Questions and Answers

personalisation-pieces.asp

Q&A's
John Davitt
Tuesday June 19, 2007
The Guardian

What's the easiest way to start publishing text and pictures online?
A new site called ScrapBlog (www.scrapblog.com) allows you to build your own "online scrapbook" collection of annotated pictures, words and even movies. It is easy to use and would also suit special needs portfolios. Alternatively, WordPress (www.wordpress.com) and Blogger from Google (www.blogger.com) are two of the other most popular free sites that let you create and publish your own collections of pictures and text with relative ease and partial elegance.
What are the best sites for ICT guidance and online professional development courses?
Apart from the obvious at standards.dfes.gov.uk, the Innovation Unit at innovation-unit.co.uk and becta.org.uk, it's hard to beat the encyclopaedic Shambles site (shambles.net). It was built originally to support those teaching ICT in the international school community. It is particularly strong on links to online training and professional development resources.
Any new sites with geography applications?
Somebody has had the brilliant idea of logging images that are being posted to the Flickr pictures site by location on a world map, in real time. So, as you watch the world map every few seconds, another picture appears, the scene scrolls and the pointer shifts to show where in the world the current image originated. The scene moves constantly - a fish caught in Tucson or, say, a night scene in Hunan province, China. It's a perfect five-minute activity to provoke questions, challenge stereotypes and remind students of the time zone differences. It's also a useful reminder of what parts of the world are most active on the internet. The site is currently set up as a trial at http://flickr-vision.com/.
Any new ideas for assessment and action research online?
Take a look at a wonderful school pairing and a genuine assessment project between Julie Lindsay's grade 11 class at International School, Dhaka in Bangladesh and Vicki Davis's 10th grade computer science class at Westwood school in Camilla, Georgia, US. Known as the Flat Classroom project, the site contains podcasts, calendars with future events and lots of reflective wisdom about what worked or not, and why (http://flatclassroomproject.wiki-spaces.com).
For action research see the blog run by Andy Roberts on distributed action research - an investigation into how we can aggregate and combine individual research findings at http://distributedresearch.net/blog/.
How can I cut down the printing bill in school?
Outside essential exam work, some schools are looking at providing good-quality draft and black and white printing, and suggesting home printing or the use of online print labs for special work and key images that students might want to keep. Online printing is an increasingly useful service and costs are surprisingly low (as little at 10p) for large, photo-quality prints. All you do is email or upload your images to the sites and the prints arrive in the post next day. Schools can buy large number of credits at reduced cost and then sell them on to students. The best sites to look at include Photobox (photobox.co.uk) and kodakgallery.co.uk.
What are the best sources of educational clip art?
There is a good collection of links on the north-east Lincolnshire site at tlfe.org.uk/clipart.htm. Also, although it's a US site, there are lots of good curriculum images at www.awesome-clipartforeducators.com.
· John Davitt is an ICT writer and trainer. Please email your queries to john@aardvarkwisdom.com

Your technical queries answered
John Davitt
Tuesday January 9, 2007
The Guardian

What's the best way to stop pupils copying big chunks from the web without spending time looking at and understanding what they have copied?

At times it pays to get them to change the media. If the original work was text-based, ask them to turn it into a one-minute talk. The website, plagiarism.org is another useful resource as it details the tools, such as Turnitin, that can be used to check whether a piece of work is original.

How can I make simple animations for free?

Have a look at the Unfreez shareware at softpedia.com. You can download it for free and it takes a collection of stills and turns them into an animated gif (a moving picture). Some teachers use it to turn a whole set of class hand-drawings into a group film, with each child submitting a frame.

Is there any useful new paint software?

Tuxpaint (tuxpaint.org) is an ideal drawing and paint package for young children that you can download for free (alternatively you can buy a disc for £6.99 that includes lots of extra resources which you can copy for parents if you wish). For older children doing more sophisticated drawing and image manipulation, see the Gimp software at gimp.org. Some consider it to be a free alternative to Photoshop. It's large and sophisticated and popular with photographers.

How can students make their own dance music? I want to get them doing their own music for our next dance display.

One of the easiest and cheapest ways is with the Mixman record deck. It's a small, flat box with two "scratch decks" that connects to a PC via USB. Using the editing software on your PC, you can combine up to 16 discrete music tracks and control pitch, volume, panning and tempo. You can even add your own voice into the mix (Mixman, £45 exc vat, available from taglearning.com). Five Havering schools recently took part in a creative composition competition, with DJ Spoony judging the winner, a dramatic professional creation from three students at Whybridge junior school. Have a listen at lgfl.net

· John Davitt is an ICT writer, trainer and freelance thinker. Please email your queries to john@aardvarkwisdom.com

Alternative path to the school of the future?
John Davitt
Tuesday January 9, 2007
The Guardian

The front desk at the school is a refectory bar serving wholesome food and fruit: "It's so that visitors always see a human as they enter," says its architect, Kenneth Gärdestad, at Kunskapsskolan Nyköping, 60km north of Stockholm in Sweden. Gärdestad is one of those multi-talented individuals that make you insecure just by reputation. In person he is very relaxed and more interested in the project (the school) than personality.

An ex-musician turned architect (Abba were once his backing band, but that's another story), he saw that computers were happy in darker spaces and this led him to create "little stables in social places" for the computers. The insides of the stables, large enough to house two machines, are painted black, and a yellow swatch on the floor denotes the IT zone.

The school is one of 18 secondaries catering for 12- to 16-year-olds and run by the Kunskapsskolan company (it means school of knowledge). It doesn't charge any fees, being financed through a state school voucher system that entitles pupils (and parents) to choose the school of their liking. It provides a striking example of another way of funding new schools.

ICT plays a major part in the project as students have free access to computers during their independent learning time, which can be up to half their time in school. "Kunskapsporten" (the knowledge portal) is the school's own intranet where students have 24-hour access to all the school's resources. The portal contains texts and pictures for all steps and courses.

All students at the eight sixth-form centres are also given a laptop as they begin their course. Surprisingly, one technician manages all the machines - by astute use of the disc image, says the head Dan Skoog. "If anything is wrong we wipe and re-install so students make sure they have a copy of all important work."

