Why did the Chickenman cross the road?

Today is Tuesday (I think!) I only know that because I just read the top of the ISTE Daily Leader publication (Of which I meant to drop in I appeared in yesterday which was a bit of a surprise)

Yesterday which was Monday the Worldwide Innovative Teachers were on a panel session with David Walddon from Microsoft about the Innovative Teachers Network www.innovativeteachers.com

David led the panel and 5 of the Worldwide winners from Hong Kong last year spoke about their experiences.

Watch the Worldwide Innovative Teachers Award Winners 2008 just before they present at ISTE’s NECC09 in Washington:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cLHTrRKsI-0

First up Dan Roberts UK (me) I spoke about the Recharge the Battery project that you will have probably read about in my earlier blogs. Yet again with a packed out room it was a great opportunity to discuss the work our school does on the world’s stage. Next Was Nathan from New Zealand who spoke about his project with students using mobile technology to extend their learning across social and economic problems. He was then followed by Sarah from South Africa who spoke about her innovative project where 60 of her students went into the community to each work with someone with a disability. Each student had to use technology to solve one of their problems for example one lady could not communicate due to her disability so the students created a computer programme for her to express her emotions. Next was Kate from Ireland and you may have heard me talk about her aviation project before (See her blog here: www.kilvemnon.blogspot.com) And finally Andrew from Australia talked about his project on creating Biology podcasts for his students that are now also subscribed by many students around the world.

The panel session was excellent and concluded with questions from the audience chaired by David. Well done to all!

At the end of the session one guy came up to me and told me about a project he was about to start on wild turkeys with his students and that he was now going to install a webcam like our pigcam so there could be possible links there to develop with turkeycam!

After the session as a treat we went for a proper DC brekkie – have a look at this:

Wow I love this place – how cool that you can have cornbeef hash for breakfast with cheesy eggs I thought I had died and gone to heaven! We then received some excellent feedback regarding our sessions here by an email from Microsoft execs. A big thank you and well done to David Walddon and Lianne Morgan for looking after us and really making this happen.

Later on I attended a couple of workshops will write these up later. Also we sneaked off for 45mins to see the aviation and space museum to check out the Kitty Hawk etc definitely a must see. Followed by a fabulous dinner at the Brewing city restaurant. We then had a great mini coach tour of DC the highlight being the Lincoln memorial as the sun was setting – truly amazing!

Some interesting things I saw today:

Online bookmarking – XMARKS (Foxmarks) plug in for internet is free – can add it to every computer in a suite and bookmark places for students to visit then when one adds one it adds to all of them.

Digo – Stealing sharing practice etc.

Always forgetting to do things then use ‘remember the milk’ website – you can tweet it etc updates a to do list. It can send messages to your mobile.

Collaborative learning – doings stuff with others – USE google docs they have lots of new features saw Science teachers working with students they emailed their data in and a spreadsheet then automatically plotted the whole class results.

ETHER PAD – Etherpad.com set your own URL – 8 users at the same time. This is free and allows up to 8 people (maybe 8 groups of students to work collaboratively)

Drop.io – Simple real time sharing and collaboration – upload files add links etc email to drop etc.

Thinkature – working together in real time through workspaces.

Well wow that is what sums up today! 3 different drinks receptions mixed in with some really hard work but a great experience! First off it was a Sunday and we were on the bus by 7:30am to attend the ISTE’s Leadership Symposium.

First of all I was up at 4am as my body clock is still on PMT time (Plymouth Mean Time!). At the event it was a select invitation to Leaders and administrators from Education, Technology and the Government. It was a great experience. The focus for the session was to start to develop a new national education technology plan for America. What a fantastic opportunity!

I was invited to be on the panel where I had chance to talk about the work of our school, our staff and students and really raise the profile of our school. When I finished many people came and said that they totally agreed with the vision for our school. Many people came up and said that they often keep an eye on our pigs and chickens and know of the work our school does. We also made many new fans who have taken a keen interest to what we are doing.

