I Should Be Marking

Following my recent post on uploading graphics files I’ve come across a different problem with my Year 10 GCSE group. It’s a small group and 4 or 5 of them were having real problems overwriting files accidentally. I tried demonstrating how to examine the ‘last modified’ date but they were still losing work and so I told some of them to Save As… and to include the date in the filename (e.g. identify_22_02_08.doc) if ever they were in doubt. Which has worked, except that now around half of them have folders full with 30 or 40 revisions of the same file.

I’m wary of trying to get them out of the habit as they will doubtless start to overwrite files again. Anyone else come across this problem? Any suggestions?

Two posts in an hour? Unprecedented. I would prefer to stagger them but that way I’d just not get round to writing everything down.

Well, my 3year old PowerBook (Mac laptop) was finally due for replacement and I have to say it’s done me proud. It’s happily kept up with a suite full of brand new Intel iMacs despite being built on the old PowerPC architecture. It stills beats my 6 month old desktop PC at home once I get more than two applications running simultaneously (and I quite often get well into double figures) but the Superdrive had gone, I’d replaced the hard drive once (down to 60GB which was perpetually full to burtsing), it’s taken a knock to one corner at some point in the past and it’s standard practice at work to replace every 3 years anyway.

And so to my new toy - a brand spanking 15″ MacBook Pro. Not the top of the line 17″ version - I couldn’t justify the expense and wouldn’t want a laptop that big anyway TBH. Externally it looks very similar but with a bigger trackpad, built in iSight camera and few scratches you can tell the difference if you stand them side by side. Leopard, the latest Mac operating system is everything Vista wishes it could have been. Some graphical and efficiency improvements but otherwise the same solid, reliable and effective OS I had been using previously.

Using Bootcamp I can boot into Windows for those essential high powered applications (Read: I could now play games if only I had the time!), Parallels allows me to run Windows within Leopard (so AQA Exampro, Teacher’s Report Assistant and Paint.net all work as well as IE for compatability testing) and I’ve even installed Ubuntu linux in Parallels as well (although, again, I’ve not had time to play with it yet).

Another issue is that I’ve changed my mind on browsers. I’ve been an Opera fanboy for a while now and never warmed to Safari, my new browser of choice. It’s slick, efficient, quick and the main reason I loved Opera - the ’speed dial’ - also works in Safari (well, the CMD-# keyboard shortcut for bookmarks does which amounts to the same thing AFAIC).

My biggest issue is still with online WYSIWYG editors. Moodle, Joomla, B2Evolution and Wordpress all of which I use regularly) come with WYSIWYG editors that just don’t work with either Safari or Opera. I’m forced to resort to Firefox in order to get line breaks working, or else hand code the HTML (which negates the whole point of a WYSIWYG editor in the first place).

It’s a small price to pay and only a minor inconvenience but overall I’m still a very happy bunny!

Clicky!

Phew! Well, it took two whole lessons to get right, but such is life.

My Year 8s spent half a lesson using the rubber stamp and lasso tools in Fireworks to create ‘Spot the Difference’ pictures. The plan was to spend half a lesson uploading them to the class blog for all the world to see. I’d spent quite a bit of time getting the permissions right on the blog to make sure the kids had access to the files area and had thought everything should be fine. Hmmm.

First of all, the file size limit was too small, so I opened it up.

Secondly, the files were still too big as we had saved the edited versions as PNG files. So do I stop and have a lengthy discussion on the pros and cons of file sizes or rush through a quick export in order to get it done? Well, as I’m being observed I go for the latter in order to reach my objective.

Thirdly I find we can’t upload files with spaces or punctuation in the filename - which is about two thirds of them, so we have to fix that.

Fourthly the software is set up to allow one directory per blog rather than per student, so we need to get them to create their own folder within the files section - using their first name for example.

Three of them are called Michael. At this point I’ve managed to create a nice head-sized dent in the wall.

Brilliant! We’re all uploaded. Now simply write a post and use the ‘Files’ button to add the images in. Except that this opens a new window which doesn’t automagically close once you’ve added the files. And so, Year 8 pupils being Year 8 pupils, they simply click the ‘Add’ button until it realises what they mean and does it right, resulting in half a dozen entries consisting of 24 copies of an image set to 1280×960. Then the bell went.

