Tone Matrix

I have been chatting to @mbarrow about this tool that we have both come across that works brilliantly on the whiteboard. Tone Matrix is described as :

Simple sinewave synthesizer triggered by an ordinary 16step sequencer. Each triggered step causes a force on the underlaying wave-map, which makes it more cute.

via http://lab.andre-michelle.com/tonematrix

Here is a video of Leo using it some time ago to give you and idea of what it does. I think this would be a welcome addition to the Foundation or SEN classroom.

INSET @ Fullwood

Effective use of the Interactive Whiteboard

Simple ideas
Use Images to remind, stimulate and inspire:

• Consider using relevant images when counting with younger children; a sweet or a dalek may have more relevance to some children than a collection of simple red counters

• Use Screen capture to create personalised slides and tools such as self registering.Children love to see themselves on screen and it is easy to cut out and store faces in Activ Primary using the screen capture tool in Activ Primary

The screen Capture Tool in Activ primary is one of the special tools

A "Who has go their PE kit slide?" made with screen captured faces. A further application for older children could be as shown below, here a rule is associated with a child in the class in order to make it more memorable. ( Though in the slide below I have shown four rules, I would really only have one to two per page/ lesson)

• The right image can be a powerful tool to inspire poetry or story writing. Google images is a good source of pictures, though the photo sharing site site Flickr offers a wider choice of images. These can be searched by a tag that the photographer ascribes to his or her image, these can be anything from "Barkingside" to the more abstract "fear". Searching in this way offers teachers a greater selection of photographs than would be available under Google images.

A photo tagged with "Barkingside" from Robert Brook

A photo tagged with 'lonesome' by Nekominn

Also by searching through groups you may find large pools of picture on themes or locations, there is even a London Borough of Redbridge Pool of pictures.

Use the Whiteboard as a tool for shared writing and reading

• Typing on-screen can be another form of shared writing and allows the teacher to work as a role model for good ICT or typing skills
  

• One source of on-screen texts for shared reading might be those available from Crick (they make Clicker) or other suppliers

• There are other sources of texts available on-line, for example Wikkipedia or some of the Information texts available on the BBC, for example their famous people area has a great section on Florence Nightingale

• As mentioned under LGFL below, a further source of good on-screen texts comes from 2Simple, they have a new resource (Talking stories 3 ) , which is free to use in school, but will need to be logged into @ home. This suite of stories contains engaging animations alongside activities that the children could complete both in and outside of the ICT suite.All of the stories and associated plans are linked to the Renewed Framework for Literacy.
  

Visit www.stories3.lgfl.net

• As a Redbridge school, you will be able to download and access Testbase for Key Stage 1 and 2 Maths and English, once installed the software's new whiteboard features can be used to good effect, including the ability to add thought and speech bubbles to characters and to gain easy access to comprehension questions. Visit the Redbridge assessment pages, login toLGFL and download! (You may need to get support from your technical people, if you don't have admin rights on your PC) Visit www.asst.redbridge.lgfl.net

Use other peripherals/ resources

• Dry wipe boards- an under used resource due to complaints over pens running out, however these can be an excellent tool for interaction and feedback. They give the children the opportunity to "show" what they know and what they can /can not do. This makes them an easy assessment tool.
  

• Other children- provide opportunities for children to talk to each other to vocalise and formulate ideas and clarify thinking.

• Card board clocks- display a large clock on screen using an ITP or the Teaching Time resources and ask children questions such as can you show the time an hour age?; in five minutes etc

• Electronic Microscopes- chances are there is at least one of these sitting gathering dust in a cupboard somewhere. Why not use this to enhance Science and literacy work, items can be magnified clearly upto 200 times. These images can be exported into Word, pasted onto your Whiteboard presentation or just printed. One of the highlights of my time in Year Four was when using one of these. The children has each collected small samples of water from the pond and we looked at each of these under the microscope. One of these petri dish samples looked like nothing more than pond weed and twigs and then a monster (small pond creature magnified ) began to swim across the 'screen'. The children talked about that lesson for weeks afterwards. Help sheet for using the Microscope and associated software can be found on these Kent Grid for learning pages here.

