Well it’s that time of year again, the early autumn has been crazy, but now the time has come that things are settling down, PGCE students are off to placement and I am able to start looking at and evaluating applications and software that could be used in teaching
I have blogged for a number of years, not as often as some I know, but more often than some I know, and I have always used Blogger. I like blogger; you can adjust it and modify it so that it suits your personality. It is reasonably instinctive, and before long you have a professional looking blog coming along. The only thing in my view that’s wrong is that it may not be wholly suitable if using them in education.
Yes you can make them private, so only those people that you have invited can read your blogs, in this day and age of Internet Web safety, this does tick some of the boxes - but not all. When viewing your blog, all you need do is click 'Next Blog' and a random blog is selected. Now whenever I have done this I have come screen to face with an innocent an interesting Blog, however, is this acceptable in education where you are answerable to Lea's, governors and parents for your internet habits.
There may be an answer - I have come across a service called "EduBlogs" - blogging specifically designed with education and children in mind. These Blogs are secure, EduBlog claims that their blogs are
• Safe and Reliable – Blogs can be completely private or open to the public. Since we only host education related content, Edublogs are allowed by most school filters where other blogging platforms are not
• Student Friendly – It is as simple to add to and update a blog as it is to send an email. Teachers can easily create and manage as many student blogs as needed.
Rich With Features – A few of the most popular features include discussion tools, video embedding, Facebook and Twitter integration, and calendars.
• Customizable – With over 100 different themes which allow for control of colours, images, and layout.
• Research-Based – Engage students in their learning and enhance instruction through collaboration, student portfolios, and endless classroom uses.
There are three types of EduBlog, the free version, the Pro Version ($3.33/ Month), and Campus, designed to platform whole schools / colleges/universities for their blogging needs and the cost for this last one ranges from $750 - $5500 / year.
I have looked at the blogs and must admit there are certain features that are appealing, for example those students registered against a teacher are immediately linked to the teachers blogs, there is a control via the school / teachers site and thus control over the web addressing system. It is entirely private, I viewed a number from the Edublog site, and cannot tell which version they use, but they are professional looking and interesting.
Perhaps it’s time to change
Thursday, 27 October 2011
Thursday, 11 November 2010
Quandary
Quandary is a free software from the same stable as Hot Potatoes. Quandary is an application for creating Web-based Action Mazes, A form of model or scenario; the user is presented with a situation, and a number of choices as to a course of action to deal with it. On choosing one of the options, the resulting situation is then presented, again with a set of options. Working through this branching tree is like negotiating a maze, hence the name "Action Maze".
Like Hot Potatoes, it is simple to use and the resulting maze can be a simple modelling program like having a set number of pounds and a choice of items to buy.
It is based around Decision Points where a series of actions are possible and depending upon which action is taken depends upon which next decision point you are taken to. It is saved in XHTML format, again like Hot Potatoes which means that the only thing you need to utilise the finished Maze is a web browser. the Maze could be run interactively on a whiteboard using the class as participants and the nice thing about that format is that it could be used to generate discussion at each of the decision points. This would be advantageous in checking overall understanding, especially of a difficult concept.
The other thing that you can do is link events to the action taken. these events are called transactions. For example if you were creating a quest and e.g. on the hunt for the mystical database, then when they get to the point of Handling Data - they must have already created a table. If they haven't created a table then they can go no further until they have gone back and created a table. Or if shopping and modelling you can link the transaction so that they reduce money when they buy certain Objects.
Visually you have a certain power to alter the appearance - colours, fonts - insert pictures directly from the web, and also locally. Also there is the ability to embed or insert sound and video.
Finally there is also the ability to add multi-choice options to your actions.
All in all I like it and I think it has many uses within education, from a series of case studies linked to form a concept, to quick games to reinforce learning.
FAB!!
Like Hot Potatoes, it is simple to use and the resulting maze can be a simple modelling program like having a set number of pounds and a choice of items to buy.
It is based around Decision Points where a series of actions are possible and depending upon which action is taken depends upon which next decision point you are taken to. It is saved in XHTML format, again like Hot Potatoes which means that the only thing you need to utilise the finished Maze is a web browser. the Maze could be run interactively on a whiteboard using the class as participants and the nice thing about that format is that it could be used to generate discussion at each of the decision points. This would be advantageous in checking overall understanding, especially of a difficult concept.
The other thing that you can do is link events to the action taken. these events are called transactions. For example if you were creating a quest and e.g. on the hunt for the mystical database, then when they get to the point of Handling Data - they must have already created a table. If they haven't created a table then they can go no further until they have gone back and created a table. Or if shopping and modelling you can link the transaction so that they reduce money when they buy certain Objects.
Visually you have a certain power to alter the appearance - colours, fonts - insert pictures directly from the web, and also locally. Also there is the ability to embed or insert sound and video.
