Creative ICT News

How to blog without adding to your workload

Through my blog platform, Creativeblogs.net, I now have some 20 schools with multi-user blogsites, mostly here in the northwest. When a school signs up to the service, one of the most common questions I get asked by teachers (some of whom were not party to the decision to go with a blog platform) is, "How will it affect my already heavy workload?" This is a perfectly legitimate question to ask, and one which I will attempt to answer in this post.

The first thing I would say is that none of the following points are likely to persuade anyone unless you are willing to give it a go. The actual mechanicals of getting a piece of writing published on a blog are ridiculously simple, and, like all software, you do need to spend a short period of time familiarising yourself with the basic features of your chosen blog platform (in the case of Creativeblogs, it's Worpress MU). Once you are happy with the basic wordprocessor controls of your class blog you are ready to start blogging with your class - and remember I'm trying to show you how you can do this without adding to your workload.

Shared Writing

Wherever possible, use your blog to work on shared writing sessions with your class. You are planning to do a shared write anyway, so do it on your blog. And, by doing it on the blog you can get extra benefits:

• A new published piece of work with no extra effort;
• Go back to it in the future and edit or add to it;
• It's online for a later session when your class might be working on laptops or in an ICT suite;
• Structure a homework task around the post by asking children to comment at home. Perhaps by writing the next paragraph of the story; giving their point-of-view; writing their own verse or poem etc;
• By "tagging" each shared write according to its genre (science-fiction, autobiography, argument, chronological report etc) you can quickly build up an index of searchable resources to use in future.

What have we learned this week?

Once a week get a small group of children (possibly with a TA) to reflect on the week's work and what they have learned. They can also mention any special projects, who has had class rewards etc. Again, this gives other children the opportunity to respond, and it's amazing how often children will visit a class blog and add a comment on how much they have enjoyed a particular activity.

Put homework on your blog

The preparation and marking of homework can be really tedious and time consuming, so try and make it fun and interactive by using your class blog. Posting videos from Teachertube is incredibly quick and easy (instructions here) and adding links to educational websites such as the lovely Tutpup is also really simple. Tutpup has the added benefit of being a fun and competitive way to learn tables and spelling while giving you, the teacher simple feedback to see who is actually having a go. Don't forgot to also structure homework tasks around your shared writes as mentioned above.

The basic principle is to find tasks that you have to do anyway and see if you can think of a constructive way you can do this via a class blog. The easiest way of doing this is to structure tasks around the shared write/pupils feedback via a comment approach which can work for loads of different contexts, not just literacy.

Remember, blogging is a habit: once you do it regularly enough it becomes second nature. With a little bit of effort in getting to know how to publish stuff on your blog you will be very surprised how quick and easy it becomes I'm reminded a little when interactive whiteboards were introduced - a lot of teachers felt threatened and were way outside of their comfort zones with all this new hardware in their classroom. Nowadays I'm really surprised when I go into a classroom and I don't find a whiteboard in it. I'd like to think that it could be the same with class blogs, after all, what better way is there to demonstrate the excellence that goes on in your classroom.

Special Offer on Creativeblogs.net

Until the end of the summer term schools can order a multi-userblogsite from Creativeblogs.net and get their training half-price (£250 instead of £500). Simply contact john@creativeict.co.uk for more details.

Schools with blogs powered by Creativeblogs.net

Click on the tags to find a link to their blogsite.

Creative ICT Goes Mobile

This morning I spotted the Mofuse widget on Joe Dale's excellent MFL blog. I followed the link and within a few minutes I've created a mobile phone version of my blog. Mofuse gives creates a .mobi compliant URL for you; all you have to do is enter the feed from your blog and it formats the whole thing. You can add a logo, define colours and create multiple pages if you are running multiple blogs. Very Cool.

Here's the url of my mobile site: http://creativeict.mofuse.mobi

Apparently, on some blogs you can provide some code in the blog header which will automatically detect if the reader is reading via a mobile phone and will direct them to the mobile blog instead. Sounds a tad geeky to implement, so haven't tried it yet, but will do soon.

Using Pagecasts to Demonstrate RSS

In the past, when I've been talking to schools about blogging I've skated over the topic of RSS a bit. Newbies don't tend to get it and don't see it as a major selling point. For a long time now, Pageflakes has been my favourite web desktop. As well as all the engaging content you can drag on to your page, you can use it as a perfectly good feed reader. With this in mind, I set up a bunch of blogs for some teachers in Liverpool to try out and thought that rather than putting loads of links to each other's blogs in the sidebar I'd set up a public Pageflakes page (known as a Pagecast) that collected all the feeds together on a single page: http://www.pageflakes.com/john21/9409516 OK, so these schools haven't exactly been quick off the mark in trying their blogs, but you get the idea. Gold star to Booker Junior School for having a go! The point is that the page automatically updates whenever anyone writes a post via the magic of RSS - thus, hopefully demonstrating one of its simple uses.

