Literacy and Numeracy in Curriculum for Excellence - Part 1

Last Saturday I was lucky enough to attend the literacy and numeracy event run by Bill Boyd and Tom Renwick. The presenters individually had such a wealth of experience and knowledge that I am going to blog each presentation separately to really try to give them both justice (although there is no substitute for actually being there).

Bill Boyd

Bill, a.k.a The Literacy Adviser, does just what it says on his tin (except he uses less cliches!) Having been a Principle Teacher of English, a Depute Head Teacher and an Education Manager with LTS he shares all of this knowledge in a way that captivates his audience. He has an obvious interest in modern culture and uses of film, comics and technology all blended together to present his argument that being literate means more than the understanding of books. In his talk he referred to a range of texts from comics to digital novels in the most authentic and unique sense. I'll attempt to summarise my notes from the morning in a series of paragraphs.

Language

Bill highlighted the evolution of language through our interaction with everyday texts. We learn to follow patterns in texts. He started off by having the audience consider ingredients, song lyrics, instructions and computer screens showing that we decode everyday texts using our prior knowledge and links to function. The fact that the range of texts that we use is wide and varied is highlighted by the wording of the Curriculum for Excellence's definition of texts.

"a text is the medium through which ideas, experiences, opinions and information can be communicated." CfE Literacy Across Learning: principles and practice.


Games-based Learning

Bill argues that the narrative in modern games are as valuable as texts as are film and written word. Games such as Myst are valuable when used as contexts for learning. Creative writing, fantasy worlds, problem solving and many cross-curricular themes can be found through games such as Samarost, Machinarium and the more recent Doctor Who games.

This made me think, surely the Doctor Who adventure games could provide a whole term's primary topic as children could delve into character development through the regeneration of the Doctor, exploring key points in history, familiar and fantasy geographic settings, technology as well as the idea of creative writing and parallel narratives.

The interactive novel

This resource really interested me. Bill took us through a novel titled Inanimate Alice. This was like no novel I had ever seen before. It was not simply a book converted to an ebook or simply an interactive decision-making  story. Inanimate Alice puts you in the shoes of a young girl and fires stimuli at all of the senses for a completely immersive experience. As the chapters progress, the story of Alice and her trans-migratory family progress through different territories, exciting problems that Alice solves with the help of her handheld device-based friend. Children have created their own episodes which can be seen via the website though I have yet to explore this.

Graphic Novels

I've not been into comics since I stopped my subscription for 2000AD in the early 90's. I really think I've missed something! I remember visiting my cousin in Portsmouth as a child and being awestruck at his collection of thick graphic novels (He's now a successful graphic artist). These were not comics, these were novels with all the credibility of any piece of literature. Bill reignited my interest in graphic novels and made me realise that the gap between our literacy interests and that of the children is not as great as it sometimes seems.

Having thought about this, literacy is a perfect example of human's varying learning styles. Whilst studying English Literature at University, I would often sit through the film's of Shakespeare's plays. For me, this made the language far more accessible and the characters much more understandable. For Year 4 boys two years ago, Macbeth was brought to life by the graphic novels. The narrative remains the same but the means in which children digest, process and deconstruct these 'texts' is individual and as teachers we need to understand that. Bill says, look out for The Invention of Hugu Cabret and Chemical Reactions. I say look out for Macbeth: The Graphic Novel.

Film

I used to run the Filmclub for children where we would receive feature films to watch, discuss and write about. It worked but was difficult in the sense that a two-and-a-half hour film takes 3 weeks to watch and loses much of it's impact.

Bill directed us to a fantastic few websites that provide a great deal of teaching resources for short films that are more than manageable in class. Have a look at Moving Image Education, Scotland On Screen and Screening Shorts. I was very pleased to find the short animation The Sandman which I found so intriguing and terrifying that I have never deleted from a VHS tape that I recorded it onto, accidentally, about 15 years ago!

If you haven't been convinced of the value in analysing computer games, digital novels, film and animation as forms of text by now then Bill has provided further help in the form of the 7 Reading Strategies and the 10 Tools for Reading Film. These are certainly worth a read though I think it would be far better to share them with your pupils whilst deconstructing comics or film.

You can follow Bill's blog at http://literacyadviser.wordpress.com/ and you can must follow him on twitter @literacyadviser

Teachmeet Aberdeen October 2011

I'd had a pretty full-on term and really needed a boost to lift my spirits and increase my motivation for the long days teaching, assessing, reflecting and planning. This boost came in the form of the Aberdeen Teachmeet.