The school I am standing in was a warehouse for light bulb storage four years ago, but you'd never know it now. Careful use of vibrant colours, an open bright interior and simple, graceful, curving lines of glass and wood belie past usage. Plants trail from the first level down towards a cafe bar. "Even the greatest of ideas can be killed by darkness and gloom. Likewise, unfinished ideas can ripen, grow and bloom in the right environment and the right conditions," says the school brochure.

By refurbishing existing buildings (which are never larger than 400 students), the schools can occupy locations near the centre of towns. Most importantly the architect, who has designed all the schools for the company, returns regularly, "often weekly", to watch what learners are doing in the spaces, to talk to them and to make whatever changes are needed to preserve the "flow" as Kenneth calls the students' movement and work in the learning spaces.

I'm left reflecting that the whole approach is less "fixed in stone" and more a continual "hand to the tiller" - more Ikea, less the über office style preferred in some UK school designs. Perhaps there are some hints here of another way of getting towards the idea of a school of the future. I wonder how often British architects of new schools will be returning down the years to see how their projects are proceeding.

· John Davitt travelled to Sweden courtesy of IT supplier RM

Modern languages come on down
John Davitt
Tuesday December 12, 2006
The Guardian

Joe Dale, a full-time French teacher at Nodehill middle school on the Isle of Wight, has made a big impact by implementing ICT in his own classroom and then sharing the learning with other teachers. "My interest was sparked about seven years ago when I first used websites such as Linguascope (www.linguascope.com) with my pupils," says Dale, who is also a lead practitioner for the Specialist Schools and Academies Trust. "I could see how much they enjoyed completing the interactive activities and how they were engaging with their learning,"

He then received a portable computer as part of the Laptops for Teachers scheme and, once this was linked to a classroom data projector, he started to bring in a new dimension to his teaching. "I began making PowerPoint presentations for whole-class teaching along with my own Spellmaster activities for the computer suite, as well as producing my own version of Who wants to be a Millionaire? in PowerPoint."

Dale was particularly impressed by online tools such as Spellmaster, which allows teachers to create their own Flash-based vocabulary learning games. (You can download hundreds of word games in a range of languages for free at www.spellmaster.com).

Using a range of approaches and activities seems to work well for students with a variety of different needs. One parent of a pupil on the autistic spectrum wrote to Dale that the languages work had an effect they could see on their son's "general motivation and engagement at school".

Dale has also set up a French blog for the languages department where pictures of student work and sound files of the oral contributions in class are posted on the web each day to allow pupils to leave comments on each other's work and access materials at home as well as at school. "To date the response has been overwhelmingly positive," he says.

The students used the free Audacity software to record their voices (download this at audacitysourceforge.net) and then mixed these files with copyright-free music from podsafe at http://music.podshow.com before publishing them on the blog.

Feedback from students on the blog shows the project's impact so far: "Hello! It's really weird listening to myself speak, but at the same time I think it's awesome!" ... "To make the blog better Mr Dale should do videos, not of us but puppet-type things, while we talk." ... "Hello (bonjour) (salut) Mr Dale. I saw how many people are looking at the blog. It tells us on the left-hand side. There are lots of people from different countries because we are doing well. Thank you for letting us use this idea. It is good to learn I think. I have learnt more this year because of the blog."

Q&A

Your technical queries answered

John Davitt
Tuesday December 12, 2006
The Guardian

We want to make our own treasure hunts. What's the best way to make our own interactive content for use on the PDA?
Several city learning centres have had considerable success using Mediator interactive software on the PC and then exporting the final file to the PDA. In Waltham Forest they are building learning trails which students will use on the PDA to explore the local neighbourhood. The software allows you to build screens of mixed information and link them with a series of buttons, giving the user guidance and choices through your application. It's icon-based so you can choose the functions you want and drag them to your project. No programming knowledge is required. The final work can then be exported to the PDA as a Flash file, saving on space and requiring no special players. Find out more and download a free trial at www.matchware.com.
My year 5 students want to make short music soundtracks to go with their story recordings - where's the best place to start?
See if you can find a midi keyboard - those with built-in USB are the easiest to connect to a PC. If you want to invest in a portable keyboard, the Oxygen 8 is the type of thing you might want to consider (www.maudio.co.uk, £69 inc vat). Next, try downloading Anvil studio for free from www.anvilstudio.com. Then, as children compose their music, it appears as notes and can be edited on screen. With a little exploration they will see how to change the instruments used and, by combining different tracks, they will get some impressive results.
How can I share some of the best artwork the students do without getting too involved in setting up a website?
Various schools and LEAs are setting up an area on Flickr, which is a large image storehouse website. Here you can place photos or scans of the artwork for others to see just by clicking on the file you want to publish, and selecting upload. Using the add note facility would allow students to add "hot spots" to their pictures so that, when others pointed it at them with their mouse, explanatory text and additional information would appear. See an example from Bucks LEA at www.flickr.com/photos/bucksart. This is intended as a trial project for teachers of art "to explore how shared visual resources can be used in an educational context".
Are there any good word processors that children can use if they don't have Microsoft Word at home?
If they have an internet connection AjaxWrite (www.ajaxlaunch.com), an online word processor, is worth considering as it has all the features they'll need and it aims to work seamlessly with MS Word. The only drawback is that it won't work with Internet Explorer and they would have to have the Firefox browser installed. Alternatively, you might want to look at ThinkFree, another Office-like tool complete with presentation and spreadsheet tools. Once you have signed up for a free account, you can also store large amounts of work online. This would be ideal for collaborative writing activities (www.thinkfree.com

