These were originally on a wiki, http://bccpgce.pbworks.com,  but since I’m handing control of that over to the student teachers, I though I’d better keep a copy of my own:

Starting out with Educational Technology

The aim of the session is to provide you with some starting points and ideas that you can incorporate into your teaching. You should also be aware of some of the issues surrounding e-safety and professionalism.

 I won’t be doing handouts for this presentation – all the links and resources are here:

Introduction

• A bit about me
• Why are we here?
  • QTS standards
  • Starting a journey
  • It’s all about the learning
  • Tools I’ve chosen are either available at Birley or free 

ICT tools for teachers

Getting started: 

• Prezi
  • see it in action – this is James Mitchie’s first ever Prezi and this was mine - it’s easy!
  • get an education account with a dot edu or dot sch email address 
  • try the tutorials on the site to get started

• Wallwisher
  • try it out here
  • for groups to share ideas
  • for individuals to get creative – maybe in the style of Life on the Refrigerator Door 
  • It’s not limited to text - look at what Thomas Tallis School created 
  • Interesting ways to use Wallwisher  (more Interesting ways resources later!)

• PowerPoint
  • Good and bad
    • Alvin Trusty shows you how to imporve your presentations (nb this is a long video – around 45 mins, but worth taking the time to watch. It is also for an American audience, so the copyright rules aren’t exactly the same as in the UK)
    • Dan Meyer redesigns a slide Sounds simple, but there’s some very thorough analysis of how this would be beneficial to the learners.
  • Slideshare
  • Voting system

• Open Office – it’s free!

Images

• Copyright and Creative Commons
• Flickr 
  • Creative Commons images
  • Advanced search - remember to tick the Creative Commons check box!
  • The Commons 
• Online image editing with Picnik 

Searching and researching:

• Improve your skills and meet the team from Commoncraft
• Visual search with Spezify.com - demonstrated by Dai Barnes using Screenr. Spezify allows the results of a web search to be displayed graphically: pictures, photos and snippets of web pages appear. Of course some of these may not be suitable for school – Dai uses this as a teaching point and discusses what should/shouldn’t be clicked on, but obviously teachers should do the search and check the results before they use Spezify with a class!
• News search with newsmap.jp (don’t be put off by the japanese domain name – results are in English). Nice for tutor time, as well as for looking at current events.
• How do you decide if information is reliable? How do you teach this skill?
  • Teachers TV resource – for teachers. Obviously be aware about age appropiateness of websites etc if you use this type of activity with students.
  • North Pacific Tree Octopus (Google key words: tree octopus), or provide a direct link: zapatopi.net/treeoctopus.htm
  • Boilerplate   (Google key words: boilerplate robot), or to avoide the unhelpful search suggestion that includes the word hoax, provide a direct link: www.bigredhair.com/boilerplate/

Sharing links:

• URL shorteners
  • pros and cons
    • We were asked to let our students do a survey. This was the URL: http://www.zoomerang.com/Survey/survey.zgi?p=WEB229PGRBLP3H As you can imagine, this caused problems, so I made a shortcut: http://tinyurl.com/sypolice
    • This type of shortcut has to be entered into the address bar – typing it into Google won’t work!
    • What could happen if students mistyped? A teaching point here – use the back button!
    • Filtering in place in many schools
    • Beware of malicious links – this is a teaching point 
  • tinyurl and others
• Social bookmarking
  • Commoncraft again (I love these videos – can you tell?)
  • Delicious
    • for teachers - my bookmarks
    • as a search tool 
    • for students - Tom Barrett’s class page 
  • Diigo
    • annotate the web – but beware of risks – and SPAM!
    • groups - edtech and teaching and learning with web 2.0
    • allows automatic backup - I do all my bookmarking with diigo and it exports automatically to delicious. I can be part of two networks and I have a backup – just in case 

