Why did the Chickenman cross the road?

Have you tried twitcam yet? Well what about pigcam or eggcam?

It is a relatively new way to stream a live video that automatically tweets your live feed to twitter and while you are broadcasting you can interact with your audience via the page and at the end of your broadcast it then archives it for you and holds it on your profile so people can play it back if they missed it live.

It has a massive potential in education. I can’t wait to get back to school in September and start using it!

We broke up from school on Tuesday but because of twitcam I have been into school on Wednesday and today of this week and am planning to go back on Tuesday. Why you ask? Are you mad?

Well on Wednesday morning Alice our large black pig at our small livestock area at Saltash.net gave birth to her second litter of piglets. She had 5 in total. Dave Garland our Deputy Headteacher had just come across twitcam so we decided to give it a go and do a live broadcast just after the birth.
We had a go and the response was amazing we had 30 people or so watching and live tweeting questions from all over the world such as America, Australia, New Zealand and the UK. We did this by just using a Samsung netbook with the built in webcam.

We were really surprised with the video and sound quality – it was excellent. We did have a problem with the archiving function of twitcam as because we were enjoying ourselves too much and we broadcasted for over an hour. The site didn’t seem to archive it so we decided future broadcasts would be kept to 30 minutes as we had already tested this out and it seemed to work.

For further details of Wednesdays broadcast see Jane Hart’s blog here:

Due to the success of this we then decided to do 2 further broadcasts on Friday. Footage from Friday’s name the piglets can be seen here:

This time we reached a larger audience of around 70 or so read more about Friday’s broadcast on Tricia’s blog:

You can also see Dave’s homepage with some of the feeds here:

This is still early days but we think it has fantastic potential to use with students. What do you think? If you have any ideas please leave a comment on the blog. We will be broadcasting again sometime on Tuesday where we will be linking up to the Boston Learning Conference (#BLC09). Also if you haven’t done it yet why not help name the new piglets via twitter using the tag #namethempiggies.

The last month or so I have been embarking on a journey of transition, I have visited six of our seven primary partner schools (One more to do this week!). I had the privilege to work with Year 5 and 6 students for a couple of hours on a transition lesson titled what makes an effective 21st century learner?

The idea around it was to engage these students in a learning to learn approach that really gave students a taste of what was to come if they were to attend Saltash.net in the next year or two. I really wanted to engage students and really give them the responsibility to lead their own learning and the opportunity to use some of the latest technology such as some brand new netbooks. The main objectives were to understand what you need to be an effective 21st century learner? Describe what good communication looks like? And finally Identify aspects of what good communication sounds like? They would achieve this by producing a short video using the netbooks and webcams in an ‘apprentice style’ task.

The big question was that they were to answer what makes an effective 21st century learner? I started this off by showing them a video created by our students in a kind of shift happens style answering this particular question. One of the main things that came out of that video was the need to be an effective communicator – this then led on to the first activity of students making a long list of all the different ways that we communicate in the 21st century.

As a group students then identified a couple of examples in particular looking at visual and sound communication, we then explored body language and carried out an activity on that, this led to then listening to a few audio podcasts and as a result students created their own success criteria of what a really good video should look and sound like?

To review and consolidate this students then carried out a paired activity called back to back quick draw – One of the pair was given a laminated diagram of different shapes etc and they had to describe it to the other student who would draw it without looking at the diagram. The picture needed to be replicated exactly; students then gave each other constructive feedback on how they carried out the task.

The task to produce a 2 minute video was then set using technology that they had never used before – the year 5 and 6 students only had 25 minutes to produce this and with no help or guidance, they were being tested to work successfully within a team, to manage their time and to overcome many challenges e.g. the knowledge of using the equipment. The students were told that they had to show a video to the class at the end of the 25 minutes whatever happened there was no excuse (even if they had to act it out because the technology failed). It was amazing every single group of students in all primary schools completed the activity successfully and the videos that were produced were simply outstanding – they were extremely ‘raw’ and that was what was beautiful about them, the content was good but the way they were put together with the naivety and innocence that only someone young and inexperienced with the technology could possibly do.

The videos were then watched back and we reviewed what we had learnt and how we had learnt from the experience. The next part of the project is that Year 7 students at Saltash will conduct a video conference with the primary schools and give the individual feedback to students about their videos.

I wish I could show you some of the videos but due to permissions from the schools I am unable to!

This will be one of the last blogs from NECC09.

One of the morning sessions was led by Dr. L. Michael Golden – Vice President of Microsoft Education – who works with 1.4 billion students in the world.

He spoke about what makes an effective teachers and how they work. Vision of Microsoft Education new mission statement – To expand the power of education for all through personalised learning.

Top 10 ‘summer reading list’ from Microsoft such as Office resources, Moviemaker & Skydrive, DreamSpark, Autocollage & Photosynth, Microsoft Math and One note etc

Reminder that on October 22nd it is the launch for Windows 7. What’s new? Windows 7 will have dual screen capabilities, new auto detect facility for wireless etc and multi touch.

Nathan Kerr one of the award winning innovative teachers from the worldwide innovative teachers forum in Hong Kong in 2008 then spoke about his project demonstrating the potential of technology.

Nathan’s project was based around enabling all students to access technology he did this by giving students the technology to convert their videos etc created about their fieldtrips etc to their mobile phones (Mlearning).

He spoke about the increase in student engagement, allows them to express their own learning styles and allow creativity. The videos reinforced the learning on the field trip to help the students complete their studies.

Next up was Thomas Kenny from HP – Real life solutions for education. What does real life mean? It is about trying to live in today’s digital society.

HP innovation in Education grants for secondary school districts – www.hp.com/go/K12 Is this available for the UK?

Dr Christine L Coleman – Director of Technology – city school district on New Rochelle. She talked about the cognitive migration of teachers using technology. (Digital Immingration)

There are 3 stages of this Adopt, Adapt & Achieve.

Off to a couple more sessions – more to follow!