I have been working with Tanya at St Joseph’s today.  Most of the day has been focused around integration of iPads into the curriculum.  Consuming content is easy on an iPad, and there are a plethora of paid and free apps that enable you to do just that, passively consume content or never get past enrichment exercises.  The trick with the closed eco system of the iPad is to find quick and easy ways for students to create content that demonstrates their understanding and to post this work to a public space rapidly.  In all of my research with apps for the iPad this is my focus, can students create content easily and how easy is it then for them to share that learning on a wiki, blog, LMS or website of their choice.

Today I worked with some of Tanya’s class to show them the ShowMe app, a free screen capture and annotation app that enables students to write and speak their thoughts and ideas on screen.  We captured a block of text from a book in the library and then had them identify the text features on the screen.  The app is easy to use and within seconds the students were proficient at the tool and were demonstrating their learning.  Now Tanya has a record of what each student knows and this work has now been embedded into their wiki page.  The ShowMe site is a whole community of teachers and you can follow the videos of others, so if you want to scaffold students through concepts that they find tricky there are lots of videos up there for you to choose from and to passively consume.  However it is better to be the ones creating the content in my opinion and sharing it with the wider ShowMe community.  Below is a video I took of the students at work.

I have just completed a project to integrate 2D animation into the curriculum.  I have organised the resource by curriculum area and in year bands in order that teachers can see the kinds of activities they could contmeplate undertaking with their students, in particular curriculum areas.  The resource caters for students from Year 1 through to Year 10.  In this first iteraction of the document I have just concentrated on Literacy, Numeracy, Science, Social Studies and Te Reo.   I have no doubt that I will be adding more ideas to more strands of each curriculum area and to other curriculum areas over the coming weeks!

The screen shot above shows how a teacher of years 7 and 8 might want to use animation in a science lesson.  In the resource I have sometimes given  a simple over view of the ideas for activities (as above) and then in other cases more complex and detailed ideas for activities.  Each idea has been graded by level and curriculum strand as well.  In addition I have listed the kinds of tools that would deliver the outcomes stated in the activites as well as stating where the students should save their work to and how a teacher might then re-use the resource created by the students for futher learning.  Finally I have indicated where each activity might have other curriculum area integration potential.

Now that I have done this document I will be turning my attention to other elearning activities such as integrating digital cameras, video camears, capturing student voice etc and how these can be integrated into each curriculum area and year level.  Watch this space.

I have spent the summer creating the first tranche of resources for an integrated elearing planner for teachers.  The resource is web based and is designed to be stored on a school’s intranet or LMS.  It is designed to be adapted to the individual needs of a school and is not an off the shelf resource.  We will adapt it to mee the specific needs of any school.

As part of my facilitation work I see that the biggest stumbling block for those teachers who are not those at the leading edge of elearning is making the conceptual/pedagocial leap into elearning.  For this strata of the teaching profession they have adopted the strategy of regarding ICT/elearning as an extra, almost a treat for the students in their classrooms.  What is more, when the going gets tough, ICT activities can be withtdrawn, shelved, put on ice etc.  In addition the classroom strategies adopted by these teachers ensures that the type of ICT work that they have the students do is almost always enrichment type activities.

The resource I have created is designed to scaffold these teachers in thier journey towards elearning integration in their classroom.  The image above is a screen shot from just one of the pages.  I have taken an existing units of work and have created age appropriate, curriculum specific learning activities that include suggested elearning tools that teachers could use (Arrow A).  In the next column (Arrow B) is a list of suggested elearning tools that teachers might like to consider using, each has their merits and the idea is that a teacher will select a tool to achieve the learning goals, based on their own comfort levels.  In the third column  (Arrow C) there are links to interactive tutorials that I have created, that teachers can use to learn how to use the tools suggested in the second column.  I have always said to teachers that it is not important whether they can use the tools I suggest that they might like to use in class.  What is important is that they know what the learning potential these tools can facilitate and plan accordingly.  So equally this column and the interactive tutorials they point to, could be shared with students so that they learn how to use the tools.  The final column links to other documents to demonstrate the integration potential of the activities highlighted.  At the bottom of each learning activity I have also coded the  activities as being E, P, C or PS for Enrichment, Publishing, Collaboration or Problem Solving activities.  The purpose here is for teachers to be able to monitor what kind of activities predominate in their class and to set goals to make the elearning a richer experience in their classes as a result of their audits.

