Where's Gromit (Geotagging a trail and playing with Google Maps)?

As part of the Wallace and Gromit Grand Appeal for Bristol Children's Hospital, Gromit has been Unleashed upon the City and surrounding area in various guises.  Our mission should we choose to accept.... to track him down and.... well.... admire him.....

On the trail we have met scores of people young and old, using without thought a host of mobile technologies and tools, iPads, Tablets, digital cameras.  Personally I have been using a Smart phone, snapping a couple of images and then adding these to a simple photo blog as well as sharing these with Facebook Friends and Twitter Followers .

A while back I began using Quikmaps to geotag images to their locations, Not all of the characters on this trail are as easy to find as they appear on the official trail map,  so in addition to the official map and app here is a link to my "Google Map," where I have begun to add place holders showing the location of and one image for each Gromit Sculpture I have found.  This has promoted a great deal of discussion at home as Google's satellite imagery has not been updated for the area for quite some time, new buildings have gone up and in some parts of the city the landscape has changed beyond recognition.  It has been a challenge identifying some locations but I have really enjoyed the process as well as reminding myself of some of the fun that can be had revisiting and reusing a familiar tool.   

Animals Save The Planet

Loving these animated shorts from Discovery's Animal Planet.  Each clip depicts a diferent aspect of how we can engage with the three R's

• Reduce
• Reuse
• Recycle

Great discussion points, lots of fun but how might they work as starting points for creating your own animated shorts?  How about using Fuzzy Felt or paper cut outs and backgrounds to tell a similar story during a themed persuasive writing unit?  If animals can recycle...

Riddle Me Ree! What a Difference a Name Makes.

Floor Turtles and Procedures..  Or Riddle me Rees?

I 've been working on an iterative unit of learning with some of our Lower Phase 2 students this term, that seeks to build on their previous work using Beebots.   The unit has focussed on

• routes
• giving and following instructions
• developing procedures
• and prediction and reasoning about shape, space and measure

while drawing on creative and imaginative work evolving through ongoing activities in class.

There is enormous potential for cross curricular activity using control based activity within the primary curriculum to engage with the concept of routes and navigation.  Younger students have enjoyed creating games based on programming the Beebot to navigate mazes, collect and sequence objects, moving the floor turtle from point a to point b with as few breaks in the programming structure as possible.  Moving to the Probot should not be that different it seems to me.  The process of inputting procedures may be new with the addition of a numerical keypad, but the type of game or activity can remain quite similar.

The students are currently engaged with a theme about Pirates... They are excited and stimulated by treasure maps (several making, designing and then aging these at home with their parents), huge wooden sailing ships, and the writing and using of riddles and clues, but one key tool was missing two weeks ago that would truly aid a successful pirate in navigating his/her ship, and unravelling and following the clues left for them.

In my first session with the students I decided to create floor compasses with them. What self respecting pirate would head out on treacherous seas and high adventure without one. This was an entirely give and go session

• modelling how to use the Probot
• inputting instructions with the keypad
• how to clear memory when we had finished
• use of the pen holder as a means to record outputs from the probot
• observing input and output in action.  

This took a little longer than expected, creating the skeleton for the compass rose with the probot and pen was fairly straightforward, but the additional measuring and drawing tasks needed to create the rose from the skeleton were quite a challenge for the group.  Persevering and extending the session to allow for additional support, taking students out in small groups to complete the task however really paid off in terms of the student satisfaction and pleasure at their completed outcomes, and the discussion that evolved.  The students were asked to choose  3 colours with which to decorate their compass, and as they worked to identify the shapes and patterns they were creating within the rose.

• What shapes could they see?
• How many of each shape (triangles and quadrilaterals) could they find?
• What was special about the shapes that touched?
• Could they see any lines of symmetry within the shape?
• Could they label the cardinal points of the compass?
• What might be the names of the points in between? 

The completed compass roses have been trimmed, mounted and displayed as part of ongoing classroom work.  

During Literacy sessions the students have been working on writing riddles and solving clues.  To consolidate and link to this I decided to create some riddles that the Probot could be used to solve.  This would allow the students

• to practice input independently, 
• and to observe output.   

Each group was given a support sheet containing a series of "riddles," procedures, that when the Probot was programmed would result in the pen tracing particular shapes on large sheets of paper.  I hoped that the students would enjoy the task, but was not expecting the excitement that followed.  Changing the name of the task to "Riddle Me Ree, What can I be?" and adding the idea that this was "Pirate Challenge" that we needed to work on as a "Crew" really motivated the group. They wanted to be first to finish, but when pointed to the idea that finishing first was less important than accuracy in following clues they worked hard to organise themselves

• Taking Turns to enter inputs
• Checking that inputs were accurate, 
• Correct where mistakes had been made, sometimes this involved deleting the whole procedure and beginning again, and for some groups who had spotted you could navigate the menu, only removing parts that were incorrect and correcting them.

