My Firefox extensions

Firefox extensions I use:

1. bit/ly preview
2. Better Gmail2
3. British english dictionary
   
4. colourful tabs
5. delicious bookmarks
6. evernote web clipper
7. diigo bookmarks
8. fire ftp
9. IE tab (search internet explorer in add-ons)
10. java quick starter
11. microsoft.net framework assistant
12. tab buttons
13. WebMail Ad Blocker
14. Xmarks
    

Plugins:

1. Adobe Acrobat
2. Google Update
3. IE Tab plug-in
4. iTunes application detection
5. Java platform

Staff Induction Links

Thanks to everybody for attending the Classroom Technology Induction Session. I had to rush through a lot of things so I've collated the links here for you to peruse at you convenience.

Remember to let me know if you have any questions. dbarnes@stbenedicts.org.uk

Dai Barnes

The links

http://twitter.com

http://twitter.com/daibarnes

Twitter shout out responses.

IWB ActivStudio training.

IWB resources online. Sign up for an account: http://www.prometheanplanet.com/

Moodle on youtube

A demo course of Moodle tools to use in the classroom

Moodle's website: http://moodle.org

Some interesting tools:

Create word clouds from whatever text you want on: http://wordle.net

Sign up to a social bookmarking (favourites) site: http://delicious.com

Start working in the cloud using Google Docs instead of office software; always the same whichever computer you're using: http://www.google.com/google-d-s/tour1.html

Google Apps for Education (which include Google Docs) are activated for the school. Email Mr Barnes for your own account.

Have collaborative conversations about a picture or presentation using: http://voicethread.com

There are lots of other tools I could list. Anything you want to do and I'll find a service to try and do it. Send me a message. 

Have a look at this mindmap for anything that might interest you.

Bridging the Gap between Technicians and Teachers

After school today I saw a tweet discussing technology staff development and clicked the link. It took me to a live blog where technology was being discussed by a group of USA teachers who seem to work for the same district.

The gist of their discussion was about bridging the gap between technicians and teachers. The discussion proved interesting as contributors fed their stories of programmes to entice teachers and techs into online networks, blogs, summer camps, overtime etc. My suggestion was a teachmeet, the unconference lubricated with drinks and nibbles. This seemed to be dismissed as a 'techmeet' and some attendees weren't convinced by the alcohol approach. Obviously this is a new concept to America, or at least to this forum.

I think it is necessary to bridge this gap between technicians and teachers. As a middle man listening to the woes of both sides (but with authority over neither) I think it would be interesting to have them follow the same working agenda - TO KNOW WHAT THE OTHER IS DOING!

Why can't technicians blog about the work they're doing? Or better still use a twitter-like service, yammer for example. It might be helpful to know what technicians are doing through the day, or they could send messaqges when they are repairing some hardware, installing software, fixing this or that or researching something else. In turn it would be good for the technicians to hear about teachers using tech in the classroom; things that go right and, of course, wrong.

Connecting these bodies of personnel might help quite a lot in developing the use of technology in the classroom. I'm sure this idea is riddled with flaws but I like the spirit of it; I feel the potential it has for bringing these disparate workers together.

Thanks to Kristin Hokanson for sending out the invite to the live blog

Reading & Moodle

Having read @mwesch blogpost in his digital ethnography blog I started to wonder if I could adapt the idea in moodle. Initial thoughts are below in a response to his post. Original post:

How to get students to find and read 94 articles before the next class

My response:

This is a great idea because it is for higher end learning. In 6th Form in UK (I think G12/13 in USA) I need tools that very established and successful academic teachers can use (Medieval History for example) who have been using a didactic style for 30/40 years.

I think I could create something similar to this via moodle with students using their blogs (not a great moodle tool as there is no comment facility) with a specific tag for the project they're working on and then other tags may be included in the work as they see fit. Searching the blogs via the tag will collate all student entries into one list effectively creating the database similar to the zoho database generated in this blogpost.

This might be a difficult model to kick off in ICT as the subject doesn't require much reading. The best approach maybe to pick a well talked about ICT article/topic and get students to research it via computer journals, newspapers, TV articles and blogs.

Maths and Moodle

Maths & Moodle

Why bother?

I am looking for a Maths Dept that is using Moodle to improve what the classroom is already doing. The dept is successful with very good teachers and great results.

So I would like to see some Maths practice that is beyond the usual 'VLEs are cool' stuff I throw at teachers challenging technology in schools.

Email I received from Head of Maths below:

---

Thanks for taking an interest in us!

