Phonic Games and Zondle

From Zondle Newbie, to.. Big Smiles!

Really enjoying exploring Zondle and the more time I spend with it the more treasures I uncover.  Last year I had that rare treat of working across Key Stages 1 to 3, spending one day a week with students in a Year2/3 class.  One of the groups I worked with during the day had a Phonics and Spelling focussed session, if only I had known about Zondle then how much time I might have saved.

I am going to spend most of this post making a topic using Phase 1 and 2 phoneme/grapheme groups. I have made a number of resources already to support work with this cluster, both with students and as support material and template files to share with colleagues.  So forgive me as I play, think through a few aspects I want to share back at school and a few thoughts around CPD that might be needed to utilise this tool set or how they might be embedded not just as web based resources but also within classroom and IWB supported sessions.

Delving into the Quiz Builder

This morning I decided to investigate the more tab in the quiz builder tool, having watched some of the excellent video tutorials recommended by @ wayneholmes.  Amid the tools mentioned in the videos was "Zondle Builder," a tool that I thought Foundation and KS1 colleagues might find particularly exciting.  Zondle Builder currently in Beta, is a filtering tool to help quickly build phonic games and resources from an already populated database.  In the Builder, wordlists are organised initially, under these scheme headings as the first filter option, Jolly Phonics, Letters and Sounds, and High Frequency Words  (Dear Zondle would it be possible to include a filter for the so called "tricky words?").  This is the first time saver being able to identify with existing phonic programs in common use.  Items can be further filtered within each scheme by Phase (letters and Sounds), Word Set (High Frequency Words and Jolly Phonics).  So in two clicks I have been able to refine items very quickly,with further focus possible by refining word sets through other more specific filters, eg consonant and vowel sequencing.  Once filtered down to the specific word groups required, further tightening of the selection is possible by deselecting words from presented lists that I can exclude from my final quiz list.

On Getting Lost, and Learning from my Mistakes

I have to admit to getting a bit lost while trying to find the "Zondle Builder," but this was more to do with my "IKEA Man overzealousness" than Zondle itself...  Yet another if only... indeed if only I had rewatched the video, or waited another 30 seconds, the mist would have been cleared away.  Anyway, time wasn't wasted indeed I spent time exploring the contents of the more tab and created my first phonics quiz and games, in the process identifying a developmental task and key process I will need to revisit with colleagues, namely recording and saving audio for upload.  Anyway on with the post.

Here is my first game Phonic game SATPIN Quick Sand Bunny. 

zondle - games to support learning

This was created using an item from the more tab, the "Phonics- drag the letters to create graphemes that make up a word" question type

With the more tab open and my phoneme group "SATPIN" decided upon, I set about entering a list of all the Vowel consonant (VC) and consonant vowel consonant (CVC) words that I could think of using these phonemes.  These make up the question list to the left in the above screenshot.

Entering each word was achieved a phoneme at a time, selecting and clicking the phoneme keyboard (1), dragging the grapheme I needed from those listed in blue (2), before sequencing these on the "hangman type" space (3) by drag and drop.  On completing each word pressing the save question link added it to the quiz.  By repeating this process I created the word list for my quiz in between 10 and 15 minutes.  On returning to my topics, I was able to click on my quiz and select the game I wanted to use.

Sharing My Game

To share my game here I clicked the "embed this game in your site" link in the top right of the game window. There is a great video from Zondle explaining the process here.  However for class/school bloggers or VLE users rather than creating a web page, you will need to create the post or add a page element to house your game first.  After copying the code from the site as in the video, returning to your blog space or page element, you will need to view the page's HTML source.  Tools to do this are usually provided as a button option on the tool bar or as in blogger a tab.  With the HTML source/editor visible click into the text box, right click and select paste or holding down the control key and pressing the V key should paste the code where you chose to put it.

All VLEs and Blogging platforms are slightly different, so explanations here as within the video beyond the generic is difficult.  A little playing and mouse hovering will be necessary, perhaps even a delve into the help files might be useful in enabling you to find the tools you need.

Zondle Builder a Real Jewel

Moving on then it transpires that what I missed earlier was the floating "Zondle Builder" Button that appeared after I had clicked the More Tab.

Not quite as observant or sharp as I used to be maybe!

 Anyway clicking the Zondle Builder opens a page offering a 3 step process to making your phnonic or spelling game question.

In Step 1:  Select your quiestion type (how you would like the students to engage with your words.)
In Step 2: Use the filters to find and narrow down the word groups you would like to use and generate your word list.

Step 3: Press the add questions to topic button, a one step task that adds all words selected to the quiz/topic under creation.

Having explored the interface and with familiarity this was really quick to achieve.  From this again a number of games are now available to be played and shared.  As a treat for following my wittering this far, here is one of the game generated from the list above.



Variety is the Spice of Life

Thinking about using these activities, I can't see myself simply wanting to embed these phonic zondles in a web page, blog post or VLE and hoping the students will want to visit them.  As games they will stand alone for consolidation and practice, but would be even even more effective used as integral parts of Phonic sessions.


I had my word list prepared and in class will no doubt have a range of activities and tasks to use with the students.  Some of these will be whole class, small group or individual tasks.  Some will be practial, physical and because we are talking about sounds... heavily based in speaking and listening.  The tasks could involve physical objects, use of worksheets, the use of look and say with flash cards but having a particular personal vent towards embedding and using ICTs, I would also include the use of "multimodal" tasks, using dry wipe whiteboards as we work as a class around our IWB.  These activities would include

• Phonic photosets and slideshows using images from the web, to represent words and phonemes.  
• Odd one out shows using powerpoint slides and photograph, or present my phonemes in a variety of font styles to encourage recognition of the letter shape in a variety of forms.  
• Rub and reveal and white on white activities having students predict which of our words letters will appear.  How do we know?
• Using a set of "flash based" editable dice set up in my Notebook, to randomly generate graphemes, challenging students to spell words using them before collecting ideas sounding them out and reading these through using sound buttons.  