John Davitt
Tuesday December 12, 2006
The Guardian

Joe Dale, a full-time French teacher at Nodehill middle school on the Isle of Wight, has made a big impact by implementing ICT in his own classroom and then sharing the learning with other teachers. "My interest was sparked about seven years ago when I first used websites such as Linguascope (www.linguascope.com) with my pupils," says Dale, who is also a lead practitioner for the Specialist Schools and Academies Trust. "I could see how much they enjoyed completing the interactive activities and how they were engaging with their learning,"
He then received a portable computer as part of the Laptops for Teachers scheme and, once this was linked to a classroom data projector, he started to bring in a new dimension to his teaching. "I began making PowerPoint presentations for whole-class teaching along with my own Spellmaster activities for the computer suite, as well as producing my own version of Who wants to be a Millionaire? in PowerPoint."
Dale was particularly impressed by online tools such as Spellmaster, which allows teachers to create their own Flash-based vocabulary learning games. (You can download hundreds of word games in a range of languages for free at www.spellmaster.com).
Using a range of approaches and activities seems to work well for students with a variety of different needs. One parent of a pupil on the autistic spectrum wrote to Dale that the languages work had an effect they could see on their son's "general motivation and engagement at school".
Dale has also set up a French blog for the languages department where pictures of student work and sound files of the oral contributions in class are posted on the web each day to allow pupils to leave comments on each other's work and access materials at home as well as at school. "To date the response has been overwhelmingly positive," he says.
The students used the free Audacity software to record their voices (download this at audacitysourceforge.net) and then mixed these files with copyright-free music from podsafe at http://music.podshow.com before publishing them on the blog.
Feedback from students on the blog shows the project's impact so far: "Hello! It's really weird listening to myself speak, but at the same time I think it's awesome!" ... "To make the blog better Mr Dale should do videos, not of us but puppet-type things, while we talk." ... "Hello (bonjour) (salut) Mr Dale. I saw how many people are looking at the blog. It tells us on the left-hand side. There are lots of people from different countries because we are doing well. Thank you for letting us use this idea. It is good to learn I think. I have learnt more this year because of the blog."

The future is likely to be about more flexible networking, mobile devices and open source software. So which breakthroughs in hardware are spawning this new technology? John Davitt surveys the Bett show for contenders

Tuesday December 12, 2006
The Guardian

Count the adjectives in the name of any government initiative and you'll often get a good idea whether it will succeed or fail - the more words, the less chance of it working. Laptops for Teachers, for instance, was a runaway delight - it did what it said on the tin - but the future may be less hopeful for more recent spawnings such as personalised learning, learning platforms and virtual learning environments. They all seem to carry the seeds of their own adjectival destruction, allowing others to swoop, spin and deflect the projects from their original well-meant intentions.
Trust the teacher and learner a little more to discriminate and inform the debate as we move forward, and things may work out better than we'd think.
There are also signs that the future of ICT in schools will be softer, less hard-wired, increasingly democratic and more flexible. ICT in 2007 is likely to be mostly about community-wide networking, mobile devices and opensource e-learning opportunities with a little bit of thin client architecture thrown in for good measure (of which more later). Put these developments together and you have the seeds of something rather interesting. Wolverhampton city learning centres Learning2Go project, which provides more than 1,000 students with permanent access to their own handheld PDA computers (in school and at home), highlights the changes that can happen when teachers and students get trusted, empowered and supported with new tools.
Elsewhere, use of opensource software in many schools suggests some form of digital altruism is at work: people are performing wonders at the chalkface but also documenting and sharing their experiences for free (often through online blogs) so that others can follow.
"Opensource software, such as Moodle and Elgg, allows a school or local authority to deliver on the e-strategy in a way that's suited to the needs of teachers and learners, using programs that they can adapt to their own requirements at minimal cost," says Miles Berry, headteacher and digital philanthropist.
"These programs are built on a recognition of the unique contributions that teachers and learners can make, rather than delivering pre-packaged 'learning objects' from the content industry."
At Bett, Berry and ICT adviser Terry Freedman will show how blogs and podcasts can support learning (3pm, Thursday January 11, stand SW60).
Thin clients
Thin client architecture is also being reinvented. ICT supplier RM is launching a new ThinOne computer, and many new academy buildings, such as the work Pinacl is doing as part of the new Thomas Deacon Academy in Peterborough (stand A69), are using this approach to networking that many will wish to investigate. The thin client system works by keeping the "brain", the processing power and the software centrally and sending out "graphic slices" for the user to display on a range of terminal types from desktop PCs to handheld devices. So once you have a central server in place, old and/or cheap machines and devices can be used as terminal stations - all they need to manage is the graphics and the communication back to the server.
RM's Thin One PC, which will also feature an even thinner monitor, is a combination of the company's thin client technology and the RM One computer range. It will also the Twin One, a thin client PC that has two monitors back-to-back to save space when used in an IT room.
Learning platforms
Once upon a time, platforms were simply part of stations and shoes - you used both for standing on and waiting. But there will be no hanging around on learning platforms, we're told - they are virtual, highly specified environments where students can learn, share and have their progress tracked. Once just a partially compliant gleam in a committee's eye, they now dangle the promise of an e-learning cyberland where everything is compatible and connected.
There is a very useful self-assessment tool for schools on Becta's matrix site (http://matrix.becta.org.uk) where you can click your way through a self-review to assess your institutional readiness for all this. Learning platforms are where virtual learning environments go when they are all grown up and fully featured, it seems. The only cloud on the horizon is the fact that one large US company, Blackboard, is trying to claim ownership of large swaths of the central ideas on which learning platforms are built and has taken competitors to court. The world and Becta await the outcome of this case with interest.
Fresh from its success in providing the basis for Scotland's nationwide Glow learning network, RM's Kaleidos Learning Platform will be launched at the show with modules for personalising learning and extending school access and providing tools to reduce paperwork. There will also be a chance to see how these services will integrate with the Building Schools of the Future project by watching the experience of Ramesys and Manchester LEA, whose Assimilate learning platform will be central to the city council's vision for "an e-confident city".
