Creative ICT News

Advanced podcasting skills tutorials

Isle of Wight based, colleague, Joe Dale is renowned as an advocate of educational podcasting as a teaching tool, especially in the context of modern languages. His blog is always worth following and just recently his output has been prolific - he has been collecting lots of web-based podcasting tutorials and resources, just a couple of which I am highlighting here:

• Cleaning up a podcast with Audacity
• Using Windows Moviemaker to make a video podcast (vodcast)  

Seasons Greetings from Creative ICT

Send your own ElfYourself eCards

A big shout out to Anthony Evans of Redbridge ICT team for this excellent resource.How many ICT skills will the children use as they choose a suitable portrait, upload it, edit and frame the image, choose the dance and embed ;-)

Perfect for your Class Christmas Karaoke

Most decent karaoke sites are pay sites, and this one is no exception, but at only £5.99 for a month's sub, it's guaranteed to make the last week at school go swingingly!

Sing to the world, online karaoke

This is what happens when a blog post bites you on the bum

I was just finishing my breakfast (toast with my Dad's excellent homemade rhubarb and pink grapefruit jam - sounds weird, but works really well) when the phone rang. To my surprise it was the east midland tones of Doug Dickinson that cheerily greeted me. The conversation was fairly brief and to the point and went roughly along the lines of "Do you remember that blog post you wrote a couple of weeks back suggesting that the language in the resource uploader in Honeycomb wasn't child friendly? Well, come up with something better, then!" I had to smile - he is absolutely right of course, no point at all in offering criticism without being prepared to suggest an alternative.

The sentence in the resource uploader currently reads as follows:

"I certify I have the right to distribute these resources within the group I have selected"

It looks like this:

The first point to make is that it's great that Softease are thinking about the issue of digital rights. Children ask questions when they get to this point. I have also been very successful in weaning them off standard image search engines and in recent projects year 6 have been tasked to provide an image credit for every image that they put on a web page. Most have managed to do this, and even those that haven't have used Compfight to find Creative Commons images to upload.

So to the crux of the matter: can I come up with a better form of words? Here's my first go:

"I certify that I created this resource, or have permission from its creator to use it"

I am not sure if this is perfect, but I think it's a little easier to understand and explain. Can anybody improve on this?

Filtering the web

This week's internet news has been dominated by the blocking of an image and associated text on a Wikipedia page with an image of an album cover by the German heavy metal band The Scorpions. The blocking was instigated by the Internet Watch Foundation, a self-appointed body who make ISPs aware of illegal images on the web and ask them to take appropriate steps to block access. This has caused outrage as it is the first time that the IWF has requested a block on such a popular and important site as Wikipedia.

The resulting furore has been well documented on the web. One example worth reading: Rory Cellan Jones on the BBC

The result has been precisely the opposite of what the IWF intended and they have been forced to issue a statement and climbdown.

I for one would not in any way decry the important work that the IWF does; but I do think there are parallels to be found with the way education censors the web. The main issue for me is the lack of accountability, the IWF is a self-appointed body with its own modus operandii. This seems to be the case with most English Local Authorities where the filters are in the hands of local tech support teams. I am not aware of any examples where teachers actually have an input into the framing of filtering policies applied by local authorities (please let me know of examples of good practice). Some examples I've seen include:

• Blocking of all mp3 files regardless of source;
• Blocking of some slideshow generation sites, but not others; 
• Blocking of schools blogsites; 
• Widespread blocking of social media tools such as Delicious.  

And there are many more.

I appreciate that there is a need for some level of filter to block the obvious but, in many cases I believe that filters are preventing excellence and innovation in teaching. How, for example, could any teacher podcast in a local authority which blanket bans all mp3s? The lack of consistency is the most frustrating thing, not just between authorities, but within an authority. Why is one blogging tool blocked, yet another is freely available?

Most local authorities (but not all - you have to ask why not?) have a contact number or email address on their  "block" pages for teachers to contact the person responsible for checking sites, but again the speed of response varies dramatically from "I'll have a look now," to weeks later. In the latter scenario is it any wonder that teachers give up trying to innovate with internet tools? 

Embedable Bitesize

Thanks to Miss Merrie's class at Sudley Junior School in Liverpool I note that the BBC are providing blog embed codes for BBC Bitesize at KS2 (unfortunately not at KS1). This is fantastic news as it means I can easily embed educational games and activities into my class blog. Cool.

Anyone care to comment?

Collaborative Timelines

There are several timeline tools available on the web. My favourite is Dipity; it's simple to use, collaborative and free.

My Year 5s have been studying the Victorian era in class, so in my rather short weekly ICT sessions with them I thought I'd try to put a bit of chronological context to their study. We've started by setting up a timeline of Queen Victoria's life. Once the children got the hang of adding an event to the line, they rapidly started to add the births of Victoria's nine children, important wars, deaths etc. They all worked on the same timeline concurrently and I wasn't worried if several children put the same event on the line - it allowed us to compare entries on the whiteboard, highlight common mistakes, and agree which was the best one. The remainder were deleted. In the second lesson, I showed children how to add images and links, and I'm particularly pleased that all the images displayed are fully copyright checked and free. 

Head over to Creative Blogs for a quick "how to" on this excellent and simple tool.