My Zondles would be interspersed among other tasks in support of these activities, accessed by opening live via links from my notebook or slideshows via the Zondle site, school VLE or class blog, spaces where the students (and parents/carers) know they can be visited for follow up at home, and hopefully building on the students enthusiasm from my class sessions. Zondle games can also be set as "competitions," so perhaps I could differentiate between the games I want to use in class and those I want the students to engage with outside of classroom time.  Throughout the phase or unit of work my quiz is developed around I could have a number of games visible using the "competition" perhaps offering prizes rewards to encourage engagement.

"Its Magic!" IWB Rub to Reveal in a Phonics Session

Friday's are great with my timetable including a day with one of our younger Phase 2 classes.  The students all aged between 6 and 8 are Year 2 and 3 and a lively group.  Their day with me includes a focussed reading session, which for the last couple of weeks has involved using activities to investigate spelling and reading texts and words including the phonemes they have been working on during the week.  To help with this I have begun collecting images from the web, that we can use as a starting point for the sessions.

Some of the phoneme groups I still think are a little obscure, and image collections not easy to compile. This week for example we have been looking at the various graphemes that can be used to represent /er/.  The collection included things like ferns, birds, a teacher, a winner who came first in a race, a collection of words, a Whirlwind and  screen capture of a wordsearch.

The images were used as an introduction to the session, and as a way of re-engaging the students in listening for the sounds they had been learning about, or thinking about what each image might represent within the rhyming groups they were working on.  In addition however the images were also selected to support engagement with the main task, which was to work in pairs on a "phoneme Spotter" activity before sorting and grouping the words according to the graphemes they contained.  I was concerned that some of the words might be unfamiliar to some students, and hence the choice of a fern, though the choice of some images as visual metaphors, such as a flame for burn was also interesting allowing discussion of what fire or flame might have to do with the /er/ sound we were working on.

Previously I have printed or copied the phoneme spotters we are going to use to a smart board notebook, to act as a shared read before asking students to find and code words.  For some reason I decided last week to present the spotter covered by a layer of digital ink, and to make it into a "rub amd reveal" activity.  The students loved it, and were completely captured as the IWB eraser was dragged across the text slowly revealing the text a word or sentence/phrase at a time.  "It's magic!"  seemed to be the common consensus, and the looks on the student's faces who had obviously not seen this before was great.  This week when I was passing the class I was asked if I would be making the computer write stories again.  Moments like this are the kind of thing we live for and I was happy to oblige.

What was really interesting today was  though that element of "magic" remained, the students were now anticipating the text appearing and began to read along with the rubber as the text was revealed.  This offered some interesting opportunities to begin playing with the text,

• skipping on and revealing words later in the text while leaving others preceding it hidden.  Discussing what might still be hidden under the ink before revealing this and testing our predictions.
• Stopping to ask what might come next, before reading and checking our predictions
• revealing a few letters or a few words from the next sentence and asking what might appear next.
• Revealing the initial phonemes and final phonemes and asking which grapheme or sound picture will be under the ink to spell the word we were reading.

Putting the "magic" aside for the moment, engagement with the text in this way prior to the spotter activity, improved student familiarity with it, while the use of the images to begin meant some of the stranger vocabulary had been introduced.  In pairs I asked them to use their own versions of the text to identify the words that contained the /er/ graphemes or sound pictures, and then pulling the group together we began identifying how the /er/ sound could be written and where each grapheme usually appeared in words.


After this, the students were asked to test our ideas and generalisations by soritng the words they had found in a table.  The group was pulled together again for a final review with a "drag and drop" version of the table top task used to sort the words as a class and check against the work we had done.  While discussing how well our generalisations worked.  E.g did "ir" always go in the middle of words, and "er" always come at the end.  From the examples we had the rules seemed to work pretty well, even though I did introduce at least one example from our photos that didn't match, eg shirt, first, girl and bird followed our rule, but the fir tree didn't, however as a rule of thumb it worked pretty well.

I'm sure for many colleagues the structure of this session is more than familiar, however for me what was interesting was

• How use of "Phonic Photos" or text related images helped re-engage the students with phoneme and grapheme groups introduced and even though metaphorical in nature how some of these prompted discussion and inferential work, while also helping introduce visually, unfamiliar vocabulary
  
• How introducing the spotter as a whole class shared text, and in a slightly different way, using digital ink  and rub to reveal techniques opened possibilities to engage students with higher order reading skills such as prediction and deduction based around an accesible and manageable text chunk
• How student response and motvation seemed to increase through the "magic" created by a relatively simple extension of a previous task by the addition of digital ink and use of the rub and reveal technique.

Diwali Resources from iBoard

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i-board Divali resource link update

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The resources created and presented by iBoard are always a treat and delight to use with students. This month's free feature has been no exception. I have had a number blog visitors and colleagues in and around school looking for resources and materials to use in supporting work on Diwali and advised them to check these out. Have fun.

Smart Table

Russell Prue, demonstrated his proposal for use of a smartboard at the South West regional ICT Conference in July. Suggesting we take it from the wall, lay it flat on a desk using a short throw projector to enable students to work together on tasks and activities around it. How about this, SmartTech, have added multitouch functionality to what looks like a horizontal back projected board and produced this. Perhaps an overlerly symplified view, but perhaps what is inside the grey box is less important in this instance than the possibilities afforded by the tool, to develop and support emergent social and collaborative learning in the spaces around it.

"Small hands in a big space," in this case more than one, and direct physical engagement with the interface, opens up a host of opportunities for our younger students to engage directly and perhaps more naturally with the interface. Rather than the mouse as intermediary, that relies on hand to eye coordination, fine motor control and the ability to translate horizontal to vertical movement. everything in this context will be in the same plane, and at the end of the student's finger. The technology is very cool, but what is most interesting in this short clip, is how the small group context, shifted my view and how the tool became secondary to the interactions and engagements between the students, mediating the action rather than driving it. My MSc project drew into perspective and focus the mediating role of ICTs in social learning situations and the potential here to look at learning beyond the interface is a really exciting possibility for this tool and one that I feel should really excite colleagues.



