The Power of Skype

This year, I decided to sign up to Skype in the classroom just to see what could be achieved by technology. As Twitter will testify, technology wins!

#skypeclassroom

Brazil

International Week came around early in October. Year 6, were assigned Brazil and within a few days I had linked up with a school in Brasilia. The children were shocked, intrigued and wanted to ask as many questions as possible. They particularly like the basketball style vest uniform. This half an hour, made International Week.

Mystery Skype 

I had the bug now,so we looked at Mystery Skype. A game where you answer yes or no questions to pinpoint the other school's location. There are several good blogs on mystery Skype etiquette and class planning, 

 

http://theglobalconnection.wikispaces.com/Mystery+Skype+-+What+is+it%3F

being one of the best.
We connected with @mstoalsclass in Dublin and a school in Vancouver. The latter taking 90 minutes to crack! This tested geography skills, collaboration, questioning and distilling of information- great for the More Able.
Follow #mysteryskype

Authors

I then explored the Skype in the classroom site further. There are a huge amount of lessons for you to sign up to. Keen to inspire a range of writers i my class, I found National Geographic writer @jodi_kendall
She gave the children a great insight into her career and how she combined it with photography. Her tales of manta rays and orangutans had us all hooked.
The children then wrote stories of journeys they'd taken and were really keen to post on her blog to say thank you.

http://www.jodikendall.com

Next, I found another author @mattwardwords who wrote the excellent Fantastic Family Whipple

http://fantasticfamilywhipple.com

The children loved learning about California, his writing journey and his ideas. The book itself was about a family of record breakers, the next day the classroom was awash with Guinness World Record books. All children wanted to write about obscure records, some had even written a story at home! Unheard of behaviour. 

Story Tellers

World Book Day arrived, a great group of people based in Florida known as the Sunshine Storytellers offered to read us a story. We had a 3-way Skype call with another school in New Jersey, amazing. How they all laughed when they heard how cold the UK was.

Topic Work

Using Skype this term, we have connected with two schools in North-eastern India and have learnt lots about their areas, language and how their school operates. The Indian national anthem sung in Hindi was a highlight. Importantly, my children could learn about expectations, attitudes and tolerance, things that are difficult to teach in the classroom.

               My class

The view in India


Skype Thoughts

For some Skype calls it can take a few days or weeks, so allow enough time.

A lot of the other schools we Skyped had small groups ranging from 10 to 20, for fairness, most of my calls were with all 60 year 6 children. It works much better with a small group, more jobs and greater involvement.

Practise getting the children to present and speak clearly.

Get a microphone!

Check the broadband connection, some of our calls have been a tad slow which can quickly frustrate 10 year olds.

Make sure you it is clear what your call focus is, it can become slightly one way at times.

The Skype safeguarding is excellent.

Time difference can lead to some early or late calls but they're worth it.

Skype Ideas

We need more British schools online so connections can be more regular without interfering with the school day.

Authors, poets; where are you? 30 minutes during a poetry week would really add another dimension to a schools work without costing a fortune.

Museums and galleries would be another excellent addition, particularly for schools who are unable to visit some of our national collections in London.

Guided Reading/Book clubs with other classes

Sharing writing on a similar topic

Performances- poetry, dance, class presentations on a topic 

Maths challenges-particularly open ended problems

Olympic style sports challenges

Mystery Number - similar to mystery Skype but with guess the number type questions. Eg. Is it an odd number?

Interviews with each other

Hotseating of a character

Sharing learning

Tour of your school

 

I'd love to hear any more ideas and it would be even better to connect with you.

@mistercollard

Coding the Taj Mahal

Coding; I thought we ought to get this ball rolling. I knew some of my boys had attended Code Club, some couldn't spell coding and some were handy on an ipad so @Hopscotch was the obvious answer. Our topic was India so our goal was a Taj Mahal in code. Here's how it went:

1) Human Coding - In pairs the children had to guide their 'robot' partner around the playground with some chalk. This got them into the idea of an algorithm and also showed how comfortable they were with the mathematical language needed.

2) Hopscotch - I introduced the children to hopscotch and showed them a few basic functions and have them the target to create a square. Those that were quick were then challenged to create more complex 2D shapes or experiment with colour, size etc.

3) Circles - The next challenge was to draw a circle. The children experimented with many different ways of programming a circle and using the repeat functions.

4) Taj Mahal - We looked at some outline drawings of the Taj Mahal and discussed the shapes that were used in the construction of building. The children, now armed with programmer skills, began to code, some drew a basic shape, some created backgrounds and some added a title.

