Building the schools website

Well it is time that the school got a new website – of course hooked into a blog – so we need a new home page. Here’s a quick video using Screen Flow and Photoshop CS3 to show the build process, speeded up a little. My plan is to a higher quality, wide screen one on the schools website – as the website. With links to our Moodle courseware and a blog. Maybe the last photoshop web design I’ll do? who knows.

Screen flow is excellent on OSX, smoother and easier to edit that iShowYou (which is cheaper). Just record and go, works like iMove (before Apple ruined it in Leopard). Then drop it into Final Cut and add a tune. Lasts about a minute and a half. Made it to show some students how websites are put together by graphic designers.

More Homemade TV

My current obsession is with School TV. All started with a Cog Dog Tweet, and has grown. Just ordered some more lighting rigs for my converted TV classroom to go with the blue screen set up we did when we rebuild a few classrooms for Project Based Learning. A new professional backdrop rig should help too.

Running a semi-pro DV camera direct into a Mac (tapes are too slow and JVC Hard Drive recorders are a pain). So straight to disc is the way to go.

So now the room works, has bags of light, and good sound acoustics. Some messing about with UStream.tv has been a success, and almost time to get some kids involved with some beta testing.

Then I found a free teleprompter, which works really well (though I think I need a 24″ iMac in there now to do the job).  It works really well, and kids can cut and paste their work off their blog. (Another pet-project of mine – the elimination of Flash Drives – which seem to get lost all the time).

Hoping to get some video shot on Thursday … now need to find someone else to collaborate with …

What (big) kid doesn’t want their own TV station!

Nvidia going 3D

This is very cool and and very here and now. Nvidia are launching a new gaming card that images a game from 2 view points, so with a pair of glasses the game becomes 3D, the good news is that there are 80 games ready and of course the code is out for all developers to use. So SL gets windlight and now this. Time’s they are a changin’. Only works with Vista, bah

Progressive Regressive

This cracked me up. Given the cyclic media beat up on the ‘three Rs’ and the comparisons with 60s education and today (kids can’t read/spell/count) etc., I found this very amusing. I am not sure if we’ve gone forwards or backwards. Is it the same debate?, looks like the same classroom!

Going Global

I’ve just joined http://globaleducation.ning.com and hope that I can extend my PNL to other classrooms delivering Web2.0.

Specifically, I posted a collaborative project request.

As part of PBL, students are graded on their communication and presentation skills, roughly every 5th week of our school term.

School Term Dates
	2008	2009
Term 1	29 January to 11 April 2008	27 January to 9 April 2009
Term 2	28 April to 04 July 2008	28 April to 10 July 2009
Term 3	21 July to 26 September 2008	27 July to 2 October 2009
Term 4	13 October to 19 December 2008	19 October to 18 December 2009

We are attempting to record all presentations live using UStream or some similar service. We would like some of you global EduBloggers out there to spend 5-10 mintutes watching their presentations, then complete a Google Form for evaluation.

If possible, I’d like to arrange an online meeting with you and the students in which you can ask them questions to defend their presentations, justify points they have made and to see if they have understood their research and end solution. We will be grading them on their presentation itself, it’s effective use of available technologies (they have a Classroom 2.0 setting) and their communication with the audience.

The review panel will consist of teachers (in school), parents and we hope … real live people from outside our local community.

We think the video call would be 10 minutes … times/dates/technology to be agreed.

We are also seeking outside bloggers to occasionally look at student work in progress and leave comments – particularly to those students who find blogging a challenge.

If you can help me out in the review process, or just to post a comment on a kids site, it would boost thier confidence and make a huge difference to our PBL initiative.

Contact me by leaving a comment and I’ll email you!

Thanks

Hello IT

And for those who loved Season 1, now you can get Season 2 from most reputable outlets.

Project Based Learning – First Look

Here is a first look at the Project Based Learning in year 9. When you look at the blog, consider that this is 3 weeks work. In week 1, he didn’t know what a blog was, how to use it etc., I post this one because I haven’t stuck my oar in and suggested any tools to him. What he did was go and find out about ‘blogs’ before he started his actual work. Granted this a smart kid to think this way, but as he works in a group, he has already passed on the knowledge, so there are several kids with sites like this.

The gain is that he now can focus far more on ‘content’ and ‘applying learning’. So if your wondering if a 14/15 year old can cope with the metaverse. You decide ..

Worth 1000?

A site for creative minds to enter competitions and WIN money. Now if that isn’t an incentive for kids in school I don’t know what is /// Worth 1000. Time to learn and win!

Aviary Creative Tools

I am, I may modestly say, a gun at Photoshop, so I am hard to please when it comes to using anything lesser. Avairy is impressive. A collection of online tools to do a massive range of creative things. Check out some of the links … I must be slow, there are plenty of time-lapse and other examples on the site, and on YouTube.

So for those classrooms stuck with Paint or PaintShop Pro (yuk), or lack the budget to buy audio editors or Flash (Adobe own the creative world) … this is a real classroom option. Simple for the slower kids to pick up and useful enough for the top end to extend themselves.

New Timetable

I am proposing that those teachers who are using 21st Century Learning tools with their students start school at 4pm and finish at 6pm.

In the morning they have a video conference from 9-9.30 to receive their tasks/projects and in the evening 2 hours tutorial face to face.

This reduces the traffic, saves the environment, and allows those teachers who wish to stick their current methods, more access to computers (negating that argument about slow adoption), and reduces the overall daily population and administration of school.

This makes perfect sense to me. Half hour online briefing and 2 hours face to face. Lets be honest, we get more done between 6pm-11pm than we do all day anyway.