See the video of some of my talk here: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Lkk5LE1iqdQ

After the panel we then had breakout sessions where we worked in small focus groups – I was part of a group that focused on student engagement. It was a great opportunity to collaborate with likeminded individuals!

Next we then attended the ‘Making it Happen Award Reception’ this was similar to our version of the teaching awards but instead of receiving a Oscar style trophy you received a pink jacket even the men although some had black ones (very confusing!) It was a jacket like the ones the pink ladies from Grease wear. There were also many people in the audience who already have a jacket and you become a member of this organisation – a select few, we were well looked after with food and drink supplied. This was a good chance to chat to some teachers from America and to share ideas.

Next we then decided to have a short break and get some fresh air so we went on a mission to find the white house and took some pictures there, very warm and humid so after a short while we had to run back to the convention to cool down in the air con.

We then attended another reception this was for all the international visitors, there were people from all over the world and we had another chance to share practice over drink and nibbles. It is amazing that every teacher no matter where they live and work has the same challenges all over the world.

We then had to rush off to hear Malcolm Gladwell speak about learning, he is a well known and successful author and he delivered a good keynote on Fleetwood mac of all things (linked to learning)
The essence of his speech was about successful learners being hard working, driven to succeed, resilient etc – I thought overall it was a good start to the conference.

Then to our poster sessions…

We were all presenting our posters to the entire conference (or that is what it felt like) We were based right next to the champagne reception and I thought it would be quite quiet and people wouldn’t really come and talk to us but I was wrong! For two solid hours I got to share the recharge the battery project and the work of our students and teachers – making some great potential contacts for global collaborative projects. Watch this space!

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And finally after a very hard day we then attended the special leadership drinks reception which was fantastic we could all relax and enjoy the free drinks. Microsoft has really done well organising our schedule and getting us access to all these different events so that we have the opportunity to meet lots of people.

Just a quick couple of things I saw today that may be of interest:

• Livestream - Broadcast LIVE streaming video

You can have a full tv channel here. My understanding is that you can stream from your mobile too! May be good for students wanting to start their own TV channel or perhaps you could begin streaming your lessons?

http://www.livestream.com/

• Education 2.0 – Edmodo – Free Private Microblogging For Education

This is a Microblogging service built for students and teachers – it is free so maybe worth having a go with some students – you can upload files etc too!

http://www.edmodo.com

• Digital Bloom’s taxonomy –

href="http://">http://edorigami.wikispaces.com/Bloom’s+Digital+Taxonomy

On Thursday 25th June I travelled to Washington to attend a tour led by Microsoft and incorporating the International Society for Technology in Education (ISTE’s) National Computing conference:

See its website: http://center.uoregon.edu/ISTE/NECC2009/

I was invited by Microsoft with the other 9 or so award winners from the worldwide Innovative Teachers Forum in Hong Kong in November 2008. We will get to share ideas on how to transform education together. We will attend the National Education and Computing Conference where we will be presenting our individual project that won awards in Hong Kong. We will also be having discussions and demonstrations of several new and upcoming products and how they might be utilized in the classroom. And there will be other collaborative activities that will educate all of us in the future of education around the world. Of course we will have some nice meals and a social event or two to see the nation’s capital.

The purpose of this event is to:

• Recognize winners from the WW Innovative Teachers Forum
• Promote international sharing of innovative practices of technology integration
• Provide worldwide networking opportunities among top innovators
• Learn from each other about the state of Education Technology around the globe

The party of teachers consisted of: Andrew Douch – Australia, Marialla Paz – El Salvador, Ronald Ddungu – Uganda, Gabriele Jauck – Austria, Nathan Kerr – New Zealand, Elke Mayer – Germany, Sarietjie Musgrave – South Africa, Kate O’Connell – Ireland, Pongpanote Phongpanngam – Thailand, Parambir Singh – India, Emilia Miranda – Portugal, Marise Brandao – Brazil and Fong Yin Kuan – Singapore.

All these people are fantastic teachers in their own right and have been recognised for this but we all have something to offer although quite different we are all passionate about 21st century learning and collaborating together.

