Golf, Sunshine and no kids!

With special thanks to nana and the sister-in-law who looked after the four kids while Ronnie and I had our first real break in 12 years! We disappeared for 5 days to the new Intercontinental at Natadola Bay in Fiji. Only open a couple of months, and in the downturn and poltical unrest in Fiji, well, despite the staff telling us they were "fully booked", there were very few people at this fantastic place - making our stay even more memorable. We had a great time and I had my first round of golf for 21 months on the brand new Natadola International Golf Club. While it has been publicised as the equivalent of Kauri Cliffs, it isn't. It is far better than Denerau, but not a patch on Kauri Cliffs - still these photos will give you a better view. Well worth playing and the resort is fantastic.

Check out my Flickr set for Natadola.

Prezi version of 2009 Horizon Report

I've used Prezi a couple of time for presentations and people have been pretty enthusiastic about the tool as a way to keep the masses attentive to a presentation. I also use the Horizon Projects reports in some of my class work and presentations. Totally by accident stumbled upon this Prezi on Horizon 2009 - not only is it a cool way of putting the Horizon Project across, it is a great example of how to deliver a prezi. Hope you enjoy it. Thanks to Rachel Smith!

Data Visualisation, Authentic Learning, and Why the Web is so Cool.

Two years ago I had no idea who Hans Rosling was. Then I happened upon his first TED talk where he floored me with the way that his software gave a powerful visual meaning to the wealth of data that was, at that stage, locked away in the archives of the United Nations. 


Hans' first TED talk was inspiring - as is his second.

Now that all of the UN data is available, you have an incredibly powerful tool to work with students of all ages when considering many of todays major issues. All available at Hans' web site http://www.gapminder.org/

What is really cool about the software is that it tracks data over time and plays as an animation. There are much more powerful and important data sets than the one I have used here - I chose education (Yr 8 Maths grades) and compare against a technology indicator of internet users per 100 people. Now of course, there was no web before 1995, so that's where this data starts. The two images show starting and end points.

So, if you are looking for statistics with impact and real meaning, or are looking for a discussion starter for a Religious Studies or Social Studies or Geography or Business or anything lesson, then use Gapminder - and use the talks from Rosling - truly inspirational, all due to the power of the web and the awesome story telling tools it provides.

Interactive Whiteboard Conference Day 2

Day 2 of the conference saw David Seedhouse deal to the values concept in the new curriculum. Severely. And he makes a good case - there is no supoporting evidence for the current approach that every school and curriculum decision must be based upon an analysis of values - and the list of values that the MoE has identified. Seedhouse maintains that values are nothing more than a mix of evidence and opinions - everyones will be a little different. The role of the teacher is to expose students to the thought processes through discussion of appropriate "values" questioning. To this end his web site is a cool tool for developing this notion. A great start to the day!

Chris Betcher has been one of the stars of this conference. Every show has its star presenters, but this one has had one. I've seen four of his sessions - all delivered with enthusiams and clear passion for what he does. His session today looking at putting the interactive into the IWB has reinforced my view that in the hands of a good teacher, these boards are a "table stake" for the classroom. The interactivity doesn't really come from the board, it comes from what the board lets you do in the class. So, my task now is to re-energise our push with these technologies and light those fires again!

It's been a few years since I played with Turning Points v-pad software for student polling in Powerpoint, so I was pleased to catchup with KeePad out of Oz and look at how this has developed. Still expensive for what it is, so I think I'll head to the likes of PollAnywhere to get a look at how this might deliver some formative data. It did however give me the chance to have a play with the eBeam system - one of those devices claiming to give IWB functionality on a standard whiteboard. After having a play, I think that if you are strapped for cash, then maybe these are an option - but my preference is definitely for a "board". And while on this - I remain quite impressed with the Promethean ActivBoard. Kind of think that maybe they are just a little better than SmartBoards?? Just.

Having had my main reason for attending the conference satisfied, I spent the rest of the day in sessions looking at software options to make classroom life that much more fun. That's always a great part of these types of conferences - you always find some new stuff. There are a few that I thought looked just fantastic - I'll save them for another blog or two.