The most encouraging part of the whole experience was the speed in which some children went home and downloaded Hopscotch. On Monday, I was greeted by a host of iPads brought in just to show me how much better their work was. 

Coding; everyone is talking about it!

Thinglink for Non Chronological Reports

This week is Creative Arts Week at school. My Year 6 class are going to look at poet Benjamin Zephaniah. Before we delve into his poems and perform some ourselves, we are going to learn about his background, beliefs and what makes him passionate about writing.

We are going to create a non-chronological report about him but I want it to reflect his passion for creativity and multimedia, so we are going to use the app Thinglink.

http://www.thinglink.com/scene/495336546740731905

http://www.thinglink.com/scene/502225511313833985

I used Pic Collage to create the picture using words as subheadings related to the pictures. I then used this in Thinglink to add other text about him, video of his poems and other pictures which show his work in more detail.

Super Reading

It seems that this year's KS2 Reading SAT will be a whistle stop tour through various texts in an hour. No savouring a piece of excellent prose or reflecting upon the delights of a well executed simile, it's skim reading time!

To prepare my children for this, I decided to use a range of text excerpts which they read in class, I gave them a time limit of 5 minutes and they then had to summarise the text in 3 sentences. This helped them to find the main points of the text, explain themselves succinctly and experience a range of texts over a short space of time.

The next step, would be to use the excellent classtools.net http://www.classtools.net/twister/

Fake Tweet application to write a summary of the text in the 140 characters permitted. My children enjoyed it and it was far more bearable than yet another practice test.

BETT 2014: My Notes

While my head is still whirring with ideas after a great BETT show, I though I would post my notes of my Friday and Saturday there. The nuggets that I found, great ideas and some interesting products. Everything I have heard has been passed through my primary filter and is peppered with issues which face my school. There may well be misinformation as I don't always listen properly, according to Mrs Collard anyway!

BETT 2014: 

Digital Storytelling:

jamedo.com royalty free music

incompetech.com search music by genre

compfight.com royalty free photos 

Type pwn to download video - pwnyoutube

Create soundtracks to compliment a written text, fast, slow parts.

Idea sketch- use for brainstorming,planning

100WC - iPads need to be able to view school blog and 100WC

Use in SPAG to provide comments to others around the world-create networks of schools globally to share comments.

Woodlands primary school-great example of using digital leaders and using technology across the curriculum.

Maths Apps

Glow bug

Super 7-number bonds

Sum dog

Number run

Operation math

Daydream education-times tables

Motion math fractions 

Lit apps

Story starters

Chicktionary 

Shake n tell

Opposites 

teachingappz.co.uk

Install wordpress at school to aid blogging

Praise blogs- to showcase best work ie head teachers awards on a blog

Use apps for hw- combine home and school learning

Create your own apps-app shed - create own web app

Think about design and target audience

Work on evaluating existing apps and then create own- new curriculum

New ICT curriculum

Can be split into 3 parts:

Computer science-coding, making, creating and collaborating, how hardware etc works

Digital literacy-responsible for own browsing, critical of other apps,websites etc. can discern content.

IT: communicating, being safe and also responsible, understanding the role of web traffic, how search engines work.

 

Join computing at school (CAS) website- lots of resources esp. For coding and a discussion forum

Technology- makes the teacher invisible, but the learning visible.

Understanding computers:

Makey-Makey: use to create hardware using everyday objects- eg. A grape becomes a mouse.

Raspberry Pi- use to understand the basic components of a computer

Raspberry Pi computers can be used to control cars etc. similar to Lego or run as a computer. We need USB monitors and keyboards to do this. You can use various languages to program them or add on other simple electronic devices so that it can become a weather centre or data logger. Minecraft can also be used very effectively on this. Raspberry Pi computers really show the minimum you need for a computer and will allow children to understand the electronic features of a computer.

Lego NXT to build and program robots- use to draw shapes, solve problems, write instructions, describe the movements, write a narrative for the robot-what happens if... However, software is a bit confusing. A k'nex version is also available as well as Engino. Raspberry Pi could be used for something similar.

Designing computer games- develops how you learn-BLP-children are able to express how they have learnt.

Allows for reflective thinking, modifying ideas and design, evaluating, testing, exploring

Coding:

Jam sandwich algorithm-program a person to make a jam sandwich-limit amount of commands

code-it.co.uk

Start with real life coding tasks- using children as robots eg. Drawing a square with chalk outside, making a jam sandwich, brushing teeth, making a cup of tea, battling robots- learn to debug their own algorithms

Focus on computer language:

Input, move, turn etc. numeracy vocabulary 

Then move to hopscotch or daisy the Dino, move on to scratch

Coding products available: Espresso coding-a good start point but very limited in terms of creativity and real excitement for children. Purple Mash-from 2simple is similar. 