Finally there is also the ability to add multi-choice options to your actions.
All in all I like it and I think it has many uses within education, from a series of case studies linked to form a concept, to quick games to reinforce learning.
FAB!!
Wednesday, 10 November 2010
Hot Potatoes
Hot Potatoes from 1/2 Baked Software is a neat little tool that can be used by teachers not matter what their ICT capability. The Hot Potatoes suite includes six applications, enabling you to create interactive multiple-choice, short-answer, jumbled-sentence, crossword, matching/ordering and gap-fill exercises for the World Wide Web. Hot Potatoes is freeware, and you may use it for any purpose or project you like. It is not open-source.I was originally developed by the University of Victoria and its HOME page offers links to tutorials, easy downloads and also links to resources.
One of the advantages of Hot Potatoes is that whilst your quizes can be exported for printing, they can also be converted into a text page which meeans that to run the acivites interactively all you need is a web browser, which all PC's have. The activity can either be run off an interactivw whiteboard with individuals coming and anxwering the key points on the board. or set up on a shared network drive and the students can access the quizes individually.
I feel the application is ideal for starters or plenaries where you may want to test understanding - but the real advantage is that it is easy to set up and seems to motivate students especially at Key Stage 3 / 4 although I have also had some success occasionally at KS5.
One of the advantages of Hot Potatoes is that whilst your quizes can be exported for printing, they can also be converted into a text page which meeans that to run the acivites interactively all you need is a web browser, which all PC's have. The activity can either be run off an interactivw whiteboard with individuals coming and anxwering the key points on the board. or set up on a shared network drive and the students can access the quizes individually.
I feel the application is ideal for starters or plenaries where you may want to test understanding - but the real advantage is that it is easy to set up and seems to motivate students especially at Key Stage 3 / 4 although I have also had some success occasionally at KS5.
Prezzi
I have been experimenting with 'Prezzi' for a while now and whilst I am the first to admit that when I first used it I was unsure whether it was little more than a flashy presentational tool more suited to the bright spark in the office wanting to impress his peers, I am becoming more and more enamoured.
Prezzi is an online presentational tool, which is free if using the basic package. this allows you to produce presentations online and to download the presentations and show offline - this gets around the problem of the internet being unavailable whether from network failures or as may be the case in many schools / colleges blocked access.The basic package also gives you 100mb storage. For a fee there are more facilities open to you such as having the 'Prezzi' watermark removed and also maiking the pesentations private along with offline cretions with the most expensive licence, and of course you get much more storage.
Recently Prezzi has caught on to it's appeal for education and is now allowing a student / teacher licence which allows you
Prezzi is an online presentational tool, which is free if using the basic package. this allows you to produce presentations online and to download the presentations and show offline - this gets around the problem of the internet being unavailable whether from network failures or as may be the case in many schools / colleges blocked access.The basic package also gives you 100mb storage. For a fee there are more facilities open to you such as having the 'Prezzi' watermark removed and also maiking the pesentations private along with offline cretions with the most expensive licence, and of course you get much more storage.
Recently Prezzi has caught on to it's appeal for education and is now allowing a student / teacher licence which allows you
- Online creation
- Offline presentation
- Removal of watermark
- and the ability to make your presentations private or shared with selected individuals.
This last pointer has made the system more appealling to me. One of the drawbacks that I had in using the tool was that it made it difficult to share my presentations with my students for later reflection. Whilst there is a search tool present, it is not cery exacting, and you cannot search for authors. Being able to make presentations private would mean that providing all the students had an account would mean that the relevant presentations could be saved with relevant individuals on particular courses.
Prezzi is quite easy to use once you have had a little practice, I am still a novice, but each presentation is becoming slicker, my students seem to enjoy them and there is a strong argument for ringing the changes from an interest and motivational point of view. One of the key advantages in my mind is that the very nature of the application limits the amount of text that you can put on the screen at any one time. This forces you to think about what you need to say and keeps you on track with the key points you wish to expand. it is easy to attach external documents you may wish to refer to, ans embedding items such as videos is far less fiddly than for example PowerPoint. the presentation is made over a single screen and transitions exist in the form of 'paths' which zoom in on key areas. I can see how care needs to be taken with these as if there are two many too quickly then it is possible that some people may suffer motion sickness.
As with many applications it has its drawbacks and the key thing is to think about how you are going to apply your presentation and if it is the right tool for the job!! Further as with all new application there is always a novelty factor and it will be interesting to see how the application is developed to counteract this.