A finger under the digital microscope

Employ Effective Questioning

Research has shown that teachers can sometimes limit the questions they ask to just closed questions. These may just be the final answer to a computation or a the retrieval of simple information from a text. It is often worthwhile familiarising oneself with resources such as Bloom's Taxonomy. Furthermore the National Numeracy Strategy Vocabulary book has a number of useful questions to aid understanding and help pupils make connections in the opening pages. For Literacy comprehension, our literacy team has developed a number a set of question stems that address the assessment foci that children will come up against in both guided reading and end of year tests. This is a very helpful list to aid you in your planning for Guided and shared reading of both books, film and ICT texts.

Make Use of effective web resources

• LGFL Content-

(note these will work in a London school but will not work @ home unless you log in)

• iboard- Excellent drag and drop activities ideal for Foundation and Key Stage 1. These activities cover aspects of the Foundation Stage Curriculum, along with Literacy,Numeracy, Science and some foundations subjects for Years 1 and 2. visit : iboard.lgfl.org.uk

• Virtual Experiemnts- each area of QCA Science is covered here with a virtual representation of an experiment, coupled with data charts to interpret and objects to be dragged into the correct place.There are packages for Year 1-2, 3-4 and 5-6 Visit ve34.lgfl.org.uk for year 3 and 4, ve12.lgfl.org.uk for year 1 and 2 and ve56.lgfl.org.uk for years 5 and 6.

• Talking Stories- as mentioned earlier these animated stories and non fiction text are a good means of showcasing multi-modal texts, what's more these texts come in a variety of community languages. Visit stories2.lgfl.org.uk or stories.lgf.org.uk

Find and show video clips that enhance the lesson

With so many video clips available there is no excuse not to make use of such media. Children are born into a clip culture and expect variety, for many of us who grew up with four channels an FM radio this is easy to forget. Video does not have to be used to replace texts either, rather it can greatly enhance stories from big books or make the pages of a text book live.

1. When reading Owl Babies in Key Stage 1, consider downloading/showing a clip of an owl form the BBC motion gallery, after all how many children in Year 1, will have seen a real owl before?
2. In Key stage 2 Science children often look at food webs and food chains, why not enhance this by linking an on-screen food web to video clips of the animals in the food web, rather than just show the picture in the usual text book. Seeing the predatory seal eat the bird, or the Orca beach to capture it's seal prey is far more memorable than work sheet completion.

A whiteboard slide showing a food web in Canada

The killer whale captures his prey- a clip from BBC Motion Gallery

• Teachers TV Video Starters- free to download and great to use these short clips can be used as a great way to start a lesson or inspire an activity. For instance the Story Starts clips contain a short video of a man waling across a beach, complete with the sounds of crunchy footprints, crashing waves and screaming seagulls. While the waves crash a man calls from the cliffs and then suddenly the camera cuts away and we are left wondering what next. As the clip is so short we can review, pause and discuss the sights and sounds, all before the children answer the uqestion in their writing or their drama of what happened next. (Note in order todownload these clips
  

Teachers TV Story Starts 1
9 More Teachers TV Story Starts

In these clips you will find:

• a girl who wanders into a spooky basement
• a kite that causes trouble in high winds
• a piglet that explores a farm

......and others

Each individual story start ends on a cliff-hanger, encouraging pupils to continue the story from this point.

Also
Teachers TV Key Stage 2 8 Numeracy Starters

In these clips you'll find

• Using angles to find Pirate Kate's lost treasure
• Using fractions and percentage to help Nateisha with her packed lunch survey

....and others


Youtube videos can also be great for inspiration and they are also part of many children's televisual diet. Howver the sitecan be difficult access in schools, therefore a site like zamzar is good as it allows teachers to download and concvert videos into usable forms and also avoid any difficult content.The (youtube) video below shows how this can easily be done.

(Note if you are in school this clip may not show)

Podcasting

Podcasting has been defined as “the practice of making audio files available online in a way that allows software to automatically detect new files and download them.” To be a true podcast, these audio files need to be episodes or a series. Users can subscribe to these episodes and have their computer automatically detect and download the latest episode.