I want one one of these! What are the chances? The possibilities are endless.

Seven Wonders Of The Whiteboard Challenge Via Kwout

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whiteboardchallenge » home

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From 11th August for seven weeks, the Seven Wonders of the Whiteboard Challenge is set to begin. The aim of the project

"To improve the use of interactive whiteboards in the classroom and to stimulate more discussion about how they can best be used."

I am looking forward to a little focussed blogging and a revisit to how I am using my classroom Smartboard. However it will be interesting to see what folk are doing with the range of board types and if users of mobile solutions such as Mimio and e beam share in the process. I will also be interested to see how or if the role of peripheral devices such as voting sytems, tablet PCs, and input slates are explored in blog posts, used alongside these. Could be an exciting seven weeks.

Catapult Chicken And Talking For Reasoning

I was playing on the iboard site tonight and came across this brilliant activity in the maths trial Pack. First of all the name appealed, but then came the visuals. Picture three chickens, a stack of weights and a catapult! What to do? What to do? A serious Homer Moment arose, but with an inevitable outcome. As I expect any self respecting student would do, I put as many weights as possible on the trap door, loosed these on the catapult and then sat back as each chicken was thrust skyward beyond their roosts before, slowly drifting back to mother earth assisted by a parachute.

Putting aside for a moment the humour and obvious fun I had, my initial free and semi structured play engaged me in a series of trial and refinement processes, as I visually evaluated the effect that the simulated masses had on the catapult and its aility to raise the chickens to their roosts. Further play and I found myself estimating what masses would be needed to lift each of the three different chickens to various levels on the tree and this in itself became a bit of an art.

Devised as a tool to support problem solving in context with year 1 students (5-6yrs), "Catapult Chicken" is part of iBoard's developing tool kit to support the Primary Mathematics Framework in Foundation and Key Satge One. As with other tools developed by the team, beyond its surface entertainment value is a well thought out in, to solving problems with inbuilt space for teacher and student creativity, and oppportunities to extend the face value tasks through "talk for reasoning" and estimation.

• How could we arange the chickens largest to smallest, in the branches?
• How could we do this from top to bottom, or bottom to top?
• How many weights might we need to boost the largest chilcken up to the middle branch?
• What would need to happen if...? we wanted to get the large chicken to the top branch?
• Can we order the chickens largest to smallest, bottom to top?

I like the possibilities presented by the game to differentiate activities iteratively through variation in the complexity of language use, while allowing visual modelling and discussion to take place around a shared text as we think and begin reasoning together.

The activity besides being really good fun, would work realy well with students working in pairs or individually during "give and go" main sessions interspersed with mini plenaries that followed on from free play. Here the children could also discuss and devise problems and challenges for the class to work on, with students sharing solutions on the IWB and explaining processes or giving reasons for their choices. I can also imagine some of the students in my current maths group enjoying the use of this tool to support modelled reasoning and estimation tasks in plenary sessions or as an introductory thinking activity and starting point for a puzzles and problems sessions. The environment I would suggest is one that in developing inclusion strategies, and thinking about what the learner needs is as applicable to the stage of development as it is to age. Perhaps I am only 7 at heart rather than a multiple of... but I loved it!

Object Lessons

I recieved my lessons2go mail from ICTopus today, and was inspired by the possibilities that might be afforded through images presented in the online archive today's activities were based around...

"Object Lessons is an online display of about 200 objects from Islington Artefacts Library. The site has high quality images and information on each object."

I was just pondering how some of the ideas I presented in an earlier post entitled, "images from the past," might work alongside the activities presented within the site. Or even how these images might be used as standalone, starting with an image tasks, using the IWB to support inferential work and thinking together.

Low-Cost Multi-touch Whiteboard using the Wii Remote

Just picked this up from my feeds, again as something to return to later and follow, how Johnny Chung Lee of Carnegie Mellon University, has used the Wii Remote, and pens modified to emit infrared to create a portable multitouch whiteboard that also works as an input device for potential collaborative engagement on a host of other work surfaces. With the excitement that Microsoft Surface generated for me when I saw it earlier in the year, this solution, is a really interesting idea. It does not have all the bells and whistles, that "surface" as a commercial solution is likely to provide, but from a classroom perspective the ability for more than one student to work on the same surface at the same time, with tools we already have available to us, means this is a potentially exciting resource. In addition, as is demonstrated in the video below, using tools based on this, every surface in the classroom onto which you can project a computer desktop, becomes a potential multiuser interactive space. Currently using the solution may mean a visit to Tandy or Radio Shack, but considering the costs of installing IWBs, this solution, will surely require some rethink or redesign on the part of our current providers. I was made aware a few weeks back that the most recent Hitachi Board model includes multitouch features, but have not seen any proposals or demonstrations with other boards so far, it will be interesting to see as this idea emerges further if commercial producers will make or develop an infrared stylus, that can be sold separately for use with the Wii remote. What will also be interesting is how or if the cost of such tools will equate with the £40 to £50 pound price tag that this solution offers as is, in posts published by Ewan McIntosh and Will Richardson that directed me here.

There is still the cost projectors to consider, but this initial solution cuts potential costs considerably. Maybe with the addition of an open source, cross platform, object based software suite, that enables use of legacy file formats from other IWB software suites, this will have an impact on the solutions offered by IWB providers. Below is a video of Johnny demonstrating his innovation, you can also find his original you tube post, here amazing and inspirational.