The students were initially surprised by the idea that these instructions could produce recognisable shapes, but this further motivated them to see what the next procedure would produce.  Working with each group I encouraged them to look at what they were entering into the key pad, and the outcomes they had developed.  Could they predict what shape their next riddles might produce.

eg You had four sets of  fd 10 rt 90 this had produced a square.
     You had three sets of fd 10 rt 120 this produced a ?
     What might 6 sets of fd 10 rt 60 make?

The final riddles included repeat procedures, and the students had not had these explained to them, either what they were, or how to input these to the keypad.  This challenge was theirs, could they figure this out for themselves.  Several of the groups had few problems, but I have to admit to not actually explaining the how to any of the groups I worked with, yet they all managed to find out how for themselves, seeking help from others when they got stuck, another winner in this session.

To complete the challenge the students had to label the shapes with their names and add the riddle that had lead to the creation of the shape.  These too are ready for display, perhaps in the ICT space.  I realy like this activity and intend to adapt it when I begin using LOGO next term with Years 4 and 5.

This week the students began creating treasure island maps on large sheets of paper.  On these the students have again been encouraged to draw on their classroom work, to add mysterious and hazardous places with strange and spooky names.  I really want the students to add 10cm x 10 cm grids to these maps, though they may need some help with this reflecting on experiences with the floor compass, before using their floor compasses, their developing knowledge of input and output with the probot, their experiences of writing riddles and using my clues to create written directions to the mystery location of the treasure.  These will then be tested and evaluated by other students who will be challenged to use these clues to find where an imaginary X marks the spot.  Hopefully the students will be as excited and motivated by this challenge as they have been by the others.

Getting Persuasive: Creating TV Style Advertisements with Photostory

This term we have been working on a science based theme around materials and their properties. To engage our students with cross curicular persuasive writing we decided to adapt parts of this to focus on the "three Rs." Hmmm Back to basics ay! A real vote winner in the past, but in this case not "readin' 'ritin' and 'rithmetic" (though we have done lots of this too) rather the Three Rs in question have been how we can "reduce, reuse and recycle."

Getting Persuasive

We began our literacy unit by reading and reviewing a range of texts, posters, leaflets and letters, and using these to identify features of the text type that drew our readers in. These included visual and layout features such as

• headings
• emboldening
• the use of logos
• slogans,
• and bulleting,

that would identify these text formats as being part of the non fiction genre. Moving on to identify language features such as

• emotive imagery,
• the use of rhetorical questions
• cause and effect and logical connectives.
• and looking at how these devices were used to support the expression of opinion
  

Literacy sessions have taken on a slightly different perspective here focusing on developing and engaging with the "functional aspects" of the text type, and considering

• What persuasive texts look and sound like?
• Who might write these and why?
• and How they work?

It is difficult to be passionate about something unless you have experience of the ideas behind it. In order to give context and purpose to the outcomes we wanted to develop the students were immersed in "topic based activities" beyond the literacy hour to support their knowledge and understanding of the key ideas they would need to engage with in the process of writing.

Persuasive writing is an interesting and complex sub genre, in that even though classified as Non Fiction, texts are constructed around the feelings of an author. They may appear to find their origin in "fact" but are usually driven by the emotions and opinions of an author based on their interpretation of facts as they see them. They may appear to be objective, but usually present only one side of a potential argument. Helping students to understand this, requires that they attempt to put themselves in the shoes of their audience and begin to develop some empathy with the other side of the case, inorder to choose relevant ideas they can express that appeal to both sides or those without their experience.

To help with this and our exploration of the genre we presented a simple "marking ladder" that we could use to help evaluate the texts we engaged with, and that could be unpicked and developed as we worked to reflect the key features of a persuasive text as we saw them. This included ideas presented above, but also set out to frame generically success criteria for the writing outcomes that students would develop later, and that could be used to frame comparison between their work and the texts we had explored. These texts we decided should

• Open with a strong statement of opinion
• Provide 3 key points to support this supported by facts
• Close with a reassertion of the opening statement using either a slogan, an assertion or a question.

Within the overall process of exploring texts and developing our writing, we made audience the key focus for our work. Moving into phase two of the unit we gave the students an audience and practiced and applied the ideas we had been developing through the guided and shared writing of letter to our caterers. This sought to persuade them how composting of food waste was a great idea, giving our reasons why, and inviting a response. We know that many of the materials we discard in school are recycled or reused, but what about our food waste? Our new grounds are vast, so we decided to look at how composting as a process could be used to enhance our surroundings rather than perhaps ending up in a landfill? To make these more "official looking" the students also wordprocessed them, allowing them to use some of the visual features we had discussed to be included during the publishing process.

Working Towards A Digital Writing Outcome

In building up to our final Writing Outcome, which was to produce a TV advertisement or Video Presentation, we also read these British TV advertisements with voice overs by Eddie Izzard and Jane Horrocks, as well as this interesting stop motion project by simondo89 I discovered on You Tube.

Refering back to our Marking Ladder and success criteria for "writing," we investigated how these videos used similar ideas to persuade. The students identified the use of slogans and Logos as key tools to stating opinion and asserting ideas, but also how the use of visuals such as gesture alongside music were used to persuade us that "recycling was cool." We used comparison charts to review the three videos gradually over several sessions, looking at one initially to identify features that supported our big idea. If the advertisements are telling us that recycling is cool how are they doing this? What makes us think or feel this way?

In The Eddie Izzard Example, the voice over was seen as cheeky and quirky, presenting a casual almost throw away idea. We got to this point via the expression by one of my class that the voice over was "idiotic." This invited discussion around what she meant by this, and lead to time spent unpicking the idea and why the voice might have been prersented in this way. In addition students mentioned the type of music chosen, the bright airy look of the scenes, the shiny newness of objects and the fact that the "new everyday objects" presented were highlighted in the video as the cans they were made from. This added to the "coolness" because no one would have anything like them in their homes. The young fellow who was the focus of the story told also had a slinky, casual way about him strutting about the scene, casually casting his can into the recycling bins, and going about his business as if it was everyday. I was really pleased when a number of students after several readings mentioned how the advert also began with the character throwing away his can and ended in the same way... The advert itself was "kind of recycling." As can be seen in the outcomes later, many of the ideas in this video were borrowed as available designs to use in the works that developed as a result.

Looking at the other 2 advertisements we began with these ideas looking for similarities. The Jane Horrocks Advert from the same series used very similar ideas, Here the character from the previous video was seen playing a computer game, skateboarding and collecting points as he collected bottles to recycle. As a result the "coolness" of recycling glass was expressed in almost identical ways, but also afforded the questions around the idea of audience and who the advert might be aimed at? Using clues such as continuity of the central character, the music and visuals we decided that the video was probably directed at us, and how we could persuade our parents and grandparents to recycle. Though the main idea that it was cool, the use of the game perhaps lead us to see how recycling needn't be such a big thing, or get in the way of how we usually behave.

The final stop motion project, I think really excited the students as they had recently done some stop motion work, and could see how this advertisement had been been put together. A fantastic tool in as it turns out for engaging them crosscurricularly with the oft neglected ICT curriculum strand 4 statements around "Reviewing, modifying and evaluating work as it progresses." In this video using simple visual tools such as the recycling symbol, items from the bin, an image of the world, lettering from an old newspaper, and a piece of carefully selected music, a really simple message was transmitted by reusing material that could have been found in our bin to persuade, no voice over just a litter dance using throwaways, slogans and captions. The message portrayed used a number of familiar processes, and as such enabled them to begin drawing on prior learning to begin discussing how this had been achieved. It also began to open up the task we wanted the students to carry out. Helping identify with them the transferable skills we could use from a variety of ICT based processes such as animation, podcasting, video storymaking to contextualise the writing outcome.

Getting Persuasive with PhotoStory

The final phase of our Literacy Project was to make a short TV style advertisement./video presentation aimed at persuading our parents and other adults that we should recycle. For this we decided to use PhotoStory, the reasons for this I hope will become clear as the process is outlined and you view the completed outcomes .

In making the advertisement the children worked in groups of 4.

• Firstly they planned and then scripted their voice overs using the structure and success criteria above.
• Using the script as a frame we used Flickrstorm and Google Images to locate and save 5 images that we thought would support and help express our ideas.
• These images were imported to Photostory and sequenced.
• The text tool was used to place our slogans or key message on the first frame and to add credits to our final one.
• The children then rehearsed there voice overs, considering how they would express their ideas before..
• Using the inbuilt voice recorder and microphones to record each child's contribution over the appropriate image.

I love the outcomes of which these are only three examples. They are starting points on a journey that I feel reflect the children's emergent and growing understanding of how these text types work.

• Slogans and opening statements include ideas like "Don't Turn Away," "Prepare to be Amazed," "Our World Could Look Like This." Attempts to grab attention!
  
• An appropriate choice of Emotive images or bold and borrowed ideas to open and close their advertisements.
• Use of simple cause and effect sequences such as, how composting feeds worms, who feed the birds and this is Good for them and must be "GOOD FOR YOU!"
• and assertions of ideas such as "It is up to you!"
• The sense of fun in the experience from a student perspective is also eveident as they attempt to include features they experienced in reviewing advertisements eg singing part of a script, and how their reading process is developing with experiences from storytelling and podcasting sneaking in as they find themselves inadvertently inferring and improvising through prediction rather than verbatum use of scripts.

