Moblogging

Gerry and I attended a very informative and thought-provoking course on steps forward with IT systems today in Kent College, Pembury. Thanks Gerry for allowing me to post this snap remotely today (the idea was to catch him napping in a session but that never happened, despite some quite jargony stuff!) Blogging from a mobile is two clicks away once you have taken a photo, and posts go up instantly -as you'll see from the timing of the one below. Our school Sony Ericsson is going off on Geography field trips, the French trip and the Namibia trip this summer, so watch this space for more info - and please let me know if you are interested in using this tool for your department on trips out.

Ict course

Learning about internet security.

Whodunnitblog

Get a Voki now!



Check out www.inspecteurduval.blogspot.com for an idea on how to use a fictional blog to encourage research, creative writing and problem solving. This blog is designed for an able year 11 or a Sixth Form group. Inspecteur Duval (of course Duval, as those familiar with the valley our school is in will know) has to solve the mystery of a diamond theft from a luxury Paris Hotel. Using links to sites connected with the suspects and scene of the crime students begin to develop the characters, and prepare vokis giving a brief statement of innocence, as well as mp3s of initial interviews with Duval. Students then decide which of the suspects is going to be guilty, and plan a subtle gap or discrepancy in their story, as well as plenty of motivation for all three suspects, just to make things tricky! They can then record or post statements from supporting characters. When the project is finished (I estimate three weeks of 1hr 20 a week) we have a murder-mystery blog activity for other groups to solve. At that stage I might invite new participants onto the jury and use the polling feature in Blogger for them to cast their vote, with a 1G memory stick as a prize for the best judge's sentencing speech posted as a comment.

Share your PowerPoints

Authorstream is a great way of sharing PowerPoints with others. Upload your PowerPoint with recorded timings or narration and authorstream enables you to embed it in a blog, as you see here, download it through iTunes to an iPod, or share it as a video on YouTube (or TeacherTube). Whichever way you do it, it is a quick and effective way of sharing resources with colleagues or students. This one is something I put together for my Year 9 for the topic we are about to start on health. I intend to embed this in the class's blog and at some stage use it as revision for them for a listening test, and I am also going to try getting them to make their own as an end of year consolidation task. This would be great to round off a field trip or visit as well.

Uploaded on authorSTREAM by magpie

Search me!

Jane Hart in her e-learning pick of the day recommends Boolify as a way of encouraging students to search the net more wisely. As the name suggests it is a tool to carry out boolean searches to narrow down those impossibly long search results to something more approachable and relevant. It is obvious how to use it,visually very clear, and should be really helpful for subject setting research homeworks.

Cutting youself some slack: RSS

What is an RSS feed? If you're not sure and don't yet use a feedreader watch this video and follow the simple steps.