Scratch and

I was desparate to call this post "Scratch and Sniff," as really that is all it is, a tip of the iceberg set of statements and a momentary expression of appreciation about a tool I have been pointed to a number of times through blog posts, feeds and del.icio.us. Until a recent post and a thumb's up on mrstucke's Masterplan I didn't realise just what I had missed out on by not actually installing the download I had made or looking further than the handful of videos on the tool I had watched. Installing the application, taking a spot of time to aclimatise and familiarise myself with the environment and its visual tool box, it has been really cool to watch kitty boogy his way through a set of routines I had previously scripted for my turtle in LOGO.


Can feel a few posts of my own coming in the future. Thanks Daniel. Interested in having a play for yourself, you can download a copy of Scratch from here.

The Bayeux Tapestry

Yet another You Tube Video, but this time courtesy of Joe Dale's Blog.Here he has pointed readers to this amazing Animated version of the Bayeux Tapestry by David Newton, and additonal online resources from The Museum of reading.

Making a Portable Apps Tool Box

Imagine an ICT toolbox that you can carry in your pocket. A resource set that everyone could share for free. No need to beg that the tools you regularly and choose to use be installed on the platforms you will use before you begin a session. A cornucopia of hope?!*

On Thursday evening I found myself browsing Computer magazines in a Local Supermarket and drawn to the caption "Ultimate Portable Software, store top programs in a USB stick" on the cover of "Web User" magazine. With the Idea of "Anywhere, Anytime Learning," and the principles of "collect, store and share," firmly in my mind, from a funding grant bid this week, the prospect of having a potential toolbox that could be carried in mine or my student's pocket was an Intriguing prospect, and one I decided to investigate further through a visit to the core website, PortableApps mentioned in the article.

PortableApps are versions of existing open source environments, that have been redeveloped for download and installation to run from portable devices such as USB flash drives and mp3 players, and maybe even as the site suggests your iPOD. Once installed to the device, simply docking it with a computer and running the interface or application's .exe file the user has access to a set of generic and "familiarish" applications. Why familiarish, well this is a me thing, keen to try out the GIMP, running from my flash drive to edit the image above, took a little playing with before I finally worked around the process that would have taken seconds in the tool I usually use. This however is no hardship simply a quirk of the tool, and part of a learning process we go through now and again when engaging with something new.

Visiting PortableApps and downloading these applications today has really stimulated me to think about the potentials they offer from a curricular point of view, in terms of shared and common tool access. Since these tools are open source they are free to download, use and distribute under GNU licensing, which could have huge potential for us, as we seek to address issues such as home access to tools and the proposed "digital divide." These tools could potentially enable access to all students for the cost of a flash drive, to a tool box that could be selected from to support a collect store and share process developed through home based learning, and accessible on any windows based machine. So what tools did I think might be useful and download to my flash drive to play with:

Accessibility Tools

• On-Screen Keyboard Portable - on-screen keyboard
  

Graphics & Pictures

• GIMP Portable - Photo and Image Editor

Internet

• Nvu Portable - KompoZer Portable - WYSIWYG Web Page Editor
  
• FileZilla Portable - FTP client (our Website is not entirely web 2.0 yet)
• Mozilla Firefox, Portable Edition - the award-winning web browser (love it and we haven't been able to run happily on our network yet)
  
• Mozilla Thunderbird, Portable Edition - email client including RSS feed reader

Music & Video

• Audacity Portable - Audio editor and recorder
• MPlayer Portable - Movie player with support for most video formats
• VirtualDub Portable - video processing and capture utility
• VLC Media Player Portable - Media player that plays most audio and video formats
• CDEX Portable - My favourite Audio CD Ripping tool
  

Office

• Mozilla Sunbird, Portable Edition - Calendar and task management
• OpenOffice.org Portable - word processor, spreadsheet, presentations with Microsoft compatibility
• PDFTK Builder Portable - split, collate, watermark and password protect PDF documents
• Sumatra PDF Portable - PDF viewer

Utilities

• 7-Zip Portable - File archiver and compressor
• ClamWin Portable - Antivirus on the go
• PeaZip Portable - Easy to use file archiver and compressor
• PortableApps.com Menu - integrated start menu bundled with the platform
  

There has been considerable debate and discussion about open source versus commercial product use in education for some time, but the emergence and recent excitement generated by devices such as the Asus ee, developed around the Linux GUI and shipped with Open source tools seems set to at least for the time being reduce polarisation of this debate shifting our attention to addressing how we intend to integrate, embed and use these devices to enhance and change our view of home school learning. Using them initially as "collect, store and share devices," is how I hope to begin this process, with colleagues and students within our portables project. Exploring how we extend home school learning tasks, through the planning and creation of content for inclusion in shared school based activities using existing tools and online environments we already use and are familiar with. Providing a local, common and shared set of applications, in the first instance means that students would not be entirely disadvantaged by not having web access at home, as content developed away from school can be built on and shared through access to a wireless infrastructure and classroom based web acccess, or alternatively direct transfer to the network through flash drive. To enable this however the tools for the job must be available. Certainly the Asus provides a basic toolbox, but it would be handy to be able to run other more complex tools as the students become more familiar with the process, if we would like them to support driving innovation. Since current E Safety considerations limit access to the web 2.o world in schools then local apps are required to do this, many of which are currently not available through edu suppliers for Linux based systems, or Window's Mobile Environments for that matter. Portable Apps has a watch this space.. regarding Linux based versions of the applications they currently offer, but certainly these tools seem to me to offer enormous potential in enabling expansion of the tools provided. So in answering my opening question probably more a cornucopia of hope than a complete solution, but certainly something well worth keeping an eye on. In the meantime I will play with the toolbox I have just compiled, and continue to chew over some of the ideas.

Technology Changes: Help Desk Fun From My Feeds

Through my feeds today I encountered these two YouTube videos.





I hope they entertained you as much as they did me, they certainly rang a few bells.

Thanks to Tony Karrer and Karl Kapp

Inclusion Resources Online, Portable Apps and The Transporters

I have been following Anthony Evan's recent series of posts with interest, as he has trawled the web logging tools available online to support inclusion. Many of these freeware or open source environments may also be of interest to colleagues working with younger students, and interested in exploring tools available outside of mainstream suppliers to add to their software tool boxes well worth a visit to explore his recommendations.