I repeated my May presentation calling for teachers to become involved in an Aberdeenshire augmented reality channel to showcase children's work around the area. I also demonstrated the use of Issuu and the 'hilariously' titled Stickybits. Yes, insert captions that read 'Charlie Barrow showing off Stickybits' and such like.

Ian Simpson: Becoming Orson: Podcasting War Of The Worlds

Ian presented a fantastic piece proving that the umbrella of ICT clearly covers what we would traditionally call 'media'. Inspired by the famous Welles radio play War Of The World, Ian's lunchtime club pupils favoured the radio play genre over the celebrity music based programme pleasantly surprising Ian.

Using free audio software Audacity and microphones bought on the cheap from the Pound Store, they began work on scripting and producing the radio play. That moment we all look forward to as teachers came when Ian walked in to the classroom to find his pupils experimenting with the springs from the back of a broken chair. They discovered that they could create some fantastic foley by dropping two springs on the floor and recording the sound.

Thank you Ian for sharing your inspiration and making us all wish that we were pupils in your class!

Twitter users can follow Ian's tweets @familysimpson and access his blog at http://caffeinetangent.wordpress.com/ 

Nikki Stobie: Random name generator

In primary schools we rely heavily on tried and tested systems like using lolly pop sticks with names written on to randomly choose children for various reasons. While this has worked since before I can remember, it's always great to be able to take these ideas and modernise them, polishing them up with a little wow factor.

Nikki has found a great random name generator from classtools.net. Insert the names of your pupils and choose from the typewriter or fruit machine. The flash based animation then generates one of the names at random to a big round of applause. Nice!

Mark Hay: Glow blogs, wikis and eportfolios

Mark presented on his use of Glow blogs and Wikis. This is something I have been trying to do for a long time and I think that Mark seems to have cracked it. He went on to discuss eportfolios using Glows 'Honeycomb' based system. He also mentioned Kodu, the game development software for children which again is something I hope to follow up.

I think that the beauty of Teachmeet is that presenters like Mark can introduce resources and ideas and though I admit that I didn't follow it all at the time, the food for thought can be digested over a long period of time and this really has given me the inspiration to learn more.


Follow Mark on Twitter @MarkHay79

Martin Coutts: Games based learning and maths

I admit that when maths teachers stand up to present, I immediately feel on edge, the sweat runs cold and I get my fingers ready for some rapid calculation. In Martin's presentation he showed off a wonderful resource aimed at secondary maths pupils but which also lends itself to the extension of P7 and even P6 pupils. Manga High is a free resource with a huge amount of competitive maths games, many of which also contain teaching activities too. The resource allows for quick class registration and password generation or, as I have done in order to try it out, a random set of 30 general log-ins to be used with any class. If it proves to be a success, I'll register the class properly so that they can track their progress.

My cold sweat soon cleared and I've even tried some of the Manga High challenges. I was awarded bronze! :-/ If you would like to follow Martin on Twitter, his user id is @mcoutts81

Katheryn Roper: Geobus

Katheryn sensibly took the opportunity of Teachmeet to present the Geobus project to the 60-something attendees. To be launched in January 2012, the Geobus will be a free resource available to all secondary schools and perhaps eventually some primary schools too. It will provide mobile expertise and tailored lessons in all curriculum areas (even embedding ICT - see what she did there?) on geographical topics.

The website will be up and running soon and bookings will be taken in the very near future. I'll update the blog as soon as I find any details out. In the meantime 'd suggest some sporadic Google searches!

Gretchin Perk: Frayer Model

Another presenter sneaking in a brilliant idea to prove that Teachmeet Aberdeen was more about sharing fantastic resources than simply shoehorning ICT into teaching. Gretchin demonstrated the use of the 'Frayer Model'. The model is "is a graphical organizer used for word analysis and vocabulary building." (http://www.justreadnow.com/strategies/frayer.htm, 30/10/11) It is in the form of a four-square diagram, each square for pupils to demonstrate their understanding of a concept by defining the term, defining the term's characteristics and providing examples and non-examples. 


As I write this, my plan for my P7 metric measuring lesson includes a Frayer Model activity to allow children to demonstrate their understanding. I hope it is successful and I'll be trying it out in language work and topic work in the future.

Stephanie Orr: Jousting Game

Games-based learning is popular in both primary and secondary at the moment and I'm sure it's popularity will only grow as educators continue to accept the computer game as a valuable form of literacy such as the novel and the moving image.

Stephanie has found a great little flash game that uses historical fact to create a perfect visual learning tool showing children just what jousting is all about. It's factually accurate, fun and funny and had the audience smiling for the full 2 minutes. I spoke to a fellow Aberdeenshire practitioner a couple of days ago who used this resource with her primary class last week with great success.

