Why did the Chickenman cross the road?

Well it isn’t a new game for the xbox it is a simple, free web 2.0 way of sharing ideas by recording your own audio type podcasts. I first came across it when I read through Nik Peachey’s Web 2.0 tools for teacher’s booklet which he produced a few months back. It is a great booklet with lots of good ideas and examples of useful web 2.0 tools. If you haven’t heard of him he is definitely worth following on twitter or check out his blog: http://nikpeachey.blogspot.com/ 

As Nik says in his booklet “Voxopop is a web based audio tool that enables users to record their speaking for others to listen and respond to. It allows teachers and students to build up threaded audio discussions online similar to those on a text based bulletin board.” It is free and really simply to use by visiting www.voxopop.com

I used it a month or so ago with some of my Year 10 class as part of an extension activity during a lesson. The students had completed the objectives earlier than the rest of the class so to review what they had learnt I had planned earlier in the morning as part of the differentiation to set up this voxopop. It was so easy to use – I basically quickly set up an account and then created my first voxopop where I basically recorded some questions using the recording audio function on the site. I then could share the url with my students and get them to respond. So that is what I did, when the students had completed their work earlier than the rest of the class as an extension I gave them the url and asked them to respond.

You can see by clicking on the link below that this as a tool has great potential for students to collaborate and coach each other in many different ways. It can also be used in any subject and these discussions could even be created by the students themselves. Basically people just keep adding to the conversation, I thought that this could be use to build up revision podcasts for different units of work.

 Have a look at the one I produced with my students and please let us know by commenting what you think of it and what you think of voxopop as a potential web 2.0 tool.

 http://www.voxopop.com/topic/f32adfbc-c618-43dc-bc79-7bf91b85b401

Well what a delicious drink the Pisco Sour! As you have probably worked out I am writing this having arrived in Peru finally after a very long journey. I left home at 1:30am to drive up to Bristol airport on Monday for a 6am flight to Lima via Amsterdam. I finally arrived at the hotel in Lima after losing one of our bags at the airport at about midnight Monday UK time.  We are 6 hours behind GMT so when we got to the hotel we freshened up & then headed at for something to eat at a local restaurant overlooking the sea. Lima looked pretty cool and we had a few Pisco sours then headed to bed. As I write this it is now Monday and we left the hotel at 8am to head to Satipo which is a 12 hour road trip over the Andes heading toward the Amazon rainforest where we stopped the night to fly out to Cutivereni  on a small plane.

So 11 of us set off in our little van to travel up to the highest point in the Andes at nearly 5000 meters. In the party we have Frank and Jose our drivers, Carlos and Dilwyn our guides from ecotribal (A sort of diverse ecological company who do various projects including write for travel guides and even import local Peruvian coffee to the UK) Have a look at their website http://www.ecotribal.com/ there are some great photos and information on the Amazon. Also in the party is Jemma and Ruth who are the representatives for Cool Earth who have organised the visit, Jemma is also filming us while we are out here to go on the website and possibly some TV news. We also have Stephen who is the founder of the Cool Earth teaching fellowship (will talk about this in future posts). And finally with myself there are three teachers travelling as part of the group – Matt a history high school teacher from San Diego who teachers at a school called Branham High School http://www.cuhsd.org/ Clover a Biology middle school teacher from New York who teaches at Salk School of Science www.salkschool.org and finally Emily a Citizenship secondary teacher from Sheldon School in Cirencester http://www.sheldonschool.co.uk/

 So we left Lima and it took us today about an hour to get about 1 mile which was a bit worrying but after that we started to make better progress up the Andes. As the altitude increased most of us started to really feel it and some started to get a bit sick. At the highest point of nearly 5000 meters around 16,000 feet I felt awful. See the video clip which is extremely funny watching it back now where I absolutely lose it and don’t seem to know what the hell is happening. I guess that what altitude can do to you!

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gAK1sUpN1U4&feature=channel_page

As we started to work our way down to the town of Satipo which is nearly at sea level we started to feel a bit better. We stopped for some lunch and tried some local soup and coca leaf tea which helps ease altitude sickness and it was really nice and refreshing. (As you may know the coca leaf contains cocaine among other things!)

Satipo which is at the bottom of the Eastern side of the Andes is an old frontist town established in the 1940’s. The road from Lima was built in the 70’s and tarmac appeared in the 90’s which cut the journey time by half and also then increased the population. Satipo has a population of around 20-30,000 people and is a base for logging, citrus growing and provides services for the local rainforest area. It is from here that we will fly deep into the Amazon tomorrow and land on a tiny airstrip at Cutivireni which is a strategic community with an air strip and small port with about a hundred people. It was a former mission and is where we will fly into to stop for a day to meet the people who live there. The following day we will trek a further two hours into the rainforest to live with the Ashaninka tribe.

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!

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

First up who is the chickenman and what is it all about? I know this seems a little bit self obsessed but the amount of times recently I have had to explain what this is about is driving me mad and also as it is the first blog of hopefully many I think it is useful to the reader if they understand a bit more of where I am coming from.

I decided to take on the persona of the chickenman when one day I discovered he was much better known than I was. When I say Chickenman essentially when you look at the pictures of him, he in fact has a gender issue as the costume is actually a hen therefore it should be a chickenwoman however he goes by the name of chickenman.

So where did all this begin?

I had been teaching 5 years at Tamarside Community College in Plymouth where I was a Science teacher and also Head of Sixth Form. Tamarside is currently a national challenge school and it was a challenging place but I loved my time there and it is a school with fantastic students and really good staff who do well in the circumstances that they face. While I was there I dabbled a bit in using new technologies to engage students to great effect, although looking back I was no so called expert.

I have reflected on this recently where has this passion for technology come from?

