Dylan and the DLR

This week, being half term, I was able to spend more time with Dylan. He like his father has some sad obsessions, though sadly not Dr Who, his is trains and in particluar the Docklands Light Railway. Dylan is also autistic and doesn't communicate beyond expressing wants, he can be quite excitable, but his behaviour changes completely on a train journey. He becomes uber-calm and loves to look at therapidly changing detail that passess the windows. The Docklands is a great train in this respect as it is driverless and therefore one can sit in the drivers seat. We had to visit Great Ormond Street together last week and used a bus, a tube and the DLR, all of these short journeys were taken in the rain. For me they were quite automatic and my mind drifted beyond the immediate surroundings. However I began to notice how Dylan's eyes darted from building to building, and I realised afresh that to a child the view from a window can be exciting, despite the drab and drizzle of wet sunday in East London.

So why is all this important to a primary ICT blog then?

Following the trip I thought I could try to recreate it for Dylan In some way on the computer. So,of course I googled pictures of the train, but my biggest find came when I turned to Youtube, as there I found drivers eye view videos. (see embedded below)

I used Keepvid to download these, remembering to save them with the .flv extension. Usually though, I would play these back in SMART notebook, but I could not do this on my home PC as I haven't got SMART notebook intsalled there. So, instead I downlaoded an flv player, this must be the soloution for people who don't have SMART boards. This meant I had two videos in samll flv format, downloaded and ready for use. I was not reliant on my erratic wireless connection to stream the videos nor was I hindred by the hassle of having to search through Youtube.

In thinking about the DLR, I also came across an excellent video from Teachers TV, this showed a nearby Primary working with an artist to create print and images of East London with all it's contrasts. Very interesting.

Youtube CLIPS: