My 30 Favourite Apps

I really love using my iPad for school work, the apps do make a big different to me, especially the ones that allow me to edit images.

I don't use PowerPoint anymore, all my presentations are made in Key Note. I also love to use Pages, although I use it more on my macbook air than on the iPad. To make worksheets with lots of images I am not finding comic life really useful and feel I must invest in the newest form of the app.

1. Key note, 2. Pages, 3. Comic Life

I also use adobe voice, explain everything and iMovie a lot. I have got the hang of these three apps and would advise anyone to have a go at make movies for their class. I don't think that explain everything is very easy to get a professional feel, but I have got over this issue now. I do like using my phone for video though as I can clamp it in a clamp stand better than an iPad.

4. Adobe Voice, 5. Explain Everything, 6. iMovie

I have used stop motion a lot with my students and for that we are using Stop Motion, although I believe better apps are available. On my iPhone I have SloPro camera, which has been great for filming science experiments that are fast, like a transverse wave progressing along a slinky or two balls (one projected horizontally, one dropped) hit the ground at the same time. I also have Lapse It, which I have used several times now to make time lapse videos of experiments. Chromatography and Diffusion are two favourites.

7. Stop Motion, 8. SloPro, 9. Lapse It

When it comes to making content using images I love over, iDraw, Rhonna design, Canva, Moliv, Repix and Snapseed. Quite a few of these are on my phone to save space on my iPad.

10. Over, 11. iDraw, 12. Rhonda Design, 13. Canva, 14. Moldiv, 15. Repix, 16. Snapseed

I am finding Genius Scan very useful for scanning in notes from pieces of paper, I can tag them and find them easily.

17. Genius Scan

A lot of colleagues are finding inkflow very useful to use with students as an alternative to a mini white board. I am enjoying using Paper 53 and the accompanying Pencil 53 instead for making quick notes meetings.

18. Inkflow, 19. Paper 53

I find the apple apps of calendar and iBooks really important. I organise myself through the calendar and have all my specifications in iBooks.

20. Calendar, 21, iBooks

I also use dropbox and carousel to back up the videos and images from my iPad, which I have found very useful to help ensure there is space on it to develop new projects.

22. Drobox, 23. Carousel

I love social media and have pinterest, twitter, blogpress and youtube on my iPad. I also use feedly for following blogs and pocket for saving links to read later.

24. Pinterest, 25. Twitter, 26. Blogpress, 27. YouTube, 28. Feedly, 29. Pocket

Lastly, I am a physics teacher so I need a calculator app.

30. Calculator

What Does an ICT Savvy Student Look Like?

I need to start thinking about where I am going regarding the use of ICT in my classroom and not just about solving the issues in front of me. Within science education I feel that I have moral purpose and understand the place of my subject within the curriculum. But what about the other parts of my job; the pastoral side and (prominent for me at the moment) the ICT side.

As I have said before our school have asked the students to each bring their own iPad to school. There are a few students who haven't, but they usually do have devices of some sort. As predicted by a lot of the articles about BYOD that I have read there is some issues over the level of use of the devices within lesson. I agree that as a parent I would be concerned if my child had a £400 device and was not using it effectively. But what does using it effectively mean?

When the scheme was first announced by the chair of governors at a speech day he spoke about 'skills for life'. Our Saturday lesson programme has been transformed for key stage 3 into PHSE lesson taught by the pastoral staff in the hope it will give them skills and knowledge for life. The iPad 1-2-1 scheme is also supposed to give the students the 'skills for life' in an increasingly technological world.

I actually like this idea better than introducing iPads to improve learning. I read all the time that there is no evidence that ICT will make much different to the learning. For many members of staff incorporating ICT into lessons is going to be a stretch. On top of all the curriculum change embracing new technologies and creating the resources to go with them is going to be a lot to ask.

For me technology is a great way to keep myself organised and I hope that the students will pick this up too.

So what does a tech savvy student look like?

I did some research about the use of ICT in business. The vast majority seem have stories about the transformation of their business by being able to reach customers better. The others seem to say that by designing an app helped communication within the company. That didn't seem to apply to the students.

