communICTy

This video clearly explains how the communication of information is evolving from writing on a piece of paper, to text on a webpage, to creating your own videos.  It also explores how this ever expanding mass of information is being searched, sorted, tagged, mashed up and made into something new.

I’m always on the look out for ways to bring more relevant themes into ICT. I’m also keen to bridge the gap between the ways students use computers in school and at home.

A project that my school is doing on SEAL (social, emotional aspects of learning) provided the ideal opportunity to update our first unit in Year 7. They used to create presentations about their family and hobbies, but this was rather dull and the content of what the students produced did not teach them anything new. Instead we used an emotions tree diagram with people showing a variety of different emotions and asked the students to create presentations showing which five characters best summed up their own personality.

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I needed to find a way to enable my pupils to share their ideas and use the best language to describe their emotions. The solution came in the form of edublogs.org. This free, educational blog site allowed me to quickly put up an idea on the web and then invite my students to contribute comments (see examples). This is a safe and easy way to use web2.0 as there is no need to generate accounts and the comments are moderated by the teacher before they go live on the Internet.

To add a global dimension to our research, I created a project page on elanguages.org. This DfES funded website enables teachers around the world to link up and collaborate ideas and resources. I soon had a response from Apeejay School in New Delhi. You can imagine the cries of excitement when my students were reading their comments and found phrases written by Nikita, Dhruv, Eashan and their classmates in India! They were also surprised to find out how similar they felt about school life in both countries.

Here are some examples of what the students wrote to describe the person who is scared to climb higher up the tree:
I feel like this person when I am in a class that I am not so good at, so I must cling on to hope that I will still get a good result! Krissi, UK
I feel like this image when I am feeling low, because then I feel helpless and alone in this world. Kavisha, India

Here are some examples of what the students wrote to describe the person at the top of the tree:
I feel like this person when I do well at lessons and get it right because I have tried really hard. Zak, UK
I feel like this person when I’ve overcome all the obstacles in my work and I feel on the top of the world. Ujval, India

There has been a marked difference in the engagement of my students in creating presentations about their emotions towards school life rather than their families and hobbies. I have also been surprised at how personalised their phrases are. I have realised that SEAL is an interesting theme to explore with my students. It also teaches them valuable lessons about positive attitudes towards learning and the need to understand themselves better.

Often in ICT, we concentrate more on how to create a product rather than the message that it is trying to communicate. However, I am convinced that allowing students appropriate time to generate quality content on a theme that is relevant to their own lives leads them into producing a better end product and consequently better progress.

Click here to view the lesson plans.

Resources Update
MyTree – I’ve made this unit to replace the About Me powerpoint project. The students are given a diagram of different emotions and they write phrases to descrbe how they feel in different school situations. They then share their ideas by contributing comments to a series of blog posts. Finally they create a powerpoint presentation about the different aspects of their personality (example).

9.2 Online Survey – This unit enables students to compare the lives of young people in the UK and USA. We are hoping to involve students in other countries too this year for a global survey. Students then analyse the data using pivot charts and write a report to explain what the data proves.

MyMoney – This unit enables students to research real current accounts for teenagers and do some market research into how they save and what they spend their money on. They create a series of products including a billboard advert, leaflet and an audio advert. This unit is currently under construction.

To visit our entire KS3 ICT SoW, some KS4 resources and lots more, visit www.communicty.wikispaces.com.

Training Videos
I’ve collected a number of useful videos from the CommonCraft Show on themes such as:
Social Bookmarking, What’s a wiki and RSS. I’ve also started creating my own short videos on various aspects of how to teach ICT. To view my first attempt go to starting an ICT lesson.

Events
I’m organising a SSAT Seminar with Ian Noble on practical uses of teaching ICT with new technologies including web2.0 and VLEs. The event is at the Eastern Leadership Centre in Cambridge on 15th November. For more info and how to book click here.

Websites to check out
MindMaps, FreeMind and Bubbl.us are three excellent examples of online planning and brainstorming tools. I have seen several schools using them very effectively to plan DiDA projects.

There are a number of versions of this video, but they all have the same message. Not only is the world’s population growing, so is the amount of information that we are producing. Therefore our ability to access this ever growing mountain of data and make sense of it will also have to grow.
However, what it does not mention is that the abilities that we continue to value are still interpersonal skills required to be creative with these new ideas and to collaborate with other people around the world.

Download Video: Posted by alexsavage at TeacherTube.com.

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Whilst in London for a SSAT conference with Joe Dale in June, we met Leon Cych at our hotel. He heard that we were in town and asked us to do an interview for his blog, Learn for Life. We managed to smuggle Leon’s camera lights and video equipment into Joe’s room (despite a lot of giggling and what must have looked like quite a dodgy sight!).

We chatted about how we use web2.0 in education. Including:

Spellmaster
Hot Potatoes
TaskMagic
Making PowerPoint interactive
PieCast
VerbCast
Ewan McIntosh
The Language Show
TES ICT Blog
Linguanet forum
MFLresources
Flashmeeting
Notre Dame High School blog
MFL blogs
Scotedublogs
Interviews
Skype
Pretty May
Flickr
YouTube
Keepvid
YouTube goes international
Moderating comments
Nodehill Bloggers
Breaking down the classroom walls with technology
How local blogs can create communities
Blidgets
Ning
Google Reader
Feedwhip
eTwinning Ambassadors

Who cares how you get to school?!!
Having to create a survey and analyse the results can be quite a tricky and time consuming business. Therefore, students are often given data sets of ready made, often fictitious, answers. Also the same old themes seem to be used over and over again. To be frank, very few students are interested in how children travel to school!

Real Data
Online surveys are a great way to enable students to generate and analyse real information from people that actually exist anywhere in the world. They can also empower students to research issues that they are actually interested in.
There are now a number of quick and easy to use sites that enable teachers and/or students to create a survey and then collate the data into a file for analysis. One of the best free sites I have found to do this is surveymonkey.com. It enables the user to create a 10 question survey for up to 100 responses. For the last three years I have been using SurveyAtSchool. There is a small charge, but it gives the user more control and features to use.

KS3 Resources
KS3 ICT unit 7.5 introduces students to generating and analysing survey data. Our Dept. has adapted the QCA sample resources to make it a project on ways to save energy. By analysing the data students can then suggest ways to reduce our energy consumption.
Another unit that we have adapted from the KS3 ICT strategy is 9.2b Online Surveys. After creating a project plan our students record their assumptions about how the lives of young people in the UK and USA differ. From these initial ideas they create hypotheses and then questions to prove/disprove them. We then compile the questions into one global survey and invite our link schools to participate. This year 1238 students took part!
The survey data is compiled and saved as a .csv file (comma seperated value). This can then be imported into a spreadsheet to be filtered and analysed. This year we taught the students how to create pivot tables. To view an example of how we analysed the data click here.
It is interesting to note that a number of our students’ stereotypical impressions of life in the USA were proved to be wrong. For example, on average, UK students ate chips more regularly and more of them had their own website than students in the USA.
As the students had thought of the themes and questions themselves they were much more motivated to analyse the data in detail and produce reports on what they discovered.

GCSE Resources
Our Y10/11 students also use online surveys as part of their AiDA course. This is an effective way for them to gather research from a large number of people. Our Y10 students are currently gathering information on whether parents are concerned about their children’s use of screen based media. To view their surveys and help them in their research click here. We’ve come up with a great formula to help count results when using filters. To view an example exercise in how to do this click here.