Text Jumble

Have just picked this online fridge magnet and text tumbler tool up from my feeds via Joe Dale. Already got my mind whizzing with the possibilities it has for talking for writing, sentence and text rehearsal tasks and generating silly sentences on the interactive whiteboard.

A Christmas present From iBoard

I used this set of resources primarily with students in Year 1 last year, though some of our older students also enjoyed playing with this fantastic collection of object based flash tools from the inspirational iBoard Team, at Electronic Blackboard.

Resources include

• Christmas Shape and Space Activities
• Getting ready for Christmas: (label and wrapping paper makers, dress up Santa, and mend or even "supe up"his sleigh, being among the tools available here)
• Christmas Writing: (drag and Drop Writing frames for letters and so on)
• and a collection of Christmas Shopping activities

There are 19 activities in all available to use free here, the students who used them loved the tools, I hope you do too, and that your experiences encourage you to explore further the fantastic Foundation and Key Stage One focussed tools they develop.

Addition and Subtraction: A Learning Story

A while back I engaged with an assignment involving review and evaluation of a multiple tool approach to the use of IWBs in the numeracy hour. The PowerPoint learning story below, was how I chose to collect, collate and present the empirical data I used when discussing this in the assignment. This was finally submitted in two forms. one on paper, and the other as a navigable web page based structure.



The context of the story is a teacher designed, two week numeracy unit on written calculation methods. Drawing on framework plans as a structure, it began with the exploration, discussion and collation of the mental strategies students brought to the session as "available designs" from their previous encounters (Cope and Kolantzis 2000, Editors for the New London Group). All data presented here was collected initially during lessons using the Smart Notebook and whiteboard. It was not only used for research purposes in charting of the current lesson, and setting of new problems as we worked, but also provided feedback and feedforward from session to session. Following the classroom activities each day, the content of the notebooks was transferred to PowerPoint for evaluation and review.

Our intended learning outcome as a class was to learn how to use the standard written algorithms required to be taught within school, as ways of adding and subtracting two and three digit numbers. As an iterative process the students and I evaluated together the strategies we already knew and used, how they worked and shared them with each other as a community. We examined and reviewed our choices through discussion of their effectiveness in the calculation process. The students tested and compared outcomes of their using each other's methods, in paired activities on small dry wipe whiteboards. As the students worked I also photographed student outcomes and engagements for inclusion in our learning story, and for classroom display. Within the story I hope you can see how we began to unpick the methods we used, and to identify how apparently different and diverse methods could be reduced to common aproaches, such as partitioning and decomposition. In week two we began to transform these into the standard written algorithms the students are required to use. In effect the story shows how I helped the group intgrate their informal mental methods and jottings into a standard written form they could use and practice by the end of the unit of work.

This process was not only useful for the students but as an action research process was incredibly revealing for me. Until carrying out this task I don't think I had really given much thought to the complexity of the process involved in making links between the elements that are required to calculate using the standard written methods we ask of our learners. We often make assumptions, that since a progression of work has lead to this point in a child's development, that they recognise the processes for themselves. Exploring how students engage in calculation in this way has really helped inform the way I approach the planning and development of lessons, not only where ICT is used to mediate, assess and review learning. I try to begin units of work with initial explorations through discussion, of the mathematical strategies students themselves are bringing to sessions as a starting point, evaluating perceptions and where possible to use the tools students bring to the session to link my planned content with what is already known.

Getting Big Books On The Big Screen

We are exploring Shape Poems in class, and I wanted to place a few example that we could share into a Smartbook.

In the past I have scanned images showing similar texts that I want to share, dragging the resulting images into a smartbook to be worked on or annotated. This can be incredibly time consuming but the results are usually spectacular, even though the file sizes can be large. But how to get Big Books onto the big screen thats a different matter. No one I suspect has an A1 scanner. However many of us do have digital cameras.

heres a quick how to

• Place the Big Book on a table, or the floor.
• Frame the page you want to use in your viewfinder
• Snap away. ( you might want to find a space with lots of light and turn off the flash!)

I have a card reader, so taking the memory card out of my camera the PC treats this like a flash drive. Using this tool the image folder on the camera's memory card can be opened like any other on the computer then opening the Smart Notebook, the photograph of the page can be dragged from the card directly into the smartbook.

The whole process of including four pages from a big book took about 5 minutes this morning, and created an instant resource I could share with my students. Locking the images to page, we highlighted nouns and adjectives in situ, discussed and added new openers for the poem, brainstormed and collected alternative WOW words we might use to replace some text elements, before going off in small groups to innovate on the starting point.

Another useful application for this process is in creating stories to share for assembly, instead of using smartbook or powerpoint another old chestnut however you might want to try the slideshow tool in Windows Picture and Fax viewer.

Here take photographs, or scan the pages you want to use as before, but inorder to force the slideshow tool to play the pages in order, rename them. I often use the alphabet, eg page 1 is "a.jpg," 2 is "b.jpg," or use 3 digit numbers beginning with for example 001.jpg, 002.jpg and so on. Place all the images in one folder on your PC or Laptop, as this will also speed up loading on screen.

When you are ready to use the story, open the folder with your images in and right click on "a.jpg," or "001.jpg," and then select open with from the menu, followed by Windows picture and Fax viewer. When the software opens, press the slideshow icon. With slideshow open you can control the turning of pages with the play and pause button. This could also be used in literacy hour on the SmartBoard, by using pens to annotate texts, and then using the screen capture tools to transfer your annotated pages to a smartbook for later use.

Starting from the Student..thinking aloud

I was asked the other day to comment by my tutor, on a research digest article, regarding Interactive Whiteboards, by the NCETM (The National Centre for Excellence in Teaching Mathematics) This document is really interesting not for what it has to say about the use of technologies in Mathematics lessons, but in the assumptions it makes regarding teacher perceptions of the role of talk as a tool in ICT mediated learning contexts. This was of particular interest to me since this has formed an integral part of the literature review for my dissertation, which uses digital video to explore aspects of what learning looks like in my ICT mediated mathematics lessons. It has helped me reframe the perspective of my discussions, and provide context and relevance to some of the issues I had, previously raised about an overly generalised outsider perspective on how ICTs are used to mediate learning.