On a visit to one of the sites linked from Anthyony's Blog, SEN Teacher, I came across "The Transporters," developed in partnership between Culture Online, Cambridge University's Autism Research Centre, Catalyst Pictures and the National Autistic Society. This Online Resource uses Thomas the Tank Engine like characters, to explore through stories, narrated by Steven Fry, how facial expressions portray emotions. As with most tools such as this they are adaptable to meet the needs of individuals. In my class I have a number of students who find difficulty in reading and comprehending the reactions of their peers, and whose emotional maturity may make this space valuable additional resource to use alongside SEAL resources already available.


With the recent emergence of Linux based tools such as the Asus ee, primary colleagues, might be interested in exploring some of these tools too, as I spotted one or two among these that offered Linux versions for download. Following a browse last night through a computer magazine at a local supermarket, I am hoping to find some time to have a play this weekend with a collection of "portable Applications" recommended for download to USB and Flash Drive. Among these was a version of Open Office, Audacity, Firefox, the GIMP and a bookmarking application, that run directly from the Flash Drive. Having just submitted a bid to develop an Asus project with our Y5 students, it will be interesting to see whether there are Linux Versions of these lite applications, and how easy it would be to run and integrate this use of software with the portable platforms. Instead of wheeling out the laptop trolley, perhaps we might find ourselves handing out the flash drives? Interesting thought! But something to be followed up later.

Active Mapping and 2Create

This term my students have been working on a Geography Theme around their local area, that lead as an aside to a number of post on using Quikmaps. My curiosity about how to tag images in this environment emerged from work I was doing with the class anyway, using digital images to map our locality, firstly on paper and alongside this using 2 create by 2 simple to develop a simple zoomable atlas.

The project began as a means of supporting understanding of their place in the world. Our starting point was on the amazing worldatlas.com website, where students were encouraged to explore the site by gradually zooming into the UK, saving copies of maps from their journey through the website as they went. These images were saved locally to their home drives for use as the project developed, and included

• A World Map
• A Map of Europe
• A Map of the UK
• A Map of England
• and A Map of Bristol

The final map they needed for the project, showing the school and our environs was a Quickmap, that I developed for and with them, showing the route of a walk we took around school, to which I tagged, photographs taken by the students on their walk, for display on the school website, and use in a small video project about our favourite places.

With these images stored, the students used 2 create to make an initial 6 slide show, and on each slide they placed the the maps in "zoom order." The next stage was to use buttons to locate the zoom point for the map, a button being placed on Our home continent, The UK, England, Bristol and so on.


Right clicking on the buttons, actions were added that hyperlinked each location to the map associated with it, so clicking on the Europe button would take us to a slide with a map of Europe on it, Clicking the UK button there would take us to a map of the UK and so on, until we eventually arrived in Bristol. On the Bristol map a button was added to take us to another slide yet to be created where the aerial photo developed in Quikmaps would be located.

Getting the aerial photo we had made in Quikmaps was achieved by making a screen print. With the Quikmap in the web browser window, the print screen key was pressed, then in a graphics package, this image was pasted and cropped, before being saved to a shared folder for the students to use in their projects.

For the next stage of the project all of the photographs taken by the students on our walk, and during subsequent activities about our favourite places in school were copied to a shared folder alongside the quikmap as a shared resource for the remainder of the project. The students then inserted the quikmap image to their 6th slide. In their groups they decided which of the images they would like to use in their project and added additional slides to accommodate them.

With the Quikmap inserted, and their chosen photographs added to the additional slides, they then set about linking each photograph to its location, inserting multiple buttons to the quikmap, using place holder pins as reference points that enabled them to think about where each location was in relation to the others. On the photoslides adding backlinks the map enabled the document to become a kind of virtual tour too, as the reader is directed to return to look at other locations they have photographed.

The whole process has been incredibly exciting. The use of talk throughout, has facilitated through discussion the use of subject specific vocabulary in context, we have used maps to begin engaging with the scalability of the world from landmass and ocean, to continent, country city or town and region. Within our locality we have used maps to find and estimate position of place in relation to others, as well as to help observe features of our place in space. As an active mapping project the children have not only experienced a diverse and challenging set of ICT skills, but they have used these practically to consolidate geographical concepts moving from a global position to hands on mapping of their own locality. I will hope to share some of these projects, by exporting the projects to Flash, and embedding these for exploration on the school website soon, alongside the video project which is emerging using photographs to talk about our favourite places.

The Common Craft Show: Some thoughts on Visual Story Telling and Animation

The Common craft Show, published by Lee and Sachi LeFever, has really helped me understand some of the principles and ideas I found tricky to explain to friends and colleagues, particularly blogs and wikis, and the principles behind RSS Feeds. During the Summer I was drawn into the "Twitterverse," following friends and fellow bloggers in between posts. An "enthusiastic lurker" perhaps more than a proactive participant, but nonetheless Twitter as a tool has fascinated me, like so many environments in the web2.0 world in terms of its hidden or not quite yet discovered potentials. It has among other things been used to facilitate audience participation at a number of conferences I have attended lately, through live publishing of comments and questions among other things during presentations and events, so when in my feeds and tweats I found the folk @ Commoncraft had made a video about Twitter, how it worked and how it was useful, I was quick to take a look.



This post is not about Twitter actually, sorry... Its more about the "CommonCraft" style and approach, and the additional videos I found in the catologue after watching the Twitter video and the inspiration that they evoked around the potential of this style of presentation for use in the classroom. As you can see the video presentation is chatty, friendly and I think enormously appealing. The professional homemade look and feel, I think lends them beautifully to a genre and style of animation and presentation that could be readily adapted and used to develop multimodal writing outcomes with students in the classroom.