These videos were entirely self produced and I feel indicate an increasing understanding of how advertisements use paritcular features to atttract an audience in order to persuade. Underpinning this is the student voice and their rehearsal of concepts and ideas from beyond the text as they work to organise their ideas as sense making structures. They are I think nice examples of first steps in the use of video as an independent tool to express ideas, and as starting points for evaluation and review as we plan the next steps in our learning.

In supporting the development of this unit, the immersion of the students in a theme,

• involving visitors,
• auditing classroom and staffroom bins,
• asking questions around school about what happens to our "rubbish,"
• discussing and exploring how materials can be reused, the process of recycling materials and the possible consequences of not doing so

have developed a sense of ownership around the work we have developed. The students have begun offering their services to help recycle, if other classes sort their rubbish, delivering it to appropriate places around school during break and lunchtimes.

As a result of a "bin audit" from the staffroom this week, students have suggested the need to create posters that offer advice to staff and other students about how they can improve their 3 Rs. Our completed advertisements have been placed on the VLE to share with our parents at home, though not being able to wait it seems one student arrived yesterday, knowing we were about to make our advertisements with a flash drive, so she could take her group's home to share after school. Another student out ill yesterday, but knowing we were going to be making our advertisements yesterday, used photostory on his home PC and sent the result to me by email. The students have clearly been excited and highly motivated by the projects with the images throughout this post reflecting the level of engagement and fun associated with developing the outcomes. Next week following the excitement of this process we hope to launch our campaign a little wider with a first public airing during assembly.

These videos also present themselves not as an end product but rather potential starting points for future work as reference tools for others as well as ourselves. I was privileged last week to experience some of our secondary students working on OCR Nationals coursework, and in addition to use within the Pimary Phase, have begun wondering how as an all through school, these could be used to promote and support continuity and progression, acting as evaluation tools and starting points for older students to evaluate and develop video based projects of their own. The idea of beginning with the work of other students regardless of age, in order to illustrate processes and identify steps for self improvement and development in the quality of outcome would be fantastic. In an all through environment such as ours it would be a really exciting to involve older students taking on and helping to move forward the work of their younger peers, extending work such as this and developing it for their own benefit, while perhaps sharing and presenting new resources that can further enhance the learning and experiences not only of themselves but other students and the colleagues who are learning alongside them. Perhaps in closing my thoughts truly are running away with themselves... However in recycling these videos the Possibilities do seem truly endless.

From Probot to LOGO: Some previous posts in action

I have put together this photo montage for the time being to share some of the activities my students have engaged in while using Probots and MSWLOGO this term. Even though presented here in an ICT context, references placed towards the end of this post highlight a number of areas from the Primary Framework for Mathematics with which the children engaged, through the using and applying strand, and which draw into focus the cross curricular potential of work such as this to help children make links between areas of learning.



The file is progressive and begins with the children using the probot to create skeletons around which they made and then decorated their own floor compasses. From here working in groups the students used their floor compasses to learn about compass direction, predicting outcomes from given inputs, eg if I am facing east, and make a 1/4 turn east what direction will I be facing? This required them to know and use the numerical values for rotation sizes, or to calculate these using halving and doubling strategies. Within the problems set we also replaced fractions of a turn with the number of degrees, and the directions of a rotation with clockwise/anticlockwise, and right/left. The children went on from this to make up challenge questions for their friends in other groups.

In the next series of activities the children made mazes using strips of paper. Working initially with right angles, some children chose to extend the activity to include 45 degree turns. The children used their knowledge that a Probot step was 1 cm to help them measure the distances the probot would need to move, and estimation to predict and test the size of turn they would need to make at each point in order to navigate the maze. After step by step planning the children were asked to input procedures, that would take the turtle from one end of the maze to the other without stopping.

The final photographs in the series represent a session in the ICT suite where children used MSW LOGO for the first time. The students were given a prepared treasure map which they loaded into the LOGO workspace, before we discussed as a class and decided the route around the island we would take, or the order in which we would visit particular landmarks. Transferring the floor based experiences of the students to the screen was not difficult, and after only a brief introduction to the commands and how these should be input, they worked very successfully and independently, to resolve many of the issues they encountered. In the plenary to this session the children were asked what they would like to do in the next session, and suggested that they would like to have a blank treasure map, that they could add landmarks to themselves, they could then ask their friends to journey around their island following a route they had prepared.