Fronter continues to develop some intriguing new tools to profile and manage learning content, and Microsoft's Learning Gateway provides one of the most substantial offerings. UniServity CLC is among the fastest-growing products in this area; its solution aims to keep the teacher central to allow students to work autonomously and develop online portfolios either individually or collaboratively with other students. It's a powerful approach.
For an overview of what you need to build a sustainable learning platform at LEA level, check out the Bucks LEA project run by Ian Usher at http://breeze.bucksgfl.org.uk/naaceamac2006. (See also a special sponsored supplement on learning platforms in Education Guardian next month on January 9.)
Whiteboards
Software voting devices lead innovation in this area. Promethean will be offering its new range of ActivBoard software plus a selection of instructive case studies on schools. Smart will be showing the latest SmartBoard 690, with full widescreen viewing at 16:9 aspect for larger learning environments, and its 600i system, which combines a SmartBoard interactive whiteboard and the new Unifi projector, both of which can be mounted on a wall to ease installation.
Boardworks resources now cover most of the curriculum range at primary and secondary with new resources: GCSE Additional Science, French Grammar Toolkit and KS4 Business Studies. It will also launch KS2 year group-specific resources which are all designed to fully cover QCA learning objectives.
Personalised learning
Futurelab is about to provide an interim report on the progress of Enquiring Minds, a three-year research project with Microsoft that aims to get students taking more responsibility for their own learning. Also on display will be Fizzees, a prototype technology involving children managing the health of a digital pet and then seeing how this applies to their own health. Becta will also have a range of resources and exemplars of personalised learning in action, while Microsoft will release its free Sharepoint learning kit to replace Class Server.
Laptops and desktops
Apple's resurgence as the number one educational hardware supplier in Europe (according to Gartner research) comes on the back of new MacBook laptops with much improved processing power provided by dual Intel chips. All machines come with free software to make films, edit music, podcast and carry out video conferencing with the wonderful built-in iSight camera. Apple's ability to remain plugged into the Zeitgeist continues to surprise: if it's a current vogue activity you can do it for free on the Mac, it seems.
Dell is launching a range of servers and, with the teacher in mind, some amazingly light laptops. Few companies manage to offer such a range yet maintain such a robust, classroom-friendly construction.
Assessment
We seem poised on the edge of a formative breakthrough as we develop practice and tools to let the students know how they are doing, and how they might improve early enough in their educational experience for them to do something about it. Tag will be launching the latest version of its Maps (managed assessment portfolio system) version 2, in which it provides some unique approaches to linking assessment to a developing portfolio of work. New features include the QTI standards-based Quiz suite of tools and Discussion Forums, plus a new interface for key stage 1.
Professor Terry Russell from Liverpool University, who has carried out evaluations on early mobile learning projects, sees classroom use of PDA-type tools as one way forward in assessment: "Mobile devices offer teachers two-way windows into the minds of all the children in their class. This is a dream come true for formative assessment practices: seamless and continuous assessment-cum-teaching cycles."
Capita Education has developed a new data for improvement tool which aims to help schools see how they can use the data being recorded daily in their management information systems to meet school improvement goals. It will be made available to schools free. With the growing emphasis on self-evaluation, issues such as behaviour, leadership and raising pupil performance can be monitored.
Finally, each day at Bett, Learning Pathways is giving away one free online ICT assessment package to the school of the teacher achieving the highest daily score.
Mobile learning Tapping into the future
Small portable devices that let students access curriculum materials and communicate and publish for their peers could see dramatic growth this year. Bett will witness the launch of the eagerly awaited educational digital assistant from Fujitsu Siemens, which was built with Handheld Learning and in consultation with the children involved in the Wolverhampton learning zone project (£400 inc software and 3-year guarantee). The product will feature a camera, new authoring software and, most importantly, built-in GPS (global positioning system) so that students can tap into a wealth of outdoor activities, with their device telling them what to look for and do as they reach different geographical locations.
"Location-based learning", as some call it, is likely to become popular and allow teachers to rediscover the instructional potential of the great outdoors.
Dave Whyley, who coordinates Wolverhampton's project, is delighted that "the project scaling up by a factor of 10 has worked"; 1,000 machines are in place after an initial pilot of 100. Using the experienced teachers from last year to lead the training and support has meant new teachers have got up to speed very quickly indeed, he says.
Teachers have found the stills and video camera on the Loox 720 personal digital organiser (PDA) essential, and have used it with pocket slides (with full PowerPoint capability) to create showcases of pupils' work. Early days, maybe, but reports suggest publishing and sharing of the students' own eBooks seems to be having a dramatic impact on boys' literacy. You can download the plug-in at the project's web address. One school has reported that, despite producing a literacy target of 20% of boys reaching level 5 at the end of key stage 2, 50% actually achieved it. Find out more and hear student podcasts from the project at www.learning2goblog.org.
Another useful tool for managing PDAs in class is Synchroneyes from Steljes (from £557 for a single teacher licence). It's designed to integrate student PDA use in whole-class teaching, as the software allows the teacher to bring up every student's PDA display on the whiteboard at the same time. Meanwhile, RM is launching the "slim but powerful" Samsung Q1, which provides high-performance, mobile computing and features a fully functioning PC power, with GPS via a 7-inch touch screen.
Weblinks
Apple: www.apple.com/uk/education (Bett stand C40)
Becta: www.becta.org.uk (J40)
Boardworks: www.theboardworks.co.uk (C79)
Capita Education: www.capitaes.co.uk (D20)
Dell: www.dell.co.uk (B20)
Educational digital assistant, Fujitsu Siemens: www.fujitsu-siemens.co.uk
Fronter: www.fronter.co.uk (H50)
Futurelab: www.futurelab.org.uk (J6)
Learning Pathways: www.learnpath.com (A20)
Microsoft's Learning Gateway: www.microsoft.com/uk/education (D30)
Pinacl: www.pinacl.co.uk (A69)
Promethean: www.prometheanworld.com (K30)
Ramesys: www.ramesys.co.uk (H39)
RM's Kaleidos Learning Platform: www.rm.com (D60)
Smart Technologies: www.education.smarttech.com (G40)
Synchroneyes from Steljes: www.steljes.co.uk (B50)
Tag Learning: www.taglearning.com (B56)
Wolverhampton's Learning2Go project: www.learning2go.org (B56)

