Photo by www.recumbentblog.com

This GPS tracker has been written about before by my counterpart at East CLC (see his post here), but I thought I’d add my own opinion too.

Essentially the tracker logs your position every 6 seconds and creates a track on Google Maps when you return and plug it into the computer.

Any photos taken on the trip can also be uploaded, added to the map and annotated – in order for these to be placed correctly, the time on the camera needs to match the time on the computer. The map can then be shared on the www.a-trip.com website – either as a private trip or made public. You can see an example of mine here, which involved a walk around Chatsworth House to look at the latest Beyond Limits sculpture exhibition. As you can see the route isn’t always 100% accurate (I’m pretty sure I can’t walk on water), but considering the device was in my pocket for tha majority of the time, it did an excellent job.

Positives:

• It’s really small, as you can see from the photo above.
• It is simple to use, with a single button and some LED lights.
• The software to create the map and add photos is easy to use too (see exceptions below).
• It is retailing at £49.99 at the moment, and so is affordable for schools. (See the website for more information on where to buy.)

Negatives:

• Sometimes it’s hard to work out if it’s waiting for satellite data or just not turned on, as you rely on the combinations of LED lights.
• The software is great when it works, but there have been some glitches on certain computers – and it’s not clear why that is happening.
• You sometimes need to drag the photos to the correct spot on the map, even when the time onthe camera is set properly.

In all though, the device is great, so much simpler and more reliable to use than previous devices we’ve looked at, and it seems to have some obvious educational applications, in particular documenting field trips.

One of our partnership schools, Mundella Primary, borrowed the tracker for their year 6 field trip to Eyam. Dave Shaw, the teacher who led the project, said:

“The GPS tracker was useful for the children to help recap on everything we did and saw. The photos linked to the GPS especially helped their memories. They were also able to see the ‘bigger’ picture by using the maps to look at the landscape and its uses. [...] It brought the project alive!!”

We are also planning on using the tracker for a transition project at Newfield School, with year 6 pupils from their feeder schools taking a tour around the school grounds, then adding photos and descriptions of what happens at different sites.

photo by Brenda Anderson

La Oruga Muy Hambrienta

Last term a class of Year 1 pupils from Woodseats Primary came to the CLC to perform a Spanish version of the much-loved children’s book The Very Hungry Caterpillar by Eric Earle, with the help of year 7 pupils from Meadowhead.

This was the result of a coaching project at Woodseats which aimed to give primary teachers with little knowledge of a language the confidence to deliver language lessons.

Three Meadowhead pupils read the story in Spanish whilst the year 1 pupils acted it out with fabulous props and costumes. The performance was watched by th remaining year 7 pupils back at Meadowhead via video-conferencing. This was followed by a question and answer session and a Spanish song.

Señora Goulden, the year 7 teacher said, “From my point of view, this was a really enjoyable experience. I was delighted to see so many talented linguists working together and very proud of the achievements of all those involved!”

Her thanks go to Señor Fernandez, Señorita Cassou, Señora Lewis and Señor Sockett at Meadowhead School, to Señora Millbank at Woodseats and the staff at the CLC.

Ideas to Inspire is a great website  that collates a number of collaboratively created presentations on the use of ICT in the classroom. The ideas have all been suggested by teachers and other educationalists, based on tried and tested projects. There are suggestions on using specific software and online webtools, items of hardware, and subject specific ideas – suitable for all key stages, though with a slight bias to KS1 and 2.

For example there are 40 interesting ways of using a Pocket Video Camera in the classroom, 24 ways to use Google Earth, and 23 ways to use a Nintendo DS. You can also add your own ideas if you feel they are missing by mailing Mark Warner, who created the site.

To visit the site go to http://www.ideastoinspire.co.uk.

This term saw the launch of the Double Club at the CLC. Selected students from Newfield School spend time on a Thursday at the CLC doing English lessons, with all the resources based on football related themes, and each week there is a new team captain to lead the training. The club is an extension of the Playing for Success scheme based at the Sheffield United ground, and the students receive 2 hours of football training after school each week from United coaches.

The Club has been very successful so far, with students returning early from lunch to continue with the activities.

To see what the students have been learning, and how they feel about it, see the Double Club blog here.