This series of activities, as well as the obvious ICT and Geographical links, offered opportunities for the students to engage practically with the following strands and related objectives from the Primary Framework for Mathematics

Measuring

• Know the relationships between.., metres and centimetres..., choose and use appropriate units to estimate, measure and record measurements
• Read, to the nearest division and half-division, scales that are numbered or partially numbered; use the information to measure and draw to a suitable degree of accuracy

Understanding Shape

• Read and record the vocabulary of position, direction and movement, using the four compass directions to describe movement about a grid
• Use a set-square to draw right angles and to identify right angles in 2-D shapes; compare angles with a right angle; recognise that a straight line is equivalent to two right angles

Counting and Understanding Number

• Read and write proper fractions, interpreting the denominator as the parts of a whole and the numerator as the number of parts; identify and estimate fractions of shapes;

While using and applying their knowledge and understanding of these areas in the context of problems and puzzles.

Many of the activities here are drawn from or build on previous posts that can be found within the control category to the left of the page.

Mapping Landmarks; Digitising the Anologue

Wanted to share a nice activity that we worked on in class today. Our theme is based around being a Bristolian, and last week we identified some of the student's and our favourite places in the city, charting these and creating a simple postcard.

Using the landmarks the students had identified, we compiled a collection of labeled digital photographs, printing them out to use with a tourist map in this group challenge. The following learning story, was compiled in Microsoft Photostory, and uploaded to Google video for sharing.

Active Mapping and 2Create: An Example Outcome

I've posted a number of times in the past about 2 simple's 2 create a story, and how I have used "export as flash," to create web publishable interactive texts with students. 2 create has been the tool of choice this term, and it too has an "export" or "save as flash" file option. The big difference between the two tools as you will see from the example below, a sneak peak from our mapping project is the ability to develop your own navigation paths, by inserting buttons and hyperlinks.

By exporting as flash the 2 create project is also useable as a portable/standalone presentation, that can be run not only in web pages like the one below, but can also be inserted and played in a Smartboard Notebook, as part of a presentation. So as part of a teacher resource development tool box it is also apotentially powerful tool, that could be used to develop layered texts, similar to those developed for the National Literacy Strategy's IWB Packages using PowerPoint, and the flash based multimodal stories presented by the Hamilton Trust.

The flash file below, exported from 2 create has been uploaded to our school server, using the portable apps version of Filezilla I downloaded last weekend, and then embedded here using a piece of code I found on Flash For Blogger-dummies Guide.




Now I know that this works, I can spend some time with the students next week using this tool to show how their completed files get onto the web on the IWB, before using the embed flash tool with small groups on our class wordpress blog to share their maps as they are finished. A big well done to T and P, who developed this file. What I was particularly impressed about with this example, is how the two students themselves decided to label the buttons. This they said was to help their visitors understand how the map worked and where they would go on their journey. I hope this illustrates the kind of learning outcomes that were achieved and presented in my previous post. Top job Year 3.

Image and File Credits: Maps. worldatlas.com Photographs and Slide Show: Y3 Teyfant Community School

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.

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)

Imaging our Learning Journey: Learning to attach images to a Quikmap!

For a while now I have looked in awe at Quikmaps developed by colleagues, where photographs have been associated to placemarks, wondering how this was achieved. I shared my most recent post through twitter and Tom Barrett came to the rescue. I hadn't realised that the use of html tags in the place mark bubbles, would load images stored elsewhere on the web. This has opened a whole new world of possibility for me, and presented yet another tool to use in data logging and monitoring with my students.

In class a couple of weeks back, my Y3 students mapped a "landscape walk" locating images collected by "tagging" them on a table top map. This map used an aerial photograph I had previously made and then screen captured from quickmaps. To capture the map, for use in the classroom, I used the "printscreen" button on the keyboard, copying the screen image to the computer's clipboard, and then pasting the map to a graphics package where it was cropped and resized, before printing out for use in their table top task. The outcome of the activity, mediated by small group discussion, was to create a poster/map, where the route for our walk and staging points on our journey were marked, with labels and arrows placed to show the locations where our photographs had been taken.

This activity was in part inspired by tagged mapping activities I had spotted in the blogosphere, through the work of John Johnston and Anthony Evans, and show how, even without the "tech know how" it is possible in looking beyond the technology, to develop similar processes for use in the classroom. Thanks to input and encouragement by Tom and his blog, I have decided to have a go at transferring the table top task into the Web 2.0 world, and the remainder of this post is me thinking through how how I did this and how I might develop the activities worked on with my students.

In his post Adding Image and Videos to Quikmaps Tom Barrett explains the "how" process, of associating images with placemarks in Quikmaps, but before this can be done any images you wish to use must be collected and uploaded to a web space or host. A number of free sites enable this, among which are Flickr and Picasa. We have a school website, and each year group has it's own community and gallery spaces, where images and files can be stored, so it is here for my first go I have uploaded the images I intend to use in making my map.

Making The Map


I created a quikmaps account a while back to play with, and for my previous post I had a prepared map. Having logged in and loaded this map the screen shot above shows this and the interface for the Quikmaps environment.

To create my map from scratch

• I used the search tool to navigate to the approximate location I wanted to create a map for.
• Using the zoom tools I refined my location,
• I centred my map by using the hand grab tool to move it until the location I wanted appeared in the middle of my map window.