John Davitt
Tuesday December 12, 2006
The Guardian

Not so long ago only the Queen gave a Christmas broadcast and Encarta was the only girl in town when it came to digital encyclopedias. Now we are all potential broadcasters (some families may even tune into seasonal podcasts from far-flung offspring this Christmas), and Wikipedia is the reference book of choice where we can all contribute to the corpus - and it's available free online. This Christmas might be a good time to focus on our transformation into more active communicators.
Next year could be the year of personal GPS, the hardware and software that tells you where you are in the world. GPS will become a feature on most portable devices, including phones and PDAs, and will open up a new world of delights, particularly if we take to the great outdoors on foot and discover the joys of geocaching - essentially "treasure hunting for all ages". First you find the coordinates of a cache (a hidden treasure store) in your area and type them into a handheld GPS receiver. There are over 15,000 caches to choose from in the UK and www.geocacheuk.com is a good place to start. A number of dedicated handheld GPS devices are available, including the rugged Garmin GPS 60 (£159 inc VAT) which provides clear display and allows you to add points of interest as you go. The display shows caches as closed chests that get opened when you find them. For those seriously hooked, the more highly specificed devices like the eTrex Legend Cx (£299 inc VAT) looks like a neat mobile phone and even shows you your position on a detailed OS map as you walk. Both worked very well in the local fields (www.garmin.com/uk).
The GPS units will take you within striking distance (3-5 metres) of the treatures, then it's up to you to search around, with riddles and clues often provided on the web to help you at this stage. If you strike it lucky, the idea is that you take the gift it contains away and leave something for the next visitor. It really is an infectious way to rediscover the great outdoors for all ages - and lots of maths and geography is learned on the way.
The Nintendo DS Lite could be a hit for family purchase as it's the first handheld games machine to be targeted at all of us - yes, even the over-40s. Well designed (in black, white or pink), it has a clamshell opening to reveal two neat colour displays. One is touch-sensitive so you can write and draw on it and, with the built-in networking, you can communicate with other devices within your wireless range. Using the stylus rather than a range of buttons seems much more natural for many "older" grown-ups.
Early success of the unit will probably be linked to the wonderful Brain Training software "game" from Dr Kawashima. It comes with age 3+ on the box but many grown-up families are already addicted. You begin with a hypnotic colour-naming game - the Stroop test as its known in psychology circles. The device has voice recognition built in and it works very well as you call the names of the colours you see.
The software gives you a "brain age" based on your performance, often (hilariously) up in the 80s to start with. Soon you are using the stylus on the touch screen to answer a range of activities such as simple calculation or drawing a line to link numbers in sequence. The claim is that as you use the program over time, your mental acuity will improve and the Brain Age will drop, indicating a younger, healthier brain.
Progress is charted in graph form and helpful tips are given for things to do away from the game to tune up the old grey matter, such as: "Today read all signs quickly in your head" or "Count the number of times you brush your teeth" etc. Up to four users save their files and each file can hold a year's worth of data.
For those from 12 upwards keen on gameplay, Medieval II Total War (CD for PC) provides an entertaining yet informative way to learn history while you play. You can skim across medieval Europe waging war, rebuilding civilisations and even manipulating taxes, and all while trying to keep in with the Pope and other power brokers. The exceptional graphics enrich the re-runs of many famous battles such as Agincourt and you can also reverse history and lose if you deploy your forces unwisely (Sega for PC £29.99). There is also an extensive website with resources and extension ideas at www.totalwar.com.
The latest iteration from Age of Empire from Microsoft is III: The WarChiefs where you get to lead either the Sioux, Aztecs or Iroquois as you seek to expand your empire, with stunning sounds and images and plenty of historical facts as well (www.microsoft.com/games/pc).
For skateboarders, skiers, and anyone else who wants hands-free filming on the move, the Tony Hawks HelmetCam could be the beginnings of a film career. A small, squat, cigar-sized camera records good-quality clips on to a 32Mb card (supplied) and films can then be downloaded to the computer for further editing. Made by the maker of the Digital Blue camera, it's likely to prove very useful for field trips and sports activities (£79 exc vat, www.taglearning.co.uk).
Microsoft's anticipated Zune MP3 player will not make it to the UK till way into next year, so the Apple iPods still rule. The remastered iPod nano is a design and capacity delight, especially the juicy seasonal red one, (4Gb model pounds 129 includes a donation to the Global Fund to Fight HIV/Aids). Apple's MacBooks also look increasingly desirable, with processor upgrades across the range and built-in cameras. For owners of MacBook, the Huckleberry mirror will be a must-have accessory. It sits atop the screen and reflects the camera so that it points away from the computer and effectively turns the MacBook into a film camera for interviews, animations etc, and all for £9.99 including software (www.mungaimirrors.co.uk/huckleberry).

John Davitt
Tuesday September 19, 2006
The Guardian

Half way through this article the main subject got a name change. The worthy and ambitious project to provide online resources and connected learning opportunities for all Scottish schoolchildren and teachers, the erstwhile Scottish Schools Digital Network, overnight became Glow. An independently produced movie introducing Glow is now available online where a handsome Scottish angel chappie takes a rather winsome young teacher on a journey to the land beyond her overflowing school desk. He then practically seduces into believing in the potential of a world where staff briefcases no longer bulge, all curriculum content is available at the click of a mouse and teachers once again have a social life. At the moment it's a dream sequence, but many in Scotland are working to make it a reality. Time will tell.
Glow is a national schools intranet, digitally linking Scotland's 800,000 educators and pupils. It's is funded by the Scottish Executive and managed by Learning and Teaching Scotland (LTS) in partnership with RM. In terms of ambition and scope, it's probably the largest such initiative in the world and there will be many lessons for schools elsewhere. It's still early days, but with the hardware and software in place and extensive trials beginning - leading up to a full launch in the middle of 2007 - it's time to start learning lessons. The Scottish assembly is clearly taking this very seriously, commissioning and paying the developers for Glow up front and providing it as a free service to all schools.
Laurie O'Donnell, director of Learning and Technology Scotland, tells how planning for Glow began in December 2001: "At the end of the New Opportunities Fund for Teachers we were thinking, 'what comes next?'" They were also looking at nascent broadband opportunities and a range of new communication tools. "We wanted to pull all these strands together, adopt some standards and give access to every learner and teacher."
Common purpose
Another unique advantage for the Glow project is the scale of Scotland. "Remember it's only the size of Yorkshire in terms of student numbers," says O'Donnell. If the first advantage over England is scale, the second is surely common purpose across regional education boards. "It's not difficult to get a consensus across the country. We want to be the best. We have the highest literacy levels in the world and technology has to be part of this repertoire."
It's hard to imagine regional broadband consortia working with the same clear, collaborative purpose in England.
Some resources included in Glow at launch will be an individual email address for every teacher in Scotland and a virtual learning environment (VLE). Teachers will be able to manage and control curriculum resources for their classes and assess, mark and return work to pupils, as well as checking their current performance against previous performance in the assessment section.
If this works well it could provide a model for home educators, hospitals and children unable to attend school. It will also be technically possible for teachers to upload lessons for their classes from their sickbeds if they are absent ill and for poorly students to do the same in reverse. The most delicious promise is that some of the activities provided in the resource can be automarked by the system.
Students in turn will have homepages, which will list all the work their teachers have assigned to them through Glow. Completed tasks will be returned automatically to their teacher and, once it is reviewed, pupils will be able to see their marks and read their teacher's comments. Chatrooms, newsgroups and instant messaging are also built into the system, along with resources on net conferencing, which allows text, voice and video conversations between users across the intranet. Teachers can also use an online whiteboard to share their presentations with others and control online meetings, leading other users through their presentation.
Sigh of relief
Frank Nawn, Glow project director for RM, almost breathes a sigh of relief as he notes the completion of the gargantuan technical side of the off ering. "We have had more than 100 developers working flat out for the past year in Abingdon and have just complete the commissioning of a complete server farm at a secure location in Scotland."
Some of Glow has been built around RM's own Kaleidos VLE, other parts have been built around a range of industry standards and third party software including Marratech VC for videoconferencing. Another consideration that will be of interest to many authorities in the UK is that Glow will work across computer types, as Apple Macs are used in around in 30% of Scottish schools.
If the NGFL portal in the UK is anything to go by, centrally provided web resources have in the past often been doomed to failure. The multimillion NGFL portal closed in April without notice, a forwarding address or any reflection on the lessons learned from the experience. This hardly provides a welcoming precedent for Scotland's new initiative. Those north of the border, however, have been faster to learn from past experience, seeing the way before others on the potential of formative assessment and feedback in the classroom and the use of ICT as a tool in the process.
Resources from past national Scottish projects on science and literacy teaching are now migrating to the Glow portal as part of the content delivery infrastructure . In addition, new content will feature centrally-produced resources like a massive, copyright-free image library alongside contributions from teachers at local or LEA level.
Sometimes you can scale up from a successful story elsewhere, but at other times you might just have to say "good for them, but it wouldn't work here". I'm afraid this might be the case with Glow as far as England is concerned, unless of course someone knocks a lot of heads together.
· Find out more and watch the movie at www.glowscotland.org.uk. Glow will be featured at Sett

