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.   

Asus Activities Session 1

Today we began our first project using our Asus Eees, and opened with a basic skills session. The primary aim of the day was to make sure we could log onto the wireless network, log in to the VLE, and to familiarise ourselves with some of the processes and tools we will use during the development of our Challenge.

Our literacy session today was desktop based and involved talking as readers, using printouts from onscreen resources. In our project this week we do not want the children simply copying and pasting material from the web, but want them to engage with the texts to pick out key ideas. The first thing that struck many of them was the technical vocabulary in a text about weather and climate. The children were encouraged to use highlighting to locate unfamiliar words and phrases that we could discuss as a group. These included words such as cyclone, tropical, monsoon, earthquake and drought. Some of these not only raised discussion around their meanings, but also lead to some interesting discussions around decoding. What was useful here was being able to highlight how in reading these we had encountered problems ourselves in understanding and taking meaning away, what would have happened if we had simply copied and pasted it? This lead to discussions around the seasons, what was meant by tropical and why some regions were called the tropics. We needed a globe to see this and a timeline to help us see when winter, summer and the monsoon seasons happened. The children were intrigued by there not seeming to be a spring or autumn, but rather three seasons from the text we had explored. We will be revisiting and building on this work, as the students begin to use the ideas we explore in literacy sessions this week in their presentation challenge.
Moving on in the next session we began developing and reintroducing some of the ICT skills they will need to use in the challenge. Here we worked through the log in process for using the Wireless network, booting the machines up and using the network tool to locate the connection we had made last week and practicing again the connection process.

Once we were online, the students navigated to the VLE and logged in. The next stage of the activity was to reply to an email that I had prepared for today's session and sent to each of them prior to the task. This contained a very simple message welcoming them to the challenge and asking them to reply with a greeting that would let me know that they had managed to get online. On reciept of this email I returned the compliment by forwarding each a link to the build yourself wild website introduced through Twitter by colleague Doug Dickinson a few weeks ago.

The expectation was that each pair of students would take turns to send their email, log out so their partner could then also reply to my email. In the process praciticing the log in and out process for the VLE. When they logged back in their reply would then be waiting for them.

As well as learning about life in India this term we have been working on a science topic on habitats. The children were encouraged while designing their wild self to think about where their beast would live and to select from the features available to them, those that would help them to survive in their chosen habitat. On completing their creature the children were asked to create a desktop wallpaper at the site and to save this to their computer. Both children in the pair carried out the task, and as a finale, were shown how to and required to upload the activity to our shared space.

This process may seem quite mundane. But if we are going to use this space effectively it is an essential prerequisite that skills such as this become second nature, and if the rest of this week's activities are to be successful the key skills worked on in this session will be central to the work the children do.

During the course of the day we learned how to and consolidated a number of skills and processes that included

• Booting up and shutting down our PC
• Navigating a new User Interface and folder structure
• Connecting to the wireless network
• Opening and familiarising ourselves with a new Browser
• Logging into and navigating our VLE
• Opening and replying to an email
• Downloading and saving an image from a web page to a local drive space
• Browsing to find and then uploading an image to a shared web space

Many of these skills and processes had been engaged with before, through blogging activities and through work in Honeycomb earlier in the year. Processes such as this are easily transferable across platforms, but every environment has its own particular quirks and ways of doing things. It is easy to assume that the students will just know how to do this as a result of previous experience. The students seemed to enjoy learning and revisiting these through this particular activity, they were keen to learn how to do the next thing as they built on each activity in stages. The tasks that follow this week will further build on and consolidate these tasks in other practical contexts.

Reflections: Collect, Store, Prepare and Share

During the half term holiday I was asked by a colleague to consider expanding on and to present some of the ideas surrounding a principle that underpins much of my work using ICT for communication with students, and so how I hope to develop use of mobile and web 2.0 tools within and beyond the classroom in school.

This post sets out to introduce the principle of "collect, store, prepare and share," a concept I encountered at HHL07 but adding a personal twist, using a number of tools and examples to model and introduce the essence of the process as it relates to my work in school. In the first example the context is personal use, and the tools though not readilly accessible for use in school, nonetheless I hope begin to illuminate the possibilities and the processes behind the principle. The second example is a more practical and down to earth example of how the principle underpins everday practice and the preparation of material to use with students, before finally beginning to develop how the principle fits in with the mobile and home school elearning project we are beginning to develop.