With the map in the window, the tools above the map were used to draw, "doodle," on it, enabling me to mark and trace the route of our walk. Within the map window itself there are also tools to change the map type or view. The map can be viewed as a map, aerial photograph or hybrid, and to the left are a collection of zoom and navigation buttons.

In the space to the right of the map, are the place mark pins. These are added to locations on the map,

• By picking them up with the hand grab tool
• dragging them to the place you want them on the map
• Dropping them in place.
• Once on the map they can be picked up again to refine our location
  

Once on the map, clicking the pin head, opens a bubble, that includes a text window, where information about the location can be included. This up until now has been the limit to Quikmaps I have created with students. Simple text based tags, helping to describe places they have visited, or recording their comments.

John Johnston has extended this to map wildlife images, captured on walks, while Tom has used historical images with students to develop inferential activities around locations as they appeared in the past. Anthony used his quikmap to locate photographs of images he had taken of BeeBots, as he explored the ideas around a where in the world is... type project.

Here you can see an Information Bubble from my Quikmap, with the opening section of code, suggested in Tom's guide to embed a photograph.

On my map you can see that I included the route we took, using the line drawing tool, as well as the pins for each staging point on the way.



Preparing my Images

Having created my map, I now need to prepare my images. I don't want to use vast pickies, in any of my pages, as big images mean particularly on a page with multiple images slower download speeds. A while back I decided that I would use standard sized smaller graphics on my pages, in school and at home. In sessions with students and colleagues I also taught them how and why this was necessary, and have downloaded the MS Powertool "image resizer," a simple to use batch conversion tool, installing this on the school network to help me and the students with this process.

Once installed, using this Windows XP extension, is really straightforward.

• Copy all of the images you wish to use to a folder
• Select the images you want to resize
• Right click to open the file context menu
• From the menu click resize pictures
• In the dialogue box that appears select the image size you require.

For my web graphics I usually opt for the "Win CE" option. Since I am going to upload these to my school web space and I may decide to put multiple images in a bubble this is the size I will use today.

I author, edit and publish our school website using MS Frontpage, so I guess the next step is to copy my resized images to the gallery folder of the website and upload them... Working with the students at school, I could also open the site as a web folder, log in and then copy the images to the site.

Using Flikr or Picassa this is the point at which I would log onto the site and upload my images to a gallery here.

In for a Penny In For A Pound

Ok I have my images uploaded to my webspace, I have made my map, now for the moment of truth. Adding the image source tag to the bubble the web address (url) of the image, then closing the tag... Yay! it works!


Now I will select the tag code by clicking and dragging

• right click the code
• Select copy from the menu
• Open the new placemarker bubble
• right click and paste this tag,
• and edit the image file name (.jpg) to enable the code to locate these new images.

Adding A quikmaps widget to the blog

Now I have finished my map, tested it and know that it works, I have decided to include it in my blog using a widget from widget box. Having ssaved my map, and then selected to add "this map in your site"
I clicked the add widget button
clicked the embed source code button
clicked the copy code to clipboard button

and in blogger, pasted the code to the page here in html view.



This process has been a really exciting development for me, a new tool to add to my Humanities and Data Logging toolbox, and to develop for use with Tizz our traveling bear.

However for anyone, who like myself, is also thinking about mobile technologies right now, this seems to me to be one further exemplification of a context where the "collect, store and share" affordance of these tools, discussed in previous posts, would be really useful. Students on a school visits, capturing images, making notes, perhaps even recording sounds or short video clips that on return to school, could be tagged and linked to create quikmaps of the locations they have visited. Even more powerful would be the addition of the resources being captured in real time. Use of 3g tools and moblogging in the field; using prepared maps of visit locations and place markers or GPS, students could potentially use prepared maps, and add resources, tag locations as they work, making this resource an additional tool in the "collect, store and share" process.

Back on the ground for a moment, and back with my own students, this tool will be extremely helpful in consolidating their understanding of spatial relationships. particularly their place in space, as we are able to dynamically zoom in and out of the locality they live.

My next step, is to use this tool with them to explore food journeys. Next term I want to use a visit a local Supermarket, to look at the journey of some of their favourite foods, or their five a day. Using a walk around the supermarket as a starting point to identify where in the world their food comes from, it will be interesting to tag these locations on a quikmap, and to begin not only considering where they are grown, but how they get to us. In terms of the National Curriculum for Geography the tool will take on two roles

1) as a data logger, the site and map created will facilitate the storage of data, and marking of the relative locations of each source to our home locality.
2) As a dynamic environment, we will also be able to begin considering the wider connections between ourselves and other locations.

