Field Trip to a Cemetery

flickr photo by Vanessa (EY) http://flickr.com/photos/vanchett/371032362 shared under a Creative Commons (BY-NC-ND) license

Today I had the pleasure of accompanying our Y10 students on a field trip to Sheffield General Cemetery as the source they were to use for their GCSE History Controlled Assessment. The historical connection and information which can be unearthed and synthesised from a cemetery is obvious, but I was also struck by the potential for a cross-curricular study. There are a number of subject disciplines which could gain value from an exploration of the site:

Science – a number of perspectives offer themselves up here. An exploration of causes of death and links with health, sanitation and epidemics. DIsuse over the years means many parts of the site have reverted to nature and are therefore ripe for habitat studies. The rocks used for tombstones offer geological information – are they local and if not, from where did they originate.

Maths/IT – a graveyard clearly offers a wealth of data and only when that has been collected, analysed and interpreted can they be used to tell a story. What data should we collect, how should they be gathered, stored and shared? In what ways might they be filtered or sorted, then analysed and how should the outcomes be presented?

English – an atmospheric place like a graveyard offers plenty of potential for creative writing, especially if the story of the cemetery and its life are taken into account. In addition, many of the tombstones and memorials are decorated with poetry in recognition of their lives, or to offer up prayers. These could be compared, contrasted and interpreted, perhaps then serving as stimuli for further wiring.

RS – many of the on tombstones, memorials and buildings are replete with symbolism. This particular  cemetery was originally conceived to serve the needs of non-conformists, but later admitted Anglicans, so may offer potential in discussing the differences?

Geography – spread over a wide area, the cemetery constitutes a large site, divided into different regions. This provides opportunities for mapping and, given the topography of the site, exploring contours, land usage, and microclimates. Data gathering, as mentioned elsewhere is also possible.

Art – A particularly moody place, the cemetery also offers a variety of locations like woodland and parkland, plus the chapels and buildings available for interpretation through drawing, painting and photography.

Learning technologies – with plenty of data to gather, a multitude of possibilities opens up. This can be as straightforward as recording information into a database/spreadsheet, which could of course be a collaborative file with small groups of students crowd-sourcing the data for the whole class. Rich media can be used to gather information in the form of photographs or video/audio commentary, or indeed building on the atmosphere of the location for more creative endeavours, like video storytelling or making movie shorts. Mobile devices with gps capability offer the opportunity for gathering location-based data, perhaps helping retain the context of the data gathered for the other sections already mentioned.

Other than history and possibly science, it might be difficult to argue the case for arranging a trip just for the brief examples I provided above. When combined together for a cross-curricular theme however, surely it would be well worth the effort and disruption to other lessons for the potential gains?

Letter to an Unknown Soldier

A while ago I had the pleasure of attending a talk by Kate Pullinger on digital storytelling entitled ‘Beyond the Book.’ In addition to Inanimate Alice, Kate also mentioned other projects with which she has been involved, including ‘Letter to an Unknown Soldier,’ part of the ’14-18 NOW’ commemorations. The stimulus was the cast figure of the Unknown Soldier in Paddington station and people were asked to write in a letter, imagining they were sending a message to the soldier from our place in the future with what we know now.

Kate took us through some of the amazing letters people had sent in, providing a snapshot of the range of people who were inspired to write; over 21 000 in all. As were in a digital storytelling session, I too was inspired and thought about other possibilities; other ways in which the letters might be presented digitally. Although digital storytelling can be delivered through a variety of media, I felt the words that the contributors crafted deserved to stay centre-stage. Inspired by a video I once saw (which for the life of me I can no longer remember), I thought I might attempt what I now know to be called kinetic typography. If you search under that term, you’ll see lots of examples.

Having chosen a letter from the repository on 14-18 NOW, I then needed an application which could generate the text. It appears that the majority of professionals use Adobe After Effects … which I don’t have, nor would want to buy. There are alternatives, including Wax which is free, but whilst there are plenty of tutorials, none of these applications appears to have a shallow entry point. Searching for other possibilities, I came across a couple of posts which suggested PowerPoint, which in the later versions has an export to video option. Here then was something I could certainly cut my teeth on.