I remember at my secondary school from 1990-1997 (St Aelreds RC High School, Newton-Le-Willows most famous for the school that spawned 80’s quaffed singer Rick Astley), we only had around 15 computers in the whole school even when we were in sixth form you only got to use a computer if you did ICT A level which I didn’t. We didn’t really have a so called PC at home either as money was tight although looking back we could have got one however I chose to have a mega drive for Christmas instead!

It wasn’t until I went to University in Plymouth in September 1997 that I started to use more technology like computers, we had to use them for my course all of the time, to help with this if you didn’t have one the Babbage building was open all hours and held masses and masses of the things. I remember the first time I went in and it completely blew me away, the volume of computers. This may sound really sad but it really did I remember embarrassingly saying wow! It is weird to think that I had never used things like Microsoft word before or even PowerPoint, all things these days that I use often. My friends helped me with the basics and then I learnt it as I went along, I discovered like I suppose many boys do with computer games, I never used to read the manual I just discovered as I played and that was what I did with computers – if you got stuck some bright spark had added a help bit that you could type in what you couldn’t do and it would tell you – well actually it was a dog at the time that noisily wagged its tail whilst helping you!

I also remember that when I arrived at University no one had a mobile phone however by 1999 I had a Motorola pay as you go that resembled a rounded brick (a model better than my mates whose did look exactly like a brick with a long antenna on the end that he used effectively to pick things!) So looking back now I have come a long way in less than ten years from never using a computer to having one or the technology of one permanently at my finger tips. In fact as I write this first blog sat on a cliff top just off the South West coast path on a beautiful summers day overlooking the channel and following a very nice picnic courtesy of Marks and Spencer my wife sits beside me reading and soaking up the view whilst moaning about how sad I am that I’m on my computer again doing ‘work’.

The last two years…

I arrived at Saltash.net Community School, which is a specialist Science, Maths and Computing school with a rural dimension exactly two years ago now as a Head of Science. At the time I was also a Lead Practitioner for the Specialist Schools and Academies Trust focusing on Science but also using ICT in innovative ways. When I arrived at Saltash I was in my second year in this role and was carrying out active research in using multimedia in Science with things such as using music, sounds podcasts and creating videos in Science. This had all come about on the back of the Masters I had completed a year or two previously where I looked at using these types of multimedia in lessons in an accelerated learning approach to raise the achievement and attitude of students within Science.

Coming to Saltash really opened my eyes to using technology in innovative ways; the whole approach is not about spending thousands of pounds on all singing and all dancing technology etc but to use the stuff that is out there and often free and what students are used to using. One of the Deputy Headteachers there Dave Garland was the driving force behind this as well as many other innovative and creative staff.

When I first arrived one of the first things you encounter is the schools small livestock area, you may have heard of its world famous pigcam which encountered massive media attention a few years ago when Delores the pig had her first litter of piglets live on the internet – it was watched by thousands from all over the world! One of the first projects I was involved with was to really improve the existing livestock website as it was pretty simple and had not been used for a year or two. A brand new GCSE had just started in September – Environmental and Land Based Science and so we gave the students a chance to redesign and improve the website whilst meeting parts of the curriculum of the course, they worked with Dave Moore our E-content person at the time to do this. You can visit it at www.saltash.net/livestock (It is still very much a work in progress)

This then led to the world renowned ‘Recharge the Battery’ project. (I will discuss this in much more detail in a future blog). It was a series of 3 lessons created by students and the objectives were to understand more about the advantages and disadvantages of intensive and extensive farming. As a result we had the idea to rescue 7 battery chickens from a local intensive farm who were about to be killed and let them live in our livestock area free range. The students would create podcasts and video diaries of how their behaviour, physical appearance would change etc. They also added an eggcam so that you can view the chickens anytime. We decided to launch this to the whole school to inform the students of the intensive/extensive debate and that they could see this first hand – one bright idea from one of the students was to create a viral campaign where I would dress as a giant chicken and rap in whole school assemblies as part of the advertising campaign – hence the title chickenman!

This project had a massive impact not just in our school but on the world stage. My Headteacher Isobel Bryce the previous year had won the South West Teaching Award for best Headteacher and was then asked to attend the Worldwide Innovative Teachers Forum 2009 sponsored by Microsoft in Helsinki. Whilst there she made some good contacts with Microsoft UK Pippah Hullock and Stuart Ball and she spoke about some of the innovative ICT projects that happened at Saltash that could be future award winners for future forums. In February 2008 she was asked to recommend someone to go forward to the European Innovative Teachers Forum in Zagreb in March. She decided that the Recharge the Battery project had great potential to showcase the work our students and staff do. So I then had to complete a VCT (Virtual Classroom Tour) which is simply a vehicle of sharing a project r series of lessons that has all the resources, examples of students work etc attached that you upload to the innovative teachers’ network and other teachers from around the world can download it and use it in their own classrooms. If you haven’t done so please join it by registering at www.innovativeteachers.com

Anyway this is getting to be a hefty first blog and I am sure it isn’t supposed to be! Anyway I went to Croatia and the project was an award winner, it then went through to the Worldwide Innovative Teachers Forum in Hong Kong in November and also won an award. More recently I was invited back to the 2009 European Innovative Teachers Forum in Vienna as a keynote speaker which was a fantastic experience. Whilst in Croatia and Hong Kong I wore the chicken outfit and became an attraction at theses Microsoft events, so much so that when I was walking on the streets of these places and even one day in a theme park (well in fact on the log flume normally dressed) people were shouting look it’s the Chickenman!

So finally why did the Chickenman cross the road? I suppose ultimately to overcome barriers to learning.

In my next blog I will talk more about the project Recharge the Battery.