On the Saturday (today) early in the morning we left for Microsoft HQ in Washington. Here we worked with David Walddon, Lianne Morgan from Microsoft and Les Foltos from the Puget Sound Centre who works with Microsoft on the Peer Coaching Programme among many other things.

Here are a few pictures of some things I came across in reception:

We started the day looking at the essential question:

What conditions are essential for successful collaboration among teachers? Led by Les Foltos

Needless to say we came up with a massive list of things such as having the clear common goals and vision, understanding the value and necessity of collaboration. There must be enthusiasm, trust, determination, and resilience to make it a success.

The next session was redesigning the Innovative Teachers Network (ITN) – led by Lianne Morgan
We got to see initial designs of the new innovative teachers network that will be semi-launched at NECC but finally at BETT (UK Jan 2010). Basically the ITN will incorporate more web 2.0 tools such as blogs etc. They are trying to incorporate more of the social networking tools etc. There will be better search facility, easier to post resources, personalise your profile, also great new facility for instant messaging and video chat etc.

A cool application I saw is a translator – www.microsofttranslator.com (New Bing) This translates any webpage etc from one language to another and places them onscreen side by side so you can access it. You just type in the webpage and select which language you want it translating into. – could you attach it to your school website or blog etc?

More importantly about my first main day I found this cool gift in my gift bag! I was also kept very busy working hard as you can see!

First of all if you want to know all the technical stuff on this and what Microsoft Songsmith is all about then read Stuart Ball’s (Innovative Teachers blog)

http://blogs.msdn.com/teachers/archive/2009/06/10/britain-s-got-the-x-factor-idol.aspx

You can download a free trial which I have done which lasts a long time – not on the number of times you use it but on the actual hours used recording – something like 50 hours. Alternatively you can buy your own copy for something like less than £20 a bargain!

I first used it on a collaborative project with teachers from all across Europe at the European Innovative Teachers Forum in Vienna in March 2009. You can see the video produced below: (The song recorded on songsmith is at the end of the video (It is at the end near the credits):

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=M4AiNLiRJHE

It is a really neat bit if kit that enables students to be really creative. I have used it a few times in lessons with Year 7 where I give them one lesson to write, perform and produce their own song. The great thing is that because they write the words themselves about a particular topic then this helps their own learning and understanding, but more importantly it is copyright free as a piece of music as they have created everything about it – it is original and unique. What is even better is that within less than an hour they really can do it and produce something I think of really high quality and extremely creative! It just shows giving students the responsibility and independence just look what they can achieve!

Have a listen to some of the songs we have created recently songs here:

http://www.saltash.net/main/index.php?page=experimental

There is a few on there one on Learning 2 Learn @ Saltash.net; Heroes are Global (You may have read about this in a previous blog!) and one on Magnets by The Great Gar!

Why not create your own and then add the music as a soundtrack to your own videos too!
Let me know if you have a go at this and would love to listen to any songs that you produce!

Heroes are global
All around the world
Helping people to live and to grow
With our qualities, we’re a community
We are together, we are one”

That is the chorus to our song from our international collaborative project a picture tells a thousand words. Who would have thought that at the Worldwide Innovative Teachers Forum in Hong Kong in 2008 about 6 months ago that some Year 7 students from Saltash.net (little town in Cornwall) would have taken part in a global collaborative project involving teachers and students from 5 countries, presented to 300 teachers in Indonesia as part of a live television broadcast to 30 million people, named a new child and wrote, performed and produced their own song! All this came as a result of the Baby 5 project that was created by 5 teachers in Hong Kong.

The teachers pictured below from left to right, Ike (Nigeria), Lois (Canada), Me (UK), Kathleen (Ireland) and Manpuano (Indonesia) created this project at in November and we have just completed it.

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Here is an overview of the project:

The planning and origin of the project

1. Background information
In Hong Kong, a statue of Buddah was completed in 2003 after 10 years at the site of a monastery. After visiting, we recognized how important this statue of Buddah was to the monastery and wondered if other countries and cultures had a symbol/person/object that had such an important meaning to their community.