What seems at the moment more relevant to me, in terms of understanding what learning might look like, is in the material that surrounds the IWB review presented, and what it has has to say about the use talk, in supporting, framing, mediating and developing mathematical contexts. The "transformative potential" of the IWB lies not in the technology, but how we as teachers understand it as mediating tool in learning situations, We seem to shy away from the idea that IWBs are presentation tools, becoming defensive about our perceptions of it, but essentially this is what they were designed for. In the classroom however their transformative potential lies in how we use them as a vehicle to bring together a host dynamic tools within wider structured and tool mediated collaborative or communal work. How as "designers for learning" teachers draw on the affordances of software environments and other tools to engage their learning communities, for example through guided investigation and problem solving approaches within shared and communal tasks.

The current web 2.0 revolution is evolving through social networks, where learning together and communal knowledgebuilding is a key and accepted element. I learn much by visiting other blogs, wondering how certain things were achieved, experimenting and joining in sharing ideas, and seeking support from a diverse network. In the classroom I know this occurs also, but the key to enabling this is how we use the space to share in the knowledge and experience developed by one member of the community, building on this through the experiences we bring for the benefit of everyone, seeing each contribution or idea as part of a larger whole. Using the ideas embedded here, and stemming from engagement with the work of Neil Mercer, I have begun to use his view of talk, as a process of "thinking together," to look at how or whether the IWB and other mediating tools used supported the creation of common knowledge and ideas in my classroom, and the strategies I used that enable or disable this process to take place. Anyway to end on a lighter note, thinking about starting from the student I found this today thanks to Doug Dickinson

A group of young children were sitting in a circle with their teacher ...
...she was going around in turn asking them all questions.

"Davey, what sound does a cow make?" Davey replied, "It goes 'moo'."

"Alice, what sound does a cat make?"Alice said, "It goes 'meow'."

"Jamie, what sound does a lamb make?"Jamie said, "It goes 'baaa'."

"Jennifer, what sound does a mouse make?"Jennifer paused, and said, "Uhh... it goes... 'click'!"

Submitted by Dave, Bolder, Co to My Kid Sister's Sayings .

I have to say this really appealed to me, as a similar incident occurred when a colleague from Chile was drawing with his son. They had made an elephant, and were colouring it in. My colleague asked if he could paint the elephant grey, and his son reached over dipped his finger in the paint and pressed on the elephants body. Unfortunately unlike the PC based "paint" this did not result in a flood fill, which is what his little boy had expected. So talk, what we say and how we interpret it does have a bearing on the common meanings we make!

Start The Day or End the Week with a Talking Point

IWBs take up a considerable amount of wall space, so how about turning yours into a dynamic display board during downtimes, or at the start and end of the day?

Windows XP and Vista come with a collection of preinstalled desk top themes, that can be customised and changed, as well as including in their desk top properties tool kit the "my pictures slideshow" or "photo" screensaver options.

In addition both also include their own slide show tool, which in combination with IWBs and projectors afford the opportunity in combination with selected images from the internet to provide a talking point or wow factor at the start of the day.

A while back I installed the National Geographic POD (Photo of the Day) and NASA Image of the day gadgets to iGoogle, which are updated daily with some really amazing images, and occasionally I am inspired to download them to use as wallpaper on my laptop, or for use in slideshows. Many of the images I have downloaded to support the making of Whiteboard notebooks, have also found their way either onto the desktop of my laptop, or into photo slideshows. I also take a lot of photographs while on school visits or to log our activities in class.

We have found digital photographs and the Windows Slideshow player, to be really useful in helping students recall their previous work or supporting discussion, and thinking together, around visits and events, and as a vehicle for younger students to share their previous days work with parents and carers on arrival in school.

With older students, regularly changing desktop wallpaper, to include theme based images or to celebrate and model expectations and quality outcome, have also been helpful in promoting the value I place on certain types of activity and behaviour, as well as promoting discussion at the start of the day. A couple of favourites among the students were a full windows theme I downloaded from the web at christmas, based on Dr Seuss' "How the Grinch Stole Christmas," with sound effects and voiceovers from the movie that played when frequently performed tasks were carried out, and the amazing Simpson's Matrix and Bart Vader wallpapers.

Next term I return to full time class based teaching, and am interested in exploring the extension of a reading club idea begun with my current class and their partner class last year to extend home school partnerships. Using photographs of the week as a slideshow would be an interesting talking point to perhaps help students and their parents/carers engage in learning diary and review work as part of this on a Friday morning, with an open classroom start to the day, that will support and lead to pairs of students completing the class or year group Blog later in the day.

Pivot Stick Figure Animator

Waiting for lunch before half term, I and a group of year 1 students sought a moment or two's entertainment. The thought of thirtyish 6 year olds all trying to wash their hands at the same time was to say the least disconcerting, they were not in the mood for a story, so we made our own entertainment taking turns, with the Interactive Whiteboard, making small adjustments to an on screen stick figure, inserting an additional frame, choosing a friend who was being a quality audiences before washing our hands for lunch, and then returning to watch our friends. By the time we had finished we had had a wild time creating a figure who when the play buton was pressed seemed to dance and hurl himself about the screen wildly. If you have not heard of or played with Pivot Stickfigure Animator it is freeware, really good fun, and can be downloaded from here. You are not limited to black and white, indeed you can import backgrounds, select from a number of prepared pivot figures, and change their colours. Frame speeds can be slowed down and speeded up. Your very own onscreen flick book. On the recommendation of an LA Technician, we downloaded and installed this on all of our machines in school. The gif above was the year one creation. This on the other hand is a little something I threw together myself...

Spot The Inference: Using Video and Multimedia Authoring In the Literacy Hour

I haven't embedded video to my Blog, before, so this is a bit of an adventure for me. I thought I'd give it a go with this particular entry to give a context to the sessions I have been developing, using digital writing frames with two different year groups in school this term. I also wanted to share how I have used the same digital text, to introduce and extend children's skills using mutimedia authoring tools, while supporting writing outcomes. The video I have been using, and which is embedded below, is the computer generated, animated short "Bert," created by Moonsung Lee. 

My Sequence For Reading This Video

As I have spoken about in previous posts, I have been using video data to inform my classroom research project, and this has in turn begun to inform the way I use Video snippets and short films with my students as literate objects. Video as a text presents meaning in several modes, and sessions involving video require us to engage with these as we do others. With written texts we engage with them on a word, sentence and text level, with a video I tend to view them on a visual, aural and whole text level. To begin the unit we spent time "watching" the film in different ways:

I minimised the movie, and we listened to the soundtrack. Bert is great as it has no dialogue, there are lots of sound effects to listen for, and a jaunty score which changes to reflect mood. Every now and again I would stop the film, and encourage the students to discuss firstly in pairs and then as a class what could be heard and to infer what they thought was happening from the clues they could hear.

I muted the sound, and we watched the movie as a series of moving pictures, pausing the film at approximately the same points as before, cueing the children to recall the sounds they had heard in a particular section, and focussing on the actions, the facial and physical gestures of the characters. Using these to devleop inferences about feeling, and to predict actions that might happen next.

We watched the movie with sound and pictures together, and spent some time rehearsing and retelling the story orally before beginning our own versions of the story.Preparing To Write.I have a copy of Bert in MPEG format, and have used this previously to support narrative writing and recount in the literacy hour. For previous table top units of work, I created and used Smart Notebooks with drag and drop storyboards, to support sequencing and oral storytelling.

To create the Notebooks Quick Time Pro was used, to capture significant scenes from the film and to save these as image files. These images were inserted within the Notebooks, to support sequencing and discussion of how the story unfolded. Images of characters, featuring facial expressions and gestures, were also used as prompts to support discussions about feelings or why characters might be behaving as they were. To some images I added thought bubbles and speech bubbles, and using "pair and share" or "talking twos" used small drywipe whiteboards to encourage discussion and suggestions about what the characters might be thinking or saying. Since the film is without dialogue use of images such as these out of sequence, also enables revisits to predictive tasks from previous sessions. What happened before this? What happened next? and facilitates the use of inferencial skills to consider why characters might be doing or saying what they are, drawing on the visual cues and the student's sense of events drawn from the aural and visual evidence within the film itself.

From this immersive work, I went on to develop student's own versions of the story through collaborative storyboarding and comic strip type activities. The Writing outcome initially being to orally retell, using images their versions of the story to the class. This immersive approach I found worked particularly well with struggling writers, who were able to use the visual narrative to support their independent work later.

The last time I used this movie was with a group of reluctant writers, and students who had significant literacy difficulties. Our unit's final outcome was based onscreen, and used images captured from the movie in MS PowerPoint, as writing prompts to support creation of a picture book for younger students. This term I have developed the unit to become two multimedia text units one at key stage 1 and the other in Key Stage 2.

Extending This To Develop Onscreen Multimedia Texts

This term I have drawn on the activities above to develop familiarity with the story, but have used the images captured previously to create digital writing frames.

In Year 2, I was asked to use a unit originally about graphics and text to support the student's understanding of features of recount writing. We have been using 2 simple's 2 create a story, and Bert as a context to support this. Before we began the onscreen writing task, the children helped me to choose 8 images from the movie and 2 create a writing frame, inserting the images before saving the file to the network. The children then worked in pairs, opening the shared frame and drafted their texts on screen, using the images as writing prompts. On completion of their writing the children were encouraged to think about what they had written and choose animation effects for their images that would help support the story they were trying to tell. Finally they were asked to add sound effects to the page that would add to the feelings of the characters and action within their story. I have published the first completed text to the school website.

In year 5 we are extending their experience of digital texts by writing a digital story book for younger children, using PowerPoint. The story is much longer, and as well as using images from the film, they are inserting action buttons to enable their readers to navigate the story on screen. We have turned off the onclick default setting for slide movement, which means that the strories they produce will function very much like a CD ROM story in slide show view. Some of the students have asked if they will be able to include sound effects, as the CD ROMS they have used often jingle when pages are turned, and also about the possibilities for having their story read to their audience, or hiding sounds or actions in the pictures. These types of questions I find particularly exciting as they reflect an awareness of the creative potentials of ICTs in the classroom, which we may overlook. They reflect student knowledge and experiences of digital technologies, experiences we tend not to utilise or draw on in our need to teach particular skills, or perhaps because they are beyond our personal experience. They also reflect a move I actively encourage, the "how do I get the computer to do this, rather than what can I do with the computer today" approach we often see in classrooms. We discussed how we might be able to achieve some of these, but time is an issue here, though I really would like them to have the opportunity to build on this interest and the excitement and sense of achievement I am sure it will generate. I had planned to insert page turn sound effects, and am considering how we might insert hyperlink effects through image hotspots. We also have the software environments available that would enable the students to create self made sound files to read the stories through action buttons (and on mouseover), in the form of Podium and Audacity, this however will mean the children needing to work in small groups to create these. Watch this space for further developments.

iBoard and Control

If anyone is looking for a fantastic resource set, for introducing on screen control to younger students, yr 1 and Reception, checkout the iboard resources from Electronic Blackboard. I used three games today with my year one group, from the iboard purple "control it" set, called Cheese sniffer, pollen hunter and fly catcher. As young and relatively inexperienced computer users, many of this group are still learning mouse control, and developing screen to hand coordination. These games enabled a multi pronged approach. They involved

• Mouse control practice
• Coordinating actions on screen with mouse movements
• Decision making about which directions to send the game characters in,
• Visual problem solving
• Turn Taking

Cheese sniffer is a two person game, involving input, to control either a grey or pink onscreen and furry mouse. The aim, for your mouse to gobble as many pieces of cheese as possible before your partner's does. It uses an onscreen arrow pad, featuring right, left, up and down to input movements. Children take it in turns to input up to 5 moves before their pad fades indicating the next players turn. Whoops, cheers and much giggling was a key feature of the children's engagement and enjoyment of the tasks. As an IWB resource, as we modelled the activity, it was soon highjacked by the children, giving instructions to their friends from the carpet space. Great fun.