The next lesson we started from the point where we had done the image editing. I talked a lot about file types, the export process (people kept complaining that when they exported their PNG as a JPG they still had a PNG file on their desktop. Aaarrgghh!!), the upload process, the adding of images to the blog post and the structure of a blog entry (Introduction, Description, Discussion - the last part always being the most difficult to tease out).

So a partial success and a lot of lessons learned. I don’t think blogs are cutting edge, although their use in lessons still is to a large degree - especially in secondary schools where lessons are shorter, classes change more frequently, etc. I certainly feel like I’m on the forefront, but maybe that’s just me!

Well, it’s that time of year again. Coursework gone, exam classes all but finished and thoughts turn to KS3 next year. It’s about time we made sure we covered the basics of Flash, I’d like to do some more targeted graphics work in conjunction with the art department and in Year 9 we’re replacing the Theme Park project with a Grand Designs project.Design three houses in Google Sketchup, build a spreadsheet model to look at costs and present an interactive brochure in Flash.  Should be a challenge, but more interesting and relevant for where we want pupils to go. By far the hardest thing is fitting everything into the time available and trying to balance moving forward with the inevitable gaps created by shuffling a unit from Year 8 to Year 7 (effectively missing an entire cohort). Still, anything beats marking coursework!

It’s not the right word, but I’m having a mental block. Settling, acceptance, being too focused on just getting coursework in on time and getting the exam classes prepared. Between that and feeling guilty for not completing my iMedia writeups here has kept me from posting for far too long. (Edit: Re-reading that it makes no sense, but hopefully you can figure out what I meant)

I feel a bit of reflection would be pretty useful at the minute. I’m starting to worry that I’ve lost that drive to self-evaluate every lesson in order to improve and started going through the motions of teaching a lesson and just moving on. I suppose it’s inevitable that a bit of that young, enthusiastic edge would wear down (young, fnaar) but I’m determined not to lose it entirely so self reflection begins again in earnest.

What have I found out during the hiatus?

• Edexcel Applied ICT Unit 10 (multimedia - done in Flash) is hard work and we really need to get Flash going a lot earlier in the school. I need to get a Y7 unit put together for next year. (DJ Phillips - formerly of GCSEICT.com has a fantastic resource here)
• Scratch is great. I’ve had classes making simple ‘dodge the ball’ games, car racing games, helicopter games - I’m going to get my iMedia group to make a version of Pong if I get time.
• You can lead a Y10 class to enlightenment, but when you stick a video camera in their hands they’ll stick act like prats, forget the meaning of the word ‘continuity’ and somehow ‘forget’ to record half of their script (and that’s if they remember to take their script with them!).

It’s been hard work, but fun (the best way to be IMHO) and I was promoted to Asst. HoD last month (which means I’m either doing something right or I’m hiding it well). We’re also interviewing for a new colleague on Monday, should be fun!

Will write again soon, promise.

I’m still here and I haven’t forgotten my promise to write up the iMedia units. Unfortunately I was ill for a large chunk of last week and am on half term this week - and left all of my notes at school. Tsk. I’ll have to do some marking now instead.

Incidentally - I had the ‘experience’ of a whole day’s PD day on the new ICT curriculum. The one interesting part of the day was comparing our current Y7 Scheme of Work to the new learning outcomes. And we’re already meeting or exceeding each one.

I had been looking at HoD jobs in the area, but if I have to sit through a number of those days as a result then I wonder if any amount of money can really be worth it…

As I mentioned a couple of weeks ago the school, working with Creative Partnerships, has arranged for a refugee bus to turn up. It’s a trailer which is used as a stimulus for discussion about the various types of people that come to the country, the labels we give them, the impressions people have of them and the reasons they came here in the first place.

Being in a fairly affluent area we have a lot of ‘Daily Mail’ parents and a lot of low-level intolerance. We have very few problems of overt racial abuse but a lot of people with quiet prejudices bubbling away.

As part of the project I had a Year 8 class blog about what they thought a refugee was, and then again once they had been through the trailer to see how their impressions had changed. It was interesting to see that most of the pupils took to the whole project very well and I think some valuable learning has come out of it. Equally interesting were posts like this one which perhaps demonstrated slightly less in terms of long term improvements to the images people have.

Overall I think it’s been a very worthwhile project and I’ll certainly be looking to expand the range of ‘global’ topics I cover in ICT.