2. Planning
This project requires collaboration with a number (5-6)of other schools as a means to collect data. These schools can be within your local community or from the larger, global community. You will act as the moderator for this collaborative project.

3. Essential Question:
What will the future global citizen look like?

4. Outcomes:

• Determine if people around the world have a common set of attributes
• Examine whether cultural identities influence the behavior of people
• Identify characteristics future global citizens will posses to be successful
• Learn about other cultures and countries
What tasks will allow the students to respond to the essential question?
• Divide the classroom into groups and brainstorm a person who your group thinks possess the qualities needed to be a future global citizen. Present (sell) your choice to the class.
• The class votes on one person that they believe is the best choice
• Using only images, tell the story of your person to demonstrate the qualities they possess that make them a great, future global citizen (Photostory, Photosynth)
• Send your “story” to one of the other classes involved in the project.
• Review the “story” that has been sent to you and create a set of inquiry questions that will help you analyze this person.
• Respond to the questions that you have been sent to further clarify your global citizen.
• Post all stories and questions with the responses to a collaborative blog or website
• From all the stories posted to the blog, have your students submit, to the moderator, a list of 10 common characteristics they have identified.
• Fine tune the list to eliminate duplicate characteristics and post the characteristics that a future global citizen will need (have) in order to be successful

5. Assessment

Technology Standards (ISTE)

Technology outcomes could be assessed using the ITSE performance indicators.
2. Communication and Collaboration
3. Critical Thinking , problem solving and decision making.

This was a fantastic project that really opened the eyes of all of our students. A quote seen below was taken from some of the press coverage of the project:

SALTASH schoolchildren have appeared in front of a television audience of 30million people – in Indonesia.

Youngsters from Saltash.net Community School used a video link to take part in a regional teaching conference in Java.

The conference was then transmitted on Indonesia’s main television channel to an estimated 30million viewers.

Assistant headteacher Dan Roberts said it was the sort of audience you would only get in this country for something like England playing in the World Cup Final, but Indonesia had a much bigger population.

He added: “We were taking part via a videolink in a conference of about 300 teachers in Java, the equivalent of a South West teaching conference, and for some reason the main Indonesian channel picked up on it and ran it as a live feed.“
Mr Roberts said the dozen 11- and 12-year-olds, in a specially-equipped room at the University of Plymouth, did not seem fazed by the fact they were talking to millions of people on the other side of the world. The assistant headteacher and the Year 7 youngsters were talking about their involvement in a project which links them with children in Indonesia, Canada, Nigeria, Ireland and China.
The project, A Picture Tells A Thousand Words, sees pupils in each country telling each other about local heroes as a way of learning about their respective countries and cultures.
Mr Roberts said: “They loved the fact that they could chat to students on the other side of the world, living in such a different world to themselves, in the same way they could talk to children in the same street. The video conference has brought this project to life.
“They can now picture the Indonesian children, they’ve heard their language and hopefully that will help them when it comes to learning about global citizenship”.
Ofsted has just praised the school’s use of enhanced computer technology across the curriculum, thanks to its status as a specialist college in science, mathematics and computing with a rural dimension.”

Finally students then wrote, performed and produced their own song on this project using a microsoft product songsmith all in 40 minutes of a lesson! (See the next blog)

Last week was a crazy week for me and the staff and students at our school! We were up for 2 national awards on Tuesday and Thursday, at the beginning of the week I was thinking what if we didn’t win any of them or what if we win both! Is it such a big deal to win awards? What does it matter?

A big part of me seriously is a little uncomfortable with the whole prospect of winning awards as lots of people deserve them but for whatever the reason don’t ever get nominated or are in the right place at the right time. When I was in school on Monday I spoke to some students and they changed my view on it, they were talking about the awards this week and were really proud – they said that these things really put their school on the map and show everyone how good it is! I decided after that moment to remember that and embrace everything that week had to offer.

So to the TES AWARDS on Tuesday…

We headed down to the Hilton Hotel Park Lane via First Great Western and arrived in style in a black cab and straight away were served very chilled an delicious champagne! Mmm Very nice, we then had a very nice lunch and quickly on to the awards.

