Podcasting

The presenter: Wes Fryer
The gist: find the information http://handouts.wesfryer.com/podcasting
his website http://www.speedofcreativity.org/

• he uses radio wilow web- digital show and tell...can add and show notes eg hyperlinks writing is the most powerful form of writing...it connects my ideas and my writing...to media and the web...use music not just speaking
  http://learninginhand.com/
  
• use a planning guide to help students and teachers go about creating a podcast and show much more than a podcast. http://mps.mpsomaha.org/willow/radio/podcastbooklet.pdf
• he uses a online timer - for discussion Timeme.com/timer-stopwatch.htm
  attention grabber is clapping and clicking
  
• podcasts improved literacy ...real audience eg parents, realtives etc and their peers
  difference between podcast and audio on the web...link on website says xml and itune
  ip tv...there is a convergence of computer, tv and phone..
  podcast are part of this convergence
  subscribe to podcasts use a podcatcher itune store you can subscribe
  search for wes fryer get his channels video podcasts
  
• use audacity...free online editing..also need a lame file to make it work
  celebrate oklahoma voices.us project
  
• digital backpack....what you need eg camera, recorder, headset, falshdrive, memory stick for camera
  http://wiki.celebrateoklahoma.us/Home/resources/handouts/audacity-quickstart.pdf?attredirects=0
  
• audacity uses different layers..import music and move around....envelope tool to reduce volume of section..none of us like hearing us ourselves...sit and watch your self or listen and this helps you improve....practise using the microphone at end expeort as WAV (larger) or mp3..quality bitrate eg 32 if music
  
• open podcast in itunes add art work get info add a id3 tags and artwork
  http://millsmurfee.blogspot.com/ feed eg use gcast widget in a wiki
  http://www.gcast.com/u/wfryer/mothersday2009 eg
  
• 3 sites let you eg drop.io record to web record to the web need to ring the site
  http://wiki.celebrateoklahoma.us/Home/resources/music-and-audio-resources free music

My summary: Podcasts are worth trying with students they make products creatively for "real" audiences.

2 Games for fun and education

In my opinion the best educational games aren't those that actually set out to educate. So many 'educational' games are simply rote learning tools dressed up and although rote learning has its place, it is only fun for a while. Added to that is the fact that if you know a game is supposed to be educational, then that sucks the fun from it before you begin.

A couple of years ago I came across Bridgebuilder

by Chronic Logic. It was created in 2000 and gives you the opportunity to create 2D bridges to span a given gap, and then run a train across it to see if it is structurally sound. It starts off easy and then the levels increase in difficulty to become fiendishly tricky. The creator of Bridgebuilder has since left Chronic Logic and you can get an updated version from his new site. The total size of the game is only 239Kb so it is quick and easy to download and setup.

I have used Bridgebuilder with a senior science class to look at simple engineering principles such as trusses, arches and the importance of triangles. The physics engine in the game allows you to examine where the stress is distributed in your bridge and is great for illustrating the effects of compression and tension forces.

 I have also used it with a year 4/5 computer club as a problem solving exercise. It would be a great game for early finishers in a primary classroom.

Chronic Logic have since released sequels, Pontifex, Bridge Construction set (A.K.A Pontifex II) and Bridge it (essentially a remake of Bridge Construction set with glitzier graphics). All three are available to buy from their site, or you can download a demo. They will do educational pricing if you email them with your needs. The gameplay for these later versions is similar but the bridges are three dimensional and there are new materials to play with including suspension cables and hydraulics for the creation of draw-bridges so that you can make a greater variety of designs. They are brilliant and offer a more involved challenge but it is hard to beat free.

The second game that I feel compelled to recommend is Fantastic Contraption which is similarly themed in that there are levels of increasing difficulty, it is a physics based game, and triangles are king when it comes to stability.

The aim of the game is to move a box or ball from a starting area to a goal area. You have at your disposal two types of rod, self-powered wheels and unpowered wheels with which to move the box or ball. You can fling it with a catapult, build it into a car, send it on a conveyor ride, or pick it up with a crane. There are usually many ways to succeed in the task, and many more ways to fail.

The principles of gravity, pulleys, levers, force, friction and Newton's Laws can all be explored.

Again this is an excellent problem-solving exercise for all age groups. It is browser based so no need to install anything. For an extra US$10 you get access to a gazillion levels designed by the community. You can rate them for difficulty and quality. There is a companion site made by fans that helps to keep track of all of the extra levels. It has been bought by the Fantastic Contraption owners so should become integrated with the main site soon. It also has a wiki that has a page about the physics of the game so you could have your students explore the gravity constant in the FC 'universe'.