Using Twitter and Twitpics: Using Public Tools Personally to Collect, Store, Prepare and Share

The first part of my story uses my mobile phone and the social networking tools Twitter and Twitpic, and begins early on the first Monday of half term, as the sun began hauling itself lazily over North Somerset's lower Mendips in to another day. On this glorious morning I found myself here, with friends on our favourite 18 holes.


It was a beautiful morning as you can see from the photograph. I really wanted to share it with my friends, not later but now. Not only the beauty of the place but the effect of the light on the alien object to the centre left, that gave the eerie feel to the space. I could have texted my friends, attaching the image, but wouldn't it be great if I could put the image in one place to share it with them simultaneously, and where I could go back to later, to download it or use as a reference point in other things we were doing like this?

Captured on my Digital Camera I could share the image with friends when I got home, uploading it to a "share" space such as Flickr or Picassa. Since I had my Mobile phone with me, less bulky and cumbersome than my camera, and that I tend to carry for "just in case moments" I had the additional advantage of a direct network connection, and the possibility of using a space to store and share the moment directly and almost immediately.

Attaching the image to a message I sent it directly to Twitpic. From here friends following me on Twitter were sent a message and were able to visit it on the web, to see where I was, what I was up to, and were able to leave a comment about it or should they choose, to download it or link to it themselves. Twitpic also allows annotation and labels to be added to support the image, or titles and tags to be provided. In this process I "collected" the moment, "stored" it on my phone, "prepared" it for upload before "sharing" it. Several other images were also sent to share visually parts of the story of my morning, and these appeared chronologicaly in my Twitpic space. For esafety reasons we are unlikely currently to use a site such as this with primary age students, but the possibilities for a less public moderated space, specifically designed for use in mobile learning and combined with the widespread availablity of camera phones, or web access through 3g and wireless enabled devices and environments do open interesting possibilities for platforms such as this to be used on school visits and so on. In the the not so distant future our previsits could enable the design of virtual tours using mobile devices to structure activities around particular aspects of a place. Inspirational projects such as Mudlarking in Deptford, and the Create A Scape projects carried out through Futurelab have begun to explore and model the possibilities of such ideas and for putting the tools to do so in the hands of the learner. There are also a growing number of downloadable MP3 and phone based audio tours already, one of which over the summer I used to help me explore aspects of Bristol's Docks.

Going Local: Looking at the Process in the Everyday

The principle of "collect, store, prepare and share" relies on a multiple tool approach and underpins many of the processes I personally follow when developing and making multimedia resources to use in class, and the teaching and learning processes I plan to help students compile and make Multimodal Texts.

A Personal Professional context as a model for this might be useful and so I will use the example of preparing a whiteboard notebook. Before making a notebook I usually spend time compiling (collecting and storing) the elements I might need to design and make the tool. Links here are to both external websites and other posts on this blog that reference my use of them. This might include

• Searching for and downloading collections of images. (flickrstorm, Google etc)
• Using my digital camera or scanner to "acquire" or "collect" images that are more relevant to the students, or which they have collected themselves
• Downloading and converting useful video files from for example YouTube via www.zamzar.com, or directly from subscription services such as Espresso
  
• Inputting text, or copying, pasting and reworking relevant text from the web or CD Roms we have in school, or perhaps from services such as Espresso.
  
• Locating useful websites to support our work, and bookmarking or saving their location (tumblr via Kwout or del.icio.us) or alternatively by copying and pasting to word, then saving as a Web Page.
  

This would represent the collect and store part of the process, but as you can see from the twitpics example as a process the latter elements of this are fairly fluid and placing these materials in a shared network space at school will also allow for use by colleagues and students on later tasks, through adaptation.

The prepare part of the process is about how we use these resources to meet our decided purpose, it might involve

• Importing them to relevant pages in a notebook,
• Using the slide or page sorter to reorganise and structure the file to reflect the path we want to follow within the sessions planned
• Further work on editing the text we copied and compiling examples from more than one source
• Cropping and masking images to include only what we want
• Reviewing video and considering how, as well as when we will use it with the notebook
• Developing hide and reveal or other tasks that include the tools we have brought together in the notebook to meet our intentions.

The prepare part of the process is about adaptation, using materials we have found elsewhere and from multiple sources to create something new, personal or professional, something that meets our needs and designing for learning.

The share event will happen when we use it for the first time in class, or so proud of what we have done we show it to a colleague, who also wants to use the material and we involve ourselves in a dialogue about how the tool will be used, or might further be adapted.

What I find useful in looking at the process in this way is how easily I begin to see that many of the resources and tools I collected, prepared and stored, can be further adapted for sharing with and use by the students as extensions of the work we are involved in through the whiteboard as a shared space. Potentially framing ICT based multimodal tasks for students in local applications and tools or online environments. Since I already have the "raw material" I can develop and make tools to support table top tasks, to mediate talk for writing or ast as writing frames. Once I have undergone the "collect and store" process, the materials I have can be made available on the school's local network through a "shared space," or could be uploaded to an online share space such as Honeycomb, Think.com or our VLE, and from here the students can select, work with and use the material themselves to create and design new content. My own web searches will also give me some indication of the types of things that are returned from Internet searches, and help me structure, advise or support the children in the types of queries we might use to return the type of material we are looking for, or prepare me in advance to deal with the unexpected.

If my intention is to create a text type, based on particular research focus rather than the self search process, then the bookmarks I collected can also be shared to provide and frame the work I want my students to engage with and sites I know will help in the process.

This process I feel is a significant shift from what can be seen as teaching with ICT and technologically determined views that often see children plugged into the computer, practicing skills often out of context. It provides potential for an adaptable scaffolded approach, that challenges perceptions using ICTs to "hide behind." Collect, Store, prepare and share sees the user, the teacher in this first instance taking an active part in engaging with and modelling a process that uses a range of tools to support not only their own professional learning but also that sees the user as an active participant in the design and redesign of content, rather than a passive recipient looking for material that exists and just about meets our aims. It presents a model and expectation for our students that they too should learn to use a range of tools to engage with content available.

So why did I begin by wittering about Twitter? Why talk about local networks and file sharing? What has using a local application got to do with online or e learning platforms? The "collect, store, prepare and share," process outlined in various ways above are key features of the principles underpinning my evolving views and many I have read around e and mobile learning, and are central to projects I am currently juggling with, have set out to develop within school and wondering about how to illustrate concretely to colleagues.

The key tool in developing our projects will be the Asus EE "webbooks" we have invested in, not to work as standalone platforms, but to function as "collect, store, prepare and share" tools. The principle which underpins our their role does not see them as the sole devices that students will use in supporting learning with ICT, but as part of a wider tool set. As a platform it is envisaged, students will learn to use their Asus, as a local applications host in the first instance, a place to "collect and prepare" material to work on other projects, as a tool they can use in school and away to compile, edit and "collect" the resources and material they will need either for inclass use or to support the development of collaborative projects with peers. The process as envisaged will require web access and a networked view of learning as a process. The wireless enabled devices should allow us to use online tools such as our VLE, and plugin spaces we are currently working with such as Honeycomb and Think.com to enable students to prepare and share together the work that they are doing. The local model provided above is an illustration of how we as teachers can begin to engage with the principles and modelling process, and how the model works with tools we are already familiar. However we need to look beyond the technology, to see it as an enabler for changes in pedagogical perspective, a social as well as technological tool. The use of Twitter and Twitpics earlier is intended as an illustration of the potential immediacy and accessibility of online mediating and social sharing tools, how accessible and available we can make resources even in the remotest place. While the webbook and VLE represent a point somewhere in between, where we can begin work with colleagues and students alike in testing and exploring the possibilities and challenges to pedagogy these tools represent, while working from the familiar. I would value any thoughts and contributions readers might have around this that would help develop and extend thinking. The principles are intended from my point of view to help guide through the longer term aims and expansion of our project. They have implications for CPD, which have been raised and highlighted by colleagues. It is this alongside comments from colleague Doug Dickinson who suggested I should try to outline what I meant by the process that has prompted this post. I have referred to the principle in several previous posts, and the ideas behind it he suggested might be be helpful to share with other colleagues. I hope that this proves useful in terms of what he suggested, it has certainly helped me to begin to pull together some of my thoughts and tie together a number of previous posts.