Instead I wrote the following aims: students live in an increasingly technological world, where businesses, organisations and individuals are using advances in ICT to communicate, collaborate and organise. Students need to be aware of the benefits and risks of this as well ash the practicalities of using technology.

In no particular order, a 'technologically advanced student' will be:

• using RSS feeds, twitter, social networking apps, instapaper, read later, to collate potentially useful information and resources for later use. They may even do this in collaboration with others
• accessing alternative forms of media such as podcasts, video and blogs. They will probably do this in short chunks. This may be related to work, but also related to the interests of the students.
• sharing, communicating and collaborating on work projects over distance and time using electronic devices. This may be communicating with other students, but also will be communicating with teachers.
• organising time, resources and work using shared calendars, email and folders that sync across several devices and maybe shared with many others.
• able to manage their workflow
• aware of their own digital footprint and act according when using social media.
• able to produce a range of media to be consumed inside and outside school. This maybe in conjunction with school work, charity work, social work or to raise awareness of an issue. This will involve blogging, video, podcasts, documents, images, infographics, websites, GIFs, and presentations. 
• supporting others in their use of electronic devices.

They may go further and:

• produce their own app
• learn how to code
• investigate computer networking
• build their own computer
• use ICT in another enterprising way

I would admit that it isn't necessary for students to be able to do all of these things for their learning, or even their life. But I do think that it is important that students are aware of all the implications and ways that ICT can be used.

The next steps are working out how we get there? Do we use technology for learning? Should we be restrictive and prescriptive about the way that technology is used in lessons? What about outside lessons and in extra curricular activities? Will practice change as a result of technology and what will the behaviour of our students in lessons look like? How will these changes impact on their employability? Is it even possible?

Socrative Quizzes

I want to use socrative to capture student's progress at the end of a lesson. So I have made a few short quizzes and will make some more.

If you would like to take a look at the first ones that I have done then the codes are below.

P1c A spectrum of waves (features of transverse waves and wave equation):12371027

P3a Speed (distance-time graphs): 12195705

P3b Changing Speed (speed-time graphs): 12198553

You can then import my quizzes. I hope there are minimal mistakes, but do let me know if you find a problem.

I think that it will be quicker to use the excel template to import questions and answers as it doesn't involve quite so much clicking.

Socrative

As I have mentioned before. The girls at my school will all be arriving at school in September with iPads in September. I want to make sure that I am utilising them from day one for two reasons. 1) I am interested in seeing how they can impact on my practice and 2) I want to make sure that the iPads are value for money for the families.

I am using explain everything, audio boo, nearpod, iDoceo, QR codes and pinterest. I have had a go at Aurasma and will continue to work on iBooks too, with a view to the new curriculum.

However, another tool I want to utilise is Socrative.

It is a website and app that allows students to answer multiple choice, true & false, and short answer questions.

It is possible to upload an image to the question, which is very useful for science questions. 

In the summer term I trialled this with a few classes using their mobile phones. They did find it hard to find the website and put in the room number to start with and there was some staggering of starts of the quizzes. I would hope to get over this as the students start to get familiar with the site and/or app (if they chose to download it). I also want to look at  using the teacher paced idea to help students keep up and not race ahead. 

I would also suggest that keeping a quiz short will help to reduce the time lag between the fast and slow finishers. I have perhaps made too many questions with 12.

After the quiz it is possible to download the report to see how students have got on. I am interested in doing this and uploading it to evernote and ultimately idoceo to help create better, personalised, feedback in reports and parents evening. 

I have also noticed that it is possible to download the quizzes and hand them out as paper resources. I think this really adds to socrative: It takes a long time to type a multiple choice test, but this means that it will be better to type it into socrative and get a paper or online test. Two birds, one stone. It will also mean I can keep a copy in my teaching file or give a copy to a student who forgets or breaks their iPad.

When I have completed all the work for P1/3/4 from the Gateway science GCSEs suite I will share the resources, including the socrative quiz numbers. 