John Davitt
Tuesday September 19, 2006
The Guardian

How can I share good weblinks with my A-level students so that they can access them from home?
If your school has a website you could make a webpage with a number of hyperlinks to the relevant sites. This could be done in Microsoft Word and would involve typing in the description of each site, then highlighting a piece of text and choosing a hyperlink from the file menu, before typing in the web address or browsing to the webpage in question. Finally, save your page of links as a webpage and publish it on your website. A simpler way would be to sign up for a Delicious account and simply paste the links in there together with a simple description of what each website contains.
Go to http://del.icio.us to set up your own collection of online weblinks with descriptions.
Are there any new ICT resources to help with PSHE?
There is a new resource pack just launched called This was Me. It's an interactive resource CD along with a 30-minute scenario DVD of what happens when a student's life is turned upside down by unexpectedly moving school. Instantly recognisable and at times raw, it will have direct appeal to many students at the sharp end of adolescence. See www.thiswasme.org for details. The DfES-sponsored www.teachernet.gov.uk/pshe is another useful site for secondary students and, for primary, there are lots of worksheets and game-based resources at www.primaryresources.co.uk/pshe/pshe.htm
Is there an easy way of getting materials from the internet into worksheets?
A new product called Webstractor, from Softchaos (www.softchaos.com), allows you to automatically grab any webpage then edit out unwanted areas such as adverts before saving your own version to your computer for future use. Another feature allows you to highlight text and to add your own explanatory comments. This means that sites with misleading content can be labelled and explained by the teacher - a perfect way of improving students' information skills. The software is currently available for Apple Macs.
How can I make more of a particular webpage in my teaching without having to bring it up live in the class or having to let students loose on the web?
You can save whole webpages in an archive format. Each browser manages this slightly differently, but choose the save option on the file menu. Then make a note of the folder the files have been saved in. Some teachers save these web archive files straight on to their USB memory sticks. To show them to a class, simply click on the files and the web page you saved will appear even if there is no internet access

John Davitt
Tuesday September 19, 2006
The Guardian

Sometimes you just need a simple step to change for the better the way in which we use technology in class. When Tim Rylands, teacher at Chew Magna primary school, Bristol, decided to leave the standard position at the front of the class and sit down among his class, talking students through key movements in the Myst adventure game, he was breaking a mould.
It was as if he was rediscovering an older and deeper form of dialogue as he sat down among the class with a wireless keyboard and mouse in the half-light and quietly asked the children to describe, predict and invent what might come next. In fact he was revealing an alternate way of working with the technology of projection in the classroom. This "digital Socratic" method also seems to lead to exam success, particularly for the boys in the class who saw literacy come alive with such an approach. One hundred per cent reach level four, compared to 67% in 2000.
It's a lesson that a number of teachers are taking to heart - with many choosing to use a cordless keyboard and mouse alongside the classroom projector. The recently launched Logitech Revolution MX mouse, for instance, looks like the ideal tool to use around the class - it even allows scrolling and searching of the internet with a spin of the wheel, taking you through up to 10,000 lines of text on screen.
At Little Heath special school, in Essex, ICT specialist David Ware uses a similar approach at the lunchtime video club, stopping the film occasionally and asking students to predict what is coming next. At the club, students also get a chance to look at video work prepared by other youngsters as part of their studies. Making films about what they are learning has become a key part of the educational experience for students at the school. By pausing and refl ecting on the work they have made, the teachers are making sure that the opportunities to learn from this are not wasted.
The moral of the story is that just because you have a projector (or even a whiteboard) it doesn't mean you have to spend your life caught up in its beam "dancing in the light fantastic". The recipe is clear for teachers: at times it pays to vary the approach. Why not get down and be quirky: sit in the dark with the students and ask some powerful questions. Just put an interactive game or even a subject-based CD-rom or website on the computer and start talking it through.
Rylands is currently on a year's sabbatical, investigating further the use of games and collaborative learning opportunities and spreading the word on creative new approaches to ICT in the classroom (www.timrylands.com).