Over the holidays I came across the Learning Event Generator by John Davitt, which generates over 2500 permutations of topic and activity, for example: “Do the concept of gravity as a blow by blow sports commentary” or one of my favourites: “Do the history of the Olympics as a mime”.

I then decided to create my own slightly more colourful version aimed at Primary teachers, to randomise choice of ICT activities. You can see the Activity Generator here. Type in your own topic at the top, press the button and it randomly generates an ICT activity.

To make it even more useful to teachers, it is in the form of a template, whereby you can edit a text file with your own options, to create a bespoke list of activities. If this template would be useful to you, please e-mail me at cmoore@ssclc.net, and I’ll send it along.

Finally, if you teach at one of our partnership schools (see list here), you are welcome to come along to the CLC with your pupils to be used as guinea pigs for a randomly generated ICT activity session – with small groups working on the same topic, but all using a different medium.

The Ordnance Survey have announced their scheme to provide a free OS Explorer Map to every year 7 pupil in the country.

“The scheme not only supports learning about geography and the environment but also helps encourage children and their families to get out and about and explore their local area. It has been praised by teachers, pupils and parents alike.”

Teachers must place their order for maps by 30 November 2009 on the Ordnance Survey free maps website: www.ordnancesurvey.co.uk/freemapsfor11yearolds.

An additional resource will also be available to teachers, a booklet called The Language of Landscape, created with help from the Geographical Association.

For more information about this initiative, see the press release here.

Incidentally, the Geographical Association’s new website is now live, with lots of resources for geography teaching, primary and secondary: http://www.geography.org.uk/.

A second Spanish Summer School ran last week, essentially a repeat of the first one with different children. Once again it was a great success, with feedback from parents that their children were really keen to come back each day as they were enjoying it so much.

Here are some of the comic strips and animations they created – the pronunciation is fantastic on the animations:

The CLC recently completed its inaugural Music Video Summer School, inspired by having a number of bands using our music recording facilities this year. Fourteen students spent 5 days at the centre creating a music video in 4 different groups. We asked one of the bands from our partnership schools, The Ruze (website here), to record one of their tracks for groups to create a video for. One of the groups chose to record their own song which gave them a chance to use the recording facilities. The following days were spent planning, filming, animating and editing the films, with students learning how to film using with the green screen and edit in Adobe Premiere.

You can hear feedback from one of the groups here

The finished videos were all excellent and were judged by a panel made up of CLC staff:

The Winner

Runners Up

Thanks to all the participants for their hard work, and particular thanks to The Ruze for the track and allowing the groups to film them playing.

Whilst everyone else is on holiday I thought I’d make a short film on how to make a basic stop-motion animation, for showing to students before we start any animating. It doesn’t go into what hardware you need, but talks about planning, making sets and characters, and the actual animation. There are many more tips and tricks that can be mentioned, but I wanted to keep it short – maybe before the end of the holidays I’ll have created a part 2.

Let me know if it’s any use, or if I’ve missed anything obvious.

We have been running a number of summer schools at the CLC over the summer holidays, including a three day Spanish summer school. We had fourteen year 5 and 6 students learning the basics in Spanish, whilst using lots of ICT. They started with greetings, asking how you are and what your name is. They then used Comic Life to create short conversations illustrated with pictures of their choice:

Everyone then recorded their conversations using mp3 recorders and uploaded both comic strips and audio to Glogster.

On the second day the students learnt the numbers, how to say where you live and some simple weather. They then wrote and performed weather forecasts for a particular Spanish-speaking country in front of the green screen, so they could have a picture of the country in the background. They edited these in  Windows Movie Maker (once the backgrounds had been added in Adobe Premiere) and posted them onto their Glogs together with information they had found out about their country.

On day 3 they learnt the colours and pets, and in pairs created a short animation about animals – you can see all their efforts below.

In all it was a successful few days, and the use of ICT certainly seemed to be very effective in helping the participants learn their Spanish. Here is one parent’s feedback regarding her daughter’s experience:

“After her first day she came home and she had learnt more in one day than she had doing a year of Spanish at school! It has renewed her enthusiasm – combining technology/language and creativity has worked really well. Many thanks!”