Thunder

Today I took my podcasting roadshow to Sir John Talbot’s school in Whitchurch Shropshire, this is my local secondary school.

It was the year 6 induction day and the headteacher had asked me to get a group of 20 mixed year group students to record the events of the day. Prior to the day, just like at OWS, I emailed the students with a link to their blog and asked them to comment on the first six posts. Unfortunately not many of the students participated in this activity, this lead to me having to spend time going through the questions with them to assess what they knew already. The applications I had asked them to look at where all new to them - so today was going to be a big, but enjoyable, learning curve for them.

So after getting their brief and planning the questions they wanted to ask the year 6 students off they went with ibooks, mobile phones, mp3 recorders and digital cameras in hand to record their discussions.

The students were given a brief introduction to Garageband, iPhoto and iTunes to enable them to produce their enhanced podcasts. All photos taken throughout the day were uploaded to the schools Flickr account, they even caught me doing some work - I think I should frame it!

The students were really motivated and engaged with using the ibooks and ICT being more than spreadsheets and databases. All the teachers that popped their head in during the day were impressed with the work ethic and the buzz that was going around the room. It was amazing to see how much they produced. You can read their evaluations of the day here, at present there is only a couple but they have all agreed to add theirs comments tomorrow.
Please check out their blog and leave them some comments.

It was great to see the students so engaged in their work, there really is great potential in developing this kind of experience for our students. I will have to put some time aside during this Summer break to produce a unit of work for KS3 ICT lessons based around these collaborative and social technologies.

After having a rest and watching the first half of Brazil v Croatia I have managed to spark up the laptop to post about the fabulous experience I had today.

About three weeks ago I was asked by Lisa Thomas at Oldbury Wells school if I could organise and deliver an ICT day for their able and talented pupils, I nearly bit her arm off So, today the day arrived and I was so nervous - it has been a long time since I spent a whole day teaching

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Ok, my ibook G4 has arrived - what now?

Where do I start? The cool thing was I turned it on put in some basic details and I am accessing my home network and out onto the net.

My first job after getting web access was to install Firefox and Skype, but what next? I started up Skype and Ewan was there, an experienced Mac user. His first piece of advice was to download Homebrew Formulator 2.6.3 - I know see what Mac users priorities are

As I know nothing about mac’s, I would be grateful of any help people can give me. What should I do? What free apps are essential? Where can I find useful resources to support my adventures in Macland?