alastair.turnbull

I thought I would share some practical advice and tips, and experience.

We have an OS X server. When an camera is attached to download photos, it only goes into iPhoto on that laptop. On a recent trip with my class (27 P5s) I took over 130 photos. I wanted each laptop to see and have access to them quickly. Yes, you can put them into a Public folder where all can see them, but the transfer time is very slow. Initially I copied them to a folder on the desktop using the laptop where they were in. Because all the laptops saw a common desktop, when logged in as the same user, this folder was gradually appearing on all the laptops, as I wanted. But oh so slow, 2 or 3 photos a minute. So the answer, of sorts. I put the original folder from the desktop onto a Firewire drive and went round each laptop, 16 of them, transferring them directly on to the desktop. By the time I was nearing the end of this, this folder was appearing on the ones I had not been to and I had to ‘replace’ as it was starting to be in existence on the desktop, via the wireless network . Eventually all laptops had the photos on the desktop.

Why did I do this? Because the children were using Comic Life and needed to access the photos quickly. It took time but was worth it. The children enjoyed using Comic Life. From an academic point of view there were literacy skills, Direct Speech, and from an ICT aspect they were learning to use a new application. They were showing me and the class how to flip the ‘bubbles’ and to change the colour of the font. A mutually beneficial experience for the teacher and the children!

Our server has given up the ghost for a few days, so, as it was the main ICT day when I take other classes for ICT I had to resort to photocopiable materials. Usually I am a hands on teacher! I looked around school and came across “5-14 Developing ICT Capability Developing Informed Attitudes Levels A-F”
This very useful pack is produced by Q-Net, School of Education, University of Aberdeen. It helped to broaden the horizon of the children in P1-P4 and showed them how computers and microprocessors are used in the big wide world. I will certainly be using it more. There is some good material in it and is very user friendly!

Last week I was fortunate to attend an inservice course “ICT and Literacy”, with reference to A Curriculum for Excellence.

The day had various components, including how and what ICT materials was used in our classes. There were about a dozen teachers who were teaching at different different stages in primary schools. Two items especially came to my attention.
1. . Comic Life has been mention on Argyll and Bute Glow Mentor blogs before. This super application allows photos to be turned into comic strips. Children will love this! And, we are very fortunate in Argyll and Bute, that the authority has purchased site licenses for us. (A note here for Argyll and Bute staff: there is a free upgrade at Comic Life’s website.) Comic Life it is multi dividending! Importing and managing photos, creating a story line and introducing speech into work.

The curricular guidelines for A Curriculum for Excellence has emphasis on the implications and appropriate use of technologies and digital texts. Comic Life fits well in here.

2. StarWriter Published by Longman. This is a writing programme for children in Primary 4-7. It helps to deliver self assessment, is easy to use, and is very popular. The children like it. The reason I mention it here is that quite a few teachers on the course, and we were from different schools, remarked how good it was as a writing package. It uses multimedia software.

I am not getting paid by either of these publishers! Just ‘thought you would like to hear the verdicts of teachers. I will certainly be exploring these products more.

Mr. Scott Executive
Holyrood
Edinburgh

Dear Sir

May I, on behalf on the staff here at Colgrain Primary, thank you for your recent generosity, in giving us a large amount of money to spend. We are delighted!

The staff have been busy in discussions in full staff meetings, as well as informally, trying to decide what we should buy. It has not been easy. We want everybody in the school, both teachers and children (at all stages) to benefit. It has been decided that we would spend a lot of the money on interactive whiteboards. There has been tension in the staff room as to who would be the lucky beneficiaries! We are also getting new laptops (MacBooks), to go with the whitebords. Some staff have opted to go for iMacs. I do not blame them, they are very attractive looking PCs. The children will certainly like using them. Our authority, Argyll and Bute, has been very clever in negotiating some great deals with suppliers which makes the pounds go further!

We do have a couple of mobile whiteboards. These have not been a success. They take time to set up and there are wires across the floor. (Health and safety would not approve!) So with some of your award we are making these permanent fixtures in classes. They will be used a lot more by the staff and children in all curricula areas.

Thank you again for you generosity.