My experiences with students, tell me how challenging amid the excitement of making a film students find taking time to frame shots, waiting for that hand to get out of the frame. It is usually not until the finished product, as they see it, is aired, that groans emerge about the hand in frame that shouldn't have been their. While watching the Commoncraft Show again this week, I have begun thinking about how often my intentions and desired outcomes may overcomplicate what is neccesary to enable the technology to fulfill its roles in class based animation activities. The students are usually happy with the work they make, and the outcomes they achieve excite and motivate them. I began wondering just how important in using audio and video as a writing medium it really is for students to be hindered by the issue of "hands in" productions. We all want quality outcomes to result from the work our students develop, but perhaps the question I have missed when thinking about animation projects in the classroom is why we were really doing them. What purpose will they serve? For me animation is about multimodal communication and storytelling, so maybe if this is what I want to achieve, then I should review this side of the process rather than dwelling on the technical aspects too much. Disney, Pixar and Aardman's animators, spend years honing their skills, and hours/months planning the outcomes and making the sets and environments in which they will set their stories. Perhaps their are other ways to develop situations where emergent learners can develop their understanding of the elements that make up the audio visual storytelling process. Ways that enable them to tell stories while they engage with and explore the nuances of the media and tools involved, and this is where the Common craft show came into my thinking.

I made some films with students in Y4 last year using the Stop Motion Process, and Stick Puppets to tell the story of the Ramayana. The project was split into scenes that we storyboarded in class and which the students went on to use in small groups to recount and tell different parts of the story as short stop motion clips. Their completed group video clips were later compiled as a class movie, by editing together on the IWB in Movie Maker. Communicating beyond the visual however was something the students found difficult to reconcile, and to support their story most drew on the familiar comic strip genre, including speech bubbles and captions to support their narrative. Because of our limited experiences at the time, time limitations for the projects and student eagerness to complete their work, the text elements were displayed for too short a time for their audience to see and appreciate them, but the idea was their. Animation as a storytelling process is incredibly complex, requiring more than the skills and knowledge of how to achieve motion, though in the emergent stages I think this is what the students find most exciting and appealing, the bringing to life of static and inanimate objects. While watching the Common Craft Show what struck me as powerful, was what might have happened if we had actually seen the video creation process as a digital writing outcome. Like "The Common Craft Show" this project used paper based hand drawn and screen printed cut outs. I have begun to ponder on how a "Common Craft" type approach, combining talk with the props we had developed as the "writing outcome" may have enabled text rehearsal and the bringing of these objects to life as a visual narrative.

A common craft type approach to using video and animation in the classroom seems to offer a powerful pedagogical tool, for linking some of the ideas I have explored in previous posts around multimodality and literacy development. Check out this description from The Commoncraft Blog where Lee describes

"How the workflow breaks down:

• I create the first draft of the script and basic storyboard, we review it
• We both edit the script, often concurrently using Google docs.
• I create the illustrations
• We walk through the storyboard and script together
• In the studio, Sachi runs the camera and effects (animation/stop-action) and I direct the story
• Sachi does all the video editing/finishing
• I blog about it

In terms of our views of literacy and the writing process, what does this reveal about the complexities of digital text authoring. This reflects the complexities of a process based outcome, What Lies Beneath this situation, far outweighs the apparent simplicity of the outcome. Planning, drafting, , reworking/editing/revising, rehearsing, performing, evaluating, before re-editing, revision and publication; and throughout... Collaborating.

The process of oral storytelling, storyboarding and talk for writing we have begun to develop in support of "podcasting" seems very similar. Many of the materials the students develop to do this never see the light of day beyond the planning stage. Using this whiteboard based visual storytelling medium and process would I'm sure not only be really good fun but an interesting way to blend and evidence the role of talk for writing through practical activity and outcome. The added bonus is that using this medium as the writing outcome, we have courtesy of Common Craft a number of ready made models of the text form to draw on, share, evaluate and work with as a frame to hang the text development process on.

As a final soundbite, how about this project or one like it to link ideas from a science or geography project through ICT and an extended Literacy unit. How would you classify it? Is it a non chronological report, an explanatory or a Persuasive Text or does it encompass elements of all three?



How could we use this tool to enable students in taking ownership of and sharing their conceptual models or in bringing concept cartoons to life, perhaps using the process to explain pollination, photosynthesis or condensation? What about creating a set of instructions? Could we use the process to tell stories drawing on storyboards as writing media in their own right, with cut out characters and voice overs using digiblues. This would also be relatively easy to accomplish using digital cameras/ scanners and PhotoStory. How about using IWB presentations, capturing video through the smartboard recorder, with students adding narration through tools such as Movie Maker. The smartboard software could be installed for use as an application suite for this purpose on machines not attached to the whiteboard. This as you can tell has really got me thinking. What do you think?

Kiwi: by Dony Permedi

This fantastic animated short by Dony Permedi, in which a Kiwi seeks to fullfill his dream to fly, is a nondialogue based narrative that you might find useful as a starting point for talk for writing or for framing multimodal work. Doug Dickinson commenting on my posting of this clip through del.icio.us earlier this week recommends Kiwi as great for use within the Y 5 Unit 5 on Narrative.

Layering it on Thickly! Playing With Podium Multitracking

This week I downloaded, installed and had a little time to play with the Podium Upgrade and am loving it. The key difference between version 1 of Softease's Educational Podcast Tool and the upgrade is that it affords multitracking, and the ability to layer sound within the episodes being produced.

It would be an understatement to say little other than this has changed, though the simplicity of the tool has not altered. The principles and processes underpinning podcast development with the tool remain the same but the ability to add additional tracks to files being developed, adds an entirely different dimension to the possibilities for multimodal outcome creation. The addition of multitracking now enables a less linear approach to developing episodes than before, and is something I know at least one of my students has been waiting for. By adding a new track; background music or sound effects can be imported and added, and individual volume controls on each track used to alter their volume, enabling simple mixing and allowing the user to add depth to the "soundscape" they are recording.

The idea of "soundscape" development is a really exciting additional aspect of the upgrade for me, I can see possibilities for using this new version of Podium not only for podcasting but as a wider part of our digital authoring toolbox. Perhaps performing a role as a basic editing suite alongside Garageband, to create narration and backing for MovieMaker or PhotoStory projects. The addition of Multitracking makes Podium much more versatile, somewhere to create and produce sound tracks or "soundscapes"for use in other digital outcomes as well as its intended purpose, for example the narration for a video with background music. The object based nature of the soundtrack, means that not only can new sounds be imported, but they can also be dragged to the location desired by the user on a timeline, making them audio authors. Where perhaps previously the notion of, we added that sound because we could or because it was the only one we could find, this enables us to build on student experiences of Podcasting or evaluation of video texts to support consideration of the role sounds and music play in multimodal texts we engage with or are creating. I am really excited by the possibilities that this new version of Podium brings to the idea of "Playing With Sound," So now its time to have the upgrade installed and begin exploring the practicalities of my wandering mind!

