never mind the optics

I thought I had done well to get some of my AH Physics class to submit a draft of their investigation report to me by 3.30 on the last day of term.  I had no idea how much I would regret not paying attention to the type of files that were dragged and dropped from usb memory sticks to my macbook desktop.

When I got home, I noticed that all of the files were saved at Word 2007 files, with the .docx file extension.  That didn’t bother me as Office 2007 has been deployed on an increasing number of machines across the school and Word for Mac 2008 on my macbook has always opened .docx files in the past.

However, none of those files contained items inserted using the new Word 2007 equation editor.  When I went to open the first file, I was confronted by a warning message

I clicked ok and when the document opened, I was presented with a strange selection of characters where the maths should have been,

clearly not what was intended.  I was a bit miffed as I thought that 2008 for Mac would be able to view, if not edit, equations produced in Word 2007.

Undeterred, I tried to open the pupil’s work in Apple’s Pages

which simply refused to show anything.  So I tried OpenOffice instead.  Even after upgrading to the latest version of OO.o, all I could see was

so I was kind of stuck!

Then I went looking for an online solution and found that Zamzar could change .docx files into the .doc format.  This worked like a charm and I was able to open the .doc files and view the equations, which had been inserted into the document as images.

While the mix of software deployed across my school has clearly had some bearing on the situation, I’m still amazed at the fact that Microsoft have broken the compatibility of their Word application across the PC and Apple platforms.  If it wasn’t for Zamzar, we would have had some unhappy S6 pupils in class at the start of next term.

On Saturday, I had the privilege to share a share a platform with Nick Hood at the Scottish Science Education Conference at the Dunblane Hydro.  Our session went by the name “Using New Media in Science Education – Not Just for Twits”.  The aim was to share some of the online practice taking place both inside and outside the country’s science classrooms.

We spoke about blogging and walked the participants through the process of setting up a free blog.  Nick explained RSS and demonstrated why every teacher should use a RSS reader.  We also covered podcasting and use of a wiki.  For anyone interested in the links we used on the day, find a summary on my wiki.

During the session, we mentioned the lack of blogging Chemistry teachers. Word has reached us that Dr. Taylor has met our challenge head-on and started his own blog.  Great job, Dr. T.!

A great new project kicked off at EDUtalk this week.  John Johnston and David Noble have set the ambitious target of posting a piece of audio every day throughout 2010 as part of their EDUtalk365 project.  I think that their idea of educators sharing ideas on the changes sweeping through education is brilliant and the nature of the contributions makes it possible for busy people to dip in and out of the published audio as and when they have the time.  I have posted previously on the ease with which audio resources can be accessed while driving, walking the dog, washing the dishes, etc. and I think that David and John are on to a winner here.

To help them on their way towards 365 days of audio, I recorded a short piece on how I have been using Wordle in the classroom as an aid to literacy across learning.  You can listen to my contribution here. Better still, subscribe to their Posterous blog or add it to your iTunes podcasts so you’ll never miss an episode during 2010!

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It’s not often that I am able to take part in the fantastic CPD opportunities that “the powers that be” in the deep south organise for teachers. Fortunately, it’s the October holidays up here so I was able to spend Tuesday afternoon in a flashmeeting listening to Greg Whitby speak with a group of teachers at LTS.

So who is Greg Whitby?

• He is the Executive Director of Schools and leads a system of approximately 80 Catholic schools serving the Catholic community of greater Western Sydney.
• In 2007, he was named the most innovative educator in Australia by the Bulletin Magazine in its annual SMART 100 awards.
• He was awarded an ACEL Presidential Citation for his contribution to Australian education.

Billed as Gregmeet, the event was a chance for the Scottish education community to hear his thoughts on where learning & teaching has to be in the 21st century.

His main points were;

• lack of relevance has resulted in most young people disengaging from education
• realising that the idea of personalised learning represents learners having a deeper & continuous learning rather than an individual education programme
• de-privatising of teacher practice: teachers can’t (and shouldn’t) work in isolation
• the power of technology to release us from the education timetable that is essentially set in stone at the time of our conception

Greg got his final point across with an equation

who learns what with who where & when

= anywhere, anytime, anything, any device  - time table

and suggested that the Scottish education establishment is moving in this direction with the rolling out of Glow across the 32 local authorities.

His point is valid.  Why is it that we still create a situation where learning can only take place in a classroom, with a teacher, during the day? In moving to an informal, anytime learning environment, pupils can learn when they are ready to do so.  Greg calls this “just in time” learning.

I found myself agreeing with his view that the laptop has lost its original impact in the classroom.  So often, technology in the home is far ahead of the facilities we can provide in schools.  Greg advocates switching to more flexible technology in the form of mobile phones, pointing out their accessibility, flexibility and cost advantages.  While this is a move that is actively resisted in many schools, Greg’s message is that we must learn from research and this shows that handheld devices bring enormous educational benefits.