Over the last two years Podcastsing has grown in popularity in both the media and education. It's beauty is both it's ease of creation and the portabaility of the final product. This means I can use a free program like ITunes to subscribe to the Ricky Gervais or Russell Brand Podcast from the internet. Each time a new episode is released Itunes will detect this and the episode will be downloaded to my computer. I only need to plug in my Ipod to grab these radio shows for ease of lsitening at another more convenient time. There are Podcasts on every subject from simple computer maintenance to ITN bulletins, there is even an Archers Podcast.

Creating a Podcast could not be simpler, all is need is a microphone some music samples and appropraite software. Once the audio has been recorded and edited it needs to be uploaded to a website, where it can be hosted for other to access your work. Thankfully the London Grid for Learning provides free hosting on the new Podcast hosting site.

Note you will need to login to this site using an atomwide account, please contact your ICT coordinator if you do not have one of these accounts.

But how do you make the Podcast in the first place. This is simple or easy peasy as the producers of the software like to say. First decide on your purpose for Podcasting, don't just do a Podcast, remember there are lots of opportunites to podcast within the Renewed Famework for literacy, both as a means to perform poetry and as a journalistic tool.

Once the purpose has been decided next comes script writing, a simple script alvoids speakers drying up on the microphone,it may only be a poem or a complex radio show with interviews and comment.

Then perform the podcas, ensuring that everyone is clear and that everything has worked.

Now insert sound clips and edit and improve the lenghth and volume of the sound clips.

The whole process is made easy by the use of software like Podium or the less user friendly Audacity below:

Podium an easy, primary Friendly tool for Podcasting

Audacity- a less friendly interface, though it does allow you to multi-track

Links and Resources

• A vast range of sound clips can be downloaded from the LGFL Audio Network visit: http://audio.lgfl.org.uk
  

• Podium has an informative website- including training videos and easier definitions of what exactly is Podacsting and how to use it

• Audacity can be downloaded from here

• A redbridge network of primary schools, that are creating and innovating with podcasts are recording their progress on a blog - click here

• The LGFL have also put together a new mini-site of their own called Podcast-Central. This does not support Podium, but does give helpful advice on how to create video and audio podcasts. visit Podcast Central here
  

Another week in ICT

Blogging and Podcasting-

Its all happening!
During Subject Leaders, I often nag (or as I like to call it inspire) people to make use of Web 2.0 applications. It is my opinion that all ICT subject leaders should be bloggers and I think we should not underestimate the power of the blog as both a communication and collaboration tool.Used regularly this could act as a direct link between home and school, pupil and pupil and pupils and teachers. What's more this tool allows the true application of the 'wisdom of crowds', or two heads are better than one. And all that aside, it is just so easy to blog, whereas the Dream weaver or digital brain made site is just a big hassle! For me the blog allow me to record my ICT journey and day to day experiences, while taking on board the encouragement, criticism or questions of others.

We have been talking about Blogging and Podcasting fro some time over the last few meetings. Many teachers had set up their Google home page to read my blog, or those of my favourites such as Simon Mills Inspirations site.

But this week I have begun to discover little fires of blogging and podcasting are beginning to be fanned into flame, and I hope that the success of these can be shared beyond the ICT rooms of those involved.

The first success comes from Val Barker @ Gearies Infants and all the other teachers who appear to have taken up the blogging challenge. Here Val has acted as a trainer and a pioneer, beginning the blogging process and showing others how to do it. Val is using the main blog as a sort of easy to publish website, while other teachers are using a blog to keep the choir up to date, while another rather visionary teacher is using a blog to carry out research with the children around poetry.

The author of the blog- who I believe is Dan ( one of our ASTS) hopes to work with the children to answer the following through his blogging.

Will a focus on increased first hand experiences of poetry and performances improve overall literacy attainment?

Can this idea be developed through a child autonomous research project?

In a nutshell, can we as adults scaffold a research process that allows children to unveil possible answers to the questions we would like to try and solve?