Measurement and the Probot

In a recent post I was excited to report that the humble Probot moved 1cm for every unit input, and was keen to take advantage of this as soon as possible with my students during numeracy. Last week we were exploring scales and investigating the relationships between standard units of measure, and this seemed like too good an opportunity to miss.

Over the course of the week our key objective was to be able to read scales to the nearest half division, and since we are Y3 as the week progressed I wanted the students to engage practically with a range of scales. The context chosen was linear measure, where we began practicing our use and appropriate choice of tools and units, Using rulers and tape measures, to estimate and measure to the nearest whole and half division, while also considering the relationships between the units.

• How many cm in a metre?
• How many mm in a cm? And so on...

All of which would help us to create and solve the problems we would be working on with the Probot later in the week.

To work with the relationship between metres and cm, we carried out a group challenge to construct a skeleton of one member of each group. The students cut strips of sugar paper to represent two circumferences of the head, the length of the spine, each arm and each leg, the distance around the waist and three different measures around the chest, and across the shoulders. They estimated the length of each before using rulers to measure these in cm. Once the measuring tasks were completed the skeletons were assembled using a stapler. I mention this here because it was a task that really engaged the students, and which they really enjoyed.

On Friday we were ready to use the Probot. The session began with the students sitting around a large piece of card, a metre rule placed along its length, and the Probot bumper lined up with the start of the scale. The class were reminded of previous work they had done with BeeBots, and asked to identify the differences they could see between this tool and that.

• It was a car not a bee
• It had different buttons
• It had forward and turn buttons, but it had a pad like a phone

The students were asked how they thought I would get it to move and a little time was spent as we discussed and established how we needed to press the direction buttons and then use numbers, rather than previous experiences of repeatedly pressing direction buttons to move the turtle.

The students were then asked to close their eyes, as I input fd 10, and then asked them on pressing go what they thought I had asked the Probot to do? We tested some of their suggestions, before confirming that I had pressed fd 10. What would happen then if I input fd 20, fd 30, could we predict where the Probot would stop. The students were asked to close their eyes again as I input fd 35 and pressed go. What had I input now? How did they know? Gradually we established that 1 Probot step was 1 cm.

Next a pen was put added to the Probot, and the class talked through the inputting of fd 10 rt 90 fd 20. Before the go button was pressed the students were asked to discuss and predict what they thought would happen. We then observed the trail left by the vehicle, and they were quick to recognise the right angle turn, enabling us to establish that this was the 90 (degree) input given with the right command, the 1/4 turn they were familiar with and had used with the BeeBot.

For the main activity the students were organised into groups. Each group was given a Probot, a collection precut paper strips of different lengths and some measuring tools to choose from. They were challenged to make mazes for each other, that included only right angle turns. Their friends were then to be challenged to use the things we had learned from our carpet time to input accurate instructions to navigate their Probot through the mazes. Throughout the task the students used measuring tools accurately and with purpose, discussed and planned routes applying mathematical vocabulary beginning to predict and using reasoning about the choices they were making. Above all however they really enjoyed themselves.

The Elonex One

Check out this post on Doug Dickinson's Blog about the Elonex One. Posted yesterday, I see it has already been edited and updated adding a sneak peak video demo from Ian Usher's Blog.

I liked the look of the Asus when revealed at the HHL conference in the Autumn, going so far as to have a live version of Linux burned to disc so I could play with the OS, feeling this was something I needed to explore and familiarise myself with. With this potential competitor, coming into the arena at sub £100, I will be fascinated to see how this all unfolds and to follow threads and thoughts around the 2 devices. I have a chance to look again at the Asus this week, but this time through the eyes of a local secondary school on Tuesday, as they share the device with parents and community as a potential element in their anytime anywhere learning solution. Can't wait!

Playing With Words: Podcasts, Performing Poetry and Plenaries

I took quite a while formulating a suitably illiterative title for this post, that sets out to share two new podcast episodes. I didn't intend to publish these when I planned the writing unit from which they come, indeed the writing outcome for our work was actually to publish a written anthology, which even as I write is awaiting lamination and binding.

Both podcast episodes were actually recorded in class as integral and incidental parts of our talking for writing process while we experimented and explored rhyme and rhythm during the writing of Limericks and Spells. The poems created by the students were recorded and then played back during literacy hour plenary sessions, inorder to support evaluation of written outcomes against the success criteria we had established for each poetic form. Recording and Listening to the voice recordings was a part of the students ongoing and assessment for learning process, a chance to externalise and share their internal voice, and to consider how or whether their poetry worked within the rules we had established together, as well as an opportunity to consider with their friends how they might improve not only their content but also to gain suggestions about things they might do to restructure parts of the poem before publication. There is for me anyway an incredible sense of satisfaction in these recordings in terms of seeing (sorry hearing) how far the students have moved in their emerging understanding of the relationship between reading and writing for an audience and speaking and listening as a presentational device. They were so keen to include expression and what they were learning that in one case particularly the evidence presented in the limerick shows how the student had so obviously used the spoken cadence and rhythm rehearsed not only during rehearse and write process, but also in his final presentation of his final poem. It is also obvious from the background sound that each poem was recorded in class. The internal mike on my current laptop being sensitive enough to capture not only the performers voice but also the rustlings and tappings of the more "kinaesthetic" members of my class. Fortunatley within the spell recitals these have added to the stormy atmosphere added through the inclusion of thunder claps. I hope you enjoy listening to these, but that also this post in support, offers another perspective on the potential role of digital voice recording and podcasting software in the classroom.

Social Networking: Celebrating the Joy of Learning

After recent TV programmes and negative press surrounding Web 2.0 environments, it was a treat to meet, download and watch this Teachers TV presentation 30 mins well spent, and potentially a great INSET tool to boot! School Matters - Online Social Networks - Friend or Foe?

Goldilocks and the Three Turtles: Sadness Dawns!

Even though I have been playing with the Probot all week, it never dawned on me to check or measure the size of a Probot Step until this morning. And so needless to say this post probably seems a bit trivial and sad, but do I care... Not a Jot...

This is a bit of a Goldilocks moment, so bear with me.
"A Roamer step was always to large to use when thinking about about standard measuring units (as it needed to be scaled), A LOGO step was too small. But guess what it appears that a Probot Step is just right."