Over time I will add another column to this resource, one which links to videos of best practice; best practice with specific tools being used in classrooms by teachers.  I have long been a champion of schools retaining their Intellectual Property and think capturing teacher best practice is a good way to ensure that this happens.  The added benefit of doing this, when combined with the resource that I have created is that not only is IP actively farmed, schools create an induction pack for new staff that can be used by individual schools to project a philosphy of how they do elearning.

Perhaps the best beneift to schools is that over time they are creating their own training resource, specific to their school.  It will be a truly JIT (Just in Time) training resource for new and existing staff.

I am happy to talk with you to discuss your individual requirements for this resource to work in your school.

The Plane organisation in Australia have just posted this.  In the post is a video by our very own Mark Tredwell.  In the video Mark argues again that as educators we are at the confluence of three major global shifts and that it is our duty to prepare students for this paradigm shift.  Mark says that there has never been a better time to be an educator, I agree.  As we go into the summer vacation this video should be something that we should all watch and reflect on.  Then we should consider what changes we need to make to our pedagogies to ensure that our classrooms provide the environment where we create the life long learners that Mark talks about.  Make 2012 the start of your transition.

I have spent the day with the students of Upper Harbour Primary. We have been looking at using tools such as the iPad to capture change over time using apps such as those highlighted here.  They will be using their iPad or iPod’s next year to capture this kind of change over time.  The web cams in their computers can also be used to record time lapse videos really easily by downloading and installing the free version of Sam Animation from Tufts University.

The following site has some good examples of time lapse in the wild, to get students thinking about what they could make the focus of their time lapse work.  However, speeding up the world of the slow in the class or the school environment is made easy with the techniques I demonstrated to the students today.  Once I got home  I set up my camera and took the following study of the clouds.

I came across a post on the Upside Down Education blog today that discusses the effect that furniture can have upon elearning pedagogy in a classroom http://upsidedown.edublogs.org/2011/11/06/learning-spaces/ In my Building a 5th Wall in Your Classroom  I suggest how this can be done by simply moving furniture around.  The presentation is below:

I was inspired to make this conclusion having seen the excellent presentation by David Jakes who describes how the layout of furniture in a classroom has a direct impact upon the learning that it can facilitate, it is well worth a look. http://www.slideshare.net/djakes/would-you-want-to-learn-here-3015221

Today I was working for Lifeway College again. The venue today was Kingsway College in Orewa. I contintue to be delighted to see so many teachers willing to give up their weekends to make pedagogical shifts in their practice through integrating elearning into their planning.

I have long been a fan of time lapse photography and the addition of the time lapse app to my iPad has now enabled me to take simple time lapse footage. You can see the example taken from my office window below.

More importantly this app can be used in a classroom to enable students to demonstrate change over time, such as the effect that yeast has on dough as it proves or ice cubes melting etc.

However if you wish to see some truly beautiful time lapse photography, you should also look at the You Tube video below.

Time lapse from my office window:

Epic time lapse of Ruapehu and the Milky Way…

I had a great day working with the team at Lifeway College. They had invited me along to work with their delegates to learn how to use tumblr as a blogging platform. I worked with over 80 teachers throughout the day. Lifeway have put together an elearning package for schools and they either deliver it in school or as they did today at one of their venues. I have yet to se the entire programme details butnit appears that it runs over several months and is a cumulative skills process, looks good.

They have booked me for several more days this year and are looking to do the same with me next year too. I have suggested that I could also offer courses on how to use specific tools such as the ones that I build tutorials for, but related to the integration of the tools into class programmes. The main aim with any of these initiatives is to move beyond mere use of the tools and towards seamless integration and pedagogical shift by the teachers to ensure that the tools leverage deeper learning on behalf of the students.

I have also offered to the Lifeway team my social media course. Only time will tell what they would like me to deliver for them and where I fit into their programme. All in all a good day and one that will be repeated again next week in Orewa.

Had a great day yesterday, two presentations to deliver and both went well.  I took a bit of a punt on my first breakout.  I have had poor experiences with the internet connectivity when I have presented in Rotorua before, admitedly this was at a Learning at Schools conference and not at a Ulearn.  However, it was still a punt, I invited Patrick from TalkWheel to Skype in from San Francisco to tell the audience about his product and to give a short demonstration.  It went really well.  I had wanted a small intimate room, but got the theatre and 110 delegates!  Apart from the lack of a working mic and the lack of round tables, it went well.  Presentation is below: