Luckily, someone suggested using the camera on their phone to take a photo of the screen. It worked brilliantly.
Very quickly, everyone was able to record their own set of results on a phone and we quickly established that our equation worked. Much better than guessing numbers on a flickering screen.
Sessions on the first day were booked up well in advance, with 1000 teachers and auxiliaries spending Tuesday at the festival. I had planned to go along on the second day as the programme had more ICT and secondary sessions of interest to me. However, that changed when I became a late addition to Wednesday’s schedule with a double slot to speak about the work I have been doing with blogging and iTunes in my classroom.
The numbers for my sessions were low on paper but two or three times as many people turned up each time. I spoke briefly about running a blog before explaining how SMART Notebook software can be used to produce a videos that can be downloaded as podcasts with iTunes. Then we looked at the ways in which everyday handheld devices such as mobile phones and iPods can be used for mobile learning. I was genuinely surprised by the level of interest shown and the number of questions I was asked during and after each session.
I was delighted when I managed to squeeze into Ollie Bray & Derek Robertson‘s games-based learning session at 12.30 in between my own slots. I’d met Derek before, he was one of the tutors from my PGCE course, but I had never met Ollie despite having exchanged tweets and interviewed him on Skype for a podcast.
The single disappointment for me was the way that the event finished so quickly in the afternoon. My last slot was over by 2.30 and by then many of the exhibitors were packing up. If the rumours are true and the event is run again next year, then I think I would try to spend more than just one day there to ensure I could take something from the event for my professional development.
As always, I was economic with slides but I have embedded them anyway. There’s also an audio recording of the morning session attached to this post.
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.
I found this blog post by Joe Dale on a method for creating mobile phone quizzes very interesting. The maker of the videos, Lilian Soon, has since blogged about it herself here. I finally got round to giving it a try for myself today.
I had previously asked members of my Higher class to tell me the make and model of their mobile phone. I checked these on the manufacturer web sites to get information on screen resolution and was surprised to discover that 240 pixels wide by 320 pixels high appears to be something of an industry standard.
I used a simple graphics package to create a series of white rectangles 240 pixels wide by 320 high and pasted in images I had scanned from an old Higher Physics past paper. I used the graphics threshold levels to remove any residual greyness from the scans before inserting the text of each question around them. Simple questions required two images each (one for the question and a second for the answer) while longer questions with multiple statements or diagrams required three or even four image files to complete.
I created seven multiple choice questions over a double period, creating text only questions would be much quicker than tweaking graphics. I uploaded the image files to my phone in jpg format. The results were encouraging, with both the text and images displayed clearly. My only concern was that the order of the files had reversed when transferred to the phone by bluetooth. On trying again, it seems that the problem is that the Apple iSync application transfers multiple files starting with the highest file name, while the phone stores files in the order of receipt. This is an issue requiring a workaround before distributing quizzes to a class.
Here is a question from the set I made. I’ve left them at full size (240 x 320 pixels)
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 