I know I said I was going to write-up comments for each unit over the weekend. Well, it’s still on the list of things to do, it’s just that other things have temporarily taken over.

I’m sat here with a rare 15 minutes spare and I’m contemplating what to do next with my iMedia group. The project brief I gave them, to create an advert for a local business, allows sufficient depth to meet the assessment criteria - a minimum of 3 edits with different tools. So basic cutting, adding titles, transitions and/or video effects ought to be fine. I’m still not sure they’ve got enough theory under their belts though, and I’m not sure they’re all good enough for my liking.

I’m trying to think of an alternative project brief for next time and, inspired by the montage sequence in Team America: World Police I was going to get them to make a trailer for a film. Of course they need to capture the footage for themselves and the more I think about it, the greater the gulf between professional trailers and our low-timescale, low-budget attempts  seems.

Another thought was a music video, but I’m not entirely convinced that this will lead to anything other than messing around for a couple of weeks. So what else? An interview? A documentary? An advert for the school? The course? A chosen GCSE subject? Do I give them all the same script? (I’m pretty sure I’m allowed to as that’s not part of the assessment criteria - although storyboarding is).

It needs to be a project that will allow them to film with a minimum of props and other equipment, and in a short space of time. Being able to film people without needing a change of clothing is useful, and the ability to add effects, transitions and edits without it looking too ‘primary school’ is key.

Feel free to offer suggestions. I’ll let you know what we decide…

NB: I’ve added an iMedia category to the blog but have not (as yet) retrospectively tagged previous posts. I won’t make any promises but Multimedia should provide similarly themed posts in the archive.

Yesterday I attended an iMedia training day, mostly aimed at those planning to deliver the course form next year. As we’re halfway through the year with our first cohort we thought it might be sensible to get some training and so we spent some time with the Chief Moderator, Kevin Wells, as well as Alison Pearce, the head honcho.

It was my first formal training course for a specific qualification but I got the impression it was somewhat unusual. We got to ask direct questions to the two most important people, and were given direct responses. It seems that they have gone out of their way to make the course easy to manage without being a pain to assess or adminsiter (administrate?).

Most importantly, it seems that we’re delivering the course more or less right, but I thought some of you might appreciate a brief rundown of the topics covered. As such I’m going to take the unprecendented step of using the ‘more’ tag. If the world as we know ceases to exist, I most humbly apologise.

(more…)

Anybody out there heard of Creative Partnerships?

We have an ongoing relationship with them at school. They give us some money every year and we fund creativity in two ways. One is through one-off projects . This is what, apparently, most schools do with it. We also (and primarily) fund one year promoted posts. As previously mentioned, mine is related to getting pupils blogging, whilst others are promoting creativity in maths with low achievers, working on P4C (big questions), promoting competitive creativity online and encouraging creative writing.

Our big project for the year is the refugee bus. A trailer which aims to demonstrate to the pupils what it is like to arrive in a foreign country, not speaking the language and having to go through customs. The aim is for the kids to appreciate how traumatic the experience can be as well as learning about the difference between migrants, refugees and asylum seekers. We have a lot of prejudice bubbling under the surface I suspect, not helped by the national media.

My part in this was to take my Y8 bloggers who will be going through the experience next week and simply asking them “What is a refugee?”. The answers were fascinating. “Someone who travels around the world but has no identity”. “Someone who had to leave their country because of war”. “They’re a bit like a tramp, but the government gives them a house”.

I refused to tell them anything. Whether they were right in their assumptions, whether this person would be male or female, whether they would speak English, where they were from… Instead I told them to make up the details. They had to invent a refugee and describe who they were, and who they are now. As I said earlier, the results were fascinating.

One of the first pupils to name their refugee called him Mowglai. Another wanted to call her refugee Lloyd, because he didn’t have to be foreign. Two thirds went for male refugees, and two thirds went for non-European. One pupil had a refugee with a private jet who flies around the world staying in posh hotels. All very interesting.

Next week they’ll be posting about what they found out in the ‘bus’, with a further, conclusive post a week or two later. Fascinating stuff and it really makes me want to do more of this stuff where we challenge the way kids think rather than just teaching them how to make PowerPoints about theme parks.

To visit the blogs themselves (and PLEASE leave some comments), go to egglescliffeblogs.org.uk