Ed Walton: Stagework, Dark Materials

Unbeknown to the Teachmeet congregation, Ed was busy creating an off-the-cuff presentation on his iPad having been inspired by the previous presentations. How he managed to get such a slick and full presentation done that quickly is beyond me but it was excellent.

One of his main demonstrations showed how he taught meta-cognition to his secondary pupils through a series of superhero cell-snapshots presented in ComicLife. It was a bold and captivating way to do it and I can understand exactly how his pupils must have felt when engaging in it. Using a plethora of higher order thinking through speech bubbles seemed to just work.

He also presented some interesting material through the stagework website which is full of teaching resources for curriculum areas through drama. There was also a fantastic sequence of videos from the His Dark Materials play (I think) where each shot was filmed 3 times with slightly different actions to enable the pupil to create their own version of the scene. I forgot to write the address for this properly so as soon as I find it, I'll post it.)

Darren Gibb: Resource medley!

Darren Darren Darren, what can I say. He could have presented for an hour with all the resources he had. He chose to go last which, in hindsight, could have been a ploy to make sure that after 2 hours of listening, we were all still on our toes. He covered so much in such a short space of time that I will list the bits I wrote down and will leave it to future blog posts to share how I've used some of his ideas. I've used two in the two days of teaching since his presentation. Both with great success. Thanks Darren.


Audioboo
This app has been on the go for a while and is heavily endorsed by Stephen Fry. It's like a twitter, blogging, podcasting tool in one. You record straight into the computer's mic or your android, iphone, iPad or whatever device you have, and upload it to the world. It's so quick, so easy and right up my street as it's a great way for children to publicise their work. As a form of social networking, pupil Internet safety should be at the forefront of your mind all the time but if handled carefully could be a valuable tool.

Wikispaces
This is a really simple way to build a wiki about anything. It's extremely easy to create class logins from an education account and once created, every amendment to the wiki can be seen along with the child that edited it. Assessment is for Learning, tick!

Todaysmeet
is a chat tool that allows you to create a private room that only people with the specific web address can access. You can set the room to be automatically deleted in hours, days or weeks and children have 140 characters with which to comment. I am fascinated with the idea of our language developing based on the need to cram as much in to small windows of text. Children are getting pretty good at adapting their language. I hope we can keep up with their literacy skill.

Placemats

A really simple active learning activity where children use an A3 sheet divided into quarters with a fifth, central box to hone their ideas or facts. Each child silently jots down as many notes as they can about a given topic and afterwards they discuss which are the important points to select for the middle box.

If you want to follow Darren on Twitter then he's @darrengibb

So, another Teachmeet Aberdeen over with. With the attendance increased three-fold, the next one in about 6 months time should be a cracker. "We're gonna need to get a bigger boat"...er... venue! Thanks to Stuart Brown for organising the event at Aberdeen University. Thanks to Ian Simpson, Darren Gibb, Martin Coutts for your bits. I hope they'll give me something to do next time. I could bring the crackers and cheese?

Never Mind Excuses!

Oh dear oh dear! It's been an age since my last blog post and I'm slightly embarrassed that I haven't had anything rattling around in my brain that was worth writing.

In my defence, I focused my blog-writing energy on my Coast to Coast blog documenting my off-road cycle trip from West to East Scotland. Although

Much has happened since the Summer. I've begun my probation year teaching a Primary 6/7 composite class at Fishermoss Primary in Portlethen, Aberdeenshire. That could also explain the lack of posts since all of my time and attention has been spent on planning for an unfamiliar age group and a HUGE range of needs across all curricular areas. It has certainly been a challenge but it's getting easier.

I'm looking forward to using technology to enhance my teaching, their learning... and my learning. I'm battling against some teething problems with GLOW logins, browser errors and strange unknown bugs and beasties in the system but those will soon be defeated.

Looking forward, it's the Aberdeen Teachmeet next week. Meeting up with lots of like-minded teachers is a great way to sort things out in my own mind as well as learning what colleagues have been doing recently. Watch this space as I revive Augmented Reality, QR codes, Issuu publishing and our Jaguar Cars Maths in Motion challenge progress.

Coast to coast to raise money for UK cancer charities

 

In July 2011, I will set off from the Skye Bridge at Kyle of Lochalsh and cycle 270 miles, climb over 17,000ft and will be in the saddle for 7 days before arriving in Montrose on the East coast.

This trip is to raise money for both Cancer Research UK and Macmillan Cancer Support. Please support me, even a couple of quid will help.

Click on the logo to visit the blog where you can donate via the Justgiving widgets.