John Davitt
Tuesday June 20, 2006
The Guardian

Have you ever thought about using ICT as a storytelling medium to build curriculum resources? Ask John Wiffen, headteacher at Whinney Banks junior school, Teesside. As part of a digital learning project, his school put in a bid for support time with a visiting specialist to develop resources about the local area. "We decided to focus on part of a geography project we are developing around caring for our fragile world," says Wiffen. "We selected 10 students from years 4 and 5 along with a year 5 teacher to work with a visiting specialist for a day in late May. We wanted to get clips of developments in our area and help the pupils use these to create a resource for other children."
Working in pairs and using a mobile tape recorder and Tag Learning's Digital Movie Creator 2 camera (£84 excluding VAT, www.taglearning.com), each group began gathering information about their selected area. One group specialised in making panoramas from key vantage points around the community. Another used a professional sound deck to record interviews with local people.
First, class teacher Gill McCredie got permission for the interviews to be conducted. Then the students put their questions to seven local residents, including Betty from the chip shop, the head of the local community centre and even a retired resident who was resting on a garden wall as the children passed by.
Another group acted as guides to local parks and amenities, at times offering thoughtful pieces to camera about areas that had become run-down and fallen into misuse. "As a number of new building projects are under way in the area, some of the footage they gathered will serve as a unique record of earlier times," says McCredie.
Back at base the students spent the afternoon editing their clips and assembling and titling them using the Movie Maker software that comes free as part of Windows XP. The interviews were also imported into Audacity sound-editing software and the noisy bits removed before they were turned into a short radio programme for use with future local study courses. Finally, students drew a map of where they had been and this was scanned in to provide a front menu for the work.
"We learned a lot and it was a clear proof that much of the learning is in the doing," says McCredie. "The fact that each group had its own particular focus and assets to gather also made a big difference in giving students a sense of responsibility for their area."
The resources are being placed on to CD for sharing with the local cluster of school which is working on a series of complementary projects. According to Wiffen, a final key outcome is that "we have developed a group of pupil mentors who will support other children (and staff!) doing similar work next autumn."
Compiled by John Davitt
Tuesday May 16, 2006
The Guardian

A fair clip

Many teachers want to add snippets from educational DVDs into their class presentations. Sometimes this is easier if they can strip out the clip they need rather than play through the whole disc.

Several utilities now exist that allow them to do this - provided, of course, that the copyright restrictions on the DVD allow this.

One of the most popular for this task is the open-source software Handbrake, at http://handbrake.m0k.org/ This software allows you to convert DVD clips into standard video clips that can be shown through any presentation software such as PowerPoint.

Tell us a story

At Green Lane primary school in Middlesbrough, ICT coordinator Cheryl Sleight is using Microsoft Photo Story and Audacity sound-recording software as an end-of-module review tool.

"We recently finished a project on the Vikings and we gave each group of year 3 students an area of life to focus on. Some got 'warfare', others 'housing' and so on. Each group then drew or modelled a series of tableaux detailing the aspect they had been given, which were then photographed.

"Then they scripted and recorded a 30-second soundbite about their pictures in Audacity - we used the medical room as a quiet recording space," says Sleight.

"Finally, we used Photo Story to bring in the pictures and added the sound. Then we had a premiere, where the whole class watched each group's presentation."

The results were very engaging and provided a powerful reminder of the learning that had gone on. "The staff are keen to use it in similar fashion," says Sleight.

Download Photo Story at www.microsoft.com/windowsxp/using/digitalphotography/photostory Download Audacity for free at http://audacity.sourceforge.net/

Photo fun

Pictures are supposedly worth a thousand words, but sometimes they are hard to manage in the classroom.

Karen Riding, ICT teacher at Witton Park high school business and enterprise College in Blackburn, has found a way to make the most of them using Picasa image organising software.

Picasa helps you to find, edit and share all the pictures on your PC. Every time you open the software, it automatically locates all your pictures (even the ones you forgot you had) and sorts them into visual albums organised by date, with folder names you will easily recognise. You can drag and drop to arrange your albums and make labels to create new groups.

"We use it at school for visual bingo, where the students have a card with some small images and they have to match them up with the slideshow of images I have prepared on the screen," says Riding. "It makes them look at the pictures with far more care and attention. I also use it to show pairs of images and get students to explain the connection between them.

Another way of using the software is as a reverse scavenger hunt where students have to find the webpage that a picture came from - "a good last-day-of-term activity" says Riding.

In addition, riding has used Picasa to make collages of small thumbnail images for home use as framed presents and wrapping paper.

Riding is also looking into using Picasa for news quiz-type activities, where students have to guess what the "big picture" is by looking at just a small part of the final image, which is an ideal way to freshen up jaded topics like U-shaped valleys.

Download the software for free at http://picasa.google.co.uk/.

Make your own magazines

Teachers have been quick to see the potential of the flickr website at www.flickr.com as a store of millions of tagged and indexed pictures.

The site is particularly useful for history and the natural world (you can search for any year, for example, and any geographical feature).

Now a third-party set of tools for images allows you to make your own magazine covers and motivational posters from any image you find online (or provide from your own hard disk for that matter).

Try this, and lots of other resources, at www.flagrantdisregard.com/flickr/ magazine.php. At a recent ICT conference in Newport, South Wales, teachers made a magazine in less than half an hour simply by using these free online resources.

John Davitt
Tuesday March 7, 2006
The Guardian

The transformational effect of technology in the classroom is often reported but rarely witnessed. Many false dawns have passed without much impact on the range or depth of learning. However, a Learning2Go trial in Wolverhampton project on the use in the classroom of handheld computers or personal digital assistants (PDAs) seems to be bearing early fruit. It is having a dramatic energising effect on home-school links and social learning opportunities.

Phase two of the project was launched last autumn and has been very promising. Even Ofsted has been impressed: "Pupils' enjoyment and sense of independence and responsibility in their own learning is much increased by these opportunities."

Dave Whyley, project co-ordinator for the local education authority, says the current project is exceeding all expectations. "There are 1,000 devices in over 18 institutions. We are also starting a project with PDAs for parents. They have asked if they learn more, now that their children are doing so well with them. They want to catch up with their children."

The students have the devices 24 hours a day and benefit from having affordable access from anywhere, which has never quite been managed by laptops. Students are also becoming skilled at maintaining the devices. At one school an eight-year-old girl has become expert at saving, reformatting and restoring work on on any PDAs that "play up". The purchase of the devices (Fujitsu Siemens Pocket Loox PDAs) is funded jointly by schools and parents. Parents seem happy to contribute, with one mother equating the cost to "just a packet of cigarettes a fortnight".

Many external sponsors have supported the trial, including Espresso, Kar2ouche and the Grid Club, which have made their content available and helped to tailor it for the smaller PDA screens.

"The children themselves are the 'digi natives' and have energised the project by finding new software online and bringing it to school," says Aidan Prior from the whiteboard producer Steljes, which is funding a project assistant and helping link the handheld devices to classroom whiteboards. A large part of the success of the project seems to have come from students foraging on the web for new tools and applications to run on their PDAs.