It looks good – a bit like equation editor in Word. How would we use it? This is not a moan, but a genuine question – I’m not sure what the benefits for our students would be in doing maths over a virtual environment, but when you have the time would like to discuss this. From what I have seen of independent schools (mainly Hailbury Group) ITC use is minimal – we are probably quite advanced in comparison. Have you seen any good examples?

---

Thanks to Ian Usher and Dan Needlestone for discussing/twittering about this with me.

We determined that we already use it for access to rich-media content in the form of electronic text books mapped to KS3 and KS4. Other than this, and the normal VLE exponents (24/7 access), we thought it would be excellent to adopt an idea presented at TeachMeet Bett 2009 by a TechSmith employee teaching at a Primary School. He suggested using Jing (free product) for pupils to record screencasts explaining what they were doing on whiteboard software (graphics package of some sort). If you adapt this model to tablet PCs, you could see more sophisticated sums being sloved and narrated on video. These in turn could be posted to Maths forums within Moodle as a catalogue of good practice or learning. This would be a really neat idea. And work at potentially the highest level of Maths delivered in schools (A Level) would be satisfied by a tablet PC, maybe the tablet eeePC. I'll have to investigate the tablets a bit more as I have never owned one but hopefully the annotation facilities won't be too far away from pencil and paper. The Maths department have expressed their reluctance to move away from that media before but this might tip the balance.

ActivStudio is relaunched as ActivInspire

Promethean have launched a leaner meaner looking ActivStudio called Inspire.

Download it from http://www.prometheanplanet.com/ - you have to be registered to get the download.

It looks great - a welcome makeover and some new features you can read about here!

Quick screencast preview made with Jing (techsmith)...

Best use this link as the video hasn't resized properly - ooooops....

screencast of Inspire

A new screencast demonstrating the upgraded Handwriting Recognition Tool - I am loving this bit because it is so much better than before.

HTC TouchHD Comments

A friend of mine had this to say about it...

The HD is lovely. It is a great size and weight and feels just right in your hand. The screen is fantastic and the touch usability is excellent. However, TouchFlo is just a bolt front end that only temporarily hides W6.1. Eg texts 'arrive' on a touchflo screen, but as soon as you click on reply, you are in nasty W6.1. It would be good if HTC developed TouchFlo to do all of the main phone functions instead of just pretending! W6.1 doesn't respond to the accelerometer, so in most screens, turning the HD on its side makes no difference. W6.1 seems to have 'improved' some things over PocketPC 2003 (which I think my old ipaq is on) and in the process made it worse. A small example is the alarm clock feature. I use my pda as an alarm clock and on the old version of WM when the alarm goes off, a big screen appears asking 'dismiss or snooze?', which is logical. On the new WM6.1, when the alarm goes off, the only way to enable snooze is to fiddle with the menu and then select the length of snooze required. Whilst this is an excellent way of waking me up, it not what a snooze feature is supposed to be! WM6.1 is basically pda software with the mobile phone bits added as an afterthought, so for example emoticons, which now most mobiles support do not display. The TouchFlo keyboard is nice and easy to use and is a massive improvement on the W6.1 version which can only be used with a stylus, but it is nowhere near as nice as the iphone one in which the keys 'grow' as you touch them to show you which letter you are typing - surely this cannot be copyright and is such an obvious thing to do.

I realise that these are all minor things compared to all the good things it does do, but it frustrates and annoys me that manufacturers produce software with such disregard for finishing touches. It is a bit like a car manufacturer designing a beautiful looking car that has a fantastic engine and bodywork, but with windows that do not fully close.

The only REALLY annoying thing about the HD is the camera software. I am used to the Sony Ericsson cameras which are SUPER quality. Excellent software and brilliant results. I often used my mobile as my main camera (even though it is only 3.2 mp), because the results were so good. The HD allegedly has a 5mp camera, but what is the point in this hardware if the software is shit. The autofocus takes an age to settle down, and the shutter speed seems to be extremely slow. Most of the pix I took over Xmas seem blurred with dull colours, whereas in previous years the pix I took with the SE were colourful and sharp. HTC need to majorly rethink their attitude to cameras if they intend including them in high end units. I will carry on experimenting with the camera, but at the moment it is a huge disappointment.

Overall, I am pleased I went for the HD.

For me, the choice is defined by quick access to the main tools I use - twitter, web browser, text messaging, family contacts (calling) and music. But the camera is becoming more and more important to me. So the comment about the camera being a bit poor is a concern. iPhone no better though - so maybe the Nokia N96 would be good.

Apparently the Google Android G2 is coming out end of Jan 2009. That is going to have Touch HD hardware with G1 keyboard etc.

OMG! What's the big deal anyway - just a ******* phone and it's not like I travel the world every week. I'm rarely more than 30 minutes from a computer!