They were presented by Rory Bremner who was good but we were unsure whether he was appropriate to do these awards as he seemed to be a little disrespectful to the profession.

A list of the winners can be seen here: //www.tes.co.uk/article.aspx?storyCode=6004051&s_cid=Winners

We were in the final of the E-learning category but unfortunately we didn’t win but the winner was:

Evelyn Street Community Primary School, Warrington
Project: to encourage junior boys to engage with the curriculum, they were given hand-held computers to take home to access games and websites controlled by the school’s ICT technician.

Would be interested to hear more about this project and what it’s about.

It wasn’t a wasted journey though as we really enjoyed the awards and made a couple of good contacts. Once again it is great for the school to be at things like this as it really does raise the profile.

So to the TEACHING AWARDS (SW)…

It was hosted at Dartington Hall in Totnes and was a fantastic venue! We took a couple of students with us who had nominated and had endorsed my application with the judges. It was a great day and some fantastic people.

I was completely shocked when Justin Leigh (Local BBC Anchorman) announced that I had won the Becta Award for Next Generation Learning which is brand new! I was presented with the award by Brian Hardie of Becta.

You can read about the new award here:

http://news.becta.org.uk/display.cfm?resID=38861&page=1657&catID=1632

Also check out:

http://www.nextgenerationlearning.org.uk/

If your school hasn’t already done so sign up for the ICT mark, also lots of resources etc on there.
So I was an award winner and now wait to see if I stand a chance of winning the main one in London in October!

You can see an embarrassing video of me receiving the award here: I am just so pleased that the battery ran out on the camera before I unleashed my unprepared speech on the audience!

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GP16EsTXYRE

I just wanted to thank all the staff and students at my school for all their support particularly those involved endorsing my bid with the Judges and also thank you to everyone at the Teaching Awards who were brilliant!

Why not nominate someone for next year – you can do that by visiting the site:

http://www.teachingawards.com/

You can also visit my page on there – please leave a comment if you want!

http://www.teachingawards.com/winners/winnerDetail.ikml?id=39088&t=reg&y=11

This is a fantastic example of just what children and technology can achieve. It proves that technology really can open doors and cross divides. This project has transported the innovation of Cornish students from a classroom in Saltash to all over the world. Instead of me just re-writing what has already written about the project I am just going to quote and link to other blogs where others have discussed it.

I decided yesterday whilst writing this to do a google search on ‘recharge the battery’ It was really interesting that I did get a few articles on buying rechargeable batteries but mostly it was about this project.

The first hit was a blog by Yuri Goldfuss from Microsoft Austria – he was discussing a speech that I presented in Vienna at the European Innovative Teachers Forum in March this year. It outlines the keynote and some background on the project. It was a fantastic opportunity to discuss the project at this forum in the most wonderful of settings (The Hoffburg Palace).

http://blogs.msdn.com/itf09/archive/2009/02.aspx

One of the next hits was the following video which gives a summary of the project. It was filmed by Microsoft in Hong Kong at the Worldwide Innovative Teachers Forum last year and shows me receiving an award for the project.

http://www.live-e.tv/video-prilog/etv-23-12-2008/microsoft-pil-2008-recharge-battery-united-kingdom

The next hit was from a blog by Ollie Bray. Ollie is currently working for Learning and Teaching Scotland but was previously a Depute Headteacher at Musselburgh Grammar School, East Lothian, Scotland I met Ollie in Vienna and his innovative project using Guitar Hero in transition was an award winner and must stand a very good chance of winning at the 2009 Worldwide Innovative Teachers Forum in Brazil in November.

http://olliebray.typepad.com/olliebraycom/2009/03/microsoft-2009-european-innovative-teachers-forum-5of10-recharge-the-batteries.html

Next up was a piece of news on Reuters:

http://www.reuters.com/article/pressRelease/idUS168554+06-Nov-2008+PRN20081106

And finally for a little bit more information check out Kristen Weatherby’s blog from Microsoft. (It also shows some information on the innovative teachers network)

http://blogs.msdn.com/teachers/archive/2008/10/29/lessons-from-an-innovative-teacher-part-2.aspx

Where next for Recharge the Battery?

