Now that I am geting settled into my new room, I thought I would try to practise using the Smartboard. It’s been playing up since I moved in, the internal walls of the building are plastic-covered sheets of steel and they seem to have caused an earthing problem inside the Smartboard 660 model that was fitted in my room, The room next door has a 580 version and it is unaffected as it hangs from a bar rather than screwing to the wall.
Yesterday afternoon, I got the all clear to start using the IWB and I set about trying to make a screencast of a worked solution to this week’s Higher Phsyics homework. I found that the files generated by the SMART recorder were enormous (>40MB for a 3 minute clip) and so I set about working on ways to reduce the file size.
First of all, I reduced the capture rate to 1 frame per second. That seems slow but I find the response of the board quite slow when I am writing anyway. Then I set the recorder to “no audio” and drew a capture area on the board rather than having the entire workspace captured. All of these changes brought the files down to around 5MB each, a much more reasonable figure.
I was going to send the video to Voicethread.com so that both myself and pupils could add a commentary but the site didn’t want to accept the file. Instead, I imported the .mov files into Apple’s Garageband to dub a commentary over the top. GB lets you do this as long as you agree to ditch the default podcast track at the top of the screen that is used to sync still images to podcasts. Then it was a simple case of recording commentary as I watched the clips playing through before exporting them to the hard drive and uploading to youtube.
I’m pleased with the results. Whether this is a justification of the costs in another matter. I suspect that the same result can be achieved with a more portable resource such as a tablet. Here is a sample screencast.
I stole this title from a post earlier today by Tom Barrett. Tom has set out his stall, having identified the technology he will be using with his class over the new school year.
What about me? All I know right now is that I need to up my game in terms of classroom technology this year. Unlike Tom, we’ve been back to school for 2 weeks now. I’m moving into a new classroom next week (photos to follow) and will have an interactive whiteboard for the very first time. One of the challenges I will face is how to integrate this new tool into my predominantly senior school timetable without patronising the 16+ age group. No doubt I will be drawing heavily on the IWB tips that Tom and others have compiled.
Add to that the new Intermediate 1 Electronics course, where I am having to get up to speed with packages such as Crocodile Technology 3D to teach circuit design & simulation before letting this class loose on their SQA projects.
That’s a steep enough ICT learning curve for this term.
I’ve been trying to clear out the hard drive on my laptop. I cleared it back in May but it seems to have filled up again. Lots of video podcasts have been transferred over to the science folder on the school server, photos transferred on to a portable hard drive, hundreds of old email attachments have been binned and I have been ruthless in reviewing my iTunes subscriptions.
Then I found something half an hour ago. It’s a folder that takes up a whopping 15GB on my mac. Inside, there is an iMove file for a video I started with a S2 science class back in April. I was half way through the editing process when we changed timetable and I must have forgotten to finish the editing job for them after they moved on into S3. It was a great plan to have non-stop practical work, building light-proof plant propagators, assembling different coloured light sources (see the blue light source below) and all to see if plants responded differently to red, yellow and blue light. I liked it because it allowed me to combine biology and physics - we don’t get to do that very often!
What should I do? Finish the editing or just leave it on a hard drive somewhere? It’s going to be hard to find the enthusiasm when the pupils involved are no longer in my classroom.
I’ve been working on other things recently and the RSS feeds have been building up a little higher than I would like. One of the sites I caught up on today was Kairosnews, where playpus matt has blogged about his discovery of a template within Office 2007 that makes it easier to complain about a teacher. Microsoft go that extra mile to help their customers, especially when that means complaining about teachers. You can tell this by the presence of additional templates for complaining about a teacher to the Principal of the School and even writing to the school board to complain about a teacher.
Thanks, Microsoft. You’re just the kind of Partner in Learning that we need.
You’ll understand if you watch this film.
I’ve noticed some strange behaviour with one of my senior classes lately. There seems to be a desire to get me to say unusual words as I model answers to problems on the board. For example, whenever the number “2″ appears in a problem, I am asked about the weather. The number 10 produces prompts about Europe.
It’s only now that I realize the kids are playing Numberwang with me.
As a newly qualified teacher, I’m really determined to lift the image of physics at my school. The old labs are being replaced this year and should resemble a trendy MFI kitchen by the time Christmas arrives but there is very little ICT within the department. For example, the introduction of Standard Grade some 20 years ago was accompanied by a proliferation of Physics software for the BBC microcomputer. Unfortunately, other subject areas have since blossmed into PC-savvy, interactive whiteboard wielding technology warriers, leaving the physicists on the Luddite side of the ICT divide.
This is where I thought I might be able to make a difference. My department has a single digital projector and nobody else uses it. I might not have my own room but with an Apple iBook under my arm and a digital projector to go, there’s not a lot to stop me trying to inject some 21st century course delivery methods into my lessons.
I learned on my final PGCE placement last year that PowerPoint is a powerful behaviour management tool. Provided you are prepared to do the work in advance, PowerPoint can be used as a means of displaying course material without taking your eye off the pupils, very handy if you teach a class like my own 4.2! An additional “coolness” factor to this approach was my use of the Apple Wireless Mighty Mouse. This little beauty lets me wander around the classroom without relinquishing control of slide transitions, allowing me to check each pupil’s workrate as I go.
It’s a pity that these little technowarriors realised that the mouse functionality was achieved via Bluetooth connectivity. Before I knew it, they were attempting to communicate with my iBook and brought chaos to the lesson. Messages such as “Please may I go to the toilet, Sir?” flashed up onto the screen and brought gales of laughter from the kids. After 20 or so messages I conceded and brought the lesson to a close.
I have since discovered that Apple computers do not have to remain discoverable to operate with a wireless mighty mouse. Instead, open the Bluetooth preferences and add the mouse (or any other device) to your Bluetooth favourtites menu. Then turn off the discoverable option on the main Bluetooth menu, this ensures an automatic connection to your mouse when it is turned on but prevents kids from assualting your laptop with their mobile phones.
