| Digital - teacher | Education in a technological world

Preserving the Past

A while back I wrote a post about an old school website that I had built many, many years ago that was still available online. Since writing that post the site has - as I feared - finally disappeared from the Internet. I had a feeling it would, and I was looking at ways to preserve the work within it.

A School Website, a Digital Antique, and archiving.

This evening on Twitter I did a rare thing - I engaged in a twitter conversation.

I know. A conversation. Me. On Twitter!

There were two reasons for this. (1) It was a conversation that some of the "experts", the 'all knowing" and the "Twitter-elite" wouldn't join in with, and (2) it had really sparked my interest.

Reality?Virtually

In January 2014 two Yr6 pupils listened to a piece of music from a local band and were inspired to create an imaginative project based around it.

“It sounds like a video game” one of them suggested.

“Yeah, like a Mario or something” the other added.

"We could make a video of someone making a computer game, but then they imagine they're in it, and we see them playing inside it”.

 

Augmenting Advent

This was enjoyable. Absolutely no relevance to the curriculum, but fun to do, and the kids were desperate to star in it.

Our pupils have been busy for the past fortnight recording Christmas related videos for a special project that is on display in the school hall. It is an Augmented Advent Calendar. Just like in a traditional advent calendar where each day you open a window for a treat, with this calendar each day you point a mobile phone / tablet at an image for a special video.

via www.porchester.notts.sch.uk

Going out with a Bang

Here's a rare thing - a post. A post on this site!

Quite a while ago Dughall McCormick (@dughall) introduced me to something new - Augmented Reality through Aurasma. The same evening as he introduced it, I began thinking of how to use it within education. You can see some of the experiments in this blog. It was whilst these experiments were undertaken that an idea was beginning to form in the back of my mind. It was ambitious. It was ridiculous. But with new web based tools that were being released on a regular basis, it was becoming more and more evident that it might just be possible to achieve.

Commenting + audio = Speakpipe

How can you encourage more interactivity to your website? Thanks to Julian Wood (@Ideas_Factory on Twitter) for the heads up about a brilliant new add on to websites and blogs. Speakpipe is a (currently) free service that allows users to send audio messages to a website.

lupgceict

OK, not the snappiest title I've ever written for a blog post - but it's appropriate. I'm currently at the Leicester University Post Graduate Certificate in Education Information and Communication Technology day. I've been invited back by Doug Dickenson (@orunner) for a second year to talk about the use of technology in the classroom.

YouTube adverts - an update

Yesterday I posted about my concerns over YouTube suddenly adding adverts to the school channel and, as I later discovered, also appearing before and over the top of the 'Welcome to Porchester' video. After lots of digging and work by Kevin McLaughlin (@kvnmcl), (please note that that is appreciated greatly), it looked like the ads were appearing because the school was showing a video with copyrighted material.

One step forward, one step back

Anyone who has read the articles I have posted on this site over the years will now how I feel about the filtering service that schools are subjected to when they go online. It's no secret that I think it's draconian and too rigid.

One year on...

It was last October that I began a project that had a massive impact on the way I teach ICT. I had an opportunity, whilst my class were being taught by a trainee teacher, to see just what we could do on an iPad. Turns out it was lots!