It might be interesting for the students to begin linking our web based resources to the personal atlases they have been making, and in terms of Geographical concepts already developed in the process, to discuss with them and other colleagues how this "dynamic personal mapping" type approach, might be developed to create an ongoing resource, that students can develop and expand as they move through school. But this will no doubt be another story.

Note to self: Consider with colleagues how this tool might be used to modify and innovate QCA Geography Units

Geotagging a Learning Journey

On Wednesday afternoon we went for a walk around the school environment with the aim of exploring and capturing digitally features of the existing and currently changing landscape around the site. In previous posts, I have mentioned other projects involving creative partnerships, where students are logging these changes over time by digital means, as the new all through school rises in the space behind our current school building. During discussion with my class the other day, it slowly became apparent just how few of the students had actually noticed some of the more prominent features of the locality they pass everyday. It struck me as interesting how easy it is to assume and take for granted the knowledge and experiences our young cares bring to school of their locality and their place in it.

A couple of questions I have always found interesting to ask students when looking at a landscape painting are "where they think the artist was when they made the image?" and "what do they think might have been behind them, to the left, the right or above the canvas?" I pondered the other day how much I enjoyed sitting on the top deck of a bus, with the chance to see familiar settings from a different perspective, and from this came the idea for a digital landscape walk, using digital photographs to enable students to capture different views from the same location, that we could then use to focus discussion back in the classroom in relation to a map of the journey.



This map created using quikmaps, shows an aerial photograph of the route we followed with the students. Each of the small map pins, showing a staging point on the journey. The students used digital blue cameras at each staging point to capture two images, one looking out from the school into the surrounding landscape, and another after a 180 degree turn that captured the scene looking back towards the school grounds. Back in class the students were encouraged to review their images, identifying and locating on a shared map where each image had been captured, before matching the two opposing landscape perspectives, to locations on the map. To follow up, and as a table top activity, small groups of students were given copies of a blank map and challenged to mark the route they had followed, locate the staging points for themselves before finally mapping their images to their locations.

The students are currently using 2 Simple's 2create, to to develop their own interactive atlases. These are very much in the developmental stage. We have used maps downloaded from World Atlas.com, to create slides that begin with the world and which will progressively zoom down onto the place where we live and work, using hyperlinked buttons to enable this. I am now thinking how interesting it would be to extend the project, by encouraging the students to think about how this tool could be used to to create a textured presentation about our school in its landscape, maybe in a virtual tour type format. Using 2Create, means that the final projects can be exported in flash format for publication to the web, or on the year group blog, providing audience and purpose for the outcomes.

Post Script:

YAY! Thanks to Tom Barrett and Twitter I have now also learned how to add some of the images that the students captured to our quikmap. This is really exciting...

Geotagging with Lucy

Just talking through, sharing and bandying some ideas with a colleague about how we might use Quikmaps to support our geography project next term. How to organise use of this tool with the whole class has been flagged as a potential issue, but by planning in and developing table top tasks as research activities allowing data collection before creating class or group maps as a final or ongoing outcome, should help with this. Look forward to writing about and sharing these later.

Google For Schools

Received an envelope full of glossy goodies from Google this morning, introducing Google For UK Schools. The space includes some interesting project ideas starting points and support materials for using Google Earth and Google Maps involving geotagging as well as search tutorials for students, and presenting some gadgets that may be of particular interest to teachers. I like the idea of the "Fair Trade and Chocolate" project, which seems to me to have some interesting possibilities for using geotagging to help students understand the origins of the foods they eat.

Next term we will be engaging with a geography based topic where we will be trying to integrate work on food and eating. This has set me thinking about how it might be interesting to adapt this to think about the journey of a meal. Perhaps beginning with food labels researching the origins of the ingredients, or even making a visit to the local supermarket, to photograph and note where the fruits and vegetables in our local five a day come from. The countries of origin could be geotagged by students using my quikmaps account, or following table top tasks as part of a shared session, for inclusion in our class blog or year group community pages. Maybe we could add these to our growing interactive school atlas, and be embedded in Tizz's Travels. Well some "food" for thought anyway. There are some interesting possibilities for this idea, and I am sure this would make an interesting starting point, not only for supporting understanding of our "place in space," but could be extended with older students around issues of global responsibility, sustainability and fair trade.

Units of Measure: Might quikmaps help visualise big units in the locality?

This week we have been thinking about the relationships between units of measures, presenting an image of a cm and a m is fine, but how do you present a picture of 1km to a group of 7 year olds? I was pondering this evening on how useful quikmaps might be for this, estimating and plotting out the distance in the locality. Driving into school this morning I used the odometer in my car to help me rough out a kilometre so I could share it with my class, and this evening have set up a blog to use as a modelling tumble. What do you think, this map features a prominent landmark and an imaginary walk which is approx 1km long?

