What is new with Glogster and Eduglogster

Just taking a look at what is new in Glogster and Eduglogster today and I am rapt  when I see a Glog in the Best Glogs section called Catastrophe in Japan.  It is exactly what you might imagine if you have used Glogster, a multimedia interactive poster full of information about the disaster.  This powerful Eduglogster has be created to educate those safely far away and share the images of the horrendous disaster that has devastated the east coast of Oshika Peninsula, Tōhoku.  With more catastrophic repercussions pending, who knows what the images may look like in the future?

If you would like to fundraise for this incredible cause Oxfam has some useful guidance to help you organise it.

ICT in the Outdoor Environment

This week’s sessions for the PGCE primary students is designed to inspire cross curricular use of ICT and to encourage the use of the outdoor space available in school. We often see the outdoor classroom talked about in the early years classes; it is encouraged by all. But sad to say it is much more difficult for junior teachers to integrate it into their daily routines, mainly due to the pupil staff ratio. That said there are many wonderful opportunities for Outdoor Environment to be utilised across the whole primary school.

I set challenges across a range of subject areas; maths trails collecting digital evidence, adventure story writing using mobile technology, archaeological digs combining history and ICT, weather station and weather data from a local airport with suggestions of a weather broadcast of some sort using Skype and scientific enquiry using a selection of hand held microscopes that can be used to explore the natural environment without disturbing it. All in all the sessions seem to be going well, the students came up with some excellent ideas that will be developed upun in the next session. So watch this space.

I would love to start a tweet with the #tag #smupgce11 to get students resonses about the session ideas they took part in.

Also to check out http://www.delicious.com/peacehome/ICT_outdoors my bookmarks for the session

What we did learn though, is that it is not always a good thing to buy the cheapest product, for example the metal detectors used for the archaeological digs were really children’s toys and not very robust.  So it is worthwhile researching for a good product so that your children will not be disappointed and can really learn from the experiences you provide.

FOSS for the classroom or just for fun!

There are some really amazing free applications around at the moment that are just perfect for the classroom; especially the ever financially stretch primary environment.  So for this week’s PGCE session I am compiling a list of my favourites for my impressive specialists to try out and hopefully add to.  I love the little talking avatar that you can create in Voki and the best thing about this sort of web 2 tool, is that they are so easy to embed in your other applications.  You can embed your Glog in your Blog, or your Voki on your facebook page and you can embed them all on your wiki.  So the range and scope of audience is wonderful, although it does obviously mean that there are lots of safety issues to consider it doesn't mean that they should be avoided, just used purposefully and cautiously to keep your children safe and engaged in the ever evolving world of the web.

The Games Day

Well the Gaming week with my 2nd Year Ed Studies students was quite a success according to the response at the end of the module.  I was a little nervous on Monday to say the very least.  Not having a clue about gaming myself was the main worry.  I am always telling students that you don't need to know everything about the technology you are using, you just need to have clear learning objectives and identify skill development possibilities.  I took myself at my world and embarked on two hour sessions of gaming with each group.  They had a range of devices to explore, from sport on the xbox kinect to brain training on the nintendo DS and as they played they had a list of specific aspects to focus on, whilst enjoying the gaming of course.  As the week progressed I introduced new rules and realigned the focus, I could see what was working and what wasn't.  I realised that I needed to give much more input if I wanted them to think out of the box, so to speak.  Initially they were thinking of how they could just included playing the game in the class as a tool for learning per say.  They had difficulty in thinking of just using snippets or adapting the games use in order to fit it into a curriculum area.  At first I felt that I was forcing my own ideas on them and possibly stifling theirs.  However the follow-up session where they planned a whole lesson from the gaming day idea proved me wrong.  There were some fabulous ideas were the games were used as a stimulus for exciting cross curricular activities.  This is just the beginning.  Each group created a wallwisher as they played take a look at their games day comments!

http://www.wallwisher.com/wall/gamesstationday

http://www.wallwisher.com/wall/es2d2011

http://www.wallwisher.com/wall/es2e2011

http://www.wallwisher.com/wall/es2b2011