So, about four hours later, here’s the result:

(Not sure whether the jerkiness is down to my wireless bandwidth or the YouTube compression process; maybe it’s OK for you. The final video was fine, so a big up to PowerPoint for that.)
Have to admit this was incredibly time consuming and I shudder to think how long it might have taken in an application with which I was less familiar, or if the text had been substantially longer. There are no shortcuts. It’s a matter of adding the text, adding animations, then making iterative small adjustments until you’re satisfied with the output.
With the benefit of hindsight, I think next time I’ll output an audio-free video file, then edit in a video editor so as to get better synchronisation between the animations of the text and the beats/rhythm of the music.

Snakey oscillations?

Our Physics technician, Simon, produced this video during his hols.

Apparently it took an absolute age and the patience of a saint to get to this standard, but what a resource?! As soon as a I saw it, my mind started buzzing with ways I might use it in the classroom.

To prompt questioning

In the first instance, I think it’s sufficiently intriguing to catch a student’s eye and suspect they’d watch it more than once. I’d also contend it would prompt questions and leave them thinking “Why is it doing that?” or “How was that done?” So the first thing I’d probably do is to ask them what questions do you have? (If you’ve not seen 101 Questions by Dan Meyer, it’s well worth checking out and if this video hadn’t been just over the 1 minute limit, I’d certainly have posted it there). If you’re simply using it as a lesson starter, that might be as far as you get, but there’s clearly potential for more.

To encourage close observation

There’s scope here for students of all ages and capabilties to participate at their own level. Precisely how detailed do observations need to be to capture the complexity of the motion. Maybe observations could be crowd-sourced from the class, either using good old paper sticky notes, or an electronic version like Padlet. The notes might then be arranged in different ways: a timeline of events, thematically etc. Could the students then describe what they saw in sufficient detail for someone who hadn’t seen the video to be able to picture the event?

Hypothesising

Given the questions they’ve already asked and the observations they’ve made, are they better placed to offer hypotheses which begin to explain what they’re seeing? What is causing the effects? Then of course, how might they test their hypotheses?

Taking measurements

What measurement might they want to take to try to make sense of what is happening? And how would they do that from a video which is on screen. These are clearly the kinds of practical skills upon which students are assessed, but rather than the traditional pendulum experiment where we might provide them with the instructions how to set things up, what measurements to take and how to take them, here’s a real phenomenon, based on the same theory, but which challenges them to come up with a novel method for taking the measurements … and in attempting to ensure accuracy, what problems do they face? Of course that can be followed by displaying and/or processing the results in whatever way is deemed appropriate.

Replicating

So having interrogated the phenomenon in the detail they now have, how would they set up their own version? Or a better or different one? There’s now the option to delve into the practical aspects in much more detail, but be warned, Simon assured me that the adjustments that were needed to the length of the pendulums to produce such subtle changes in periods of oscillation were incredibly fine, which is where the patience came in. Perhaps with older students there’s an alternative approach? With measurements of the difference in time periods between different golf balls, by using the equation for a simple pendulum, can they establish what the difference in lengths must be? Maybe then they might be able to set up their pendulum snake from theory alone? Those interested in coding or with sufficient design skills might be able to produce an animated representation.

Maybe the effort and time Simon put in could be repaid several-fold?

Stop – Go

This work has been released into the public domain by its author, Arpingstone (http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/User:Arpingstone)

In a staff workroom the other day, a colleague turned and asked how she could make a traffic light image image on a PowerPoint slide animate between the different colours. Nothing fancy; just to enhance the message she was trying to convey.