Readers of the Podcasting blog will know that this has also been an exciting week for Podcasting. We had the Podcasting network meeting, which allowed us to showcase the work and the plans for further work in: Manford, Fairlop and Redbridge. I was really struck by the work of the Year Two class at Fairlop, these children performed an interview with Samuel Pepys along with a song. They were clear, audible, engaged and using the correct vocabulary, all within an appropriate curriculum context. I also visited Hatton school this week, to look at (among other things) the podcasting work done by Dan Plane. Dan's work on Podcasting with children from a range of abilities has been picked up by Podium and is featured on their blog. When sitting in on a session I was taken with how pleased the children were to hear their compositions played back, surely a boost to their self esteem.

When thinking about Podcasting in the primary school, I think there are some important considerations and questions. Some of these I have the answers to, or at least bits of answers to in my head. I have listed these questions below and maybe other readers/bloggers may have some thoughts:

1. Why not just use a Tape Recorder? ( As first mentioned on Linda's blog)
2. Scripted or unscripted?
3. How do you organise a group of 30 children to create a set of podcasts and avoid background noise from each other?
4. Why bother- does it raise standards?
   

1. A tape recorder does not allow the easy manipulation of sound and editing of tracks that you get with Audacity or Podium. In ICT and Literacy children are supposed to review, modify and evaluate. When using a tape recorder then I am only able to review, in order to modify I need to erase the whole thing and rerecord.
2. Scripted or unscripted- From watching children (and adults) struggle to know what to say when placed in front of a mic it seems clear to me that children need a focus, otherwise they wonder why they're being asked to 'say something'. Rob from Redbridge raised the point that on real radio shows there are a team of researchers who compile show notes and questions for intervie, the show does not just happen! And though I can see that most schools begin with the experimental stage of podcasting. This may manifest itself as the test podcast or as an imitation urban style radio show. The challenge to teachers is how to take the medium form the club and into the classroom .
3. The key to managing 30 children creating podcasts is classroom management. This means not allowing the children to begin by selecting music as this can take too long and will mean they will quickly run out of time. As for having a class of 30 in and ICT suite with up to 15 microphones, yes this is hard and seems a recipe for failure, but it has worked in some schools. What do you think?
4. Why bother two reasons - The first was the look on the child's face i saw last Friday when she listened back to her podcast, clearly a boost to her self esteem. The other reason is a motivation to write. In Redbridge primary, the Podcast club have been given notebooks to create their scripts. They are told that these will not be marked and that they belong to the children. Remarkably these books are filling up very quickly with legible and detailed show notes and scripts.
   

SMARTBOARD WORK


This week I have worked with teachers on effective use of the IWB, or to put it more precisely the SMARTBOARD. I have been encouraged by those teachers who have been excited by the power and potential of the IWB. For some teachers it is a neglected resource, something that they may only know how to write on and run websites like Education City on. For others it is hard to consider life without it.

Among other things I have been promoting the key message around relevance and connection in what we display on the board. I elaborated under each of the slides below:


I have used Keepvid.com to download Youtube videos of fire engines form Ilford and Dagenham. Displaying one or all of these on the IWB will provide a powerful stimulus for writing, and as each clip does not actually show what happened next. Then we have a good platform to ask a range of higher order inference questions. Furthermore Literacy units in Year 2 and 3 often mention using films as texts.




The slide above shows a good context for shared writing. It combines a local image of Barking allotments along with the very cheap ( but essential) Oxford Reading tree clipart. It would be a good idea to create a notebook gallery file, in order to quickly access the resources. The same idea could be applied to the slide below.




The idea presented in this slide is that the IWB allows us to easily display images that are relevant to and within a child's everyday experience. So, rather than demonstrating counting with on-screen counters or flat clipart circles, why not also use objects like cola bottles or write word problems involving a WII or a number 25 bendy bus.