I spent waaaaay too much time playing this in during my recent holidays, give it a go.

Mixedink: Write democratically

By now, many people will have used wikis, blogs, Google Docs, Zoho or something similar to get their students collaborating on a task. They all enable multiple editors to work on a piece of writing, be it a poem, a practical report, a letter, a procedure or an essay.

Mixedink also allows people to collaborate but it differs in the execution and is aimed towards getting larger groups to work together.

Anyone can start a piece of work for any purpose. As with other services, invites are sent to potential collaborators. If for example you write a letter to the government of Japan complaining about whaling, collaborators can read and rate your work. They also have the option of writing their own version and while they do, paste in and modify the best bits from your letter. When they are happy with it they publish their version and then other collaborators can repeat the process until there are many versions, each rated by their peers. At the end of a period set by the organiser of the letter/article etc the version with the highest rating is the 'winner'. Below is a demo video:

MixedInk from MixedInk on Vimeo.

Implications for teaching:

Collaboration in all forms is an essential skill and this service could be a great way to inspire and direct students to think about a given topic. The rating system encourages analysis of existing ideas and the drafting process encourages synthesis. One problem that many students have is in drawing on a number of secondary sources to create their own work. We have all had to mark a zillion cut-and-paste horrors. Plagiarism is something that can't be overcome without explicit teaching of how best to stitch together concepts and ideas. This tool has the potential to assist teachers and students to examine the process of writing a good piece that uses other's work ethically.

As with all work involving collaboration online, care would haveto be taken to set guidelines for students re: language, personal attacks etc. but this should be standard for all classrooms anyway. 

The rating system does have the potential to favour popular students and we don't necessarily want the physically attractive yet illiterate students to have their work rated highly. I would advocate having the students set up anonymous accounts that only the teacher knows the true name for. It is a shame that Mixedink hasn't prepared for educational users by allowing educators  to create class sets of numbered IDs like a couple of other web 2.0 services do. Maybe later.

Likewise there might be some hurt feelings for students whose work is rated lowly. This is something that students should be prepared to deal with and it is an opportunity for some real self-examination ie "did I work hard enough?", "how can I improve my writing?", "Why did Jenny's get rated so highly?"

 

Some ideas for use:

Interclass debates: Imagine if the main arguments for and against were assigned to whole classes or even year levels. An interesting way to see what arguments would hold the most weight with a large number of people

Writing an 'issue' letter: Write to government or a company to voice your discontent or otherwise about an issue.

Story writing: Set the class a character, problem, setting etc and let them create.

School newsletter: Crowdsource an article on any topic

Student council: Prepare submissions to the school executive about an issue of concern to students.

You get the idea!

What I'd like to see for educators:

1) The ability to create bulk logins for students.

2) As mentioned above, the rating system could become a popularity contest. I would like an alternative rating system that rates work according to an algorithm involving number of visitors, average time spent reading the article divided by length of article, number and amount of paragraphs copied etc.... but then, I am a maths teacher. 

The Whiteboard Challenge

Get over to the Whiteboard Challenge wiki and try your hand at one of the challenges being set for users of interactive whiteboards by teaching professionals.

Every two weeks a new challenge is being posted and participants are encouraged to blog about their exploits. What a great way to encourage both innovation and reflection in our practice.

There is a button that you can grab from my sidebar for your own blog or wiki in order to promote the event.

Wikis and Blogs in Education

As well as presenting a professional development session on VoiceThread last week I also presented the following session:

| View | Upload your own

The title was a bit of an 'in' joke. I was going to present on screencasting as well but it was just going to be toooo much.

As with the VoiceThread I wanted to focus on the why rather than the how of wikis and blogs. So much professional development is about how to put an image in or how to embed content but doesn't address the "show me the educational value" side of the equation.

I got good feedback, other than a couple of people who wanted more time to do the how. Oh well, I guess I will have to organise some follow-up sessions.

Picnik, minus the ants

I have come across an excellent online photo editing tool. Picnik offers all of the basic editing features that you would need for touching up photos. Resizing, cropping, rotating, colour manipulation plus added effects make this a very convenient application. There is an addon for Firefox and an extension for Explorer available so that with a click of the right-mouse button you can be editing any online image in Picnik.

Educational use:
Any time you have students working on wikis, blogs, VoiceThreads, Photostory, PowerPoints, you name it, there is a use for this application.