Facing the currently unknown

Moblogging from #ililc

Here we go, folks, my humble contribution to this weekend's festivities at University of Southampton. I'll endeavour to slidecast the presentation when I get hold of the audio, although I'm afraid I doubt that will be until next week now.

And so the point of my presentation really was to encourage people not to just assume that because we might be out on a trip, immersed in the target language culture and language, that we are maximising learning opportunities- for those on the trip or those back in the classroom. But see what you think and I'd love your opinions- and suggestions!

Moblogging - ILILC 2011

View more presentations from Chris Fuller.

Edutalk

David Noble is a fascinating man. And that fascinating man is working on what I see as a fascinating project- edutalk. Edutalk aims to bring together the voices of educators, telling one story at a time, every day of the year. Some of these may be in the form of presentations that David has recorded, but he's also encouraging people to get in touch and use one of the ways which edutalk have set up to add material to the site. This could be through a Gabcast account set up for the purpose, an audioboo from an iphone, ipadio or alternatively using Skype and the recording tool Pamela.

Given that the project is based around the use of mobile devices for recording I decided to give David a quick call to talk about my interest in integrating mobile phones into the classroom and beyond. So, as @joedale put it, I gabbed. I hope you find it interesting.

So now I've done my bit- so over to you, get involved!

EDUtalk #17

 

I've just come across this really interesting Teachers tv video. What I found particularly interesting was that many of the decisions are being taken by people who proudly claim that they've just learnt how to text. Are these really the people who are best positioned to weigh up the entirety of the issue?

Mobiles are here, and I can guarantee you that they're not going away at any time soon- and if they do then it'll only be because they've been replaced by a further step forward along the COMMUNICATION line. So let's educate and guide, rather than shutting our eyes and shoving our fingers in our ears! 

By the way, did anyone else like the mobile orchestra near the end? Genius?!

SSAT conference with Louise Crossley

Firstly, apologies for how many times I say the word "ok". Oops.

Secondly I don't seem to be able to count. All of the numberings on the slides seem to start at . Mmm.

Thirdly, Juliet, I am NOT a geek.

ICT- thinking outside the classroom box

SMS poll

Mmm, an interesting one for you here, especially following on from my post about using mobile phones to enhance learning. SMS poll is a free, UK based service which allows you to create online polls which can be completed by text vote OR by voting online for tose who don't have access to a mobile or whose callplan doesn't include free texts (as even most of the pay as you go plans do now, oddly).

To fully exploit the resource you can then download the results as a PowerPoint or excel spreadsheet or even embed them immediately into a blog. Sounds interesting to me- even though each quiz only as 1 question, you could ave a number of quizes open and then really exploit them in the follow-up lesson...

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How I use cell phones in Learning- Voicethread

Howdy everyone, apologies for the Americanism in the title of this post, but I wanted to bring to your attention the voicethread above, started by the fantastic Liz Kolb. If you haven't come across it before, her From Toy to tool blog I can't recommend it strongly enough. It's just a shame that so many of the tools she points out are only US based.

Anyway, you were spared my audio because for some reson it doesn't want to play, so I'm just in text form. Lucky you...

Audacity, but portable

It's always exciting to find fun new tools. So a big thank you to Creative ICT for putting me onto the existence of a portable version of Audacity. THink of the potential of having Audacity with you wherever you are- to work from any computer at all via a memory stick, external Hard Drive, even an iPod. School trips where, for example, the computer in a hostel doesn't have the magic piece of software to let pupils get podcasting on the go?

I'm excited. Sad, but true. So if you want to play around too, download it from here and then check out their other portable apps for even more fun and games.

Isle of Wight exhaustion, 2007

Yesteday was an amazing experience for me, and for that I have to thank everyone who came to the Isle of Wight conference. It was a fairly inspiring day, with ideas flying around left, right and centre, with a room packed full of people with innovative, creative ideas to enhance all of our teaching.

I fully admit that I was realllllllllllllllllyyyyyyyyyy nervous before my sessions, and I hope they were interesting for everyone involved- but hey, all feedback is very much appreciated!

I've made the presentations available to download below, but if anyone would alos like me to put any other examples of things on the blog then feel free to add a comment and I'll put things up.

What I also really enjoy about days like yesterday is getting the opportunity to actually meet people who's work you really admire and who you've struck up contact with over the net. So thanks to all of those people, especially to Lisa and David- here's looking forward to the Euro 08 project getting moving!

Good luck with all the ideas as they start to become reality over the next few weeks!

Chris

Download its_a_bloggers_life.ppt

Download blogging_intro_presentation.ppt

Download how_to_use_a_blog.ppt

Download what_is_a_wiki.avi

Download what_is_a_mobile_slideshow_and_how_to_make_one.doc

Mobile phone update 2

Oh yessssssssss!!!

I love that feeling when a plan comes together, and then so does the lesson! I've just finished teaching year 9 all about the wonderful world of directions, culminating in them going off and recording their directions on their mobile phones. I've never had the vocabulary written down so quickly, and scripts written without complaints, loads of requests for further vocab items and how to pronounce them, oh the joy!!!And most groups then had time to go round and record them, which came back loud, clear and beautifully pronounced, yippee!!

Yes, there were issues to be aware of. 1) AS soon as I started the introduction, 1 girl started recording my intro. Now, actually, I'm all in favour of that as it would have given her an opportunity to listen back to the vocab at a later date. However, stupidly, I stoppped her from doing it. Next time I'll learn! 2) One boy, quite a lower achiever, got distracted by pressing buttons on his phone. This was easily corrected, ensuring that they put all phones down until the scripts were written, but nonetheless, it was something to be kept in mind.

Now for the sure fire test- next Tuesday they'll have their next lesson, when they'll be swapping phones and following the directions- but will they get to the right rooms? Find out next Friday at the Isle of WIght Show and tell!

Using mobiles- first update

OK, had year 10 today, who had been set the homework of recording an estate-agent style description of their homes, recording it onto their mobile phones.

Issues:

1) some didn't see it as a "proper" homework, and so I had a larger than normal queue to tell me they hadn't done the work.

2) the difficulties of actually getting the work in- at the start of the lesson a few of them bluetoothed me the films (a few of which were absolutely top-notch, which fills me with hope that the idea will work.) However, with larger numbers, how would be best to get all of the films in?

3) ONe girl e-mailed me her clips. However, the time involved to download the 4 clips, and then put them into zamzar was totally disproportionate. And then Zamzar had issues with the .mp4 files.

I'm still committed to the concept, but at the moment more work needs doing- and all ideas are more than welcome!