Yours faithfully

Alastair Turnbull

Over the Christmas break I met a very interesting woman involved in intellectual property management and we got on to the subject of creating work and publishing.  Under the Employment Act (1977) if an employee produces a piece of work, which is related to the purpose of their employment, the piece of work belongs to the employer.  So any worksheets, guides, “how tos”, etc. that one may make is intellectual property (IP) of the employer.  If teachers and anybody connected with GLOW, decide to put material on GLOW for anybody to see, advice and permission should to be sought from the employer prior to publishing.

Local authorities need to publish guidelines as to what can be posted on GLOW.  Every authority in Scotland has produced material to help teachers.  There are Art Packs, Maths Planners, P.E. Guidelines, the list goes on.  Before GLOW gets fully up and running for open access, there should be a document produced by authorities giving guidance to teachers and anybody else about what can be posted, advertised and downloaded for public consumption.  Teachers, themselves, have of course produced a lot of useful material. I think we need advice.

This is an article in The Observer (Business and Media) 07.01.07

Reading it I found it very true to life. Especially the middle section starting “There’s a surreal quality to it……..Yuck!”
We are not getting it right. The children in the P7 class I take for ICT, at home do use Bebo, MySpace, MSM, text phones….and all far better than me! What do we do?

Microsoft Vista is good. See the New York Times article……..it comes up after the ad.
http://video.on.nytimes.com/ifr_main.jsp

But, who am I to judge? I’m a mere Mac user…………..

We have been informed that we are going to get a fairly large amount of money to spend (additional SEED funding!)

One offer I have heard of concerns Promethean Boards:
For new users of Promethean boards there is a special offer.
2 x Activboard+2 wall mounted 64” or 78” Systems (it does not matter which) with projectors for £4000 fully fitted. (Contact: Bernard Nevin, Manager Celtic Region. Tel: 07970 893969 bernard.niven@prometheanworld.com)

Our younger members of the school P1 - P3 have been on the internet with me. We went to www.educationcity.com It really is a good site. The children love it! They keep asking when they can play more games. I took lots of photos too, good for display purposes and the Primary 7 newspaper. Talking of which, we have just purchased iWork. This is to use Pages. A great application for newspapers, leaflets, etc. You do not have to start from scratch (a blank page), there are lots of very easy to use templates. Yes, I know there are other applications which do this, however the big draw is that it is Mac native (it can be used with other Apple native applications, iPhoto, AppleWorks, etc.) You probably guess that I am a keen Mac user………..!!

Well, what has been happening recently?

I have been contributing to Andrew Brown’s blog, debating how we should discuss our experiences using GLOW.
http://www.whereisab.co.uk/
It has certainly generated discussion! There are some interesting viewpoints. Ask people for their views and you certainly get them!

Today, I was on a course myself, Using a Promethean Board. So much to get to know. It was very intense, but useful. Like anything new it has to be practised and played with get confident with. My HT has recently ordered a second board for our school and it will be in my class. Aren’t new Headies wonderful!

I think that along with GLOW and the new board all my CPD time will be allocated for, fo the next couple of years. No more new initiative please for the foreseeable future!

I have been using GLOW recently and taking part in the different discussions and trying out the site. This is the last week of the pilot, so I will have to get my thoughts together to comment. The concept is brilliant………..

My class are in the process of making their Christmas Cards. This is a joint Art and ICT project. The art specialist is designing and making the cards with the children and I am helping the children to make their messages inside. Aspects of word-processing (fonts, size, layout, insertion of images, etc.) Isn’t it great when something is cross curricular?!!

Well, this week of course I have been exploring Glow. Wow! So much there. As many people will know, time just flies by when sat in front of a computer and you get to use/see something new. I have already spent nearly three hours looking around and making comments (constructive I hope!). It is easy to get carried away. There is so much there and if we can get teachers to use it I think it will have great potential.

My only concern, and it is not a criticism, is that there are many new initiatives that teachers being involved in. I hope that Glow will become one of the top ones for us! It is up to us Glow mentors to sell the product………

I also spent some time with our Pre 5 Unit staff explaining how to save and back up their Teddy reports. They appeared quite happy, so hopefully we will have a smooth year without losing work…..