Panorama

Predictably, the Panorama programme last night had no statistics to allow viewers to make a balanced risk-assessment about allowing children to access the internet, compared to, say, crossing the road. However it did provide some excellent advice to parents to minimise risks:

1. Don't allow children to have internet access in their bedrooms;
2. Make sure that their user profiles contains no means of identification (age, sex, location: ASL);
3. Engage with children in discussions about who it's appropriate to chat to online i.e. don't add friends of friends to your network: only people they actually know. One parent regularly asked his daughter to physically describe each person in her network in order to get her to delete contacts that she'd not actually met.

I'm not sure how realistic this parent was being - consider the example of Emily Sanderson. Robert Hart, in the latest issue of Ictopus' Sharing Good Practice demonstrates convincingly how engagement in a safe online community adds a significant dimension to her learning

More worrying to me was the discussion I had after the programme with someone who, after the e-safety conference mentioned below, had discussions with various Stockport headteachers. They were shocked to find out that few knew what went on in their classrooms concerning e-safety.

Much more enjoyable than the Panorama programme was the programme entitled Road Rage: the Battle for Britain's Roads. As someone who cycles a lot for exercise, I was shamed by the number of cyclists in London casually running red lights; but equally immensely amused by the twerp that drove around the gridlocked roads of Hampstead in his Jeep during the school run and didn't see himself as part of the problem!

Asus Eee PC Review

I'll begin by saying that I don't normally do hardware reviews as I am not really qualified to write them. However, Phil Birchinall from Computeam let me play with his Asus Eee PC the other day and was really excited about the potential of this device. First off, it's small and light, being only 9" across and has a brilliant 7" screen: much bigger than those you get on a pda/eda/smartphone. Add to that the ability to plug it in to your school network or work wirelessly, as well as a proper (compact) keyboard, and you have a device that could really make you think again about investing in laptops.

Plus Points for Schools

• No moving parts (solid state memory), i.e. rugged
• Very fast boot up (around ten seconds)
• Good battery life >3 hours
• Great screen - easy to read most websites
• Open Office installed
• Cheap (around £195 for the 4gb memory version)

Minus Points

• Very limited range of software
• Browser may not support all video formats  and Shockwave Flash e.g. I'm told it doesn't support the videos in Espresso
• Limited internal storage (2gb or 4gb versions) - won't be a problem in school when on your network, but may be a limiting factor on the road - solution: add a memory card
• Don't write essays on the compact keyboard

There are further developments in the pipeline, however, that give this device even more potential. An 8gb version is on the way, as well as a version that is running Windows Xp instead of Linux. I'm also told that they will add a GPRS version in the spring to enable you to hook up to the internet anywhere you can get a mobile phone signal (contracts for this type of service can be as little as £10 per month or can be bought casually, whenever you need to be mobile, e.g. on a residential.

In the brief time I used the device, I logged on to my blog site and found that it had no problem supporting Wordpress or Twitter or most of the other web services that I use, in fact it was a dream to use on these sites - particularly on Teachertube. My only word of caution, noted above, is to make sure that that it's compatible with any content that you've subscribed to.

In short, don't think of this device as a replacement for a laptop; it has nothing like the storage capacity or flexibility. However, if you want a device that provides an excellent browser and a suite of productivity software (wordprocessor, spreadsheet, presentation etc) it could be a great solution. The very fast boot time and long battery life alone should be enough to entice those among you who have (and I include myself) experienced endless frustration with under-specced wireless networks trying to cope with too many laptops at once with the added fun of batteries dying all over the place.

The only real problem may be getting your hands on one - they are proving extremely popular.

Other information about this device:

http://www.notebookreview.com/default.asp?newsID=3829

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ASUS_Eee_PC

http://eeepc.asus.com/global/

TeachMeet at Bett

If anybody asks me whether it's worth going down to the Bett Show, my response is the same as all other regulars - "it's the only show in town", so if there was any more persuasion needed then there is the recent announcement that TeachMeet 08 will take place on Friday 11th January after the show.

It takes the style of an unconference in which all attendees are expected to contribute in some way, but don't let this put you off as already there are loads of interesting people signing up who are well worth listening to.

I am considering running a trip to Bett from Manchester this year - probably by train, and possibly staying Friday night with a view to a bit of tourism/shopping on Saturday. If you are interested, leave a comment or drop me a line.