The Financial Cost of Being a Teacher

During my career I have always used my own money to support my teaching in some way. At first it was buying pens. I could fight and argue with students, I could pick discarded pens up off the floor, but in the end I bought them from ASDA or Tesco every Sunday and gave them out to students, about 30 per week. Praise stickers and stamps were bought and and other prizes like chocolate for use in class.

Towards the end of my second year of teaching I also bought myself an Apple PowerBook, this was a serious investment in my own teaching. Even in 2005 it wasn't common to be permanently connected to the internet so this computer was bought for making presentations and worksheets on as well as storing all my electronic information.

At my second school things got a little more serious. We weren't allowed more than £10 per year of photocopying. That was one set of sheets per class per year. This was because all the photocopying was done the summer before and therefore we wouldn't need anything that wasn't in the scheme of work. But I did. I wasn't going to give my students hand written sheets that were photocopied on an angle so you couldn't see the bottom corner of the sheet. So I bought a printer, laminator, coloured paper, paper cutter etc and set about making my own worksheets and paying for them myself. They were mine, no one got to share them and I took them all away when I left.

As a science teacher I have spent considerable amounts of my own money on things for experiments. We have petty cash in the department and you can get expenses, but it seems trivial to ask for 59p for a pack of strawberry laces or 40p for two packs of spaghetti. If I am honest I don't mind about this. I once bought a class set of hand-held fans for a lesson on air pressure and I did claim for them. I would always expect my technicians to claim for shopping as they do earn significantly less and I would never judge someone who wanted the 20p for spaghetti back.

I also care about my own CPD, I have hundreds (if it doesn't run into thousands) of pounds worth of teaching books, revision gudies and textbooks that I have bought with my own money. I was once told by an SMT member that I should claim this back too, but I didn't because I want to own the books not the department. I spend my own money going to the ASE conference, the ticket as well as the travel and accommodation. I don't think anything of it.

I bought myself an iPad, I use my own camera, I have my own leads for connecting the iPad and my macbook air to the projector. When my partner is challenged by his management about why he leaves school within half an hour of the end of the school day his response is that we have better equipment at home to work on that at school and it is true. We've spent money ensuring that we have the necessary equipment to allow us to do our job.

I pay a membership to the ASE, my union and the IoP. I will probably have to add the college of teaching to that in the future.

I have always just got on with spending my own money. It is part of the teaching culture.

Until now. The next step down this line is into the world of IT. I have bought myself a new iPad mini (as my original iPad doesn't run iOS 7) and I have started buying apps. I didn't really think about this either, I find playing with the apps fun and don't begrudge £2.99 here or £0.69 there. I have a dropbox account with 100GB of storage that costs me $9.99 per month via paypal. I don't even think about the cost of that, I use it to store things for work, but I also use it to back up my photos.

I am considering upgrading to evernote premium (£35 per year), if you want to embed videos into a wordpress account it is $60 per year, and edublogs account which can embed video and manage student accounts is $39.95 per year. Nearpod is $120/year. I can pay a subscription to pocket (sounds really useful actually), I can pay a subscription to feedly. I can pay twitter to remove the adds, I can buy more add-ons in apps like moldiv. Popplet is $30 per year. You can up grade Prezi for $59 per year. Picktochart upgrades are $24 per month.

Where does it stop? How many lots of $9.99 per month can I pay, how much equipment should I be supplying that will allow me to do my job? And why don't I claim it back?

AudioBoo

I have seen audioboo mentioned as a possible medium for students to express their learning. But I hadn't really thought about using it. I don't want to get my students signing up to things, so they end up with a lot of social media accounts that follow them around for the rest of their lives. However, last night I was looking through the app store, saw audioboo and decided to give it a go for myself.

I am glad that I did. You don't have to have an account to see the audioboos someone else has made, so this means I can make short clips and my students can listen to them.

I believe that audioboo gives me a much quicker alternative to explain everything or making an iMovie. I have produced three audioboos today that I feel relatively happy about sharing.