Lots of software is based around designing games-very little for website design.

hackasaurus.com is a good start for this. 

Children can use notepad to begin designing images and websites. (More training needed)

Binary number system could be introduced around Y5/6 - Excel could be used to change the colour of cells that have a 1 or 0 in to introduce the idea that a picture can be made using numbers. Binary number system can be used in maths.

Angles, rotations and measurements are all important as well as precise language.

Scratch- widely used and discussed can create games, images, quizzes with lots more scope. Ideas and lesson plans from CAS and Code Club.

8 IPads

Website that explains how to use 8 iPads in each class at all times-8 @digitalroadtrip

Products of Note:

Clicker 6: very useful for supporting all levels of writing. Features included the ability to select word lists for topic vocabulary, synonyms to increase that level of vocabulary and a reader function which could correct sentence demarcation errors. New word lists could be created by copying text from a website and filtering out low frequency words.

Brainpop-a great learning support with lots of videos.

Yes Programme-a site with videos created by adults in all forms of employment. It explains what they have to do in their jobs and then link it to an aspect of the curriculum, thus putting the learning into a context for later life.

5aday fitness-selection of videos for exercises and brain breaks, also in MFL forms.

Fiction Express-online stories created by published authors, with a chapter a week. Classes vote on what should happen next and the authors write it. Also has accompanying guided reading type questions.

3D printers- coding and DT together, still pricey but coming down.

Websites:

Snappy words-creates a word web of synonyms to support writing-more visually interesting than right click in word.

Hyperlapse- plays a sped up version if street view from one place to another-writing stimulus, exploring different areas of the country.

Google Tour- create a world tour use historical information and add commentary etc. May need to be run on a PC only?

Google Cultural institute-tour world heritage sites and galleries-children could curate their own gallery around a topic. May be PC only?

Cool text-has a bank of fonts to use in class eg. Harry potter font.

Classroom tools.net- lots of tools to aid interactivity and engagement. Create your own spinner to pick children rather than lolly sticks.

 Fakebook -create a mock facebook page to talk about a character in a story-who does Frodo like? Or is friends with? Use for e-safety. Use to talk about numbers, friends could be factors? Shapes etc. 

text message generator- write messages between characters in a story or historical figures. Eg. Romulus texting Remus.

Class dojo-behaviour management website that gives children points and virtual prizes for good behaviour.

Blockly- a program to teach coding, moving blocks and creating mazes as well as navigating mazes. Available on the hour of code website as an Angry Birds version with instructions. Code.org

Echo genesis-a music/sound generator could be used to create a score for a narrative or sounds to inspire writing.

My pop studio- a tool for writing, singing and performing

Record tripping-practice mouse control by scratching records like a DJ!

Apps

Touch develop - app creator for iPads

Use twitter to show and share work quickly with people. Eg. Tweet an author a piece of work inspired by their writing. Do the same with art.

Thing link-

Link all work together from a topic with various apps etc. embed into a picture

Pic collage- digital storybook using pictures, video and audio.

Using QR codes to create a choose your own adventure or any kind of hunt. You could also  send home codes  for parents to scan on their phones etc. and share their work.

Aurasma- use it as a feedback tool when you scan a child's face it can give audio or video feedback about their work. Can also be used for book reviews in a library.

Wordeo-an app that takes words and adds video and sound to them. Good for remembering key vocabulary or as a story starter.

Tim Rylands:

Using technology to enhance the outside, senses and bring together all ideas in one piece.

Moving Forward: 

Creating an online sharing system. Work can be shared quickly and easily with home, providing instant feedback, praise and the chance for further work at home. By sharing virtually, it also allows for lots of peer assessment, possibly in conjunction with social media.

Possible solutions: Google drive -work can be shared across the platform

Dropbox-as above with work stored Ina cloud.

Edmodo- is a Virtual Learning Environment- it provides a platform to share work and for teachers to mark online and give feedback. Tests can be given through this and scores collated. It also provides a communication platform for children, parents and teachers-ideal for setting homework. Good examples of work can be shared easily and children who do will be rewarded via the site.

Children will become more digitally literate and will need to express themselves in a modern format as well as traditional paper methods. We need a way of storing this information and being able to record teacher feedback  and progress. Each child could have a digital folder, to accompany or replace their workbooks. Written pieces could be photographed or copied into a digital format or form part of a larger body of work or the scaffolding to get to the finished piece. Videos etc. could be shared via a You Tube Channel or other video sharing site. This digital work could include mini interviews with head teachers award winners about their work and then played in assembly or shared online.