Tracking Santa

Check out this years Tracking Santa offering from NORAD (North American Aerospace Defense Command). This year they seem to have teamed up with Google. Thanks to the Witshire ICT Nuggets Blog for the update.

Little Patches of Ground

Over the last couple of weeks I have encountered a number of excited mentions of the online tool voicethreads. Voicethreads, at its simplest, is a tool that enables audio commentary to be combined with annotation and photographs or other digital images to tell stories. A voicethread also has the additional social dimension that others can contribute to your thread, by adding recorded or written comments.

The potential it seems from what I have seen and read sofar, is limited like many such tools only by how we might choose to use it. Here are a couple of really nice examples of how colleagues have used the tool personally from

John Johnston
Paul Harrington

Reading these threads has lead to an interesting thought or two about how this tool could perhaps be used in combination with or to extend/embed use of the simple Vodcast structure I played with recently in combination with the Tizz's Travels Frame.

A colleague of mine a while back mentioned a project she wanted to develop around the Idea of "My Little Patch Of Ground," Essentially this project would involve students in engaging with a similar idea to those engaged with John and Paul, photographing or originally drawing their favourite places, and features of the landscape and location and writing about them. We originally discussed using Multimedia Authoring Applications and Digital photographs to prepare the material for inclusion in the school website. However Voice Threads and MS Photostory now seem to offer a new way of looking at this project proposal, and one I must take up with my colleague on return to school.

Linking into the wider curriculum, as well as the obvious geographical possibilities, this project has a number of other potential links to Literacy and Citizenship. In the case of Literacy the exploration of visual genre is an exciting possibility, considering how we might use traditional written formats in support of our thread, perhaps through the use of the frame to present and perform poetry as the basis for a textured script, as well as the recieved potential for documentary type presentations and recount development. In terms of citizenship our engagement with our location, has the possibility for identifying and sharing the views of people around us within the context of common experience of a place. Questioning, engaging with and challenging through comparison personal perceptions about our place in space.

In terms of the use of Voice Thread, the completed outcomes are hosted remotely, with code available to embed the project into blogs, and this is a useful element for me, as it has the potential to open the use of class Blog Spaces to develop and share the projects. I do have a current e safety concern, as my last visit to Paul's blog pointed to a worry he had regarding comment moderation on the threads he produces. There are however others not the least of which at the moment is the LA Firewall, and not being at school currently I cannot check whether the widgets that hold voicethreads in place can get through. It woukld certainly be an Irony if having worked so hard to develop these, the students couldn't access and share their work in school. We will also have to consider the ways in which threads are produced, in terms of the visual information they contain, and the texts developed, however this is an exciting possibility rather than a problem, as it is a teaching point that could be used to engage students practically in considering how the projects they develop relate to our e safety guidelines when producing material for publication.

Voice Threads and Visual Literacy.

As part of my podcast/vodcast experiment I have been using MS Photostory and Podomatic, alongside my Blogger trial. One of the affordances of Photostory is an ability to like voice threads add real time voiceovers to the images included. Perhaps a step back is what I need to take at this point. (Ed.. almost a jodaism, a bit of quick editing will fix this! A stepback at this point, what I need to take, is perhaps. Aah thats better.)

In engaging with visual and multimodal texts, as with traditional texts we need real time examples, texts we can share, explore and evaluate, as we would a book. The voice threads above would be useful starting points, perhaps as a stimuls. Working through these, the students could engage in a similar process to that I was beginning to think about earlier. developmentally publishing their "threads" through a literacy context, and as PC users, within photostory. When finished, the "threads" could be exported as Windows Media Video and using a site like Zamzar, the completed texts converted to Quick Time (.mov) files for inclusion in a Vodcast created at Podomatic. The purpose of this is ultimately to create a sense of purpose and audience for the texts developed. In developing this project I might encourage my colleague to create a station at Podomatic called "little patches of ground," to where the vodcast "threads" could be hosted, and linked in to Tizz's Travels, either as a separate page with an embedded widget, or by embedding the widget in an existing section of the site with its back link to the Podcast. Linked to Geotagging this project could also be exciting, in locating the the patches of ground through quikmaps, tagging the map with file names or episodes, and perhaps embedding the map produced into Tizz's Travels or a project blog. This is worth exploring further, particularly whether this map might be embedded in the vodcast station.

While I am whittering, I have been wondering about the possibilities this might have for comparing places through time. I have wondered about the possibilities in the past for recreating visual landscapes, by engaging students with photographs or paintings from the past while trying to frame the same shot as it looks in space today. Our city scapes and landscapes constantly change, and it might be an interesting project to discuss with colleagues around the use of trails and digital media. Wonder how this would fit around the exciting create-a-scape work being done at FutureLab, it is quite similar to this project carried out in the Kings Cross area of London I guess. It would be interesting though to build on this to develop voice thread type presentations that combined student's interpretation of the then and now, on return with their data.