

Yet, I felt that this information could have been displayed more readily, more like…. we see most places online, Youtube, iTunes and so forth. The “Rate my course” block sitting in 42nd place would do a great job of rating almost anything I would think. Could this sit on the Modules information page? Could that star rating be shown on the stats page? Feedback for the developer, assurance for the prospective Moodle administrator?

Well today, we installed and used Checklist. I am confident that it will support students handing in assignments or complex, multi-part projects by

  1. tracking their progress and having that progress available to them at all times and not only in their folders or on a teachers marksheet
  2. assessing themselves more accurately – by having the correct criteria to reference and
  3. by maintaining learner motivation – some of our students fail short following a very arduous and lengthy coursework based ICT qualification of many parts (31). I am confident that when these students come unstuck, the visual presentation in Checklist we show them that distance travelled, is less than distance to the finish line.

It didn’t surprising to find Checklist,sitting proud in 2nd place, only behind questionnaire. (Probably the longest serving No1 since Bryan Adams ‘Everything I Do) I Do For You.’

This mulling than span in a second direction. I wondered if @JosephThibault over at Moodle Monthly would have fun with a mods and plugins chart for the site? Maybe there is a fort-nightly article/chart in there somewhere?

Racing up the charts to this weeks No2……. Checklists! Imagine charting your way through a long, complicated coursework based project. Task after task, bullet point after bullet point…… Checklist allows your students to self assess with guidance before presenting the outcome both visually and as a percentage.

Popularity: 3% [?]

IT Network — No Comments
28
Apr 10

Bluetooth Lacks Bite

From the time we started to planning our Laptops4Learning (L4L) project, we have been interested in Bluetooth technology and broadcasting. The thought being that as our netbook population grew, we could share school communications with a wide student audience for little or no cost, instantly. Second, that we may be able to received feedback equally efficiently and promptly. Next year we move the L4L programme into the 3 top year groups and it may just hit the tipping point.

What and when to broadcast? We have fully discussed this yet but on a whole school basis this might include;

  1. Mentor notices – (less photocopying / less in pigeon holes)
  2. School Menus
  3. Signalling end of break times (students on time for lessons?)
  4. Events / Sports Results or short notices/reminders

On a class basis – homework Extended Learning tasks? Room changes? Polling?

Then, in what format do we bluetooth that information? Text file, image file? QR code? Maybe thats too much…..

One expected learning by-product is that students will also learn how to use exploit their bluetooth capabilities and the understand the security issue of leaving their bluetooth left on.

Finally how are we going to managed the bluetooth broadcast. This facility is available both commercially and through open source options. We currently reviewing Bluetooth Radar, an open-source application that displays all Bluetooth devices within reach of your computer’s radio on a radar-style display. Now we may have to investigate how far that reach is, and how we might extend it, if we are to be effective on Hamble Colleges very large footprint. Bluetooth Radar displays both paired and unpaired devices reach, perfect for netbooks and mobiles. Bluetooth Radar then retrieves basic information from the unpaired devices, but in the case of paired devices, gives you additional options like file transfer and remote file browsing. I hope to report back here in due course.

Popularity: 1% [?]

Digital Learning / ICT / Leadership / Management / Middle Management — No Comments
24
Apr 10

How Long Before…

I am sitting in the garden, relaxing, watching my little boy ‘pottle’ and play (Saturday 24th). I have a Twitter conversation in the background talking and exploring Teach Meet Moodle and I am browsing my RSS feeds. Meantime I have decided to write this post on WordPress for iPhone because otherwise I will forget what I was thinking (as it happens I forget to post it anyway). Watching my son pottling around the garden got me musing. What will education look like when my son goes to school? What will Secondary School look like? How will he learn? Will he go to ‘school?’ What will be the evolution of anytime mobile (anywhere) learning?

Education can rarely afford to be cutting edge, certainly not bleeding edge. We his school life be that different? Education is hardly renowned for expedient change. How long before the highly innovative technologies of NOW, those being explored TODAY (AR, location based information and multi-touch -ipad) appear in a classroom? I have written this post as a ‘time capsule,’ a marker of sort. I am pretty confident on the technology path for the next 10 years.

1-2-1 will be school driven. Netbooks have accelerated this particularly inroad. 1-2-1 projects will be initiating or commonplace in ALL schools 2-3 years.

Handheld learning? Will it ever arrive? Portability say yes. Data input makes the proposal more challenging. Nintendos clam shell DS, (2004) and Apples I Touch (2007) made little impact. Apples Ipad (2010) has plenty of media support and education speculation however Education’s pockets are not Apple deep, and Educations arms are even shorter. So that leaves the door open for the £200 netbooks for the foreseeable future. Until the tabletsphere works it way towards affordability we will have to swoon over the I-Pad and I-PadGenerations 2, 3 and more.

So will ‘mobile handheld multifunction communication devices’ (I gest) hold the answer? Mobile phones with a secondary input device might be an interim solution. This will only arrive when we have SMART priced as well as SMART phones. (sorry ASDA). There are currently more iphones in SLT than in Yr11 at our school! The shortfall will have to be made up by innovative learners and their teachers.

I think that should buy me at least 5-7 education years. During this time VLE will mature and be able to offer more realistic learning. Netbooks and wireless schools will be commonplace. The tablet changeover, running Windows 9 with Office in the cloud, may only then be edu-affordable. Personal own devices will then replace the formerly school run 1-2-1 projects. Well thats my 2 cents.

To conclude, a  minor point really. Can we also now safely agree that the term ’21st Century Learner’ is an outdated term, afterall he/she is now 10 and in September starts Secondary School.

Popularity: 1% [?]

ICT — No Comments
22
Apr 10

Gapminder Updates – Great Post

Hat tip to Dan Stucke for his great post on the updates to Gapminder.org

…a fantastic tool for visualising a wealth of World data on lovely scatter graphs that animate changes through the years. (Dan Stucke)

Like Dan, I too have been inspired by Hans Rosling and IMHO the data sets available at Gapminder are fantastic – and I am not even a mathematician .

Popularity: 2% [?]

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