Talkman is a microphone and software application for the PSP, it allows you to speak into your PSP and translate simple phrases into 6 different languages.
It would be interesting to see if/how this could be used in the MFL classroom, Ewan & Joe??
Today I am in Derbyshire at their ICT Conference, I have a keynote this afternoon on Web2.0 technologies in the classroom. The day was kicked off by David Baugh (Denbighshire LA) an interesting keynote on Digital Creative Learning Environments, not VLEs or LPs, but creating an creative learning environment in school. It was great to see the creative work on many primary school pupils from Denbighshire. One of the key points that sticks in my mind is that youngsters are doing all this creative ’stuff’ at home but not at school, why not and how do we recreate a youngsters bedroom (minus the clothes etc) in school?
Did you know that there is a band from the West Midlands in the national Rock Idol 2006 final?
Go Quagmire! from Bournville School won through the regional heat last month and are now going forward to the national finals. They will be performing on the 30th November. You can view the competition by clicking on www.wmnet.org.uk/go/watch_rockidol  (you need to enter guest as the username and leave the password blank)
You can also vote for Go Quagmire and comment on their performance.
On the 29th November there is the final for new bands.
I posted a link to FlashEarth on my del.icio.us account a couple of days ago, thinking I would write a post about it when I got some spare time. Ewan has already posted about it, so just check out what he has to say.
At the last Shropshire Advisory Service day I did a short demonstration of my blog and to show my readership I clicked on the clustrmap and then struggled to name some of the countries my readers come from.
Last week I was reading a post on the TecnoTeach blog entitled ‘Where did you say you were from?‘ the teacher appears to share my lack of geographical knowledge.
…. asking the children to start naming new locations as they appear on the map. Making this a game with the possibility of winning school house points has opened up a new curricular area in our blog that was not intentional. The children are now looking at the map, with interest, and locating marked areas as they have a desire to find out who their world wide audience are.
If you have a school blog, go and create a clustrmap now to develop your pupils’, and possibly your own, mapping skills.
This is a great idea and I wholesomely agree, put a clustrmap on your blog - not to record the number of hits your blog gets but where people are coming through. You could produce a huge world map on your classroom wall and insert pins in it when you get a visit from a new geographical region.
Slideshare is like Flickr for Powerpoint presentations, once you have created your account you can upload your powerpoint presentations and then either embed them in your blog or provide a direct link to them.
Unfortunately I can’t get mine to embed 
I guess it is a Wordpress MU issue, so here is a link to mine.
As powerpoints appear to be the common means of communication in lessons in our schools nowadays this seems an easy way for teachers to be able to publish their lesson notes etc, pupils or other teachers could then comment on the presentation.
Encyclopodia is a free software project that brings the Wikipedia, which is one of the largest encyclopedias in the world, to the Apple iPod. Encyclopodia can be installed on iPod genarations one to four, as well as on iPod Minis and Photo iPods.
This sounds like another great educational use for an iPod - the pressure is mounting on me to purchase one. Download encyclopodia from here.
The findings from the ‘Summit on Educational Games, Harnessing the power of video games for learning’ organised by the Federation of American Scientists can now be viewed online. The summit was convened to discuss ways to accelerate the development, commercialization, and deployment of new generation games for learning.
The Summit focused on four issues: video game features useful for learning and aspects of learning that could be supported by video games, research needed to support the effective use of games for education and training, market barriers, and changes in schools that might be needed to take advantage of educational games.
Last year I was chatting to Karl Royle from Wolverhampton University about gaming and he mentioned a project he was involved in ‘e-games league‘. After chatting to a couple of local headteachers they agreed to pilot the scheme this year with students in year 10.
Last week I was able to get in to Thomas Adams school to have a look at an e-games lesson, the students were motivated and engaged in their ICT activities. At the end of the lesson they played Fantastic Four on the xbox against each other. More information can be found on the e-games blog on the ‘what is it?‘ page.
After chatting to the teacher after the lesson we decided to get the students to set up their own blogs to record their work as they progress through the course. If you have a spare couple of minutes could you visit on the the clan blogs and leave a comment on their logo:
Trying to think of a creative project that harnesses music and film, then think no further check out BoomAcademy.
BOOM! Music Video Academy uses the coolest music from the backing of the pioneers of the music video, MTV, and the latest video editing software from Adobe to enable teachers and students to create their own music videos.
BOOM! challenges you to tap into your creativity and produce the music videos of tomorrow.
Teachers can download a plethora of resources ranging from posters and lesson plans to copyright free music files to be used in the video. You can also view past winners videos to be used as inspiration and challenge your students. The student interface is really cool, it is very interesting to see the different approach to the website for students and teachers.
Even though the competition is being organised by Adobe and MTV, there is no requirement to use adobe software. I wonder if there would be any scope in using the web based software discussed by Theo at the recent Teachmeet: Jumpcut and VideoEgg.
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