Wednesday, 28 April 2010
Tuesday, 27 April 2010
Bits and Bobs
Anagramarma
I have been trawling through a pen drive given to me last year from RSC and JISC, such has been the year that I have only got around to it today!! And stumbled across an application called Anagramarama - which being a free download is right up my street basically it gives you &letters and a clock ticking and you have to make as many words as possible from three letters all the way to the 7 letter anagram. The time ticks by and solves the entire puzzle. From an ICT point of view and pedagogoy, the program is self generating so that evan an ICT novice can use it, one drawback is that you don't appear to have any control over the anagram itself, so it would be limited to reinforce subject specific vocabulary, however from a primary point of view it can be used to discuss vocabulary and discuss the words that the program founfd that the pupils did not. Also you could use it as a starter excercise with adult learners especially those with english as another language.
Another of the applications I have rec ently been playing with is Dspeech. DSpeech is a text-to-speech program with the option of saving the output as a WAV or MP3 file, which is great for creating audio books from text sources. It also supports dynamically changing the features of the voices eg. insert pauses, emphasize specific words, spell them out etc. using tags. You can get a portable freeware version. Now this is where it can become really useful because in todays age of costs you do not have to either buy it or download it to the computer you are using, all you have to do is download it to a flash/pen drive and you can use it from there. Now the drawbacks, the voice is very mechanical and robotic in sound, however you do have the optuin I believe, but you would need to check it out - to record using your own voice. so why not use Audacity, well with this program you have the text written in the program, so providing the project is saved it is possible to go back and amend/ edit the text and build a new WAV file. this would especially be useful for special needs, for those dyslexics, or those who have speech problems, or even just those who have inner speech problems. Work used in a word processor can be copied and pasted into the program and the program can read it back to the pupil. The only thing is the caliber of the voice. However, I am sure there will be developments here.
I have been trawling through a pen drive given to me last year from RSC and JISC, such has been the year that I have only got around to it today!! And stumbled across an application called Anagramarama - which being a free download is right up my street basically it gives you &letters and a clock ticking and you have to make as many words as possible from three letters all the way to the 7 letter anagram. The time ticks by and solves the entire puzzle. From an ICT point of view and pedagogoy, the program is self generating so that evan an ICT novice can use it, one drawback is that you don't appear to have any control over the anagram itself, so it would be limited to reinforce subject specific vocabulary, however from a primary point of view it can be used to discuss vocabulary and discuss the words that the program founfd that the pupils did not. Also you could use it as a starter excercise with adult learners especially those with english as another language.
Another of the applications I have rec ently been playing with is Dspeech. DSpeech is a text-to-speech program with the option of saving the output as a WAV or MP3 file, which is great for creating audio books from text sources. It also supports dynamically changing the features of the voices eg. insert pauses, emphasize specific words, spell them out etc. using tags. You can get a portable freeware version. Now this is where it can become really useful because in todays age of costs you do not have to either buy it or download it to the computer you are using, all you have to do is download it to a flash/pen drive and you can use it from there. Now the drawbacks, the voice is very mechanical and robotic in sound, however you do have the optuin I believe, but you would need to check it out - to record using your own voice. so why not use Audacity, well with this program you have the text written in the program, so providing the project is saved it is possible to go back and amend/ edit the text and build a new WAV file. this would especially be useful for special needs, for those dyslexics, or those who have speech problems, or even just those who have inner speech problems. Work used in a word processor can be copied and pasted into the program and the program can read it back to the pupil. The only thing is the caliber of the voice. However, I am sure there will be developments here.
Tuesday, 20 April 2010
Delicious
Delicious is a social bookmarking site (http://delicious.com/), it is free to register and keeps all your interesting websites under one bundle. what is more you can 'tag' them. This means that you can attach a tag or number of tags to the web address. What is the point of that, well you can catogorise your sites. from a teaching perspective this means you can share sites easily with students. Further because you can put a number of tags to the site it means you haven't got to share all your sites with all your students, but you can discriminate and share the appropriate sites to the appropriate people. My colleague Mandy has been using the site for a while now, and whilst you can set up a network and allow access to selected people - a bit like a wiki I suppose, the way she operates is that she encourages all her students to register the site - its free and it means they can start building a list of their subject websites. once registered you can view all the popular website, or just your own, you can also search tags. this means that if you get into tagging the sites, not only with a tag that will identify what the site is about but also with a tag specific to the course, e.g. its course id number then when searching the students can find the websites specific to their requirements.
It can take a little while to set up, especially if you have lists of websites, say in a word document, but when you are on the sites it is really easy and the tagging system is only a matter of a couple of extra clicks. You must be logged in to Delicous, however if not you will be prompted as you tag your site. I have added Delicious to my IE8 toolbar and if I come across a website that I think is of use, simply click the site and add the tag, the site is then added to your list!! So simple, no need to flick from site to site or copy we addressess and paste in on a different page.
The beauty of the site is that it is simple and easy to use, when operations are uncomplicated there are far more incentives to use them!!
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