Creating a traffic light graphic in PowerPoint took a few moments; the different colours of the individual lights could easily be swapped using different fill colours of course. I then tried to wrangle the animation feature in PowerPoint to produce some sort semblance of the lighting sequence. Oh dear! I spent far longer than I should have … all to no avail. Confident I would have the wherewithall to bend PowerPoint to my will, I’d neglected an alternative and (if I hadn’t been fixated on PowerPoint) blindingly obvious solution – the animated GIF.

Using the graphic I’d already produced, I exported a sequence of four images, each having a different lighting mode, as GIFs. Then a quick search found Picasion, an online GIF maker. The four images were uploaded, a couple of settings were adjusted and voila – an animated GIF available to download, link to or as an embed code, all in a mere few minutes.

I guess there’s a lesson to learn there. Since the original request came from the context of PowerPoint, an application I’m  intimate with , I failed to step back and consider other possibilities. I guess there’s a lot to be said for standing back and taking the helicopter view?

Three little questions

cc licensed ( BY ) flickr photo by Cali4beach: http://flickr.com/photos/cali4beach/8104593909/

Whilst I was responding to being ‘tagged’ in the 11 Questions meme by Nick Jackson, I started wondering how this principle of spreading questions and answers might be used in our classrooms. We’ve always solicited answers from students, whether whole-class, group or individual, and sought to employ good questioning techniques to encourage higher-order thinking in so doing. Increasingly, we’re beginning to recognise that it’s even more powerful if we empower students to ask their own questions, so we seek opportunities to do just that.

How about then, rather than 11 Questions which might become rather unwieldy, a 3 Question challenge? This could be on a topic you’re about to study, so the activity could reveal the current breadth of the students’ knowledge and understanding. Or it could be done at the close of a module as a simple assessment of how much the class has picked up. Maybe it could be an activity done at the start of the year to help to get to know a new class of students, or help them to learn about each other.

In practice, each student would ask three questions which would be distributed to three classmates, chosen by some fair system. This could be distributed via a blog if you have one, Google docs or email, or if you have access to none of these, pen and paper could also do the job. Each of the three recipients then has to answer the three questions in such a way that the sender can see the responses. After that first round, the initiator should then have three answers (which may of course be the same!) to each of their three questions. Since they’ve also acted as a recipient, they’ll also have seen and (hopefully) answered nine questions in total from three other people … again some of these may have been duplicates. By then drawing together and summarising the questions and answers of the whole class, it should be possible to get a good overview of areas which are strong and others which might need revisiting or addressing.

It sounds complex, but worth a try perhaps?

Coding by stealth

If you’re one of the increasing number of connected educators, you can hardly fail to have felt the pressure to improve our students’ understanding of the world of computing, computer science or coding. There’s a big push here in the UK, but also more widely around the world. From non-profits like Code Club and Code.org to large organisations like the BBC and Mozilla, the resources they’re deploying to encourage young people into coding and computing are expanding daily.

Given that background, it can be a bit daunting for those of us with little experience or knowledge in these areas to know where to start. However when you begin to ‘lift the hood/bonnet’ on certain applications with which we’re already familiar, there are lots of little tweaks and tricks which become possible with only a rudimentary appreciation of code.

YouTube Embed code options

Let’s take an example. I often embed Youtube videos within our school learning platform, or indeed on my blogs – if you do too, you’ll be aware that we’re already into the world of coding, even if it’s only copying and pasting an embed code from one place to another. Whilst in the ‘Embed’ context-sensitive panel under a YouTube video, I often change the video size to one more suitable for small form-factor devices like smart phones. And here’s a first coding learning opportunity; as you change the video size, the embed code changes to reflect that. So how about having students embed YouTube (or Vimeo) videos into a site¹ so they have the opportunity to make that kind of change and watch what happens to the code … or even tweak the code manually and see what happens to the video. Let them explore what the code element ‘frameborder=”0”’ means by changing the figure and see what happens.