The Future (and trying to make sense of it)

Firstly, I must apologise as this is going to be a lengthy post. Today I had a tweet, it looked like this:

And it made me think. What is AR technology all about? Augmented Reality has been around for decades. In essence AR is simply the overlay of artificial (computer generated) information over a real image. For example, when your disappointed football manager comes on the telly and over the video image pops up his name, thats AR. Or perhaps the news report that has a moving ticker giving extra info at the bottom of the screen. I suppose even that radical idea of having an MTV logo at the top left of the screen. How annoying and now its everywhere. So really, to explain AR and it's applications would be a little like someone saying, so explain - what's the internet all about then?

In this post I am going to attempt to try to explain AR, it's applications and how it is already embedded in our society. I will also show how exciting it is as this aspect of science fiction has now become reality. I think it's also important to recognise that as exciting/scary (delete as appropriate) as this technology is, it is not the be all and end all, particularly in education. But I believe that it will have a huge impact on the way we learn and how we prepare our children for their future.

I'd like to start with a video that blew me away at the beginning of last year. It is from early 2009 and I wonder if the people that made it knew what the developments were likely to be over the next two years. Look out for the technology that we now know about which makes this reality much closer than first thought.





So, if you missed it, heres some of the technology already being used to make this reality possible.

touch responsive boards like SMART
voice to text and instant translation from Google
microsoft surface
xbox kinect for the 'minority report' wizardry
ipads/tablets with cameras to support gps based AR like junaio, wikitude, foursquare
paper thin video screens in magazines
paper thin mobile phones

During Teachmeet Aberdeen 2011, Jim McCracken made a salient point that we have to be careful not to replace good teaching and learning with technology. I agree, sometimes we can get carried away and I constantly ask myself, what does this tech add to teaching and learning that could not be done before? How does this help learning? And, yes, sometimes I persue the use of technology where it does not add to teaching and learning and have to bring myself back down and refocus. On the other hand, what appears reactionary now may be worth keeping in the back of your head for the future. I'm sure people thought about the potential of a 4" high-res colour screen in the classroom before teachers began lobbying for them to be allowed. Others saw them as something else to fight against. What's the use of a position of power if you have nothing to ban?

So, a fraction of the way through the post and I have to ask, where do I start?

Augmented Reality - 3D, the wow factor.

One aspect of modern augmented reality is the ability to use simple imagery to trigger 'things'. One such 'thing' that can be triggered is 3D modelling. This is where a camera can be used to detect a simple marker depicting the size and orientation of a 3D model that then pops up on the screen. Some of these are fantastic and I've included a video of the first ever 3D augmented reality CV.

You can read more about this aspect of augmented reality in my posts, Smart Grid Augmented Reality, LearnAR, Second Sight (I'd recommend looking into AR Sights for a brilliantly accessible plug in for google earth and google sketchup for free)

Augmented Reality - Image Overlay

In February 2010 I shared this TED talk video about Bing's use of image overlay. Microsoft Bing Maps - Augmented Reality

I instantly thought of the fantastic use of this technology in the social studies curriculum area as this is an area where a picture does speak a thousand words. My memory of history at school was just the copying of a thousand words! But this technology brings it all to life. If you  navigate to the US version of Bing Maps, there is the option to the streetside photos app. This shows photos overlaid ontop of street view. Imagine historical images overlaid onto street view and accessed with a smart phone or tablet. That's got to make an impression on any Standard Grade history pupil!

Augmented Reality - GPS tagging

This technology is everywhere now. Google maps on a smartphone, wikitude, layar, junaio, many apps now allow you to use the phones camera to see information about your surroundings. You can even scan your camera in any area and see where all your fellow tweeters are. Scary stalking scenarios now spring to mind. This technology is behind the phenominon of Geocaching but as a further educational resource, what if treasure hunts were actually stimulus for exploration on school trips. That was my idea when I set up a treasure hunt at Hampton Court Palace using Wikitude. Wikitude was chosen as it was easy to insert the information on the computer, simply inserting waypoints on a map. Mobile devices then overlayed these waypoints onto the phones maps and once you had located the waypoint, the teacher designed task could be carried out. Have a look at the blog post for that for more info. GPS AR Trial @ Strand Juniors' Hampton Court Trip

That leads me on to where I am at now; investigating the idea of sharing children's work with the wider network through the growing use of mobile technology. Junaio is the closest application that I have found with the ability to enable pupils to almost pick up a virtual version of their 3D design and move it around, or to send a newsletter home and have parents use their mobiles or tablets to access moving image in a window of the newsletter, or to be at a school trip and see where extra info has been virtually supplied by the teacher by way of GPS tagging or view other pupil's interpretations and comments by pointing a camera at a piece of art.