Learning from experience of making videos I made a script of what I wanted to say. Even doing that I re-rewrote it a few times as I spoke the script. Spelling mistakes, bad hand writing and line reruns in odd places made getting the right word out and the best rhythm difficult and meant I re-recorded often. Audioboo allows you to edit your clip by cutting bits. I used that a lot. Leaving big spaces between sections to allow easier clipping.

listen to ‘GCSE physics: stopping distances’ on Audioboo

This post was my first attempt.

https://audioboo.fm/helenrogerson80 This link takes you to my profile, with the list of other boos.

I wait to see what my students think of this and how much use they make of it. Either way I am impressed with audioboo, thanks to all of you who brought it to my attention.

First Attempts at Making a Video using ExplainEverything

I have this vision of being able to use videos to help my students learn. But first I need to practice and become quicker at this.

I have heard a lot of people recommend ExplainEverything, so I gave it a go. My first attempt is not for public consumption, took my hours and I didn't think it looked very professional. Then I searched for some tutorials. Perhaps I should have done this first. http://www.morriscooke.com/?p=134

I learned that you can upload a presentation and each slide in the presentation will be a different slide in the ExplainEverything movie. So I decided that I would create a presentation and use ExplainEverything to talk over the top. It seemed (and it is) much easier to do this in ExplainEverything than in iMoive.

I wanted to make the film look slightly interesting, so I took inspiration from Jamie Clark: jamieleeclark85.wordpress.com/ The resources he makes always look great and I saw no reason why I couldn't use keynote to create attractive slides and make the short film more interesting to the young people who will use it.

By far the worst thing about making a video is doing the voice over. I strong recommend writing a script and reading through it. Even then I make mistakes and change my mind when reading it. I have found the experience of voicing a video very interesting. I don't find it easy to succinctly describe physics phenomena, so I imagine that I babble on in class. Creating the video means that I need to use as few words as possible and get to the main points. Hopefully this makes it clearer what students need to know.

If you watch the video you will see black stripes down the slide. In future I need to realise that I must make the background presentations with 'wide screen'. Which is a possible selection in Keynote. This should eliminate the issue.

I wish that in the video below I had used more features of ExplainEverything to actually move the hand around. (I think it can do this). But I will continue to play and make more resources. Hopefully it will help to engage my students.

At the moment I plan to only make instructional videos for GCSE, as I will teach Key Stage 3 with a more discovery approach and I don't want them to always be told the answer. Plus I have online textbooks and activities bought from OUP for them. A-level is changing in September 2015, so I am going to leave that for now. I hope to make very short videos for GCSE so that they will be useable in the new specifications even if content is shuffled about within the modules.

I am on holiday at the moment and I am concerned whether I will be able to keep up the creative juices when I get back to school, but as twitter colleagues have suggested, students will be able to make the videos too! I look forward to that.

Decisions Decisions; where to start when using ICT

I have said this before, but in September all the students will have 1-2-1 iPads. I have spent two days thinking about this opportunity. I would welcome suggestions and possible pitfalls.

One thing I have realised is that there is too much choice.

Do I use google, showbie, dropbox, onedrive, Evernote or what to share content with students? Do I create a blog? Will what I choose cause confusion if other staff go with something different? I have read about iTunesU, but I don't have permission to 'bind my institution to the terms and conditions'. Which is disappointing. I think that despite the enthusiasm on the internet for this, I will give it a miss for now.

However, after a recommendation from a colleague (who like me didn't get an iPad in the roll out) I have settled on nearpod as a starting point. I only get 50MB storage though, and probably need the gold package. However, as you can link to websites I should be able to link to youtube so won't need to upload videos and therefore manage to keep presentations small.

I do love the way that you can allow students to draw a picture as one of the actives in Nearpod, this means that I can allow students to show their working in physics and maths questions that are hard to type due to all the funny symbols. I might have to ask my students to consider a stylus though.