But it was whilst doing this that I spotted another option underneath the video sizing tool I’d not noticed before. “Enable privacy enhanced mode” which had a help link next to it for me to follow. In there it explained about the privacy enhanced mode … but more about the embed options too. So to make a video play automatically for example, you just add an extra bit of code (“&autoplay=1”) into the embed code. Or to start a video at a certain time, just add another code segment. Here then we can have students ‘hack’ code to make something different happen. Hacking extant code is a great place to start learning, rather than trying to code something from scratch – you get instant feedback on whether what you did is right. From here they could go on to search for other code snippets which can be used to change the way videos are displayed or played – maybe have them explore how to caption YouTube videos and think about why that might be important for some people.

And all that from a site which many students access every day as consumers, but one which used in a slightly different way, might just get them thinking a little more about the coding that makes it work.

(¹Set one up using Weebly or Google sites, perhaps themed for your subject and have them add videos which illustrate one aspect of your course – a great way to gather resources for a topic with the minimum of effort surely?)

How to make a “How To”

It’s a truism that these days if you want to know ‘How to’ do something, whether it be improve your guitar fingering, replace a spark plug or quickly get the seeds from pomegranate, a quick web search will probably find you a wealth of potential solutions. They might be videos on YouTube, blog posts or increasingly making use of an app designed to help you do just that. Whether you’re on the iOS or Android platform, there’s an app for that! Although browsing through their online galleries from the comfort of your monitor and computer is indeed possible, because they can also be viewed from within the app on your mobile device of choice, you can often taken your newly found guide to the task itself. A much more efficient and effective way of working.

So as a consumer, theses apps are an absolute boon, but do they have a place in the classroom? Well I’d argue yes, but first we need to spin them around and rather than having our students simply consume information, we need to think of them using the apps as creators … requiring a much higher level of demand and hopefully more powerful learning.

The first requirement is having access to mobile devices onto which the apps have been installed. This may be possible if you’re one of the increasing number of schools with class sets or even 1:1 access to mobile devices. Or perhaps you’re on the BYOD/T route and can ask your students to obtain the apps themselves? (The apps are both free). Thinking forward a little to when their completed guides are published and shared, demands a little forethought and will depend on which of the domains you’re in: school devices which are shared, 1:1 or user-owned devices. Will they be using generic or personal accounts and how will these need to be set up in the first place? How will the completed guide then be shared with peers and/or teachers? Perhaps by bunching together links to them all or maybe embedding them on a central page on a school website or blog?

But what would students actually use them for? Well perhaps they should be given the choice; an alternative or antidote to producing a written account or presentation? Here are a few possible options:

• Science – replacing the standard diagram, method, results, conclusion-style lab report.
• Drama/Theatre – showing/discussing how a particular scene might be set.
• Food Tech – there are plenty of exemplars already in the libraries.
• Languages – create a guide on any topic in the language being studied.
• Art – illustrate a particular technique, or provide a walk-though of a gallery.
• Geography – provide a description of a geographical feature, actually in the field.
• PE – make a guide coaching a beginner in a particular technique.
• History – create a narrative of a historical location.
• Maths – generate some ‘real-world’ mathematical exemplars.

As always when students are publishing to an open platform, this kind of activity has to come with a health warning. Hopefully your students will be sufficiently literate to appreciate the consequences of posting to the Web; if not, perhaps this provides an ideal teaching opportunity?

GIF(t) or JIF(ffy)?

3-ball cascade movie.gif licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 3.0 Unported license

The debate over the pronunciation of .GIF has raged on pretty much since the file format was developed back in 1987. Is the g soft as in giraffe, or hard as in graphics? I’m not sure it’ll ever be settled , especially given the range of responses in the comments on ‘The GIF Pronunciation Page‘ by Steve Olsen.

But what would happen if we started to run loose with the pronunciation of other file extensions?

There are plenty of file extensions from which to pick. There must be loads of pronunciation changes we could consider, right?

I wonder what Siri thinks …. ?