Now - how to bring some of this conference, plus a whole lot of other stuff I've accumulated over recent months, to our staff? I'm looking forward to it!!

Interactive Whiteboard Conference Day 1

Today was Day 1 of the IWBNet conference in Auckland - the first time this has been held in NZ. Thanks to them for bringing their conference to NZ and to Westlake Girls High School for hosting it. It was nice to hear Alison Gernhoeffer make few opeing remarks which indicate a major problem we have in secondary schools - that of a teaching profession that really has no incentive to change while there is still such an emphasis on external examination results at the last 3 years of education.

But - to the conference - opened by Steven Jury, a senior executive (OK the vice chairman) of Promethean. His presentation was generic and didn't say much that was new - did quote some research from Robert Marzano and published on the BECTA site that shows some significant gains in student learning with IWB use. You can check out the research here on the Whiteboard Blog.

What else did I get from the keynote? One thing was that my Pulse SmartPen caught the entire presentation perfectly in the school hall - without using the special headphones. That pen is just awesome! So, not only do I have the notes I took, but the whole audio to review. What I need now is the promised version of the Pulse software that will convert my scribble to text - that will be a challenge for the OCR/AI software they need to decipher my scawl!!

Chris Betcher (from PLC in Sydney) gave a useful session on possible futures. Nothing to do with whiteboards per se, but everything to do with just how fast stuff develops. Cool 3D book stuff and augmented reality - must check out the site he used.

Robyn Garden from the Invercargill area (where the local trust put IWBs in every class in every school) gave a very practical session which, to be brutally honest, restored my faith in this type of technology. Thanks Robyn for the great reminder that you can provide ICT skills and IWB skills to teachers that don't have them - but to give great teaching skills to someone who doesn't have them is much harder.

There was much more to take in - not all was great, but much was good. Of course you meet new people and old friends too.

But I went along to this conference with a big question. Are these IWBs little more than an excuse to leave the teacher in control of the classroom? I came away from the keynote and the session with Robyn with the belief restored that in reality, a large interactive touch board of some type is the way of the future. So yes, can't wait for tomorrow and more learning.

Aviary - my find of the year?

I'm on a bit of a crusade at the moment to see what open source or web 2.0 options exist for a wide range of applications that we use at school. Now, apart from the likes of the standard OpenOffice or Google Docs, more "exotic" options for video editing, photo editing and audio creation online have been varied in quality- and in the case of video editing the landscape has changed a lot this past year. Today I ended up at Aviary via a tweet from someone (it's alzheimers I tell you). While it doesn't boast video editing, the rest of the suite looks awesome.

Here's the intro video from their main site

...and this is the one that caught my eye from their new audio tool, Myna




I'll be using these tools with my Year 8 Digital Technologies class in Term 4 - that'll give me an idea of how they perform over a wireless network and how 12 and 13 year olds respond to this software.

But if it works half as well as the demo's suggest - we'll have a ball. It looks a cool tool.

Resizing a Jing cast to fit your blog

Editing a Jing screencast to fit a smaller window has been a bit of a challenge. But it can be done with no (or very little) HTML knowledge - just a little bit of mathematics. Here's how ...

I have set my screen capture for full (1280 x 770) resolution, but I want to play the resulting video here on my blog at half this size - this is the maths part. So, I want to replay it as a 640 x 385 pixel video. So - if I know where the 1280 x 770 code is in the embed code from Jing - I can simply overstrike them with the new values and they should work. I've done this in two stages - to show you the capture of the embed codes, and then in part II how to edit them. NOTE: that in the video I got my maths wrong! Half of 770 is 385, not 365! Hah! hard to find a good maths teacher these days.

Part I - Getting the Code.

Part II - Now that we have the cast up on Screencast.com you make the necessary changes to the embed code. Jing is seriously cool software for creating quick screencasts. It's a pain you have to do this to get it to play as part of another product (ie your blog or web site), but at least it works.