I think that I will ask my students to get an evernote account too. I feel that evernote is the best way to keep your lesson notes organised. Being able to tag notes will also help as well as being able to add photographs to notes. (Which reminds me, I must help students by adding suggestions for tags to my presentations, especially as you can also add tags in pages on the mac).

http://www.dummies.com/how-to/content/ipad-workflow-solutions-for-classroom-education.html
Until reading this article, I hadn't really considered the full idea of workflow. I have thought of how to get work from me to them, but not whether I want to get electronic work from them, mark it and send it back to them. At my previous school the Head of Chemistry used moodle to set all homework and loved that he could annotate the work that students did and they could see his comments.

I actually think that I would like my feedback to remain in their notebooks for now. There are a couple of reasons for this, firstly that I think the notebooks will be more ordered (as they will be chronological) than folders on their iPads. I don't want to have to get into how to keep work organised as I want to teach my lessons. I am not sure that I want to check their online folders for organisation, and I am not sure that they'll refer back to them anyway. When the inspectors come in they will want to see exercise books and folders, and I am not sure I can produce electronic resources for every lesson anyway. So even if students take electronic notes, they will likely be answering questions on worksheets. The exercise book also allows me a quick flick back to reference previous targets I have written and their contexts. ISI are due this year, and I suppose in another 5 years when they come back we will have moved on and so will they.

In the past two days I have started to write a list of videos that I would like to make. I wrote a script then I had a quick go with explain everything today, I wasn't happy, but we have to start somewhere. I think that I want to make my own graphics to include, so I need to think about how I will construct them.

I am very keen to look at online testing. Nearpod will allow this, but also socrative and googleforms. I have access for key stage 3 to activate and I hope that this will allow testing and recording of the responses. I had a look at quizlet today and I can really see how useful this would be for MFL. I think that I will borrow a textbook and use the glossary in the back to help populate quizlet for GCSE as this should help some of the girls who struggle with key words. I wish it would allow images.

I know I don't want to just produce resources that may or may not be looked at as part of revision. My GCSE Science and BBC bitesize are already there. Often students look in the revision guide and still need to come to me or have another look at the experiment. This year I found myself saying to students "you don't need to understand why an electric current is produced when a magnet moves relative to a coil, you just need to know that it happens, describe how to make it bigger and why the current would change direction". They wouldn't get that feedback from a video. However, being able to have that kind of conversation because the students have more time to answer questions that draw out their knowledge is appealing to me. I hope that technology will help with this.

I foresee a busy, but creative summer ahead.

Using Your Own Device in a Physics Lesson

Today I set myself the challenge of only using ICT (and some practical equipment) to teach Work and Power.

I have known for a few weeks that I would have to do this.

I used http://issuu.com/ , http://padlet.com , Google Docs (a spreadsheet), http://www.socrative.com , https://bitly.com , http://www.pinterest.com , YouTube, and http://piktochart.com .

The first issue was remembering to bring the devices. This *shouldn't* be a problem in September when the students all have to bring iPads to lessons. Also being a science teacher will help as they will be able to charge them in my classroom, so a flat battery shouldn't be a problem either.

The second issue was finding the resources in the first place. I wrote a bit.ly link on the board, but this proved difficult to input correctly and took them to all sorts of websites other than the issuu magazine I had uploaded.

I can see resolutions to this, either by e-mailing (time consuming) links, creating QR codes to scan, or uploading to a department blog. The issue with using QR codes is that students will need to have a QR code reader, the issue with the third is that blogs are blocked at my school. I hope that the school will allow us to use blogs or edmodo with the students as this would be a great place to start with lessons.

We all got to my worksheet. However, for some reason issuu mangled the link to the googlespreadsheet, so back to bit.ly to provide me with a link to that. Then the students had to find their own mass and enter it into the spreadsheet; I always allow students to use my mass if they don't like it. The spreadsheet calculated their weight. Then we measured the height up the stairs and each timed ourselves going up the stairs. Then returned to the classroom, and inputed the data.

My next aim was to get the students to use the data and work out the equations linking mass, weight, work, distance, power and time. Their ideas when then put onto padlet. They really liked using padlet and seeing the collaborative work of their peers, but there were quite a few half finished sentences or just a name hanging on the wall, so practice at using this website would be useful. I was also frustrated because I wasn't able to upload an image that I wanted to include in the wall (with the answers). School firewall! I will have to approach this issue at school ready for next year.