I am ( as always) keen to know your thoughts on the above

New Maths Stuff for IWBS

Just by sheer coincidence, I have discovered two new IWB Numeracy resources in the last few days. The first, a new ITP, was passed onto me by my Numeracy Consultant colleague. Once she had spotted this new ITP, there were many ooohs and oh looks! as we explored this new free resource and reflected upon what it could do. I am going to park it here on the blog and see what happens. Others may have seen it, others may have used it, some will see no point in it. If you do use it or see a use for it please post a comment, be it positive or negative.

Counting ITP




Visit the Primary Strategy ICT library of resources here.
Download the ITP file here

Download the ITP instruction file here

Teachers TV Maths Shorts


Also following on from the Literacy story starts relaesed earlier this year, Teachers TV have put together real life problems in the form of eight short video clips. I have watched a couple of these already and found them to be an ideal addition to my collection of Oral Mental Starters. Rather helpfully, each clip begins by suggesting a relevant year group. The Literacy version of this resource proved very popular and I am sure many teachers will enjoy using this with their class too.

IWB BOARDs- Things I Picked up Recently

This is a bit of a mammoth post, but hopefully there's something useful in here for my avid readers ( all 6 of you)

Promethean Presenta Boards

This is old news, but for those of you who use an Activ PX board from Promethean. There is the opportunity to upgrade to Activ Primary 3, which provides a much more of a child- friendly interface. It also means that user can gain a much greater bank of resources for their board. In order to upgrade users need to purchase the Activ-Primary 3 software which comes with a plug in dongle. I had previously upgraded an old PX board in my old school and it was costly and involved some fiddling with the back of the board, it seems this is no longer the case.





I`d much rather my IWB looked like the image below rather than a bland white space that PX gives.





You can get a myriad of Activ-Primary resources and support in the forums @ the Promethean planet website- well worth a visit.


IWB and Literacy Course

Louise from the ITLE came to Redbridge this week to lead a session on the use of the SMART board in Literacy. It was a very good course that covered a lot in a short space of time. What struck me was that her message was very much it is not the board, (and what fancy things you can do with it) but it is how you as an educator are interacting with your class.

Louise has made some excellent basics videos for Camden LA and their portal also contains a raft of very good links for the IWB.

What did I learn?

1. I was reminded about the power of the layering and colouring text- Simon pointed out how valuable this could be in his blog entry last week, and both Louise and Simon took this beyond the level of the trick and gave it a practical application.
2. That annotations can be dragged from one page to another by making use of the page sorter tab
3. That the spotlight tool is an extremely powerful tool for questioning- I knew this but I had been a bit lacking in the vocabulary
4. How film trailers from the Disney website could be used - just as we use BFI or strategy films as a stimulus for writing
5. How to build a lesson from a single familiar image e.g. a school trip or classroom picture to something less familiar- where the children could then apply the brainstorm/ ideas made on the familiar to the more abstract
6. I learned to make greater use of navigating between slides, rather than trying to see each slide in isolation
7. I was reminded that interaction can be:

The class / child answering a question

The class/ child performing an action in response to the teacher

The class/ child signalling understanding by means of AFL traffic light cards / number fans or dry wipe boards

The class child could be working in teams to complete an area of a mind map on the IWB or to answer questions on a maths game

A far cry from the one child bursting bubble multiples on screen

Stills from video clips on Windows Media Player

During the course I was asked how to obtain a still from a movie playing in Windows Media Player. There may be other ways but this seemed to work for the clips we were watching from Teachers TV , though I have yet to be cheeky enough to try it with my Torchwood DVD.

Anyway here is the method- please comment if you have a better way:

1 Find the toolbar at the top of the media player and choose Tools
2. Go to the performance TAB
3. Choose Advanced
4. Uncheck use overlays
5. Now change the background colour to white
6. Click ok and apply
7. Play your video clip until the point you need then press print screen or prtscr at the top of the page

8. Go to SMART notebook and press the paste button or right click on the screen and choose paste






Languages and Accents on the SMART Board

An MFL colleague asked me about using the SMART Board in her French lessons and commented that she wanted to change the language settings. I dutifully went to control panel and changed the board to French which then made the menus the appropriate language. But I could not seem to generate accents when entering text. If anyone knows how or of anywhere where MFL SMART Notebooks can be found, then do let me know.