Digital Learning

Digital Learning — 2 Comments
5
Feb 12

Another take on the VG (Virtual Gym)

The virtual gym is not a new idea. Take a barely used classroom, add game devices and active game titles. Think competitive rowing, dance mats, cycle races, and just you wait to see what the Kinect brings this year. Add to this a very simple 3 statement campaign and solution from Anthony David King.

1. Simple universally recognisable truth = Kids love playing video games.

2. Irrefutable fact = Exercise improves health.

3. Strikingly simple idea = Connect exercise equipment to video games consoles. When students exercise, the game plays, when they stop exercising, the game stops. Thus encouraging them to exercise more.

So, there you have it, some of my most favourite things, Physical Education, gaming and technology. I really like the active = lights on controller and the device that pauses the game. Could “Games Club” be “Active Games Club.” All things considered, number of active participants, 4x consoles, monitirs, peripherals and its not a cheap option.

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http://anthonydavidking.wordpress.com/2012/01/09/video-games-in-education/

Popularity: 2% [?]

Digital Learning — No Comments
4
Feb 12

Favoured Tweets

@TeachersJourney:

“All too often we are giving young people cut flowers when we should be teaching them to grow their own plants.”- John Gardne

http://twitter.com/TeachersJourney/status/165862105935921153

Sent with IFTTT

Popularity: 1% [?]

Digital Learning — No Comments
4
Feb 12

Favoured Tweets

@mashable:

This mind-blowing video shows the future possibilities of touchscreen technology – http://t.co/EnS6rU74

http://twitter.com/mashable/status/165714968774316032

 

Proximity, NFC, toughen glass and a good cosh of innovation.

Sent with IFTTT

Popularity: 3% [?]

Digital Learning / e-Tools / Experiments — No Comments
3
Feb 12

Even more with textwall

So, two points to pick up here. At the end of the PSRE lesson I was able to push the student responses to Wordle. This automatically gave me an overview of the lesson, warts and all. To be fair, a very use summary. I am sure if the Wordles was projected onto a whiteboard you could then use it in your plenary. Discussing words, differences between words and striking through words. Any other ideas?

Parent Evening

Second, we posted the Textwall number and email on our main hall screen during parents evening last night, giving our parent and carers the opportunity to feedback. Now, in this instance textwall was ‘unsupervised’ and we obivously did not display the textwall. More importantly we were able to get instant feedback on the night. When I checked in this morning, we had recevied six responses providing some very usable feedback such as ‘not enough seats available,’ and ‘the keeping up with allocated times could be improved.’ This type of advice is invaluable in a school and to improving both our systems and relationships. In the spirit of reports and parents evening….

Textwall B+, works extremely well in the classroom and even when unsupervised at parents evening. Textwalls contribution to whole school discussion could prove invaluable, certainly its avoids any perceived awkwardness when parents wish to give open and honest feedback. A little polish on some of the voting features could really make Textwall standout from the crowd. We look forward to next term.

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Popularity: 4% [?]

Digital Learning — 2 Comments
1
Feb 12

Textwall

This afternoon I had a very positive conversation with Lilian Soon from textwall.co.uk. In a nutshell textwall.co.uk it’s a response system where responders text, email, webpost their responses. Think Twitterfall for texting. Lilian gave me access to a sandbox account and I had a really good nose round. I was pleasantly surprised.

There are three main flavours, a single textwall £30, very useful for the individual teacher or trainer. Two versions of textwallplus, 10 textwalls @ £200 or 25 textwalls @ £400. Now, in my opinion that’s great value, considering there’s a hatful of functionality to muse over. Auto refresh control, RSS, questions, bad word filters, wordle integrations, text size, export and more.

 Of course it goes without saying that you, the host, are not charged for messages you receive but it does costs the learner their standard sms charge to text the system. But with unlimited text message plans seemingly the norm in my school, the cost of a texting for learning, may be soon an issue of the past? What is it like in your school? Of course, students could choose not to response or you could choose a non-tech voting method. I am a big fan of the mini whiteboard and Caesar’s thumb. But for £30 for you, or maybe £20 for each member of the department it seems good value to me. A simple code protects from SPAM texts. Simple.

Next step – try out the sandbox with a class. I will most certainly be able to demonstrate progress in my lessons, that is for sure.

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Popularity: 5% [?]

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