Stelarium: Open Source Planetarium

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Stellarium

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Found this in my feeds this week from Portable Apps, I have downloaded it for a play later, and was really intrigued by the visuals on the home site. Available as a portableapp this open source application, may hold some intriguing possibilities for home school learning, and anyone running windows xp on portable platforms. I am avidly watching the space labelled Linux at portable apps to see firstly what applications become available, and then whether or not they can be run on the Asus ee, from flash drive through the Linux distribution installed. Still a newbie to this.

Summertime Has Come

Well the summer break is here, we had our introductory workshop and the new year 6 students have scurried home excitedly with our new 1:1 machines, to play and explore. I have set a diary project, and pages have been uploaded to think.com to support this, with accompanying bulletin boards, for suggested ideas and to share communaly and direct each other to the things we have uploaded. I guess all I can do now is sit back and wait or watch with baited breath to see how the projects themselves emerge and develop.

On a personal front. I have to complete and submit my dissertation, but amid this I have a couple of additional missions. I want to make space to play with greenfoot, and also explore mobile web access that students can tap into in the wider city, linking this to the project I have set for them, while I explore a spot of moblogging, something I got excited about while at HHL07. This hopefully will be easy enough to fit in among other things. I am pondering a change broadband provider and considering whether to supplement this with a mobile broadband account, or whether choosing a provider that offers wireless time might be a better option. I would value any thoughts on this. In the mean time a spot of lunch and a potter in the garden seems appealing right now.

Joining the Asus Club

I have spent the last couple of weeks playing with my own Asus Ee, and preparing for this evening. I have just arrived home enthused from the launch event with parents of our current Y5 Students, where we introduced our new e learning scheme, based on the platform as a "collect, store, prepare and share" device.

I am now looking forward to introducing the devices formally to the students themselves later this week, sharing guidelines for their use and maybe setting some short summer playtime projects for them. We use think.com as a collaborative learning space, and am wondering if perhaps they could use this as a temporary blog type space, though I am also tempted by using the web cam to keep a short video diary or the use of the sound recorder to capture audio soundbites that could form the basis of a podcast on return to school, perhaps around places they have visited or things they have done supported by web images.

The project overall is an exciting development. Perhaps what I am most excited about is the prospect of putting into the hands our students a standardised toolbox and the prospect through 1:1 access of opening opportunities for all students to access the online tools and resources we began to use last year. It will also be interesting to work with my year 6 colleagues, to see how having access to 1:1 tools impacts on subject design initiatives and student engagement. Hopefully there will be much to share as the project develops and emerges over the coming year.

Storyphones: Language for Learning

With the increased availability of cheaper MP3 players, I have pondered buying a few to use with portable speakers. The main problem is that this would further add to the cacophony that already exists in my talk driven classroom, or require children to take turns with headphones. I could not really see a way of enabling multiple access to the device without a portable speaker or docking option. Then today this was published on Ictopus, about a new device the Storyphone. What a cool idea, essentially a wireless mp3 based listening centre.

I love the effect that podcasting and audio recording has had on my student's perception of reading and its purpose, and have wondered for a while about how we could use this to our advantage, in having students prepare stories for others around school. Either performing from existing texts or preparing their own for sharing through the network. The recording part would be fairly straightforward but individual or group access as said above to the completed texts more of a challenge, requiring either computers to be tied up or access to individual mp3 players. I realy like the idea of the storyphone on soooooooo many levels! Or something similar, and would encourage the company to ask the question "Why stop with selling this idea as a foundation stage tool?" I would love to have something similar available to use more widely with students of all ages across my school, how about you?

Bristol Past and Present

Have just discovered this fabulous web based resource " The Changing Face of Bristol England and It's People."

This image from the site and acredited to Paul Townsend, is part of a vast collection of images both on the site and in the Site's Google Earth Geotagged Set. However watch carefully because there is more to it than meets the eye, once on the site follow the Bristol Then and Now link for further examples.

I like the idea of Geotagging Historical images, it gives them a presence and point of reference in the here and now. Perhaps even more powerful for me in this site though is the use of image swapping through animation, allowing direct visual comparison between street scenes in the past and images captured at the same location more recently.

