Talbot students learn about life during WW2

A year 7 class at Talbot Special School came to the CLC to create a film about life during World War 2 as part of a unit of work on the topic. The students learnt all about air raids, how families built Anderson shelters in their gardens, rationing, wartime songs and poems. They built fantastic sets for an animation, and recorded songs and poems to include in the film, using the green screen to add suitable photos as a backdrop. The project really brought the topic to life, and helped the students understand how life may have been back then. What particularly impressed me was how well the class worked as a team on the animation, taking it in turns to take the pictures, direct and move the characters, and always supporting their less able peers. You can see an extract of the film below:

done

Victorian Times at the CLC

Year 5 pupils from Sharrow School came to the CLC to recreate life in Victorian Britain. They came with costumes and props and acted out scenes inspired by the book Street Child by Berlie Doherty in the form of news reports. These were filmed in front of the green screen, so that they could use photos of the era as backgrounds. They included stealing from the pie shop, escape from the workhouse and a family being evicted from their house. Following filming, they edited the clips in Windows Movie Maker to create their finished film.

The result looks fantastic, and the pupils all enjoyed the experience. Here is a short audio clip from their teacher:

Click here for audio clip

Mundella pupils re-enact the Great Fire of London

done

Year 2 pupils from Mundella School spent the day at the CLC recreating the Great Fire of London. Small groups created stop-motion animations using I Can Animate (see animation above) with some fantastic hand-made sets whilst others sampled Baroque music and created their own sound effects in Garageband. Others dressed up as Samuel Pepys, King Charles and a number of other key people of the times, to act out scenes in front of the green screen, in order to add fire footage afterwards in Adobe Ultra. A final group interviewed characters and talked about artefacts from the fire.

As you can imagine it was pretty hectic, but the pupils and adults learnt a great deal about the events and how to use lots of different bits of technology.

Glogster – Create your own multimedia posters

There are hundreds of new applications appearing on the web every day, but it’s not often you find one that ticks all the boxes for educational use. Glogster is such a one. Here you can create your own “Glogs”, essentially a poster with images, text, video, web links and sound. There is a large choice of backgrounds, types of text boxes, video players etc, to make it a very personal piece of work.

Perhaps most importantly, you can sign up for an educational account, where you can create up to 200 student accounts, and all Glogs can be seen by everyone in your class, but no-one else. There is the option to send messages via the site, which could be used for peer review (and since the teacher can see exactly who is sending what, there shouldn’t be any abuse of the system).

These Glogs would be perfect for presenting information in any subject and key stage, particularly for Modern Languages (reading, writing, listening and speaking all in one project), History (document a historical event, do mock interviews with the key people), Geography (project on the local area, with interviews, photographs etc.), English (interesting ways or presenting information, both spoken and written), Art (could be used in the planning stages of a piece of work, with sketches, commentary, links to artists). It is also a great way to document a field trip or visit.

To see a glog I created about the CLC, click here.

Update – Large video files take a while to appear in the Video box once you have uploaded them, so do be patient.

Weston Park Interactive Trails – Feedback

Museums Sheffield

As you may be aware from previous posts, the museum at Weston Park has a number of Ultra Mobile PCs (UMPCs) – essentially computers you can carry around with you, and two interactive trails to accompany the exhibits. The two trails are Ancient Egypt and Animal Adaptation and are aimed at year 6 pupils. This summer the UMPCs have been available for family groups to use during their visit.

The feedback from the primary school and family sessions has been excellent:

“Great way of getting children to interact with the artefacts.”

“Kept them on task and directed their activity, at the same time allowing them to work at their own pace and in any order.”

“Recording answers verbally instead of writing them was much better for the SEN group. Higher achievers could use the audio facility to add expression and be creative, such as making it like a news report.”

If you are interested in taking part in one of the Trails with your class, see the previous post here for details, or contact Pauline Sharkey on 0114 278 2655, pauline.sharkey@museums-sheffield.org.uk.

Science Trail

Weston Park Interactive Primary Trails

There are now two possible trails that can be completed by primary classes at Weston Park using Ultra Mobile Computers (UMPCs). There is the History Trail, looking at the museum’s collection of Ancient Egyptian artefacts, and a Science Trail, which investigates animal adaptation. The trails are aimed at year 6 pupils, with students working in small groups to complete interactive exercises and record their findings.

There will be an INSET afternoon at the museum on the 24th June (12.45-16.00) for year 6 teachers. The session is free and supply cover will be paid for. The INSET will provide teachers with an opportunity to follow the animal adaptation trail, learn how to use the UMPCs and provide feedback on the trail.

From September 2008, Museums Sheffield will only offer the UMPC sessions as part of a full day package (the other half of the day will be a led workshop about the same curriculum area) for which there will be a charge. As an attendee of the INSET day, you will be able to book your class onto the full day package free of charge in the next school year. Alternatively, you may bring your class for the free half-day session this summer term.

• To find out more about the UMPC sessions or to book a place on the INSET afternoon, please contact:

Jacqueline O’Neil, E-Learning Co-ordinator
0114 2782653
jacqueline.o’neil@museums-sheffield.org.uk

• To book a half-day session for your class to attend this summer term, please contact:

Pauline Sharkey, Learning Bookings Administrator, 0114 2782655

The UMPC project has been supported by the South Yorkshire e-Learning Programme and Sheffield South CLC, and funded by the European Union Social Fund.

Power League – stimulating debate

http://www.powerleague.org.uk/

This website from Futurelab describes itself as a “fun and easy way to explore any topic [...] Power League is a versatile resource that lets you ask tough questions, stimulates debate and creates a visual league table based on votes gathered across your group.” Essentially you choose a question, for example, “Which is the bigger cause of climate change?”and set up a league. Students are offered a series of random choices between two people or things, e.g. Deforestation and Farming, each backed up with a link to more information. After they’ve made a number of choices you can view the league. Currently in the World Power League (“Who do you wish had more power?”) Albert Einstein is top of the list, Michael Owen second from bottom.

This ideal for use in English, Citizenship, Geography, History, RE and indeed any subject that asks students to make decisions about aspects of what they are studying and be able to debate why they made that choice. The website includes a number of lesson plans.

Comic Life

Comic Life is an excellent bit of software that helps students create very attractive comic strips, using photos, speech bubbles, colourful titles and a large number of layouts. It can be used for story-telling, or story-boarding a film or play, and therefore is useful in a large number of curriculum areas. Recently at the CLC it was used to tell the story of Martin Luther King in history, and also to storyboard the French films about the new school.

See examples and .

The CLC has Comic Life in both large computer rooms, or you can download a 30 day free trial from http://plasq.com/products/ It has both PC and Mac versions.

Radio programmes – Life on a plantation

Here are some radio programmes about life on a plantation. They were created by year 9 students at Newfield using mp3 players to record the audio, and the free software Audacity to edit them. They take a little time to load up, and you’ll need Quicktime to view them (you can download it for free here):

Radio Show 1

Radio Show 2

Further examples will be posted at this site – http://newfieldgeogblog.wordpress.com/

Google UK Schools Site

Google have created some free resources for primary and secondary geography, history and citizenship lessons, using Google tools such as Maps, Google Earth, News etc. Examples include Climate Change, Chocolate and Fair Trade, and the British Empire. To see the ideas and access lesson plans go to:

http://www.google.co.uk/schools/index.html

It also contains How To guides to Google applications.