Because...

1 Probot Step = 1 cm

This little nugget/discovery has really excited me because it promises another route into practical and investigational work around shape, space and measure with my ocassionally challenging Numeracy Group.

Goldilocks Image Courtesy of the British Council

Making a Floor Compass With A Probot

Last year when I was working with Y3 we made small hand held cardboard compass models that we could use to help us with our LOGO based map work. This week I am thinking about introducing angle and turn by using the Probot to make floor compasses that students can use with their turtle. This will help introduce and practice using the keypad.

To Make a Compass

Drawing the cardinal points (N,E,S,W)

Place a pen in the pen holder, and the Probot in the centre of a large piece of card, or paper.

input

rpt 4[
fd 20
bk20
rt 90 ]

and press go.

After the Probot finishes, leave it in its end position

Adding The Intercardinal Points (NE, SE, SW, NW)

clear the menu

input rt 45 and press go

clear the menu again then

Input the previous procedure again, but this time substitute 16 for the fd and bk parameters.

ie

repeat 4[
fd 16
bk 16
rt 90 ]

and press go

Turning A Skeleton into a Rose

• Use a ruler to mark a point 1 cm along each line drawn from the Probot's home position.
• Join each of the cm marks on the Intercardinal directions to the tips of the Cardinal Compass points.
• Join each of the cm marks on the cardinal directions to the tips of the Intercardinal points.

As a discussion point about the value of the angles between each rotation around the compass I am hoping this will prove invaluable. Eg there are 90 degree turns between each of the cardinal points, 45 degree turns betwen the cardinal and Intercardinal points, while a 90 degree turn or right angle can be made between each Intercardinal Point too. We have explored right angles in numeracy hour, and hopefully the children will recognise these as sketched by the turtle. Using this model the students can mark the turn sizes as well as recording the compass directions. In practical terms I hope the tool will support ongoing work.

I want ultimately the students to design maps and tours using their Probots, and using compass directions to challenge other groups to use their probot in following directions they give. This will later be transferred to onscreen activities using MSW LOGO and imported bitmap treasure maps.

Video, Hyperlinking and Quikmaps!

Having spent a good part of last week playing with Quikmaps, and getting really excited by the possibilities that attaching photographs to place marks provided, I have been pondering on a comment left by Tom, around tagging other media to place marks, and how this might be used with my class. As he suggested, If we can use html tags to embed images from the web to place marks, can we use similar methods to embed other media types, and have them play inside the place mark too? This left me however with additional questions, what if this were not possible, how could we then provide a link to these resources, so they could be used, either as part of a presentation or as part of a data logging or "collect store and share," process. I am concerned that tools such as this do not get used simply because we can, but that the tools we choose to use should match the context of their use and support the generation and development of meaningful and purposeful outcomes. As I began to think my way round this I was also reminded of the E Safety issues we must consider when preparing and developing material for a project such as this. Because of the use of geolocation technologies, we need to ensure that we evaluate material with students to minimise personal reference and risks to identification. These are however considerations that we should all bear in mind as good practice when developing digital content with and for students, as central to their E Safety Education. In preparing digital media work, and reviewing material for publication, we need to bear in mind our school's e safety and digital permissions guidelines.

So this was my starting point. How could and why should I use video with quikmaps? What tools might I use to develop the video in the first place? What purpose might developing this resource or asset have? The notion of asset or resource development is I think a key one in how we view this tool and its role in the teaching and learning process. So where to go!

Contextualising this Asset

Our School is undergoing enormous changes at the moment with the development and construction of a new through campus, of which we will become part. In less than a year the school we now attend will be gone, and the landscape which the students are so familiar changed completely. A great context then for using video assets with students linked to Quikmaps might be to create a living History Archive.

Tools for the job!

I have used MS PhotoStory and Movie Maker a number of times with students at school to present and edit digital work, and with my class early in the year as part of a vodcast experiment. I have been really impressed with how quickly they are able compile and create projects from scratch with this tool, adding sound as a musical background or through direct recording of voiceovers for individual images. In contextualising this idea I am revisiting an idea from an earlier post regarding little patches of ground. As I said above the footprint our school currently leaves in its landscape is about to become a memory or shadow with the development of the new school campus, and its demolition, but this is a place has been a large part of our student's and community's lives for the past 50 years, so how do we preserve the legacy, while moving on?

Using PhotoStory to create a video

Using digital cameras the students might be asked to identify a place or memory from within the school grounds or locality that is special to them, that they would like to preserve or to change, and to capture 2 or 3 images which sum up the essence of their connection to that place, or sum up their reasons for choosing it. Returning to class they would import their images to Photostory, and begin drafting and or rehearsing their script, recording voiceovers to support their "voicethread." On completion the photostory would be exported to video, for upload to a web host.

Uploading Video to the Web

At the moment Quikmaps does not support independently hosted video, and my LA like most does not allow "YouTube" files through the firewall, for the time being anyway, they do seem to allow "Google Video" so for the sake of this project, I will upload my student video clips to "google video" marking them as unlisted educational files.

Once the videos are uploaded to Google, clicking on the file hyperlink takes me to a page where I can view the video file in its new google video format.

• To the right of this screen is a link button to "email-embed html,"
  
• Pressing this button offers the chance to get the "embed code" for the video file.
  
• Click the "embed html" hyperlink to retrieve the code
  
• Highlight and copy it.

Adding The Video Clip to a Quikmap Place Marker

I need to create my map as outlined in Imaging our Learning Journey and add our place markers. Once this has been done:

• I Click on the pin I wish to associate my video clip with
  
• Add a heading text or annotation for the clip.
  
• Copy my "embed code" from Google Video
  
• Return to my quikmaps window or tab
• Right click in the place mark bubble and paste the embed code
  
• Repeat this for each pin, and then save the map.
  

Viewing my Map with Video

Returning to the My Maps page, I can press the view larger image hyperlink, perhaps expanding the view to full screen.

Clicking on the placemarker pins, now not only opens a bubble, but one which contains a "Google Video" player, where I can watch the clip, attached to the context where it was shot, or with which it has an affiliation. (See the image at the beginning of this post)

This "Mashup" can now also be embedded itself into a blog, a website, or maybe even a wiki, by copying and pasting the code given in the "this map in my website" link.

