| Digital - teacher | Education in a technological world

Personal Space? ePortfolio? Online Storage?

Three different words, but don't they mean the same thing? One of the features of a packaged and paid for VLE seems to be that the pupils have their own "personal space", or their "ePortfolio", or "online storage". In my bid to create our own VLE, I've been pondering just how to set up these areas for our pupils. Afterall, without them I'll never get the VLE finished. The pupils already have their own space when they join our school - its their area on the server when they log into the school network. It stores their own files that they create during their time with us. The only problem with it is that it's only accessible to them whilst they are in school, connected to our network; no good for 24/7 learning.

Embed It All, Everywhere

If you use Embeditin on your website / blog to embed documents into the page for others to view without the need to download, then you'll be interested in their "Sitewide" plugin.

I've installed it onto the school website and rather than have to convert each file and then add the embed codes one by one, the Sitewide plugin converts a suitable file instantly and displays it onscreen in a stylish pop up, as you can see below;

Image map for the VLE

Following on from my post about my ideas for how to proceed with the school VLE, here is an image that I created to show the six aspects that would appear on the portal page, with a brief description of how each area would function, as well as who could provide the service.

The latest on my masterplan...

Things have been moving along steadily since my last posting regarding creating our own VLE. 

After a chat with my HT, Google Apps is now set up and I hope to start testing it with a pilot group of children shortly to see how suitable it really is. I'm currently looking for examples of how other schools have been (and are) using Apps with their children, and just what it allows to be achieved.

Dingle, Dangle, Dongles!

I've been thinking about mobile broadband recently. In fact, I've spent time thinking about it since I was at a conference and had a very stressful time trying to connect to their network only to find they had filtered internet access and almost caused me to abandon my web based presentation!

Still working things out

My desire to create a LP ideal for the school (and, let's be honest here my sanity as well), is moving along. Google Apps has been upgraded to the education version, and - after a bit of a delay - the email service is now working without adverts showing up. 

Google Apps - an update

I've begun the process of getting Google Apps (Education edition) for school. There have been a few teething problems with the process; the Domain Host settings were a bit tricky to sort but in the end it was achieved and the domain has been verified by google.

At the moment we have google apps - standard edition. The differences with this is that it's limited to 50 users (we could request more if we wanted to), and it supports ads. The education version is ad free - always a positive when children are concerned.

Creating a bespoke Learning Platform

As I make the slow return to full time active work, I am beginning to think more and more about the Learning Platform situation for school. We were all ready to sign up to the expensive county-wide solution (hosted by Fronter) until we went to the first of two training days to introduce us to it. To say that myself and my Headteacher were unimpressed would be an understatement (read here). We were appalled at the clunky, non-intuitive, 20th century looking product we were being asked to pay a small fortune for annually. Unsuprisingly, We opted out of the county solution and instead decided to go our own way.

Augmenting Augmented Reality

Ever since I was sent to the General Electric Augmented Reality website a while back, and saw for myself what can be achieved with a small printed out square and a webcam, I have been fascinated by Augmented Reality. I've been wondering just how this technology could be used in the classroom.

VisibleTweets

Here is a beautiful way of tracking a keyword within twitter. VisibleTweets displays all tweets containing your chosen search term (for an event you could search for a hashtag phrase) and moves from one tweet to another in a visibly superb manner.