I have pondered a number of times on how cool it would be, to enable use of old photographs with students in this way, using digital cameras to frame shots as they engaged in a kind of historical orienteering activity, collecting images on trails perhaps before using other digital tools to morph between one their modern image and the old photo they had been given as a reference point.

In our modern cityscapes, with potential access to mobile technologies and GPS this strikes me as an increasingly practical possibility. Paul's site provides some interesting models to use and share when I next set out to explore this with colleagues.

It also represents a fantastic visual history resource for the people of Bristol. Thank you.

Historyman's geotagged collection of Memories of Bristol, can be found on Panoramio.

Adendum Pictorial tours of the city from About Bristol

Making a Portable Apps Tool Box

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

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

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

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

Accessibility Tools

• On-Screen Keyboard Portable - on-screen keyboard
  

Graphics & Pictures

• GIMP Portable - Photo and Image Editor

Internet

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

Music & Video

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

Office

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

Utilities

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

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

The Elonex One

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

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

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

Me and My Mobile 2: Task List and Word for mobile

This is great, been looking forward to it all week, and at last sitting toasty on the retimed 8.15 train for Paddington, am finalising tasks for my visit to BETT today. Targets

• To leave with as little paper as possible,
• Pick up a few trial software samples to try out at home and with the students.
• Review some of the new control titles especially "2Simple control nxt" and "Go-Robo," though a chance to look at flow go and Flowol 3 at first hand would also be good.
• Get a demo of "honeycomb," from Softease, and take a look at "Podium 2" before the upgrade arrives
• Pick up a copy of Comic Life.
• Take another look at the Asus PC, a platform I first saw at the hhl conference, but following feeds this week seems to getting a lot of interested press from fellow bloggers.
• Touch Base with Anthony Evans, am really looking forward to this as we have chatted through Google, and Twitter for a ages now, but really looking forward to meeting him face to face.

This year I am traveling light. a packed lunch, PDA, digital camera, mp3 player, Guardian Link E Supplement, and show badge. Preparing for the visit over the last couple of days, I copied acrobat floormaps to my PDA, and created a to do list, of personal must sees and dos based on recent press and industry releases, adding stand numbers to help find my way round. Now with Latte in hand, and the flooded landscape of the South West England flowing past the window (literally it seems, after last night's heavy rains, the River Avon now occupies fields that usually meet the railway) am Reading the guardian link e supplement, and adding to the already full day I have planned. Fortunately some of these coincide with stands I intended to visit anyway such 2Simple's proposed online tool set.

Its been a while since I used one finger typing, a process currently akin to input through the PDA touch screen. So far it has been really slow going writing this entry but hopefully as I become more familiar with the keyboard this will speed up. Mobile Word being compatible with the PC version means I can draft thoughts today, and then do revisions and editing on screen when I get home before uploading to my blog later. In addition I want to see just how portable and flexible the tool can be, by perhaps using some of the ideas raised at the Handheld Learning Conference around, "collect, store and share," capturing images as well as my ramblings in one place, to transfer and share later in another format, and so fits with my multi tool approach to teaching and learning with ICT.
Today's posts are part of a personal experiment and will form part of a series of me and my mobile posts, that I discussed previously.

In addition to the wireless keyboard, I really must look into the process of adding mobile Internet access to the tool. Reading this as I write, it seems odd that current reflections will actually be read after the fact, asynchronously and back dated. Visiting HHL and experiencing the liberating feeling of mobile access and particularly "moblogging," it seems to me that the real power of this process for students, combined with web 2.0 tools would come from publishing on the move, and the sequence of events in diary type entries if seen live as they were written. Anyway thats something for later, but is already something that has got me thinking.

Me and My Mobile 1: New Year's Resolutions

Been off Blog for a few weeks, feet up and unwinding. While browsing my feeds I came across a link to David Salaguinto's online comic "Office Offline," where I found this comic strip among many that might just suit me as a starting point, for something I have been meaning to get stuck into for quite some time.

My resolution, is easily broken, so that probably makes it a good one, and is to use my recently acquired PDA to help organise my time better. In my classroom I feel organised and in control most of the time. At home too things are usually OK, but creating a balance between the things I want to do and those things I need to do for work I often find problematic. I used to be so good at using a diary, but this has slipped ion recent times and is something I really have to do something about. Another issue is that despite being digitally driven, I still seem to have to carry around an inordinate amount of paper, that gets put down, buried or is never where I want it when I want it.