After that they watched a video from my-gcsescience.com and one that I had made. It took me two hours to make 1minute 22 seconds of video and I could have spent a lot longer. It is very poor in relation to the videos I know others can make, and listening to my own voice echo around the classroom wasn't great.

Then we tried a secretive quiz. The students were cross with me as they got a few questions 'wrong' that the explanation said were 'right'. I think because I didn't indicate the right answer when making the quiz. I will have to be more careful with this in the future.

The students were really excited by the idea of collaborating on the same document, and they liked making notes from my YouTube video. They also appreciated the instant feedback that socrative quizzes provide.

I made an inforgraphic summarising the key ideas using piktochart and uploaded it to pinterest, which should help the students with the key ideas in their learning.

Next step is to think about what apps I want students to have on their iPads come September, and to work out how I will use the devices in more lesson. I think that I will be busy making videos and socrative quizzes during the next holidays!

Bring Your Own Device

At Easter all our students were asked to supply an iPad as part of their school equipment. I have read blog posts from senior leaders who explain why Bring Your Own Device has not been successful because teachers have not embraced. I am worried that this will be the same situation at my school.

The students often do have their own IT equipment, the older students use laptops for coursework, research and typing up their projects. Younger year groups like to make videos with theirs. But there has never been the expectation that students would use ICT in lessons, and I haven't been.

I know of schools that use iPads in their lessons and many teachers that would love the opportunity that I will have in September. In areas of America they seem to embracing iPads in education with enthusiasm.

However, BYOD presents me more issues that using 1-2-1 devices that have an image controlled by the school. Can I insist that students download certain applications? I might be able to do that with free applications, but what about paid ones? What if their device is full, can I insist a student deletes an app so they can use the one I want them to?

I also wonder about other aspects of students having their own devices? Should I be incorporating e-safety more obviously into my teaching? Should I be worried that a year 7 student might make a video clip for me and upload it to YouTube?

Another concern is that the using the technology will take longer than doing an alternative with paper and pen, detracting from the learning of the concepts. We struggle for curriculum time as it is, and devoting more lesson time to creating digital content may mean lessons have less learning?

On the other hand, ICT presents an opportunity. Students can use video to supplement their understanding, they can collaborate on experiments more easily, they can take photographs allowing recording of work more easily. Do they need everything written in a book or file?

iPads in the classroom should make my life more easy; student using online, immediately marked, homework packages would be one example. I would like students to be able to find records of their learning in videos and photographs as well as in notes. A variety of ways they can access information can only be helpful.

I want to help my classes use ICT to become more organised. I already use my iCal applications to organise my calendar, it would be great to do the same for the students, even sharing calendar events.

But using iPads in lessons is going to be a major change, I will have to think about how I resource every lessons and work on creating more resources than presentations and worksheets. Editable forms, blogs, videos, online quizzes will all become part of my practice and I need time to be able to create these resources. I need the equipment myself to create these resources.

Then I ask myself, will it be worth it? Will my attempts to use ICT in lessons be scuppered by the student who is waiting for a new one because they have smashed their screen or can't take a photograph until they have deleted the 3000 they have on their device already, or the wireless network that decides to switch itself off during my lesson?

I suppose I will have to try it and see.

Bring Your Own Device

We are planning to launch a bring your own device scheme at school. I work at an independent school so I suppose it s easier to insist on students brining a tablet to lessons.

I can foresee issues where students will not bring their device if we are not encouraging them to use them. But how?

1) If they get the kindle reader they will be able to annotate PDFs. This means I can ask key stage 4 students to download the specification and make notes on each section as to what they understand and things they will need to recap when they revise.

2) Socrative - if all students have devices then it should be simple to use them to complete quizzes using socrative. What I like about this is that an app isn't necessary.

3) Padlet - I like the idea of working collaboratively. Padlet will allow students to give answers/comments on the wall and see those of others.