Greg didn’t use slides but there is a video of the event’s flashmeeting here. Alternatively, I have attached the audio to this post so you can listen using the flash player below.

image of Greg by torres21

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You don’t have to look too far into the internet undergrowth to find a Wordle these days.  These word cloud images can be a powerful, yet flexible, tool – as shown in Tom Barrett’s 38 ways to use Wordle in the Classroom.  I’ve used this tool before to analyse my own writing for a book chapter.  I found that it helped me to check I had the correct emphasis and was handy for pointing out my repeated use of some words in the piece.

Just before the summer holidays, I thought I might create a series of classroom posters to help pupils identify key vocabulary for each unit of the Standard Grade Physics course, starting with the Using Electricity & Electronics topics for my new S3 & S4 sets respectively.

To generate the wordles, I copied the SQA arrangements for each unit and pasted them into the text box on the wordle site.  I showed the inital results to a test group from the new S3 class and they were not that impressed.

They identified several problems with the output;

• too many words on display (Wordle.net’s default setting is 150 words)
• the random vertical/horizontal word orientation was difficult to read
• words that protruded significantly from the main cloud were distracting
• unappealing colours – particularly so whenever a white background was in use

We started work on these issues by reducing the number of words on display.  The panel felt that 50 words was a good compromise and setting the output preferences to place all words horizontally was straightforward.  Similarly, the positioning of words to avoid any jutting meant remaking the Wordle until it was more pleasing to the eye.  Colour selection, however, was more subjective and it was difficult to achieve a consensus.  Eventually, it was agreed that we would create our own colour palette as agreement could not be reached with the selection provided.

Looking back, I have to agree that the white background is not particularly stimulating and a more inviting word cloud was obtained using a custom palette.  Setting up a custom palette gave a much more visually interesting word cloud, here is the final layout for the Using Electricity vocabulary.

I have to admit the preferring the colour scheme for the Electronics design – it may be the way that the scheme evokes memories of chocolate lime sweets.

I took each of the brightened up designs and uploaded them to a site called BlockPosters.  This site can produce large poster-sized pdf files of any image you upload.  I choose to blow up each image to a 5×2 array – spreading the picture out over 10 sheets of A4 paper.  The printed A4 sheets can then be taped together to create the poster.

So I have 2 posters on my classroom wall now.

They are easier to read than the initial 150 words designs and have colour schemes that appeal to the people intended to use them.  Most importantly, they are being used! When questioning the classes, I see eyes moving towards the posters during “thinking time”.  Not because the answer is on the wall but because pupils know that the vocabulary to scaffold their response will be.

I finished my book chapter today and have emailed it in to the editor for review.  I’m not going to say much about the content just now but you can get an idea from this wordle I made from the text (just under 8000 words).  I started out using PBwiki but ran into difficulty with a ropey internet connection at school.  I decided to give Pages a try as I had forked out £50 to get it preinstalled on my mac.  My verdict?  It’s quite good!

I’ve been looking at the entries for Dan Meyer’s 2008 design competition and I’m really taken with the 2nd of his personal picks from the entries.  The design was submitted by Sam Shah and the physicist in me just loves the unaligned tabs below the bar chart.  They remind me of the ticker timers and ticker tape analysis we used to have in school physics before the arrival of dataloggers and light gates for speed & acceleration measurements.  

Sticking little strips of narrow paper on to sheets of coloured A4 allowed us to build up a Blue Peter version of events and undoubtedly contributed more to understanding of speed-time graphs than inspection of the “here’s one I prepared earlier” datalogger graphs we use in school today.

ticker tape photograph by things11change

Following on from the comments I received after blogging about being approached to write a chapter for a book on digital literacy in science teaching, I’ve started work on the piece.  I’ve created a wiki for note taking and am now drafting the chapter.  I seem to have plenty to say, the problem will be keeping it within the context of science education.  How often does a person get the opportunity to write for an academic textbook about using their favourite web2.0 tools in the classroom?  There’s a danger that I end up submitting something too edupunk for either the editor, publisher or both.

I received an email today from an academic I know.  It was an invitation to write a chapter for a book that is being put together on digital literacy in science teaching.   I’m very flattered to have been asked but not yet sure if I should accept.

I am very grateful for the professional learning network I have acquired through my use of twitter.  Several people contacted me with advice and they were unanimous in saying I should take the offer.  I have a few doubts.  One of these is my lack of teaching experience, I am only in my 3rd year since obtaining the PGCE.  How would I be able to justify my use of ICT in the classroom with pedagogically sound evidence given my short teaching career to date?  Would the reader, or the editor for that matter, see my use of ICT be as technology being introduced just for the sake of it?

The other aspect that troubles me is how little time I have had to use ICT in the classroom.  One response from twitter captured this quite well.  He pointed out that few classroom teachers will have been making effective use of ICT, especially for 3 years – 4 if you count teaching placements where you are expected to have all-singing ICT through the 18 weeks you are in school.  I discussed this with a friend from my PGCE year and we finally agreed with his perspective.

So I’m back to the teaching experience thing.  Well, that and the lack of an accessible reference library from which to back up any arguments I might want to put forward in my chapter.   Given the remit of providing a realisation of how digital literacy is facilitated by science teachers, it is perhaps unlikely that I would find much in a book anyway.