Highlight reel from the Digital Arts in Education teacher CPD day at the Public in West Bromwich that I helped design and deliver with Arts Connect WM.

Bringing the community into the classroom. My talk from the Google in Education stand at BETT 2013.

It is Day 1 of our week long residency at Phoenix digital arts in Leicester. Sitting in the cafe over our first coffee of the day, I have a quick chat with Chris Tyrer from Phoenix about the whats and wheres of this great venue.

Fantastic work by @EarlsdonWI. A lesson for all of us here. 

TEDxWarwick - Ludic Rooms - Inputs :: Outputs (by TEDxTalks)

It’s taken a few days to sink in but on Friday I received confirmation that I had been selected to join this year’s Google Teacher Academy in London. The news followed a rather nervous day following the awesome #gtauk hastag on Twitter and maniacally clicking send/receive on my inbox. Considering the wealth of inspiring and dedicated practitioners applying to be involved I am a little overwhelmed and humbled to have been selected to train to become a Google Certified Teacher.

The GTA is a prestigious and fascinating professional development opportunity for me, not just the two days I’m due to spend down at Google’s London HQ in April but the chance to become part of a whole network of new collaborators from all over the world.

My application for the Google Teacher Academy.

The annual technology conference at Olympia has been a regular southward pilgrimage for the last few years. It’s a great opportunity to wander endless halls of tech companies touting their wares, to get a feel for the new trends in EdTech and see new product launches.

There’s also a whole host of branded pens, canvas bags and squeezy polar bears that will save me hastily buying any beefeater or routemaster tat for the kids on my return.

If I am completely honest, I must admit that this year I failed to see any truly ground breaking new products or services that I felt were ready to revolutionise learning. In fact I saw some real stinkers.

It made me particularly happy to see Zulogic downstairs for the first time on a stand that seemed to give their great piece of stop-frame animation Zu3D the attention it deserves. I’ve been using Zu3D with primary and secondary classes for the last couple of years and am yet to find another package that offers the same functionality within a user interface that really works for both pupils and teachers. You shouldn’t support Zulogic because they are a small family business (the kind of business that spend weeks designing and making their own exhibition stand complete with giant giraffe) but because they deliver a fantastic product with a personal and focussed level of support.

I suppose this brings me to the real reason that I visit BETT each year, people.

The real magic of an event like BETT lies in the fact that educators and practitioners from across the world find themselves together. Teachmeet BETT 2012 (and its accompanying TeachEat) was again superb, an enlightening and uplifting few hours surrounded by hard working practitioners, sharing the experiences of using technology in the classroom. Next year I will also do everything I can to make it to Collabor8 For Change as I’m frankly a little disappointed in myself for two consecutive years of failing to be there.

It was also great to see more kids this year, not only as delegates but also presenting their experiences of technology in education, as rightful bastions of good practice. Thank you to all of the practitioners who worked so hard to bring young people to the conference and remind the industry of their role in teaching and learning. 

Just a sneak peak of our exploration of technology during our residency at Fargo Space.

We meet textiles artist Julia O’Connell to explore the hybrid of open source electronics alongside different conductive fabrics and stitching.

thespoondrawer:

I don’t often tweet serious work tweets…but for Prezi users, this new feature is amazing…and I can breathe again! #prezi

Finger lickin’ car booty preliminary bend.

I bought this Lazy Town toy from a car boot on Sunday. It has four illuminated buttons that play a selection of sounds and songs from the (horrible) show. I think there is plenty of fun to be had with this, nice big case for mods. It already has a volume pot and 3.5mm minijack out.

50p.

iMovie ‘11 Trailer Mode.

Year 4 at Aldermoor Farm are working in groups to create movie trailers as part of their topic work. *Great tip* if you print out the Storyboard preview screen for the trailer, the kids can plan and annotate each shot really quickly and efficiently. It also makes a great log sheet to record your takes as you are shooting.

I’ve been working with two members of staff at Aldermoor Farm primary school to introduce geocaching into the school. To kick start it, we have devised a weekly 90-minute after-school club and I thought I’d share a brief line scheme.

The outcome of the project is to have a bank of upper phase kids who understand the game and the technology who can then assist other staff and kids to use it in the classroom.

The group will also release travel bugs and set a series of caches that are maintained by staff and pupils at the school.

Week 1

General introduction to GPS and coordinates using Google Earth to find ‘Virtual Caches’ from given coordinates and clues. Watch Geocaching.com intro 2-min video and talk about hiding and seeking. Search website for caches near to us.

Take kids outside to practice walking around using GPSr, following directions and looking at statistics (average speed, distance travelled etc)

Week 2

Kids work in groups to search school grounds using GPSr to find 12 micro caches placed by staff. Practice decoding clues.

Week 3

Groups take it in turns to hide caches and set clues. Kids practice loading cache coordinates into GPSr.Kids start researching potential locations outside of school grounds for hiding caches. Begin to build and camoflage 4 containers for their own ‘official’ series on Geocaching.com.

Week 4

Kids go to Coombe Abbey and work in groups to find official caches listed on the Geocaching.com website.

Week 5

Introducing trackables. Looking at the journeys of various geocoins and travelbugs. Kids get to hold various examples. Then working in groups to devise themes and missions for 6 school travelbugs. Naming and registering them on Geocaching.com website.

Week 6

Finish cache containers. Finalise cache descriptions, titles, hints and plot route of series on Google Earth to calculate walking distance of series.

Week 7

Return to Coombe Abbey to place caches (containing new travelbugs). Submit cache details to Geocaching.com.

An amazing opportunity for kids and practitioners to share skills, ideas and best practice. Pick up new ideas and make new connections. If you can send 6 kids along I’m certain that the school will reap the benefits. I’ll definately be there, just got to find some kids to go with…

I’m still buzzing from an amazing day last week with Y3 at New Invention Juniors. We have just started on a really exciting three-week cross-curricular geocaching project that I have planned alongside the class teacher.

The kids are learning all about geocaching, using the GPS devices, hiding and seeking caches, trackable items etc. They are also curriculum tie-ins to literacy and numeracy as well as their science work… rocks

This week the kids used this amazing BBC resource on netbooks (and the IWB) to learn about the three different types of rock; igneous, sedimentary and metamorphic.

They spent the afternoon finding caches on the school playground. Each cache contained some examples of rocks and a letter A, B or C. The kids had work in teams to identify each rock by applying the knowledge from earlier in the day.