Vikki’s Blog

I am looking forward to the  Scottish Learning Festival which will take place on 24 and 25 September at the SECC and Clyde Auditorium in Glasgow.  Last year I attened interesting keynotes and seminars, but I especially enjoyed the fringe events.  Meeting other educationalists and learning about developments in other schools and local authorites at TeachMeet and in the local authority hall was particularly interesting.  I am keen to attend and participate at  TeachMeet08 @ SLF, more details to follow.

Today Lynn and I visited Lori Ramsay and the Mothership project at Lourdes Secondary School.  Lori showed us her classroom and recording studio.  The Mothership project is a secure website offering an educational resource to pupils attending a selection of primary and secondary schools in Glasgow.  Lori is working on expanding this across Glasgow and into Yorkhill hospital school sector.  The Mothership provides schools with an area to showcase pupil work including artwork, music recordings, short-films and a pupil led radio station as well as a revision area where they can access teacher resources.  Lori is developing the idea of teacher avatars to help with homework and exam revision. Read the rest of this entry »

  CEOP Ambassador Training

Today I attended the CEOP Ambassador training course in Edinburgh.  I am now a CEOP Ambassador which means I can deliver and cascade training to teachers and other appropriate individuals in order for them to deliver the CEOP thinkUknow presentations to the 11-16 year old age bracket. 

All staff who wish to deliver the CEOP materials must first register with CEOP.  Primary colleagues are able to dowload the resources, lesson plans and notes.  Secondary staff must be trained before accessing and delivering the materials, which is where I step in.

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Just want to promote this excellent resource for educators.  There are vast numbers of podcasts out there and David Noble’s site, Podcast Directory makes finding educational content much easier.  David produces his own podcast which can be found at http://booruch.libsyn.com/  

   WeatherLink Data Logger & Software for the Vantage Pro2 weather station.

I have now installed the software on the laptop and tested the weather station outside.  It was exciting to see the wireless reciever pick up the current condtions which could then be downloaded to the computer via a USB data logger. Read the rest of this entry »

I am not an experienced ‘gamer’ and I was not sure what was in store when my colleague organised a visit to the Consolarium in Dundee.  Due to accomodation issues Derek Robertson visited the ICT Staff Tutor team at the training room in Forfar.  

  Read the rest of this entry »

ElectroCity is an online game (similar to Sim city) that lets players manage their own virtual towns and cities. It’s teaches players all about energy, sustainability and environmental management (with a New Zealand emphasis).  Its addictive to play and would be great for teachers to use with a class.  There is a limited number of turns so the game has ending!

Happy that I have now got Glow working at home.  Thanks Lynn!    

I have started editing the ‘My Glow’ area.  I have added three pages one each for del.icio.us, NetVibes and this blog.  On each I have added a page viewer, added the links and changed the size.  Now I can access my favourite sites from within Glow.  So far not been able to login to WordPress through the page viewer (cookies issue?) but this maybe because I keep forgetting my password!

I was reading the Dundee Staff Tutors blog and I was interested in the Web2.0 Glow group that they are setting up.  I am hoping I can be a member of this and start using Glow for collaboration across authority boundaries!

I have successfully registered the handsets and started working with ActivExpression to create questions.  Before I could use the handsets I had to upgrade the firmware for the ActivHub which recieves and sends signals to the handsets.  Registering and renaming the handsets is an easy process once all of the required sotware and hardware is in place.  The handsets can be named by inputing text (like a mobile phone) by the user.  I could see this having time-saving benefits for the teacher as there is less set-up and preparation required before using the voting kit compared to other handset types.

There are numerous question types to choose from: True/False; Multiple Coice; Sorting; Likert; Text and Numeric.  There is an option to use prepare questions in advance using the wizard or an Express Poll where you can start a vote on anything on the page / screen – this could include a news story from a website for example.  I have only scratched the surface of the potential for this voting kit and I will be spending time investigating it’s impact on L&T.

  This piece of kit kept me occupied for a few hours today.  I have started putting this Davis weather station together.  This combines two of my passions – ICT and Geography!

Next week I will put the tripod stand together and install the software on the laptop and test the equipment.    We have purchased two weather stations and it is planned to site them at contrasting locations within the local authority at two secondary schools.

It will be great when the weather stations are installed in schools, pupils will be able to analyse real life, accurate and up-to-date stats, it is also possible to connect with other stations around the world and upload data to the WWW.

I will post updates here as they happen.  More photos on flickr.