Schools are now using the devices to set up digital radio broadcasts and using the built-in video cameras on fieldwork. Sketchy, a free animation package from GoKnow, is also working well, while e-books - where whole textbooks and novels can be read on screen- have become a staple part of the work.

Some teachers are investigating geo-tagging resources in the community. These offer a unique opportunity to turn the world into a classroom. As a child walks past a museum, it could trigger a GPRS tag (one linked to a particular geographical co-ordinate). This in turn plays the child a voice message from a teacher suggesting they pop in and see some of the artwork on display as it links in with what the children have been studying in class. The future looks palm-sized.

Teachers across the UK share classroom ideas on best use of software and websites

Tuesday March 7, 2006
The Guardian

The free "open source" course management system software, Moodle, seems to be taking off in Buckinghamshire LEA schools. Led by Ian Usher, e-learning coordinator at the LEA, several institutions are running pilot projects with the software. It is designed to help teachers create effective online learning communities (www.opensource.org) based on the open source ideal of collaboration and sharing.

Moodling late at night

Greg Hodgson, head of art at Chalfonts community college says he's seen students using a private area he has set up on Moodle late into the night as discussion rages on the nature and range of A-level assignment questions. "Some of the dialogue online reaches levels of sophistication you'd never hear in class."

At Winslow junior school, pupils are taking an online course in digital photography. Ian Usher along with fellow teacher Katie Bownes have written simple guidance lessons on picture editing and manipulation, which students work through at their own speed before launching into projects that let them practise their new skills.

"It [lets them] learn a bit deep and wide about digital photography in their own private area, and they can complete and file work ahead of time," says Usher. Find out more at moodle.org

'Movies' with free software Teachers at Halley primary school Tower Hamlets, London, are building cross-curricular activities around the use of the free Photo Story 3 from Microsoft. Student drawings are scanned into the computer and then the software allows them to be linked to sound files and made to move as if a camera were slowly panning across the image.

Some teachers are also using the software as a review tool by taking pictures of students and their work during a lesson or module of work. They then put the images into a story to get a moving reminder of the work that has just happened.

"The effect is dramatic and we are very excited about the potential for 'show and tell' work," says ICT co-ordinator Hilary Norton. Download your own version at www.microsoft.com/windowsxp/using/digitalphotography/photostory.

Feedback tool for trainers Anne Casey, head of Camden city learning centre, London, is using OpenMind mindmap software from Matchware as a plenary and feedback tool for training events. As delegates make their comments, she adds them to a tree diagram on screen and builds in connections and shows links. When it's finished, a single mouse click converts the diagram into a series of linked web pages which are then published on the web so that all delegates can access and browse their own version back at base. "There is considerable potential in the use of these tools," says Casey, who is now exploring how the software can be used to make interactive timelines (see screen recordings of how to do this at www.matchware.net).

'Live' from the pyramids

Whinney Banks primary school in Middlesbrough is using the film-editing software, Adobe Premiere (www.adobe.com/products/premiere), in blue screen mode ( a way of filming that allows you to overlay one video clip on another) so that videos of the children can be superimposed on various historical and geographical scenes. A recent project allowed them to finish work on Egypt with several TV reports recorded by students against a moving backdrop of the pyramid footage gleaned from the Espresso site (www.espresso.co.uk).

"It's a sort of immersion effect," says headteacher John Whiffen. The school is now part of a digital storytelling project with four other local primaries and is considering using Visual Communicator software (www.seriousmagic.com) to take the work further. The software features more built-in support in the shape of a scrolling autocue and will work with an ordinary webcam. It even comes supplied with its own green screen backdrop.

Tuesday March 7, 2006
The Guardian

Are there any alternatives to Google for finding images for use in the classroom?

Look at www.flickr.com a useful site of indexed images on every possible subject. It allows you to search by keyword in a far more detailed and powerful way than you can on Google. In addition, there is a set of flickr tools at www.flagrantdisregard.com/flickr/ where you can turn any image into a poster, magazine cover design or mosaic.

How can I make the most of my favourites and bookmarks? I have built them up over the years on different machines and I don't want to lose them.

Try storing them online. The social bookmarking revolution is upon us and this means you can not only share your bookmarks with the world but also "tag" them with keyword descriptions that allow you and others to search and find them more effectively. A good place to do this is at del.icio.us Every time you publish a new bookmark it also tells you how many other people have published the same link.

How can I set up a broadcast for the foyer on parents evening?

Record the sound files you want and save them in MP3 format. Download iTunes from www.apple.com/itunes (free for Mac or PC), then choose "Make new playlist" from the file menu and simply drag the files into the new playlist window in the order in which you want them to play. As parents arrive, connect a speaker and double-click on the top file - iTunes will then play through the whole list.

Are there any good sites that help students get a feel for different jobs?

There is a lovely site for students who are considering becoming a vet. The Super Vets site at supervets.rvc.ac.uk lets students have a go at saving the virtual canine patient, Jess, by making a number of vital treatment interventions. The site also gives information on study opportunities at the Royal Veterinary college.

Some media files published on our website will only play with the latest Windows Media Player. How can I convert files to make them more accessible?

It is usually best to get media files into the most common format possible before publishing. A standard Mpeg or Flash format file guarantees that most browsers will display them with no hitches. Check out www.videozilla.net - a video conversion tool for free trial download or $30 (£17) for a licence if you like it. It converts files between 15 of the most common formats. John Davitt is an ICT writer and freelance thinker.

· Please email your queries to john@aardvarkwisdom.com

Also in Guidance and Writing

Mini Handout

John's recent articles for The Guardian

Storytelling in the digital age

Overheard

Interactive Learning Resources

John Davitt answers your Questions

Back to basics

Some Sound Advice

Learning, a virtual reality

Digital pen pal - the tablet PC

Curriculum Songs and Mind Mapping

Digital Video as an education tool?

Software that credits learning

A new way to read?

'What's the best free music software I can use?'

How to make a panorama

Resources Archive

Bingo

I Learn by Eye You Learn by Ear

Futurelab

Submitted by Eliza Mountford

(500)

Home Page - Read another one

Resources - Guidance and Writing

Q&A: Your technical queries answeredJohn DavittTuesday September 18, 2007The Guardian Where are the best websites for drawing advice?

Q&AYour technical queries answered John Davitt Tuesday December 12, 2006The Guardian

John DavittTuesday December 12, 2006The Guardian