cognoscenti curve draft 1.1

cognoscenti curve draft 1.1, originally uploaded by john.davitt.

As promised at the BETT show in London 13th January 2007. Several more illustrations to follow, click on the picture to open the image in Flickr and make use of the interactive tools and podcast links

toolkit launch

global, originally uploaded by john.davitt.

Can you find notes on the first three tools in the picture? Click on the image to open it as an interactive picture in Flickr

Toolkit Update.. we name ten thinking tools for January 07

The first ten tools in the toolkit
For January 07 Release
Get your pocket guide at BETT

Riding the cognoscenti curve
The evidence Olympics
The Pointer sisters – telling stories and making things
Beyond the 10 pence curriculum?
Fostering the community within
The story of string and stone
Making your own zeitgeist harvest
Switching on the difference engine
Building the modality motorway
The S&N orchestra

The Evidence Olympics… another tool for the toolkit

Are you ready for the Evidence Olympics..where classroom tools and approaches get to test themselves on the running track of real life. Eliza asks John about how this might work in Schools.
John talks about some ideas from the Trust Yourself Toolkit on using action research as a tool to learn from the past and decide on future priorities…Exploring the role of students and teachers as researchers learning from the past for the future.

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Some notes for the Toolkit

kitnote, originally uploaded by john.davitt.

Hello All this is the beginning of a trial where I will be making annotated notes for the “Trust Yourself Toolkit” available on Flicr using the wonderful add note feature to add layers of meaning on original ideas. Any thoughts welcome on how to use and improve this approach

A front desk at a Swedish School

IMG_0863, originally uploaded by john.davitt.

The front desk at the school is a refectory bar ’so that all visitors see a human’ as they enter says the architect Kenneth Gärdestad. This pictures was taken at Kunskapsskolan Nyköping 5th October 2006. In Flickr it bears the TAG ideafromschool just imagine if everyone (and their brother) posted a pic of an idea (something which requires thought?) that they saw or did in school. Something good that is of course of maybe not? We can learn from bad ideas too perhaps. Click on picture to go to Flickr and explore the notes and annotations that I’ve added to the picture

A day for schools in advance of building any schools of the future

Here John talks with Eliza Mountford about a new day that he has developed for schools to explore the potential of new tools and decide on their own priorities in advance of a commitment to BSF spending.

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A numerate sheep in the west of Ireland

Teachers telling stories a new old approach

Storytelling The Myst Opportunity in many classrooms

Sometimes it’s just a simple step that is needed to change for the better the way in which we use technology in the classroom. When Tim Rylands, teacher at Chew Magna Primary decided to leave the standard position at the front of the class and sit down amongst his class, talking students through key movements in the Myst adventure game they were watching and exploring together he was breaking a mould. It was as if he was rediscovering an older and deeper form of dialogue as he sat down amongst the class with a wireless keyboard and mouse in the half-light and quietly asked the children to describe, predict and invent what might come next. In fact he was revealing an alternate way of working with the technology of projection in the classroom. This “digital Socratic” method also seems to lead to exam success particularly for the boys in the class who saw literacy come alive with such an approach. One hundred percent reach level four, compared to 67 percent in 2000.

It’s a lesson that many teachers are now taking to heart and with the use of a cordless keyboard and mouse alongside the classroom projector. The recently launched Logitech Revolution MX mouse for instance looks like the ideal tool for use around the class – it even allows scrolling and searching of the internet with a spin of the wheel taking you through up to 10,000 lines of text on screen.

At Little Heath Special School in Essex, ICT specialist David Ware uses a similar approach at the lunchtime video club, stopping the film occasionally asking students to predict what is coming next. At the club students also get a chance to look at video work prepared by other students as part of their studies. Making films about what they are learning has become a core part of the educational experience for students at the school. By pausing and reflecting on the work they have made the teachers are making sure that the opportunities to learn from this work are not wasted.

The moral of the story is that just because you have a projector (or even a whiteboard) it doesn’t mean you have to spend your life caught up in its beam ‘dancing in the light fantastic’. The recipe is clear for teachers, at times it pays to vary the approach. Why not get down and quirky and sit in the dark with the students and ask some powerful questions. Just put and interactive game or even a subject based CD ROM or web site on the computer and start talking it through.

Tim Rylands is currently on a year’s sabbatical, investigating further the use of games and collaborative learning opportunities and spreading the word on creative new approaches to ICT in the classroom. http://www.timrylands.com/

making our own movies

Control of the Moving Image comes to Schools
but what will we do with it? here I had a guess a few years back after seeing some wonderfully creative work from 11 and 12 year olds with famous mentors
The moving image has become the definitive medium, but it's still strangely elusive when we try to master our own versions via camcorder and screen. The end result is usually wobbly vision which takes too long to edit into something viewable so we give up and consign the school camera to the back of a cupboard.Desktop publishing has long since given us all the power to be printers (albeit with occasional attacks of fontitis) but manageable video editing has been a lot longer coming – 2001 could be the year.For schools the potential is enormous – the advent of fast broadband networks (see p18) means it's only a matter of time before schools run their own TV stations across the computer network – imagine tuning into the news coming live from room 12. Of course, there's nothing new in this: Sharnbrook Upper School in Bedford has been running TV around the school for 15 years. What is new is that digital video editing brings point'n'click ease to an area that was once complex and only for the cognoscenti. And now, once video is digitised it can be sent and shared via standard networks and the internet in just the same way as any other computer file.The latest version of Microsoft's Windows Millennium Edition (ME) operating system comes with digital editing software built in, so that you can copy, paste and edit any digital video clip.Apple has also invested heavily in this area and developed an interface called FireWire to allow computers to communicate with digital cameras and transfer video from camera to computer in real time. This has now become an industry standard, with most major camcorder manufacturers, including Canon and Sony, building a compatible port (which they call IEEE-1394) into their cameras.Want to know what could be this year's best digital media advice? – don't buy a camcorder unless it has a FireWire compatible DV out port.At an event last October Apple paired 16 students from four UK schools together with 16 Apple Masters. The masters were all media, entertainment and academic celebrities who have used Apple computers in their work. Their creative task was to film, edit and present a two-minute movie in two days using only a low-cost Canon MV30i digital camera and an iMac DV computer (it has the FireWire port fitted as standard).The results were stunning as stars like Ken Russell and Hugh Laurie cajoled, encouraged and listened to their young charges. I stood behind Ken Russell as he worked with Emma Downey from Liswerry high school in Wales, and watched as they discussed the use of diagonal shadow and effect on the first clips. The computers running iMovie2 software, which comes as standard on the Mac, allowed simple edits, effects and transitions to be introduced with ease.Watching the groups working I got a sense of what is possible now that neither camera nor computer get in the way of the creative process.Video-making and editing is a natural communication activity which children can excel at. It also provokes talk and creative argument and, most importantly, it can give students a chance to represent their own view rather than be consumed by those of others."In the past, non-academic children couldn't shine on film because it was too expensive. Now if you believe in yourself and have access to equipment costing less than £2,000, you can produce something good enough to show a top producer," says Floella Benjamin, the TV producer and presenter.I was seeing faces I remember from TV and voices from the airwaves and, yes, they were smaller in real life, but their creative commitment to passing on their skills was clear. Bob Geldof popped in to see the work nearing completion and John Hurt had a creative difference of opinion with Fergus Stuart, his young partner.Elsewhere, Joseph Fiennes worked with Sarah Clarke from Bedford high school. She was more familiar than he with the editing tools – girls at the school regularly use digital video to make their own adverts for completed products made in Design and Technology lessons.The creative experience of the 12-year-olds and mentors showed what is possible with support, equipment and a little creative constraint. Compact cameras, a low-cost computer and a tidal wave of creativity means that schools can now build their own digital video-editing suite for less than £2,000.

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