Pollen Hunter, expands on cheese sniffer, with again only four directions, but this time is a maze type game for one player at a time. The aim is to control the flight of your bumble bee as it tries to collect pollen from on screen flowers, before he is caught by a hungry bird. What appealed to me about this was the speeds you could choose for the birds flight, described as "gentle," "slow," and "fast."

Fly Catcher is another one person maze type game, but this time with an 8 direction arrow pad. Here we pretend to be a spider sitting in his web. The aim to control the spider and to try to catch and eat as many flies as possible before they fly away.

For spatial language development, these are fantastic resources, for using to consolidate through paired, group or class discussion, terms such as forward, backwards, up, down, right and left, the foundation of any work we want to do using floor turtles for example, but also particularly useful in the early mathematics curriculum. They are also great for encouraging and consolidating the kinds of cooperative and turn taking activities we expect and want to develop when children work in pairs on the computer, such as the use of gesture and talk, rather than taking over the mouse. Great fun as both standalone tools on individual computers and on the electronic whiteboard. As an advocate of a tool box approach to ICT use in teaching and learning, these are just three of an amazing array of cross curricular materials available in the iboard toolkits, but which will definitely be embedded in our scheme of work as it is reviewed.

IWBs: Reflections on Visibility and Readability

This week I have been giving a great deal of thought to some upcoming staff meetings I will be leading about use of the Interactive Whiteboard and designing for learning. While watching Joe Dale's video, I was reminded of some of the issues around readability while using the Interactive Whiteboard with students. His use of Yellow backgrounds with Large Blue Fonts, reminded me of the suggested importance of high contrast, colour combinations and font choice when creating digital resources for use in the classrooom. as opposed to paper based tools. As we move from paper to screen it is easy to think that the process will be a direct transition, but designing for readability within digital environments can present new challenges.

Many my colleagues use Comic Sans as a preferred font, probably because it looks fun and child friendly, but their are other more practical reasons and benefits for using this and other sans serif fonts, eg arial and verdana, when creating digital material. Sans Serif fonts tend to be more rounded, widely spaced and lack the little flicks that Serif fonts such as Times New Roman have. Some usability studies and reference sources have suggested that in digital environments, these latter font types (serif fonts) can cause difficulties for some readers as they can can lead the eye while scanning. Since discovering this, I have made a concious decision in presentation tools such as websites, powerpoints and IWB Notebooks of my own design, to use sans serif fonts.

Colour choice between fonts and backgrounds, are also an important issue to consider when creating your own digital content. Red on green or green on red as an example wreaks havoc with my eyes, described as busy by colleagues I worked with on my degree course, text presented in this way was described as "dancing," "jumping" and "dizzying" by them as we tried to focus on the apparently moving text, if uncomfortable for us consider also what effect this would have on for example a student who exhibited red green colourblindness.

Several articles I have encountered about dyslexia, also suggest that the choice of font size and colour, background colour and column width may effect student ability to engage with the texts we present, not only on screen but also while publishing for paper based activities. On Screen high contrast texts are useful in overcoming some of these barriers, but it is suggested that black on white may not be the best medium, and that a slightly off white background, would be preferable to support onscreen work. For more information on this latter area visit the British Dyslexia Association's website, who offer a useful style guide, not only for on screen text development but also print materials. The site itself is also great for demonstrating some of the ICT based tools available for supporting dyslexic students, including text readers, and includes tools in its design for customising page views which are style sheet enabled. Yellow on Blue or blue on yellow are are often suggested for use in developing IWB resources, I have to say that I don't always use these, but in putting together files and resources I do think about how these texts might be received by my students, consider the fonts I am using and the colour combinations and how these might effect readability. I also try to establish with my students before we begin whether or not they can see clearly, and if neccesary (which is often an issue related to how whiteboards and projectors have been sited in a room) adjust light conditions on the screen through closing blinds, or turning off lights accordingly.

Fonts and backgrounds may not be the only factors to consider when creating resources for use with students. Consistency in style of presentation may also contribute to accessibility and readability issues. This is an important issue to consider for those of us who work with children as emergent readers, this will apply when reviewing and planning which websites we will use, how we will lay out a support sheet, and when it comes to presenting material for shared reading, I have become increasingly aware in planning and making resources of the need to maintain a consistency in style throughout particular documents, and not to mix fonts, colours etc too widely, unless the style change is neccesary for a particular purpose. Eg in making hide and reveals, or highlighting a particular learning outcome. What we need to be careful of however is limiting font use to a single standard house style, for everything we make and use, but being aware of the issues and how they might effect our presentation or reader engagement. It is not I feel useful or indeed desirable to limit the fonts we use, as we do not want children to believe that all written texts, use letters or sound pictures of the same size and shape, which is likely to introduce readability issues all of its own later.

In the smartboard toolbox, there is also a very useful tool for all students, called the magnifier. This tool acts like a magnifying glass and when opened, can be dragged over sections of a page, revealing in another window on screen a digitally enlarged version of what is inside the "lens." I have found this particularly useful in highlighting sections of text on internet pages, and enabling the students to see for example web site addresses, without the need to copy them to a notebook and enlarge them.

