Hoeben’s Blog

Ollie Bray recently posted this useful video of himself discussing uses of Google Earth in a Teachmeet conference in Havering.

Love this response by one of my A2 Photography students, Amaryllis Garland, to the work of Laura Letinsky and her exam theme ‘discord’. You can see more of her work here.

The tradition genre of still life often bores students rigid, but by using more contemporary artists, the world of objects becomes far more interesting. I particularly like the work of Peter Fischli & David Weiss and Alina Szapocznikow, who is currently showing the The Photographers Gallery in London.

Magnetic Movie from Semiconductor on Vimeo.

This is a good example of how animation can be used to help explain difficult concepts using real-time footage and underlying invisible elements such as magnetic fields.

This is a beta application called 280 slides that has all the signs of being an excellent free online piece of software that acts like keynote or powerpoint allowing you to create presentations online and post them to sites such as slideshare. Microsoft are already working on a free online version of word - however, there are already a growing number of open source applications such as Google Docs that are already offering free online word processing that MS are a bit behind …for a change.

The above image was made through controlled voice sounds - by alternating the pitch and tone or your voice, you can literally draw an image. Click here to visit the application designed by zefrank.

This video is an example of how it is being used as a form of live performance art:

BECTA are responsible for developing the government’s e-strategy and have the official remit of “leading the national drive to ensure the effective and innovative use of technology throughout learning.” Last September 2008, Charles Crook and Colin Harrison from BECTA published a report called: ‘Web 2.0 Technologies for Learning at Key Stage 3 and 4′, and make the cautious case for further adoption of web 2.0 technology. Below are some extracts, which make interesting reading:

“Overall, although most learners use the internet for learning, there is only limited use of Web 2.0, and only a few embryonic signs of criticality, self-management and meta-cognitive reflection.”

“Many learners lack technical skills, and lack an awareness of the range of technologies and of when and how they could be used, as well as the digital literacy and critical skills to navigate this space. Teachers should be careful not to overestimate learners’ familiarity and skills in this area. There is a clear role for teachers in developing such skills.”

“Findings on impact are cautiously positive. The research team identified four potential benefits to learning and teaching from using Web 2.0 to establish and sustain a participatory, collaborative, creative ethos of enquiry. These were found in the data, though in differing degrees:

• Stimulating new modes of enquiry
• Engaging in collaborative learning activities
• Engaging with new literacies
• Online publication of content

When used effectively, Web 2.0 technologies had a positive impact on motivation and engagement through involving students in more participatory learning.”

You can see a video on the use of web 2.0 in education here.

There is a tenancy amongst teachers to assume that children/young people can essentially be self-taught when it comes to technology and that all they really require is access to new technologies. Although this progressive view of learning has its merits, especially for encouraging creativity, most people require some kind of theoretical understanding, which they can then subvert. Nevertheless, the creation of ICT as a subject has led to technology becoming a separate discipline with a fixed curriculum and has further excluded its collaborative use across schools.

There is a reluctance by many teachers to learn about new technologies over existing practices, since it is possible to satisfy the curriculum requirements by using teaching methods that predate computers.The use of technology has to be exciting and open up potential learning opportunities in order to motivate staff, whilst also being integral to the assessment process. In terms of CPD, there is a case for sharing current pedagogy that involves the use of technology within schools.

Blogs and RSS feeds are a useful way of disseminating good practice and departments should be encouraged to share their achievements in this way, along with, of course, the students. Fronter have a useful tool called ‘News’ on their MLE servie, which allows for this. However, it is only an internal system and does not encourage interaction with a wider, global audience like blog platforms such as Blogger and Wordpress.

I would be interested to know what other people think about how technology should be taught in schools?

Thomas Tallis School is a specialist Arts status college in Kidbrooke, South East London, and have recently made the decision to set up YouTube throughout the school. They have set up a profile called Tallis Tube, where videos from all departments can be posted. I particularly like this video, which shows how mobiles might be used in lessons such as biology to explain processes - although this student needs to be taught how to hold the camera still…

It is inspiring to see a school prepared to adopt the use of web 2.0 applications so enthusiastically and, in particular at a Senior Management level. At Thomas Tallis college, Jon Nicholls, the Assistant Head, who I met for the first time at the BETT show in Olympia earlier this year, has been at the forefront of pushing the school towards the use of popular open-source applications such as Flickr and YouTube. Click here to visit his school blog.

This image has been simply manipulated using Tiltshift maker - this can also be achieved easily in Photoshop using a duplicated layer applied with a blur and the area of focus removed with the rubber tool, and then applied a high contrast/saturation using levels.

This program is unique in that you don’t need to enter your personal details to make print outs of comic strips. It allows you to write in foreign languages so could be effectively used in MFL. It has many links to other sites to support with translation and ideas on story telling. Overall a simple, but useful resource - despite the dodgy title.

Make Beliefs Comix

I am torn between migrating over to the new Picasa online photo sharing/management software, which has recently come out for the Mac, and maintaining Flickr as a default online photo sharing site for students. There are clear advantages to Flickr in terms of sharing through groups and the ability to categorise into collections and sets. However, I like the ease of Picasa in being able to sync albums from its desktop programme, making it easy to publish work from within your web album on your hard drive. Here is an example of an embedded album, which I have created in order to showcase different photographers that could be researched for a GCSE photography project called ‘Visual Noise’:

VISUAL NOISE Artist Research

So far, I have required students to have a Flickr account as an e-portfolio. This has worked well as an online showcase, but not enabled students to add more critical analysis of other photographers and interests to their site such as with a blog  like this one. Therefore, this year my GCSE Photography students have created their own blogs using Edublogs - see blog roll below:

These have been successful as each blog has an RSS feed and can easily be collated within Google Reader or on a learning platforms such as Moodle or the London MLE run by Fronter. This year, I have decided to formally submit the blog as evidence of analysis and use the sketchbook as evidence for visual development and the occasional annotations.

I have yet to play with Fronter’s Webfronter, which enables students to create a web page, but this might replace the Edublogs sites if it has enough capacity. It would be good to centralise these blogs within Fronter, but I doubt that there will be the same capacity of ease of use.