Thunder

Here is Ewan blogging in Derbyshire:

I continue to be amazed by the potential Second Life has for learning, I have just watched the video on this blog post and was completely blown away. Clck below to see a low res version, or follow the link above for a high quality version.

Download link

WikiMindMap produces a mindmap based on a search of Wikipedia.  This provides an interesting and visual way of researching using wikipedia.  As a test I typed in Shropshire and this is the map displayed:

By clicking on a cell with a ‘+’ it expands the branch for further siblings, clicking the green icon will re-centre the map with that branch being the central point, if you click on a branch without any icon it will open up wikipedia in a new window/tab at the relevant section.

The report highlights how important innovation is to improve education as a whole and to encourage higher learning. The report shows how the every day innovation that occurs in classrooms - from a novel way of teaching to a new approach to student involvement is rarely spread beyond the individual teacher and/or school.

NESTA identifies the need to give teachers more autonomy - supporting more developmental work led by teachers and schools to help increase innovation.  But before this can happen there needs to be more funding and support, and schools and teachers need to be given incentives to engage in it.  The report also suggests the significant impact the available budget for educational research could have on collaboration if more of it was offered to schools engaged in innovative development and research.

You can read more (or download the report) from the NESTA Website:
http://www.nesta.org.uk/informing/policy_and_research/highlights/hidden_innovation.aspx

I have recently been given approval and funding to set up a private island in Second Life, the purpose of he island will be to support the delivery of the new Diplomas in Shropshire schools.  The island will need to be accessed by students aged 14 - 19 and also their teachers. So now I am after some help and advice, any generic help would be most welcome, either in a comment or email steve[at]it4L.org .  I have a couple of key questions at the moment:

1. Should I set the island up on Teen Grid or Second Life, from reading the second life website, I think it would be best put on the Teen Grid and then getting the teachers access to the island.
2. Do all teachers have to get clearance through Ascertain, or can their LA clearance be used?

I would be keen to hear from anyone using Second Life with high school students in the UK, at present I only know of Digital Katie, who I heard speak about her use of Second Life at TeachMeet 06.

I have spent today in Staffordshire working with eight ICT teachers from across the county. The Staffordshire ICT consultant has accessed some funding for a study support project, the aim of the project is to participate in a Gaming Competition (details here). I was asked to deliver software training on Game Maker, the software to be used for the project. The project will conclude on the 4th December with the students coming to the training centre to present their games to the other students.

I have set up a blog that will be used to share ideas and work in progress throughout the project, the teachers have posted their initial plans for the project already. What was interesting is that the teachers were discussing how they will be using Game Maker in other contexts outside of the project, replacing Flowol with Game Maker was high on the agenda, iMedia was mentioned by several teachers, and using it from year 7 right up into the sixth form.

In Shropshire YouTube is blocked, but there are lots of really useful videos hiding away.  The geography advisor asked if there was anyway he could show a video from YouTube on a course, after a bit of searching and playing around I found vixy.net.  All he now needs to do is while at home locate the video he wants to use, paste the url into vixy, choose the format he would like the video in and then wait a couple of minutes and download the file to his pc.  Lots of output file formats are available, avi, mov, mp4, 3gp and mp3.

The video he was after was Ultra Records: “Proper Education” - a very cool video.

Last night I read with sadness that BBC Jam is being suspended as of 20th March. This is a real shame as these innovative, high quality resources are available freely to teachers, students and parents. One of the great things about Jam is that it is aimed at the learner not the teacher, but could easily be incorporated into teacher activities. As a student you could use these resources to support the learning you were doing at school.

Update: Check out Ewan’s post

As some of you may be aware I am in ’sunny’ Torquay at the NAACE conference, yesterday I delivered by session on web2.0 in the classroom (you can find most of the sites referred to here).

It has been great to have so much positive feedback and a little constructive negative feedback. This has left me thinking about how to improve and where I believe we should start to go next. What I believe is that it is good to see the practical uses of web2.0 in the classroom whether they be the best use or not, from the primary school blog to the geography tectonics podcast, my use of del.icio.us to the gallery of student work. Where I believe I need to take this next is to start to look in more detail about the effects on teaching and learning from using these technologies, to me it is obvious but that is not the case for everyone.

I think in Shropshire we could be at a tipping point, we have spent the last 18 months or so piloting and developing our use of these technologies but can we start to exploit them even further, using blogs to support boys writing, podcasts to support speaking and listening, del.icio.us to support research etc

I am keen to hear other peoples opinions and set up some collaborations to develop materials to support the use of these technologies in the classroom. Has anyone already developed teaching units, that don’t necessarily teach the technologies but exploit their use.

HAGames was created by the same crew who dreamt up the Hidden Agenda Contest back in 2003.  We’re Liemandts and Reimanns, which sounds like two different tribes of a new medieval quest game but is actually two families that want to make a difference in this world by furthering education through technology. Our family nonprofit organization, the Liemandt Foundation, funds the Hidden Agenda program and the HAGames site with the help of a fabulous cast of advisors and partners. The Liemandt Foundation is dedicated to facilitating, testing, and promoting “stealth education” video games so that they can make learning fun for kids who might enjoy playing games more than listening to teachers.

Don’t get us wrong – we love teachers! And parents! In fact, we hope they’ll check out these HAGames and show them to all of their favorite kids!  We have a feeling everyone will appreciate this new way to help middle schoolers learn tough subjects that may not “stick” as well through memorization or by reading a textbook.  Especially since we are committed to offering these games to kids for free, forever.