Adding Hyperlinks

In addition to video from Google, embedding images from the web as described here, hyperlinks can also be added to place markers using html. So even if the resource or asset cannot be embedded in the place marker directly, then readers can be redirected to it. Inserting the following piece of code to a place marker where

• Red = the tags embed the hyperlink
  
• Blue text should be substituted with the web address/url/location of the resource on the web
  
• Black text should be substituted to create the text in the placemark that describes the place being linked to.

Appologies for the blurriness and pixcelation in this image, will try to fix it later... The tag in place should look something like this.

Linking in this way makes reference to a place on the web, where content you cannot associate directly with the place marker can be found, eg a podcast, a website, or a wiki age/project. If associated with a media file, this would also enable direct download perhaps to the browser, to be saved to the user's computer, or with permission from the user, enable it to be opened in an appropriate application, eg a sound or video file in Media Player. If you wanted to use a file saved to an independent host site then this would be a possible solution to achieving this without using Google.

Born to Ponder

I wonder how many similar contexts for this asset could be conjured up. Some that stand out at the moment are

Recording, logging and tagging a field trip,

Logging experiences on a school journey. A Geoblog!?*

Thinking of Joe Dale and the use of digital media to support MFL, I was wondering whether there might be opportunities to use this tool to support development of MFL assets. Maybe drawing on the student's locality and experiences, to log familiar locations with images and adding/developing commentary in languages as well as English, to develop virtual tour guides, and tools for younger students.

Its A Small Old World...

An amazing thing happened today, I recieved a comment from Paul Klintworth sharing how he had used ideas from Imaging our Learning Journey to present a journey around his school with a group of children in Vancouver. Visiting their blog today was a fantastic experience. I really liked the way he had adapted the process using colour coded flags to mark the different viewpoints, green to look in towards the school and red to look out onto the landscape surrounding them.

I was reminded on my visit of how, when I first began teaching in Bristol, we used to use photographic trails around historical sites, one that particularly stood out was a trail in the city docks, where students would use photographs to help in an orienteering activity. As I was watching the Photostory made by the students at Paul's school on a visit to Yew Lake, I began thinking again about how interesting it would be to combine media and to use quikmaps as part of a multimodal resource or presentation set, to help students explore and share their viewpoints around their "place in space."

I have been playing over the last couple of days again with Quikmaps, and discovered that video clips uploaded to Google Video can be embedded to play in their player within the place mark bubbles. I have been drawn to the idea of developing a "little patches of ground project" with students for sometime. This afternoon I have been pondering on the possibility of combining the use of photostories with Quikmaps to help develop and embed this idea in a geographical context. Perhaps using MS Photostory to present/create short audio visual clips about places and student thoughts about them, uploading these to the web and then tagging them in quickmaps as student "voice" threads to the locations they relate to.

There are obvious e saftey considerations here, in that places would need to be non specific to particular students personal space in the world, and be impersonal in that they would not feature images of the students themselves. However, in relation to the campus developments at our school currently, it would be an intersting exercise to engage the children in before the landscape they are used to disappears completely. As a Wiki based project this might also be an intersting idea to consider developing with other schools, or maybe other classes within school.

Returning to the small world alluded to in the title, the most amazing thing today was discovering, while seeking permission to share Paul's work, that Bristol, and particularly the area I work is common ground to us both. Albeit a while ago, it seems Paul spent time working with colleagues at my school, as well as teaching in at least one other where I spent time on secondment. Great to hear from you. Thanks to you and your students for sharing your work. Hope to hear again from you soon. :o)

Playing With Probots

We have been using TTS BeeBots with younger students in school for a while now, but have not until recently had an affordable floor turtle option that we could use with older children to support extension of floorwork and transition to the onscreen LOGO work we want to develop with them. Last Summer I invested in a class set of Probots also from TTS to help us bridge this gap, adding a new layer in the progression of learning in control and modelling with students at school.

The BeeBot has proven a popular and fantastic device to use with young students. I have posted a number of times about how we have used these in the classroom, to play sequencing games, develop prediction and conslidate spatial language. Staff who have used the BeeBot, have begun to find some very creative ways of including the "creatures" in their classroom activities to support learning and sequential thinking particularly across the curriculum, through self developed play mats, based around experiences using TTS's Focus on BeeBot software . The simplicity of the beebot as a device has helped open up and engage my colleagues with the teaching of Control and modelling in the early years and Key Stage 1. This has been supported by work on how with a little creativity and use of other tools this device can enable us to support learning and meet the current early control experiences our students need.

The Beebot's simple keypad enables forward, backward, right and left turns to be input as strings of commands, before using the go button to start the turtle out on the process of carrying out its programmed actions as a procedure. Turns to the left and right are input in multiples of 1/4 turn or 90 degrees. Developing learning within the control and modelling curriculum however is not just about the toole we use, but the pedagogy and thought process behind and which we bring to the activities, and how we use the resources available to contextualise and set problems.

Enter the Probot, here spotted at what I am told is the most picturesque view in the UK, Wastwater. Shaped like a car this device has a numerical key pad, enabling more complex sequences of commands, to be entered. Its programming language based on LOGO, enables commands to be input as strings as with the BeeBot, but in addition, through use of the onboard menu, procedures can be written and saved, for inclusion in more complex procedures. Rotations are input numerically as well as distances , so the vehicle is able to make turns other than right angles, and does not require repeated input of commands.

Here is a short video clip to show you what I mean.

In the Video I revisited a pattern sequence I created earlier using LOGO.

First of all the Probot was programmed to travel around/trace the perimeter of an imaginary hexagon by inputting

rpt 6[
fd 5
rt 60]

then pressing go

Then a pen was placed in the central pen holder, the placed Probot on a large piece of card and the go button pressed. This lead to the Probot tracing its route on the card and drawing the hexagon I had previously input.

Selecting from the menu to make a new procedure (proc 1), the sequence of commands to draw a hexagon were added, and the procedure saved

now entering
rpt 6[
proc 1
rt 60]

and pressing go
resulted in the probot drawing the hexagon 6 times, with a rotation of 6o degrees in between each hexagon.