Sketchcasting is the New Podcasting?

The other day a fellow independent consultant, Ian Robertson from Southport, asked me if I had heard of sketchcasting? I hadn't, and he explained that it was capturing what you were sketching on your whiteboard or tablet pc as a video and then sticking it into a video podcast. Apparently loads of businesses use it to sketch out ideas. I thought about it and decided that I couldn't really see the difference between this and using Camtasia or similar to capture the pc screen and publishing it as a video. It also struck me that since Smart Notebook also contained a screen recorder, I could fire up Notebook and record what I was doing on my Smartboard. Here's my first effort:

With more than a nod to Rachel Boyd I took two minutes to write out reasons why you should blog in school on a Smartboard while recording it using Smart Screen Recorder; I loaded the resulting video into Microsoft Movie Maker; and added a soundtrack from Freeplaymusic. I uploaded the finished video to Teachertube and embedded it into my blog. Ten minutes work, max. Next time you are writing out a set of ideas/instructions/concepts on your Smartboard, why not capture it and publish so the children get a second chance at digesting what you were on about earlier!

"But I haven't got a Smartboard", I hear you cry! You could always buy a copy of Camtasia mentioned above, or better still, try Jing. Jing is a free to download screen recorder from the authors of Camtasia. It's very simple to use and you can instantly share the video by pasting the link into MSN or Skype messenger, or by email - fantastic for distance learning. It can also be used as a conventional screen recorder and the resultant video uploaded to Teachertube or wherever. I'd like to here from anyone with a Promethean or Hitachi board etc who have tried Jing on it.

Getting back to the sketchcasting idea, I still couldn't see the benefit of putting a cast into a feed. Why not use Teachertube? My simple video above has had 79 views in 24 hours and even generated a comment! I decided to Google "sketchcast" and came away none the wiser other than having found an ace website: www.sketchcast.com - an online screen recorder that can also record your narration. Hours of fun!

Creative Blogs in the Media!

Sometimes you just get lucky. I certainly did when it came to selling my first blog site: it was to Green Park School in Maghull on Merseyside. To describe the success of the site as a phenomenon would be hardly doing justice to the inspirational leadership of Peter Rafferty, the ICT co-ordinator and the enthusiasm of the staff. The site very quickly got the attention of parents and has become a catalyst for changing the way the school communicates with its community and, more importantly, the way the community feeds back and supports the school. It has had over 30,000 hits since last September and this week caught the attention of the Liverpool Daily Echo who have written an article about the site with suitably glowing quotes from engaged parents.

Let's hope the interest generated encourages more schools to get blogging!

Thanks, Peter

Blogging in the Classroom

One of the big challenges to any teacher taking on a blog project is organising when and where the posting is going to take place. This issue has been sparking some comments in the world of educational blogging recently, with John Johnston (he of Sandaig Primary fame) leading the way as usual. His post on getting children posting has led to a pretty healthy discussion amongst the Scottish bloggers.

He followed up this useful post with another one which aggregates a number of useful links on organising blogging.

For my own point of view, usually I am going in to schools to do whole class work and therefore everyone has access to a pc in an ICT suite. This is an ideal situation, but even this has potential problems:

• Differentiation is important when setting up the task as some children will inevitably have special educational needs.
• Be aware that children's rate of typing can vary drastically, and this isn't just linked to ability - I've noticed that children with computer access at home can type much faster than others and this is an issue that not many schools address.
• I also find that in some schools children associate ICT with "having fun" and not writing(or even any kind of end result). While I would contend that blogging is great fun and engaging for children, in schools where ICT lessons lack focus, then the going might be a bit tougher.
• Sometimes you need to think outside the box. One child in Y6 I noticed would refuse to engage with any form of ICT at all, let alone blogging, yet loved playing games on his games console at home. He got quite stressed and would misbehave in every ICT lesson. The Reason? He couldn't undertsand capital letters on a keyboard and was embarrassed about it.

That said, my experience with whole-class blogging is very positive and has produced some excellent poetry. Here are some great poems by the children of Bridge Hall Primary School in Stockport. This school works in challenging circumstances with over 60% SEN, yet they are engaging extraordinarily well with the concept of blogging. If you have got a minute, please leave a comment on their site.

Finally, still on the subject of blogging, I spotted the following useful wiki on edu.blogs.com with some guidelines on the use of social publishing sites for children and teachers: http://edubuzz.pbwiki.com/eduBuzzSupport

Blog Tag - a New Game

I've just discovered I have been blog-tagged by Gareth Davies (VP of Naace). I am thus impelled to create a post entitled "5 things you did not know about me" (and tag 5 others - you have been warned).

The post will arrive here shortly!