Creative ICT News

Video Conferencing and Some Free Web Apps

Video Conferencing

A few years ago video conferencing was set to be big news in education, yet it has singularly failed to take off. It has remained the preserve of one-off “special projects”, which while entirely laudable, have required so much organisation and technical back-upthat they were never going to become part of the everyday classroom. The reason for this is the local authority broadband network. These networks are so tight that it requires special access to allow video conference feeds through the firewalls, thus requiring extensive liaison and testing before a conference can take place.

Recently, I’ve spotted a couple of web applications that might just get round these issues and allow schools to set up web conferences without involving any party beyond the folks doing the conferencing.

Flashmeeting is a newish web app from the Open University that requires no downloads at all and works entirely in a web browser.

Yugma does require a download, but no tinkering with access ports and may be more secure than Flashmeeting.

Both look as though they are worth trying out, and I would be interested in hearing from anyone who wants to test either of these video conferencing applications by setting up a conference with me! Drop me a line and we’ll set up a date and time.

Displays

Despite the faintly disconcerting photo on its homepage, Blockposter.com is a truly great web application. Simply upload your chosen image, decide how big you want the poster to be and then download the resulting file for printing. It turns images into A4 tiles, so you just have to jigsaw the pieces together on your display board. The results can be absolutely stunning. I’d love to receive some photos of displays created with this site.

While on the subject of art, Artpad is a fun little package. It’s just a simple painting package, but allows you to “replay” the painting that you have just made as a Flash animation.

Harriers Greenzone

The northwest’s most prestigious athletics club has chosen Creative ICT to set up a blog site for its newly opened Study Support Centre in Wythenshaw. The official launch is this Friday and Creative ICT will be suporting children blogging and podcasting the opening event with celebrities such as British Olympic sprint relay champion, Darren Campbell and dignitaries from the world of UK athletics and Manchester City Council.

Click here to visit the Harriers Greenzone

To discuss how blogging can raise standards in literacy and create a truly interactive school website, email: [email protected]

Resources

Don’t forget that all these free resources and many more can be found at http://del.icio.us/creativeict

Birmingham NEC Exhibition

I still have a couple of seats left for my trip to the Education Show at the NEC on Thursday 22nd March (departure 8:30 from Stockport station). Drop me a line if you are interested.

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

Becta Have Funding for Free ICT Mark Assessments

It's that time of year when government departments seek to get rid of unspent cash because they know that the treasury will claw it all back again in April. Becta have obviously found a little stash somewhere because they have announced that any school applying for ICT Mark assessment before March 31st will be able to have the assessment done for free (normal fee £500).

Before you deluge the Becta website with applications, be aware that completing the Self-Review Framework, a necessary precursor to ICT Mark application, is no small task; and if you haven't yet started it, be prepared to give up a large chunk of somebody's time to gathering the necessary evidence.

As a qualified ICT Mark assessor I am able to offer schools a number of different services to support their application:

- ICT Mark consultancy - supporting the SMT in the Self-Review process, completion of the framework and evaluation of prospective applications.

- ICT Mark Support Materials - I am able to offer schools access to the excellent Schoolhouse Partnership/Logotron ICT Mark support materials and consultancy.

- ICT Mark Assessment - as an ICT Mark Assessor, I can obviously undertake an assessment of your school.

To register for ICT Mark assessment, click here

To enquire about ICT Mark consultancy, email: [email protected]

Things That Amaze Me

I thought things had moved on in the world of ICT.

Things I have seen in the last few weeks:

• Shame on the Manchester Primary School where I was in the corner of the ICT suite prepping a training session. The year 6 boys were all on a website called Gang Paradise (bet your filtering system blocks it). Yes it really was all about guns and car theft. The girls were all on Youtube. There were three adults in the room and none of them seemed to be teaching anybody anything. Is this an exaggeration? Not a bit of it - I was in the room for about 25 minutes and the teacher did not address the class once in this time.
• In Knowsley LEA you can't create a school podcast because the LEA has placed a blanket ban on the downloading of sound files. In fact the LEA filtering system is so strict that many teachers abandon using the web at all as any resource that they find at home is likely to be blocked when they get back to school. Creativity and ICT in Knowsley? No wonder the teachers there have such low expectations about the potential of the web to excite and educate.
• An ICT co-ordinator with whom I am acquainted was recently told by an LEA representative that they should be very careful about setting up informal clusters with other ICT co-ordinators to work on ICT Mark without informing the LEA. The ICT co-ordinator in question retorted that all networking was good networking!

It's not all doom and gloom:

• My 2 year old daughter marched in to my bedroom the other morning announcing that she wanted a clock! I told her that she already had one in her room. Her reply? "Not for my room,daddy, for my blog!" If that doesn't tell you that blogging engages children, nothing will.