These are only a few of the issues, and relate to ideas I will be considering as a with colleagues as a starting point when considering notebook design for students. If you would like to explore usability and readability more widely then a few useful starting points might be.
The British Dyslexia Association
Jakob Nielsen's useit.com: usable information technology
and the US Department of Health and Human Services Usability Web Sites

I was also interested to read an article By Anthony Evans on Web Page Reading a few weeks ago, where he had begun to explore how readers engage with web based texts.

Drop Downs: MS Word as an Interactive Resource

In this entry I want to share the use of the "drop down menu" creation tool, which has enabled the often static texts I have created using MS Word to become more participative. Using this tool created and shared texts become firstly cloze and multiple choice based activities, but combined with the IWB and our imagination they can also take on dynamic properties.

Digging up a Hidden Treasure

Hidden to many of us within MS Word, the "drop down" tool is part of the "form tools" set. Going to view/toolbars and moving down the available list, and clicking forms opens a floating toolbar we can begin to use to add some degree of interactivity to the shared texts we create with and for our students.

Inserting a Drop Down Menu

Working with a prepared text, a "drop down menu" can be inserted from the toolbar where the cursor is placed in the document. Once inserted, double clicking on the form element opens a dialogue box. In the drop down item box type a word or phrase and press the add button, repeat this to create your list of choices. To the right of the dialogue box, the list of words or terms in your dropdown list will be appear. If you make a mistake, simply click on the error and click the remove button, to remove it from the list permanently, or correct it and press add to put it back. Closing the dialogue box returns you to the word document you are working in. At the moment you cannot use the drop down list as you are in the design view. On the Forms tool bar is a padlock, clicking this button, protects the sheet, but also reveals the drop down arrow. Clicking the arrow opens the list you created, and so access to the choices. Unlocking the sheet again means further drop downs can be added, or double clicking on existing objects, new words and phrases can be added to an existing list.

How Have I used Dropdowns?

• To create files using shared story ideas and text level elements developed during shared and guided writes.
• To provide shared activity files, that allow children to select from ideas, lists of words and phrases, developed over the period of a class shared write, to create their own versions of a class created story.
• To Facilitate class and paired discussion about word choice, sometimes innovating on files developed and published within the National Literacy Project. (eg Grammar for Wirting Tasks).
• To focus children on common spelling errors and structures, by giving lists of the different ways familiar words have been spelt within class activities, and requiring the children to identify the correct spelling from the list.
• To explore the correct use of homophones, providing sentences which require the children to discuss and choose from different forms of the word eg their/there/they're, or one of our particular problems is deciding when to use our and are.
• To play with sound pictures as a class during phonics sessions. eg using several dropdowns and large fonts to generate words as a class on the interactive whiteboard and playing games such as inviting children to change one letter or sound picture to change a rod into a place where peas grow, or a fish etc, this extended the common sound button activity to engage with the meanings of the words we were generating.

Like so many of these tools though, playing with them in the classroom context opens up many more doors and possibilities, as we engage with them imaginatively. Thanks goes to the Secondary MFL Team during the Interactive Project, based at the University of Bristol, who first introduced this technique to me. Would love to hear from anyone else who uses or finds this technique useful.

Treasures to Recycle

During recent work using Branching Databases; to help my students understand how to develop null questions, I made a Smart Notebook that included simple two branch trees, and collections of similar themed objects to be sorted. In between each tree page I added 2 others and from the clip art gallery inserted a treasure chest and a recycle bin, which became background images for each of these. The file can be downloaded by clicking this link.

We began by dragging objects from our theme sets to the top of the branch and practiced asking and testing questions which we thought would split the pairs. As the session progressed questions which were found to work were dragged from the tree page to the treasure chest, and those which didn't were dragged to the recycle bin. We went on to use the questions in the recycle bin, as discussion points to help identify, the features which made good null questions. The challenge for the group was how we might change these recycled questions to join the treasures, that we already had available for use in our sorting trees.

This strategy has since been used in guided and shared writing sessions. Working with partners to create "Super Sentences" and "Story Openers, students were encouraged to discuss, rehearse aloud and then draft texts on small whiteboards. These were then shared and recorded on a blank notebook page. Drawing on a recent INSET session, where we were encouraged to "steal" super sentences, for display as models for later, I used the treasure boxes and recycle bin instead as tools to collect and sort both the super and the not so super sentences. Rather than rejecting them, the not so supers, became a focus for task extension and discussion. What might be done to them, so that they might be promoted to become treasures? The children suggested improvements, involving reordering words, adding WOW words etc, and revised sentences were promoted to the treasure chest.

Models of quality work are great, but heavily dependent on our student's ability to see and understand what made them great in the first place. Working and reworking texts and text elements on screen together, I feel really helps to support emergent understanding, of what makes a good text. Through shared evaluation we can begin to understand what the song sheet we are being asked to sing from really means. It also illustrates in action the potential benefits of using ICTs within the writing process. In contrast to using ICT solely as a publishing tool, text input is not seen as an end in itself, something to get finished before we move onto the next thing, but rather as part of an ongoing process. A starting point to be revisited, edited, revised and improved as part of an ongoing series of activities, and where the relationship between reading and writing becomes an explicit element of the activities and discussions which evolve. Engaging children in the review and revision process encourages ownership of class texts, as shared works as children see their "bits" transformed with the support of others. Combining this type of activity with the wordprocessor, through for example the use of drop downs, values the shared resources present within the class as a community of writers.

Using Dropdowns, which I have written about in another entry, enable children to use individual and paired activity to engage further with these shared resources, considering personal or group preferences for word and phrase choice. Despite all working from the same text elements, being able to mix and match phrases, actively engages students in reading and rereading, and creates a diverse range of outcomes. Students are frequently surprised at how different, individually published texts are, even though they began from the same starting point. But what is the high point for me of such activities, is how even the most reluctant recorder is able to develop a text of which they can be proud, and are keen to celebrate their success through the sharing of their outcomes with others.