On Tuesday 9th June we will be attending the National TES awards where our school and the project Recharge the Battery is a finalist in the E-Learning category. Follow me on twitter (chickensaltash) and keep up to date on the day to see if we win the award.

http://www.tes.co.uk/article.aspx?storycode=6011631

On a hot and sticky sunny day this Tuesday, I dragged my Year 10 science students into one of our free ICT suites (Which now seem to be standing empty a lot more than usual, this is due to Year 11 & 13 leaving for examinations, but none of the other teachers have seemed to work this out) There were a few moans and groans which isn’t normal about using the technology as they love it and normally when you remind them we are in there you are hit with the sound of a large cheers and hormonal stampede towards the door! Tuesday however was hot and the students know that although we have fans, tinted windows and many other heat removing devices it with so many computers in there it gets hot! However as soon as I reminded them that we were going live with our Twitter/12 seconds revision project then all moans completely disappeared and the stampede had begun.

The idea was to all create a twitter account in which we would stalk everyone else in the class, we then created a 12 seconds TV account which we hen linked to our twitter accounts this was so that when we posted a video the feed would go to twitter and inform others that a video had been posted. The idea was that students would produce 4 or 5 12 second revision videos a lesson, they would take a topic and try and write a 12 second video clip in a creative way that other students and themselves could then watch and watch again as part of their revision. When they posted it other students would then click on the link on twitter, watch it then give the other student feedback as part of peer assessment. This is so students could be active in their revision and make it interesting.

Anyway how have we got on then?

We all managed to sign up to twitter and 12 seconds after changing the filter on what students could access, I had contacted parents and got their permission first and we had tested it with about 4 of the students as a brief pilot and it worked really well.

However it then all went wrong – we had no issues with the twitter part but with 12 seconds, some students had their accounts frozen and couldn’t seem to use them or one minute they were using it and then the site would crash when they tried to upload a video. I was unsure if this was a problem within school or with the actual site, I believe it maybe the actual site itself. The next big problem was that when students went to view other students’ videos then some of the computers wouldn’t play them as they needed a different version of flash downloading. We got our ICT support down to help and they could solve the problem as students don’t have administrator rights to download programmes like this so a technician had to log them off and then log them on again and solve the problem – this took around 15 minutes per student. The problem is that when we use a different computer room next time we will have the same problems.

We probably had around a 10% success rate and as a class we discussed the ways forward. Students suggested that as twitter was working well we could just use that for collaboration e.g. one suggestion was that we took it in turns to post a revision question and then everyone else would post an answer and it would take on a competitive edge as we could see who got the answer correct and in the quickest time. You would also then have a log of correct answers which students could use to revise. We then decided that we still wanted to make these short videos because students felt that this would be really beneficial – we discussed using youtube and other methods but then decided on setting up our own Ning community where we could do basically what we wanted to do in the first place plus other features. The other bonus is that once again it was free, we had more control over it and more importantly we have had previous success with it as a tool.
I came out feeling very disappointed with what had happened but felt a massive sense of pride and guilt. I felt guilty as I felt I had wasted a bit of their precious revision time but also guilty because the students as learners were much more resilient than me – ‘don’t worry sir we can use ning we know it works and it will do what is says on the tin, but thanks for trying something new’ that is where the pride bit came in.
Other people discussing Twitter:
@timbuckteeth (follow him on twitter) has some good examples on his blog at http://steve-wheeler.blogspot.com/2009/01/teaching-with-twitter.html and also additional links at the bottom to other people like David Parry (potential useful video)
@Innovativeteach (follow him on twitter) tweeted this stuff from Monica Rankin (Dallas) http://www.utdallas.edu/~mar046000/usweb/twitterconclusions.htm and it gives some interesting examples.
What do you think about this? Have you tried things and it has gone horribly wrong? Are you using 12 seconds TV or something similar or twitter in the classroom? Then please post below!
Next blog – I promise I will talk about RECHARGE THE BATTERY!