In class, Apple TV can be used to share individual work. In an app like Explain Everything children can explain an idea or method in a plenary using images or text, these can be shared.

Pedagogy-should have a digital idea at the heart of it, this will enable digital literacy, create an audience and hopefully engage more students in a skills based curriculum. IT can be used to supplement each stage of our essential learning by supporting it rather than replacing it. 

iPads used more regularly can allow children to view or listen to teaching content and then carry out an activity or investigation-this allows the teacher to mentor each child providing a personalised learning journey and cementing teacher/pupil relationships.

Teacher to pupil sharing needs to be easy using the iPads. The air drop and air printing features need to be working well so that teachers who create videos or examples of work can quickly distribute it to the whole class so they can begin to work. Again, this would allow teachers to close gaps in learning or understanding. The next progression of this idea, is to share the videos which are to be used as the starting point the night before via the schools's digital platform. Tis would allow children to arrive prepared for the lesson and given time to think about the ideas as they go about their day. Flipped classroom?

Have a device setup to for those that don't watch at home. 

Bike Baron - More Learning Journeys

I first heard about Bike Baron on the excellent Mr Andrews Online Blog. The article entitled 'Raising Standards in Boys Literacy is full of great ideas for this app.

http://mrandrewsonline.blogspot.co.uk/2012/06/part-1-raising-standards-in-boys.html

Since then, as with most apps, it has been updated to its 19th version with some added features. I have used these over the last few weeks with some great results from the creators Qwiboo and Mountain Sheep.

Level Creator Feature:

This newer feature allows you to create your own levels from scratch using similar building blocks with a drag and drop system. Once you have created your level you can then test it using the Bike Baron.

In the Classroom:

1) DT Projects: we used this as a short DT project which linked with our science topic of materials. The children were tasked with creating the best jump ever! They wrote a list of materials and the type of blocks they used. By changing the texture of the blocks they created different properties, which allowed for some great discussion of scientific vocabulary. At each stage, the children could test their jumps and constantly evaluated and improved their jumps, something which can take an age to do practically. Once they had created 'The One,' we then used practical materials to make jumps of launch toy cars from, a pull back motorbike would have been better but I couldn't find one!

The children were engaged with this from the start and the usually dull planning stage contained a lot of important learning.

2) Maths: Using the blocks or the burning barrels, my class created a range of 3d shapes and found the perimeter, area and volume of these shapes, this served as a good first lesson to teach the principles.

Exploring number patterns - Which number patterns make the best jumps? An honest question for which I didn't have an answer. Children worked on number patterns at their differentiated level so we had 8x table along with square numbers. Some children also created their own number sequences, in an attempt to find the 'Golden Jump Formula'.

Record Mode

You can record elements of riding in single player mode or your own level creations.once recorded you can then record commentary over it or in-screen video.

Using the ideas outlined in the mr Andrews post, you can use the record feature to allow children to remember or innovate their original ideas. This really helped to support my less able students and would work well in KS1 too. 

We also explored the role of the crowd, what noises would they make? Another idea was to play the role of the Bike Baron's mum and we thought about her reaction or words of motherly wisdom.

the record feature really supported the ideas from Mr Andrews but also opened up some other writing opportunities too such as a news report from the scene of the big stunt.

I used these activities with Year 6, however, I think that the record feature really opens this up to the whole of the primary age range with a focus on speaking and listening.

Inside, Outside Classroom

A very quick post today but one I hope may engage discussion. 

My school has recently been revamped and we now have a brand new 14 classroom building. One of the features of this are Learning Streets, glorified corridors if you will. 

Various climate walks have revealed that theses read aren't utilised enough. The amount of furniture provided also meant that each child didn't have their own space and working conditions were cramped. 

About two weeks ago, I took the decision to put half the class out in the street and half in the classroom, this changes daily. By doing this, I know longer have a seating plan and children sit where they like. To break up difficult groups I mix them so some are in the 'street' and others are not. 

For whole class input, the street children, if you will, sit on the carpet and use A3 clipboards  and then take their work outside.

Effects:

The output and effort from those not in the classroom has been the same or better. I feel the children have enjoyed the extra responsibility and space. Friendship related squabbles have reduced as children choose to work with 'sensible' partners. It is also interesting to see the pieces of furniture the children choose to work on, some will quite happily work on the floor. The increased mobility allows for crucial thinking time.

On the negative side, the children who find it difficult to form relationships have found this tough, but I can see they are gaining resilience and are beginning to form new friendships.

I would love to hear from anyone that has a similar classroom setup or is thinking about it.