To some this entry may seem obvious, but I am a relative mobile newbie, so I hope visitors will bear with me. So far what I am liking about this process, and linked to the strip, is that as an MS Outlook user, I have tended to store contact details, my calendar and email here. As a Windows Mobile based platform the PDA I am using, allows me to synchronise it with Outlook so any additions or changes made on my PDA or PC are shared between the two devices, when I dock it to recharge, I therefore get reminders at home and at school about what is coming up, when I log on, and have access to all my contacts, or recently downloaded emails to view or follow up on when I find time.

Last weekend I visited BETT, and began to play with some ideas from previous posts around, "collect, store and share," concepts that seem key to the affordances that mobiles potentially offer to teaching and learning. For me anyway it was a liberating experience to sit on the train and in a coffee shop, using Mobile Word to draft and jot ideas for posts, without the set up ritual that would have been necessary, in lugging about and booting up my laptop. The immediacy of turning on the machine was lovely, even if for the moment anyway it has meant a return to stylus driven single finger input. A later additional and pleasant surprise from this was discovering that table based planning frameworks used in school were compatible with Mobile Word, and that I was able to open, read and edit these on the machine. Why this wouldn't be I suppose is the question I should now be asking myself, perhaps its because the interface didn't present a table tool. Anyway being able to have my "plans in my pocket" to read through and review this week has been great, with the bonus of being able to revise, edit or annotate these in response to ongoing circumstances. Does this excitement, mean I have actually found a new year's resolution that I can stick to?

Handheld Learning Reflections from a Distance: Generic tools, and the idea of "collect, store and share"

My visit to the HHL07 was not entirely accidental, as we look to develop a handheld or mobile learning project within school. As I said previously I am a novice in this area, so please be gentle as I get my head round my thoughts. One of my concerns is how these solutions potentially fit with the infrastructure already in place, but also establishing a firm pedagogical basis and vision for the use of these tools in practice.

Visiting the practitioners village and Solution Provider's exhibition at the conference, I was interested not only in the hardware but also software applications currently being used in the deployment of kit in projects that were underway and development. Many of the projects were using "pocket PCs," but despite running Windows Mobile as an operating system, and its prebundled version of office for mobile, it seemed that there were a number of limitations within the software, that prevented students gaining the functionality required by their teachers. Many of the projects had therefore purchased and installed 3 pieces of generic software to overcome this.

PlanMaker (a spreadsheet)
TextMaker (a word processor)
Pocket Slides (similar to powerpoint)

The Wildkey environment also proved to be exciting, more than just a dichotomous key or the branching data base we might develop in the online classroom, the tool draws upon the affordances of handheld tools to enable students to get out in the field, using the tool first hand for identification of organisms. The use of addins however seem to offer much more in terms of the ability to create keys, support the design of interactive trails and collect additional data, linked to mapping and real places in order to engage students not only in the use of content but adaptation to develop their own, check it out for yourself.

I liked the view that these pieces of software seemed to bring within the context of mobile use, that fit closely with my own view of ICTs as tools. The idea of "collect, store and share," presented by their use in the PDA and smartphone environments particularly appealed to me as underpining a pedagogical perspective on their use. The notion that generic (and some specialist tools) can be used alongside preinstalled and available resources, such as audio and video recording software, the camera and web browser to collect data in various forms, audio, video, photographic, numerical and textual, before exploiting the wireless capabilities in order to bring them together for sharing and use as a group in other contexts I find particularly appealing. They lend themselves to the "read write" world, I am so fond of, a way of preestablishing the semiotic resource collections needed to develop multimodal work, not just in one subject but across the curriculum. Devices with the potential to enable students to develop and create their own material with authorship and control based on their own engagement with the world around them. The mobile platform, when not seen as a standalone tool or solution but part of a wider ICT toolkit, seems to help broaden our view of ICTs as pedagogical resources. It is the social nature of learning using these tools that I find so attractive, the new spatial qualities and dimensions that they bring to teaching and learning contexts, and the mediating role they have potential to play. I have enjoyed seeing how think.com for example supports interaction between students, but combining this with tools that allow access for all from home, device synching and backup, through portals designed specifically to integrate mobile devices for education such as Red Halo. the possibilites seem limited only by our creativity.