Now here's the deal. The future is all about sharing. The concept of connectivism as a credible learning theory is all about learning through networks. We do it already as practitioners through teachmeet, #edchat, blogging, virtual CPD. It's really important. If there is one thing that I have learnt this year, it is the importance of discussing ideas with others in order to see them materialise. If you would like to collaborate to get some of these ideas going, please get in touch with me. If you have already managed to, or do in the future, please let me know how you got on. I really think that microsoft's view of the future is so interesting and exciting and it's almost here. This will be out children's future and it's moving very quickly. Let's give them a running start.

The Outward Facing Classroom using Augmented Reality

For anyone that was following the Teachmeet Aberdeen on Wednesday 11th May (#tmabdn), here is my presentation on using Augmented Reality app Junaio to share children's work.

The Outward Facing Classroom using Augmented Reality on Prezi

My main points were:

• There is a wide network of people including other pupils, teachers and family taking an interest in children's learning and progress. We are no longer confined to displaying children's achievements in a closed classroom or school foyer.
• Educators have embraced the internet to motivate and reward children whilst teaching them about audiences. Take @deputymitchell's blogging work and it's affect on his pupils.
• Mobile technology is growing and becoming much more accessible to pupils and parents. Inclusion issues will soon become comparable to that of internet access.
• Augmented reality overlays digital 'magic' onto real life via cameras.
• This kind of magic has already been used by 2simple's 2animate programme. See youtube video.
• Using Junaio app, we can attach children's work to clear images. This allows children's work to be attached to their own images, work sent home, images at visits and attractions without leaving a physical mark which, in some circumstances (National Trust Properties?) would be undesirable.
• Use GPS to represent these locations on a live map.
• Collaboration is essential. I would like to set up a Glow group to work towards a Junaio channel to showcase children's work in the borough. 
• At present, a friendly user interface allows creation of Junaio Glue channels, attaching video and 3D models. (I'll upload a 'how to' video shortly)
• Much much more is possible and in collaboration with other primary and secondary school teachers we can create a template to get children's work out to a new, wider, tech-aware audience.
• Remember, to borrow a quote from elsewhere, "Email is that thing your Dad uses." We need to move with technology to excite and keep up with our pupils.

Feel free to post your comments and thoughts to this blog. Thanks.

Aberdeen Teachmeet 2011

This evening I attended the second ever, my first Teachmeet Aberdeen. Hosted by the University of Aberdeen and organised by Ian Simpson (@familysimpson) this was absolutely invaluable as a form of accessible CPD and sorely under-attended in my opinion. I'm not going to give a breakdown of all the presentations I saw, I'll instead link to the livestream video.

In summary, I learned:

• About iPad apps as maths resources for secondary (and primary) schools including a random question generator Mathsboard and maths app Times Warp. Also web resources Manga High and games design with Kodu. Thanks to Martin Coutts from Meldrum Academy
  
• About Wordle and it's many uses around the classroom. Thanks to Kirsty Marsland
  
• Stuart Brown's fantastic collection of ICT resources, pitfall lessons, mobile learning and the benefits of letting Philosoraptor set questions for pupil essays!
  
• The concept of a Genius Bar as a short, sharp, focused CPD provision. Having been bereft of a Mac for almost a year, I was intrigued to learn about the Apple Genius Bars in stores. Sounds like a definite model for education. Thanks to Ian Simpson of Inverurie Academy.
  
• An introduction to the use of Avatars for both pupils and teachers in schools. I've experienced Voki
  before and found it a wonderful resource for helping children to think about how they represent themselves online. Thanks to Jim McCracken.
• Ian Simpson presented another presentation introducing great ways to utilise iPod handheld tech in schools. Very useful looking apps like Comictwist, Sonic Pics and others as part of the Aberdeenshire iPod Development Group.
  
• And fantastic impromptu presentations by Darren Gibb, Westhill Academy on his use of Glow, Helen Bradley on Purple Mash and The Daily What and a virtual presentation from Colin Graham on Algebra in Primary Schools.

In all, a fairly mind blowing and very positive experience in a really relaxed and comfortable environment. I particularly like the enthusiasm of all participants and the fact that people felt comfortable enough to present on the spur of the moment. Obviously the whole experience was very inspiring. I would urge anyone with an interest in ICT and teaching to attend a Teachmeet. I certainly gained some good ideas and some good contacts.

If you are interested in my presentation on the outward facing classroom and the use of augmented reality, I will post the prezi on here within the next day or so.