4) Evernote is a free app, allowing notebooks to be shared and it works cross platform. It is a possible way to share my presentations with students and also a way for them to collate their work on their tablet.

5) Calendars and reminders - I would hope that most tablets come with these applications and they are a good replacement for the paper planners students carry.

6) Social bookmarking - again to help students stay organised. Through bit.ly, delicious and pinterest.

I hope that these ideas are simple enough to be accessible to all students and possible to use regularly.


- Posted using BlogPress from my iPad

Using personal mobile devices in the classroom

I work in a school where there are no rules other than "respect each other, respect yourself and respect the environment". Covers most things, but nothing is clear cut, "respect" basically means that each teacher can interpret things in their own way and the consistency isn't great. However, we have fantastic students who want to learn and most of them thrive in an environment where independence is allowed to flourish.

I don't encourage my students to use their mobile devices in lessons for their learning. However, I know staff who do in my school and in other schools. I think the phrase is "if you can't beat 'em, join 'em".

My partner used mobile devices to help personalise lessons and engage students. He helps them to show their independent learning skills by using their mobiles or choosing to use a textbook to find something out.

Alessio Bernardelli has shown me socrative, an online quiz room where you set the questions and the students can use their own devices to answer the questions and ultimately get a picture of how the group is doing. This type of interaction is the power of mobile technology to me.

I visited my new school in the Easter holidays and was nicely surprised by their positive attitude to ICT. Starting in September post-16 students will have the opportunity to use the school computers virtually on their smart phones, net books, tablets or computers. I am massively impressed by this. I am aware the technology has been around for a while, but I haven't heard of it being implemented in a school before.

Whether this will mean that students are able to use mobile devices in their lessons, I am not sure. At the moment the school rules are such that students are not allowed mobiles during the school day. However, I have seen them out in a class where students were videoing their dissection. So I hope there is a level of discretion.

I think that "bring your own device" is how education will move. Bringing a personal device will becomes as common as bringing a pen to lessons. It will mean teachers and schools will have to become more imaginative on how we use the devices as making a PowerPoint won't become as easy, it will also be necessary to have networks that can cope with the hundreds of devices.

In terms of teaching and learning, teachers will have to develop their ability to support students' research skills. And they will have to consider carefully whe technology can support instead of hinder learning.

- Posted using BlogPress from my iPad

Location:Bristol

Using online conferencing software to engage in CPD

I have recently been involved in a CPD trial with the science learning centre using online software to connect with and speak to other teachers. We have been using adobe connect. From the end user point of view I really like it because it just works. The host sends a link, you click on it and it opens a user interface that allows you to see the other contributors, a presentation and contribute to a chat box. There is also a section that lists the contributors and allows you show symbols to agree/disagree, laugh, applaud or put your hand up to indicate that you want to make a contribution.

It is a very interesting experience to have a meeting online using adobe connect. It isn't possible for everyone to have their microphone open at once because the feedback from computers to microphones means that you hear echoes of the person who is speaking. This means that the meeting is ultra polite; we even have to raise our virtual hands to get a chance to speak.

The chat box is useful. It is like passing notes in a meeting but so everyone can see; a much more professional version of the bingo we might play during whole school in-service. It can get distracting for notes to go up on the screen while you are talking or listening, but we are now taking time at the end of each agenda point to read back over the written comments. After the meeting written comments (and a video of the meeting) are stored so we can refer to them, this is more useful than a normal meeting when you either have to make your own notes or remember what has been said.

Most of all though I like using the online video conferencing to meet with people I would never normally engage with. It is much easier to communicate face to face, even over the Internet, than by written format on a forum or in twitter. There is less room for misinterpretation I believe.

Our host Emily structures the meetings very carefully, and invites us all to contribute on each agenda point. Which I really like. It means someone like me can't push themselves forward and do a lot of talking at the expense of others. I can imagine that the success of using adobe connect depends a lot on the ability of the chairperson.

I don't know how easy adobe connect is to use as the presenter/host/chair, but I do think that there are a lot of positives, enough that if I had a group of schools spread out across a federation or LA I would use it to help connect the teachers and spread good practice.


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