The ability to store and run procedures, rather than inputting strings of commands, means that this turtle can be used to mimic on screen activities, and through the use of a usb cable onscreen activity and procedures can be downloaded from the software package Probotix , to the device, enabling onscreen activities to be transferred to the "floor turtle." I have to say that at the moment I am not having as much fun with this software as I thought I might, though this may be just due to my lack of familiarity with its quirks. I will get back to this later I hope, but currently it tends to lock up, when it doesn't recognise code, or when I make mistakes. Perhaps this will be different if I treat it more like the probot, and less like the LOGO environments I am familiar with. This however is a worrying aspect, especially if I want to use this software to support the floor to screen links I want to make.

MSWLOGO: Creating and Decorating Patterns

Enjoying half term and the chance to just play. A game of Mountain Hockey this morning, a spot of domestication this afternoon, before playing with MSWLOGO and Microsoft Paint this evening.

Having got my substitution procedure for making a polygon working yesterday, at Andy's suggestion I added another attribute to alter polygon side length so the polygon procedure now looks like this...

to polygon :SIDES :LENGTH
REPEAT :SIDES [FD :LENGTH RT 360/:SIDES]
END

I can now change the type of regular polygon I draw and its side lengths too.

What this means is I no longer need to tell LOGO to draw a particular polygon, However I do need to know its properties, in terms of the number of sides and angles I want it to have, and to decide how large I would like it to be, before I can input these for the turtle to do the hard work of drawing it.

I decided to just play with what I had for the time being and to make a pattern using my polygon procedure and a simple repeat routine, inputting several pentagons that gradually increase in side length before turning through 36 degrees.

Experiences, working with y4 students making "flowers" tell me that this is what they tend to do and get excited by when we explore the environment, having compiled and saved their static polygon procedures, and why not its fun and exciting to see what the turtle draws when he has been programmed.

In this instance the procedure I asked the turtle to carry out looked like this

repeat 10 [polygon 5 50 polygon 5 100 polygon 5 150 polygon 5 200 polygon 5 250 rt 36]

And this was the resultant pattern.

When the turtle had finished and put his feet up, I saved the workspace as a "bitmap image," and then opened it in Microsoft Paint. Again in work I have carried out with students this is a task they love to do. Using the "fill tools" with the Bitmap created in MSWLOGO, students are able to colour the repeating patterns made, and the design you can see at the top of this post was created in this way.

When I set out to create the pattern, I originally set myself the pattern rule, to use only 2 colours, and fill the design so that no 2 shapes in the pattern that touched or were adjacent to each other would be the same colour. However as I moved outward from the centre of the pattern, I reached a point where it was not possible to follow the rule, so I needed to introduce a third colour.

I am really enjoying this free piece of software and looking forward not only to exploring it further, but looking at how the processes I have missed out on by not engaging more deeply with it, can be applied to my play with the Probot I have brought home with me this week. I am also beginning to reflect on how the use of prewritten procedures might facilitate and support investigational work and consolidation activities in Mathematics sessions around the properties of shape and measure, as well as extension and challenge for more able students in ICT sessions as suggested by previous comments by Andy. Thanks

Investigating a Rectangle with LOGO

This week I will mostly be playing with Probots and the Educational freeware environment MSWLOGO I had installed in school a while back. LOGO is an environment I haven't explored in as much depth as I should have, or so I am beginning to discover, particularly with the increased focus within the New Primary Framework for Mathematics on the using and applying strands.

As I have begun to play with these tools this week, exploring beyond the simple repeat and build procedures I initially work through with students, I am beginning to discover just how superficial my personal understanding and capability with the tool is, and just how big a mistake it was on my part not to persist with the environment in my early teaching career. These short sharp sessions are beginning to challenge me to think more deeply about how I could use tools like LOGO more regularly to challenge and support reasoning and thinking with students during the numeracy hour, a place where I have long believed this aspect of Control and modelling within the primary ICT curriculum should be embedded.

Experience tells me there is a tendency for LOGO to be used and taught in the Primary School these days when the QCA Units for ICT that utilise it make that requirement. This leads generally to control sessions being developed through the delivery of standalone units such as this in Y4. What concerns me about this is not children learning to build procedures that make pretty flower designs, but that from a pedagogical perspective there is much more to LOGO as a learning tool than this. By linking the tool to help develop units of work involving application of knowledge and understanding of shape, space and measure. As a "constructivist" learning tool, LOGO affords opportunities to design learning contexts through which to apply, link and develop strategies for problem solving and investigational work while using the environment to model and explore generalisations and hypotheses.

Thinking about Rectangles

While playing today I have been thinking about rectangles and how, when shown an oblong many of my students are able to identify and describe its basic properties, eg. it is a rectangle, it has four sides, four angles or corners, and each angle is a right angle. When we compare the shape with a square that shares these properties, and the students are asked how they differ? discussions usually begin with how one shape is longer than the other. Further questioning and discussion will lead to us identifying how opposite sides of an oblong are the same length, and how the square is a special (regular) rectangle, but making specific reference to the nature of the opposing sides of an oblong is something which is quickly forgotten.

Coding LOGO to draw an oblong requires us to use and apply this property. Even though the shape has 4 sides, a repeat 4 procedure, would not be an efficient way to input the parameters. Writing even a simple repeat procedure, requires us to think slightly differently about the way we should input our commands in order to draw the oblong. So how might I use LOGO to explore and consolidate understanding about the properties of rectangles as members of the quadrilateral family.

Thinking Through an Investigation

In previous sessions, adapting the QCA Unit linked to above while working with students I have tended to stick to developing regular polygons of a standard side length, returning to making Irregular Rectangles or oblongs later, perhaps if or when students have asked how to do this. This leads to a naturalish discussion about the properties of rectangles.

As said above squares can be classified as Regular Rectangles, as such they have 4 equal sides, 4 equal and identical angles, and the same number of lines of symmetry as they do sides and angles. Each angle is a right angle measuring 90 degrees.

A square can be made with a repeat procedure

repeat 4 [fd X rt 90]

Or using the polygon procedure I published previously, by inputting polygon :side :length.

This would not work for an oblong since adjacent sides are different lengths, while opposite sides are equal.

Building a Procedure to Draw Rectangles

Lets say we wanted the turtle to travel around the perimeter of an oblong 300 units long, we could do this by inputting commands that would draw 2 sides of 100 units and 2 sides of 50 units, using a set of commands that look something like this

fd 100 rt 90 fd 50 rt 90 fd 100 rt 90 fd 50 rt 90

To turn this into a repeat procedure, we could rewrite it something like this:

repeat 2 [fd 100 rt 90 fd 50 rt 90]

So a build command would look something like this...