This however is the crux of the issue for me. It is easy to get excited by the possibilities while forgetting the realities are often very different, and so getting my feet firmly on the ground, we need to be careful not to oversimplify things or let others do so. Personally I still have have a long way to go, and lots of food for thought, to chew over and digest. As a school still have lots to consider. Infrastructure in school is one issue, but what about external infrastructure and access, how will students access the web from home, is our neighbourhood a wireless zone, or will students be dependent on 3g access? How will we enable this, either faciltate wireless access or the funding of phone access? What about CPD? Putting the C in ICT collaborating to consolidate a shared vision for ICT development seems to be even more necesary than it was before if we are to move on successfuly with this project, and enable conversations about the wider implications of such a project. E safety must be a key and guiding principle underpinning how we approach using and deploying these tools and how we engage with our students in order to ground and link policy and practice. This really is a complex net we still need to unpick. I am sure I will have more to write and think about as we work on this iteratively.

Handheld Learning 07: Reflections from a distance 1

As a complete mobile novice, I attended Handheld Learning 07 on the 11th and 12th October. I am still trying to get my head around much of the terminology that relate specifically to the hardware, but even in my naivity in this area of the market, adapting to the context didn't take that long. The questions we need to ask when it comes to mobile technologies in "the classroom" where ever that may be, it seems on reflection are little different to those we would or rather should ask when thinking about ICT solutions generally for schools.

In schools over the past 7 years enormous changes have occured in the ICT provision available for students and teachers to use. In our school we have gone through several incarnations, moving from the need to borrow and timetable the solitary BBC B when I began teaching in 1989, to the implementation of a 31 PC network with full Internet access within a National Superhigways initiative in 1995, and the need to rationalise, reorganise ,restructure, expand and develop this with the arrival of the NGFL in 2000. Implemention of infrastructure are not the end of a project but usually the beginning of the next phase, as technology moves and changes constantly. Since 2000 we have rolled out the laptops for teachers project, installed IWBs in every classroom, begun thinking about Learning Platform solutions, and to involve students in web 2.0 projects. As well as these we have gone through another cycle of Platform replacements, meaning we now have multiple platforms on our network and despite being PCs all running the same operating system and with identical software builds, we have a variation in technical specifications for hardware, each platform type requiring its own driver build. In the past as new software has been purchased and new tools have been bought, these were simply added to the original build. Prior to last September, due to inexperience our software management and maintenance regime, was built around a single platform build that was "applied" on every machine regardless of specification. This lead to frequent problems with stability and the robustness of the network. Driver conflicts or the absence of same leading to slow machine starts or failure. It is not essential to be a technical whizz to manage ICT in the primary school, but it does help I think if we have a little knowledge and experience of how the systems we are trying to maintain work, and taking a common sensical and methodical approach to how we design and implement solutions we want to posess and make available to our clients and users will help this. I have benefitted incredibly by having theBecta Primary FITS Framework scaffold my thinking. As a tool, it has helped me gain a much clearer picture of the Infrastructure and Technologies we have available in school,where they are and to use this to help make decisions about how we will use and direct our technical support, while supporting conversations about approaches we will take when discussing system changes with our SMT.

On Thursday RM shared the price tag of their ultra portable solution showing how important this still is to the school market, but experiences over the past 12 months, where I have worked with my technician to map, reorganise and restructure our network, leading to improved stability and robustness through establishment of individual builds for each platform, have shown that one of our main considerations before making decisions or discussing the purchase of platforms will be to consider the purposes the tools will serve, who will we use them, how, where, when and why? Perhaps even more fundemental to the planning process than this but intrinsically linked is what we will need to do inorder to make our existing infrastructure compliant and compatable with them. Software and Hardware providers are obviously keen to be in the forefront in order to exploit the new mobile/ultra portable market they consider to be just around the corner. In order to avoid some of past mistakes, I am keen that we explore widely the possible solutions available in relation to established pedagogical aims. Without doing so we could find ourself in the midst of another pilot or school based trial, rather than looking to the future and a potentially sustainable and developmental outcome.