• The classtools fruit machine 

Literacy: language, reading, writing and speaking

• Wordle
  • To introduce a topic
  • To compare two or more texts
  • To teach students how to do a presentation without a script
  • To encourage students to vary their vocabulary (for example considering alternatives when the word ’said’ appears in large letters when students analyse their own creative writing)
  • See a presentation here on Samantha Lunn’s blog, or read about 23 ways to use Wordle in the MFL classroom 
  • Interesting ways to use Wordle 
• Digital storytelling
  • from talking to writing
  • Using Samarost 2 as a stimulus for creative writing. [nb: Chapter 1 is free, the full version costs $5. There are some Google ads, at least on the free version] It tells the story of some aliens who visit a planet and leave with the inhabitants’ dog. An adventure to rescue the dog ensues. It’s very nicely animated and can be used as the basis for descriptive or imaginative writing. A new version is expected soon, there is also Samarost 1, but this contains characters smoking hookahs, so might not be suitable for use in school!
  •  inanimatealice.com is really good for digital storytelling, students can discuss what is happening, predict what will happen next, talk about the images or discuss the choice of music. They may even be inspired to create a story of their own.
  • Create or choose your own starting point – it doesn’t have to be fictional:
    • Video: Most schools filter YouTube, but you could try Teacher Tube, Vimeo or DotSub
    • News
    • Historical event
    • Animoto
• Blogs
  • Blogs and wikis in the classroom (The first link includes a comparison of some different sites by Tom Barrett  – it’s worth reading)
  • For students
    • Preparing for Paris 
    • Nottingham High School’s travel blog 
    • Mr Higgins’ classes (the links to the class blogs are in the sidebar on the right hand side)
  • For teachers
    • as authors – reflect, share
    • as readers/commenters -discover,  reflect, discuss
• Wikis
  • Wikis in Plain English 
  • PB Works (you’re looking at it!), Wet Paint and others
  • YoRead (created using Wikispaces)
• Audio and podcasts
  • Can be made by staff or students
  • Record on mobile phones? (But not in the classroom!)
  • Use a simple microphone
  • Audacity
  • Don’t worry if your early attempts sound less than great - content is more important than top quality sound
• Collaborative writing
  • Google docs - take the official tour, or try the Plain English version.
  • Etherpad/Primary pad  
    • Etherpad is an online collaborative writing tool. It was recently acquired by Google, but the code has now been open sourced, so other versions have started to appear – such as primary pad which is for use in primary schools. Keep a lookout for new versions – lots are now starting to appear.
    • A number of people (originally up to 8 people, but this may change as people play with the source code) can write at once; each person’s contribution is highlighted in a different colour, so it easy to see who wrote what. There is a chat window at the side, also colour coded. There is a time slider that can be used to see how the writing developed over time.
    • Steve Kirkpatrick is a teacher who used this really effectively. He played an animated Batman clip from YouTube, students were split into groups and asked to describe short sections of the clip (it’s only one minute long). The clip is full of action and vivid imagery, so it’s an ideal stimulus for descriptive writing. The students collaborated on Etherpad to produce the written work. The teacher can enter the Etherpad and check/correct work – with their contribution clearly highlighted. Read more on Steve’s blog here.

     Issues:

• Need to check that Etherpad actually works – some firewalls block it.
• The pads may be public, so in theory anyone can enter the discussion.
• Students don’t tend to start this in an organised way, so it is worthwhile either modelling how different group members should start at different points, or even putting names in for them to show where to start.

Numeracy: handling data and more

• Collecting data with Google forms
  • An introduction from Google 
  • How Dan Stucke amazed his class with Google forms: 

He used Google forms to set up a survey and asked his teacher network (more on that later!) to complete it. Students were hooked by the sudden appearance of their own data. Once exotic locations from around the world started to appear there were oohs and ahs! Forms and data were used to generate discussion about quality of questions etc.

One disadvantage – pupils can put rude words in and there’s no way of checking who it was.

Read more – Dan’s original post about using this in his interview lesson is here, his post about the presentation is here.

Dan recently did an even better versiopn of this which included the use of Wallwisher. The people who completed his survey left feedback about the questions on postits.

•  
  • Forms are also good for pupil surveys 
• Maths maps Another brilliant project started by Tom Barrett. These are all aiimed at KS2, but why not adapt it to suit your own subject and key stage(s)?

Taking control of your professional development:

Networking with other professionals and sharing ideas online

• Teachers TV
  • Videos (obviously) for use in class and for CPD
  • Groups/comments/discussion
• TES
  • Shared resources
  • Discussion forum
• Twitter
  • Meet my PLN
  • #movemeon What happened when Doug Belshaw asked educators to share hints and tips using Twitter and the #movemeon hashtag?  Lots of people joined in to share their ideas and create a really interesting crowd-sourced resource.

    Doug created an archive of the tweets using Twapperkeeper, which is great,  but it’s not likely to reach teachers that aren’t already using Twitter. So he made a book as well. Brilliant.

    This isn’t just for new or trainee teachers, we’re all learners, I’m sure everyone can find something in here to make them think  ‘I’ve got to try that’, or ‘I used to do that – why did I stop?’ Doug and Stuart Ridout have done a great job with the book. Best of all, the e-book is free, so what are you waiting for? Go and download one.

    PDF/ebook (free download): http://bit.ly/movemeonpdf

    Book (at cost price): http://bit.ly/movemeonbook

• Teachmeets
• Blogs and RSS
  • more from Commoncraft – the miracle of RSS or try Google Reader in Plain English
  • Some suggestions to get you started:
    • Tom Barrett’s edte.ch
    • José Picardo’s Box of Tricks
    • Rodd Lucier, The Clever Sheep
• Interesting ways presentations 

…and finally

• Don’t believe everything that you hear about so-called ‘digital natives’
  • always teach the skills – don’t assume that they know how to do things
  • always teach the behaviours – don’t assume that they know what to do
  • find ways to encourage and monitor participation – you need to overcome the 90-9-1 rule
• Beware of advertising
• Always have a Plan B 
• Have fun! 

Could you pick one thing from today that you could use with a class after Easter?