To rectangle
repeat 2 [fd 100 rt 90 fd 50 rt 90]
end

Saving this procedure, typing in rectangle and hitting the enter key would draw a rectangle where 2 sides were 100 units long and 2 sides were 50 units long.

Building a Procedure to Create Variable Rectangles

The last procedure would be fine if we always wanted to make our rectangle the same shape and size, or we were happy to edit our procedure every time we wanted to change the size of our rectangle. But if we wanted to use our program to help us investigate for example the perimeters of rectangular fields that a farmer could fence with 300 metres of wire? Or the different rectangles we could draw with a particular perimeter it would be useful to have a program where we were able to substitute parameters. (Thanks Andy am having lots of fun with this!) In this case we might use a procedure something like this:

to rectangle :sidea :sideb
repeat 2 [fd :sidea rt 90 fd :sideb rt 90]
end

Investigating Rectangles Maybe!

Now I could begin either inputting side lengths to the procedure to randomly draw different rectangles, or I could begin applying my knowledge and experience about the properties of rectangles, using other areas of mathematical experience such as calcualation, addition and subtraction, halving and doubling etc to help me explore/investigate the substitution values that total a given perimeter, using my procedure to model and test my work by inputting my values and testing on screen. Eg with my length of 300 metres or Turtle units

rectangle 40 110 and hitting the enter key would draw on oblong with this perimeter

40+40+110+110= 300

The procedure models the familiar formula for calculating the perimeter of a rectangle

2l+2w=p

(2x40) + (2x110) = 300

What about rectangle 45 105?

45+45+105+105=300

A suitable problem might be for children to investigate some of the different ways of fencing a rectangular field with 300 metres of wire (using 300 turtle units to represent this).

I don't think I would show the children the procedure and how it works. Instead it might be fun to begin with trial and error processes through the introduction and investigation of a systematic pattern, similar to the example below

40+40+110+110= 300 (rectangle 40 110)
45+45+105+105=300 (rectangle 45 105)
50+50+100+100=300 (rectangle 50 100)

What might the next sequence or input be? What can we see happening in the pattern? What would happen to the pattern if we changed 40 to 41 or 42 and so on? The students could use whiteboards to record their patterns, inputs and informal jottings if necessary, with the focus of the task being around paired discussion, mediated by the onscreen feedback and success of their input in relation to the expected output of a rectangle.

Moving on perhaps we could ask the children to use their experiences to visualise, map out and draw what they think the turtle has to do in creating each of the rectangles they have drawn, focusing their attention to the visible properties of each shape and how these relate to the numerical values they have inputted. Notice the line (perimeter) made by the turtle travels around the shape, so each step carried out must have been in sequence. Even though still focussed on the properties of oblongs and the relative location of their sides, we also have the contingency within this activity to begin to introduce the idea that 2 of the values in each of the patterns are the same, and that as the turtle draws them they output to become opposite sides of the oblong and that adjacent sides are of different lengths. So perhaps at this point we could look at or introduce a simple repeat procedure for drawing a rectangle and explore how each value might be substituted into the program, talking through the effect, drawing and visualising it before returning trying it on screen, perhaps with trace enabled, and finally reviewing our square and oblong, discussing how or if what we have learned during our investigation has changed our view of the two shapes. This might also support introduction of the formula for calculating perimeter of squares and other rectangles, by comparing and deriving the standards from the LOGO procedures.

eg repeat 4 [fd x rt 90]

could be reduced to the perimeter of a square is equal to 4 times the length of 1 side

so p=4xl

repeat 2 [fd x rt 90 fd y rt 90]

could be reduced to the perimeter of a rectangle is equal to 2 times the length add 2 times its width.

so p=2l+2w

Using the rectangle procedure again the task could be extended to enable students to test and investigate the shapes of fields that can be fenced using different lengths of wire by the farmer. What length would each side be if the farmer wanted to make a square field using the length of wire he has?

In class and at table tops, this activity could be further extended to explore the relationship between area and perimeter in each shape, using squared paper to explore the different shaped fields the farmer can make, and the area of each one.

This may seem an ambitious proposal, but I would be fascinated to see just what a KS2 class would make of the activity. I think most of us would be surprised to see just what a Y4 class can learn about the properties of polygons and rotation when using the idea that 360 degrees is the same as a full turn, and substituting factors of 360 within repeat procedures to make "flowers" from fixed shape procedures. The potential mathematical outcome of the Y4 unit linked to above, is way more complex than on first viewing the unit expects, yet if students are to appreciate and understand the outcomes of the tasks, beyond the making of flowers and context is to be given to what is being learned we need to engage the children with the mathematical ideas inherent within it. Perhaps this unit can be taken to pieces, and bits and pieces used or built into wider mathematical work. How might changing our view of this unit enable exploration and application of visual models to support reasoning and understanding about shape?

Expanding my Horizons With LOGO

Thanks to Andy Roberts for his comment a couple of weeks ago on my post Logo Routines: Building Polygons, where he said,

"To differentiate for the top stream it should be possible to teach the concept of parameter substitution so the challenge would be to write a procedure called Polygon which draws one of any number of sides depending on the number passed across. Most class teachers will stop before getting to this stage, which is a shame because for those who 'get it' a whole new world of constructionism opens up.

I have to admit to being one of those class teachers who never got to this stage, so having had a browse around and a bit of a play, here is my first LOGO procedure using parameter substitution routine, is that the right term Andy?!* It is for drawing a polygon of x number of sides as suggested:

To polygon :SIDES
REPEAT :SIDES [FD 100 RT 360/:SIDES]
END

So if I now if I want to draw a hexagon, I can input

polygon 6

The procedure, substitutes sides with the number six, and calculates the turn size, by dividing 360, by the number of sides I want the shape to have.

If I now input

repeat 6 [polygon 6 rt 60]

I can create a pattern like this..I guess my next adventure will be to create a "pattern" procedure or write a program that will allow me to substitute not only the :side parameter in the polygon procedure, but also to include a series of turns to output my pattern drawing on the polygon procedure. Mmmm! Looks like I am all set for a bit of a personal engagement to expand my LOGO programming. Will have a crack at this while preparing my unit of work with the Probot for my students. Maybe you can teach an old dog new tricks!!!