License to Ask

Questions by Oberazzi
Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike License

One message which came through strongly from the INSET session I mentioned in the last post was how much we need to stimulate a sense of curiosity by prodding, encouraging and cajoling students into asking questions … but asking the right questions and in the right ways. The significance of this in enhancing learning was emphasised just a day later when this Mind/Shift article was posted – For Students, Why the Question is More Important Than the Answer

Coming up with the right question involves vigorously thinking through the problem, investigating it from various angles, turning closed questions into open-ended ones and prioritizing which are the most important questions to get at the heart of the matter.

The article highlights that we need to give the students ‘license to ask’ questions and to enable this we should:

• provide sufficient time for them to think through what they want to ask
• enable it to be acceptable for some to ask many questions whilst others only come up with a few … but that it’s important for everyone to contribute
• not judge answers
• note each question as stated.

Now that all sounds like a rather time-consuming exercise if undertaken in class time. Nevertheless if it’s important enough we’ll make the time … though perhaps can’t afford to be so fastidious on a regular basis. Perhaps then ICT can offer an alternative way?

Typecast is an online application specifically geared towards facilitating student questions. The principle is that you pose a stimulus idea about which students could ask questions (maybe an image, news article, paragraph of text or short video). You then share a link to it with your students who can then begin posting their questions. What’s more, they can ‘vote’ questions up or down, so if they see someone has asked a question to which they would also like to know the answer, they can vote it up. Like many things this isn’t an activity you would just drop on the students and expect success, but with a little preparatory guidance, it offers an alternative way of soliciting questions and might provide a channel for those who would be reticent about asking questions in class.

Using Typecast offers the possibility of students preparing in advance for a new topic by encouraging them to formulate questions about the topic. This means that you’re already aware of what the misconceptions might be, what the students already know and therefore what might be the most effective route forward in starting the unit. You also have the possibility of providing certain answers which bring the whole class up to a common starting point. Typecast questioning could also be used for checking progress and understanding as a topic proceeds or towards the end of the topic as a way of checking whether concepts have been embedded.

How about taking things a step further? How about students (perhaps in pairs/groups) taking on the role of prviding the answers. Or why not make full use of the online aspect and invite participation from an external ‘expert’ from whom students can draw out information through their questions? Or even use Typecast as a way for connecting with parents and using it as a tool through which they can ask questions about a school strategy or initiative?

Typecast – not quite a discussion board … a Q&A board perhaps?

 

 

Mandala Maker

Yesterday during an INSET day, we were treated to an informative session from Jane Simister on active learning techniques we can employ with our students. As is my wont, when each activity was introduced, I couldn’t help thinking how ICT might be employed … not that that would always be appropriate or desirable.

One of the techniques helpful in drawing out the essential significant points in a topic is using a Mandala; a framework to scaffold students’ interrogation of what they know. These can be completed independently or in pairs/groups. Using a blank Mandala, the central topic is written in the core, then sub-topics in the next ring and so forth, gradually teasing out the important points which describe the topic as a whole. Useful as a revision technique; useful for planning extended writing activities.

On the fantastic Classtools website, Russell Tarr has an interactive Mandala creator, although described there as a Target diagram, and this completed version gives you an idea of what a finished product might look like:

Click here for larger version

Useful though that is, it has the drawback of a fixed number of sectors which might not be appropriate for all topics. Having been unsuccessful in finding anything which might address that, I wondered if it might be possible to create my own customisable Mandala creator. Since it look very similar to the doughnut charts found in Excel, it was to that that I turned. After a little mental huffing and puffing I got to something which works.

Mandala Template Generator

By inputting the number of sectors you want in each ring, a blank chart template is automatically created which can then be printed off for writing onto … or for the more adept, maybe even annotating on screen. What I couldn’t quite figure out was how to have different numbers of sub-sections in different segments, if you needed it. As it stands, the finished product will always be symmetrical.

So there’s your challenge: how might this be adapted to increase its flexibility? I’ve left the sheet which performs all the calculations visible if you want to interrogate and/or adapt that … or maybe you have a slicker method?