From recent discussions and excitement about the $100 laptop, government drives for the implementation and development of learning platforms and an increasing use of the terms "anywhere, anytime learning" and "1:1 learning platform," it seems to be quite right that we and the suppliers should be excited about the potential affordances of the mobile, and the potential emergence of "mobigogy," Indeed if I was a supplier to "niche market education," I too would be firing up my sales and design team to get a slice of the action. However despite all my ravings about ICT as a tool box, there still comes a time when the technologies behind the creative potential need to be made transparent, and as a teacher and ICT subject leader, I am one of those people who will potentially need to engage with this kit. in being busy making progress, we should not see ourselves as "building aeroplanes in the sky," sometimes in order to move forward we need to step back, evaluate where we are now before jumping in. As an experienced ICT subject leader, I know how easily we can be attracted to particular products, either because of a national initiatives, or because we want to be ahead of the game, maybe even because we have seen the tool used in one situation, and because it looks so effortless there we assume can transfer the solution to integrate into our own setting. Decisions about purchasing hardware and software obviously have financial implications, cheap does not usually equate with best, though suitability to purpose may mean tools like the device designed by RM does equate with this. We need, like everyone else who is considering use of mobiles as part of a 1:1 or anytime anywhere solution to ensure that we are clear about what purpose we want the tools to serve, how and where we intend the tools to be used and that the final solution we provide meets the needs of our clients and users at the point of implementation.

My main interest in attending the conference was to ask questions, and help clarify ideas before as a school engaging with developing our own mobile project. The main message I took away from the conference was that felt I was following the right path in taking this methodical and cautious approach. Hopefully by BETT I will be looking at software and hardware more carefully in preparation for a project roll out. In the meantime, here are some of the tools on show. Each was really exciting in its own way.

The RM Asus MiniBook

Running Linux as its operating system, the RM Asus Minibook, is available in the price range of £169 and £199. This compact platform is described by RM as:

"... the perfect choice for pupils; a genuine "anywhere, anytime access" device... Smaller than an A5 pad and weighing less than 1kg, it combines the portability and quick-start of a PDA with the capabilities of a notebook. ... RM Asus miniBook is an exciting new category of device, set to fundamentally change ICT provision for pupils....

Everything a pupil requires for mobile computing

• 7" screen and weighing less than 1Kg, it's smaller and lighter than many textbooks.
• Robust solid-state hard drive provides fast boot-up / shut-down and preserves pupils' files.
• Integrated webcam, microphone and speakers for easy web video-conferencing.
• Integrated 802.11b/g wireless and optional 3G module provide great connectivity.
• Integrated card-reader and three USB 2.0 ports provide a simple way to add additional storage and easy connection for peripherals.
• Full-size VGA-out for connection to projectors or monitors.
• Intel Mobile Ultra Low Voltage (ULV) technology.
  

The Asus was also featured and discussed in an article in the Guardian's Technology column. and Blog

The Samsung Q1

This is Samsung's new Ultra Portable PC the Q1, so new the bubble wrap was hardly off when the team exhibited, the handful they had received in time for the event.







Described as a

" Revolutionary mobile device that combines the capabilities of a PDA, MP3 / PMP, and tablet PC" The Q1 Samsung say, "offers a powerful, versatile solution for all Students and Lecturers alike. Whether you are a student or a lecturer working from the classroom or library, the Samsung Q1’s is so light and thin, you'll find storing and transporting it as easy as ABC. Whichever side of the desk you're on, you'll find Samsungs Q1 passes every test."

The Q1's specifications were something I felt a tad more at home with, sounding a lot closer to home than many of the other systems and tools. Running Windows XP for Tablet PC, with RAM a 7 inch TFT screen, a 40 gig hard drive and USB ports to add peripherals, while still being posessed of a wireless lan, bluetooth connectivity. At a price tag of around £540, I wouldn't mind one of these to play with myself.



The Nova5000 is a really interesting machine described as an appliance by its manufacturers. To see what this multipurpose toolbox has to offer it is probably easier to direct you to the online demo on their website.







Fujitsi Siemens EDA

I was lucky enough to win one of these babies in the prize draw at the end of the conference. It is a Fujitsu Siemens EDA, currently charging in its cradle it will be a little something to play with and help explore the software environments available and some of the things we can do or I saw demonstrated over the course of the conference. I am sure as time goes on it may lead to a few posts around me and my mobile.