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Archive for the 'education' Category
An Ofsted report has just lambasted the state of geography teaching in the UK. The report based on inspections over the last three years found that geography was the worst-taught subject and that pupils saw it as boring. Now, most of us know that this isn’t true - geography teachers up and down the land continue to inspire and engage young people with the world around them.
But, here’s the bit I really agree with. Ofsted want more fieldwork (bye-bye cotton-wool culture), and more relevance (hello climate change and fair trade).
There is so much scope for making geographical learning exciting, engaging and inspiring.
Digital Explorer wants to bring the world to the classroom in as many ways as possible using the latest technology.
If you work for the DCSF (Department for Children, Schools and Families) then contact us, or please forward this on if you have contacts.
We have plans to change completely the way that young people interact with the world. Come on board.
I was asked this question by a teacher who had come on a Digital Explorer Google Earth course:
Sorry to trouble you with this simple question, but I had your details, having come to one of your Google Earth training days in the summer. Having used Google Earth more since then, it is clear that having an upgraded use via Google Earth Plus would be excellent, but I am not sure whether the average price ($20 pa) is per computer, or establishment. The school is obviously happy to pay out the odd tenner, but not much more!
Do you know, please?
I thought that my reply may be useful to other teachers looking at the same issue.
The license price is per logon account/computer, not per establishment. Google have not yet decided to develop an educational pricing scheme for Google Earth. In reality you can use the same logon for two computers. The one extra function that is useful with Google Earth Plus is the GPS data handling. I imagine that you would only be using GPS with KS4/KS5 and I am not sure how many units you have.
My advice would be:
- Ask your IT technicians to set up additional use accounts for pupils using GPS units - e.g. gps1 to gps6 or however many units you have
- Label the machines that you have in the nearest computer room to your KS4/5 geography teaching rooms with these user accounts
- Purchase half as many Google Earth Plus licenses as you have GPS units
- Upgrade Google Earth to Google Earth Plus on the GPS machines, using your new gps1, etc. login details (you can use the same Google Earth Plus account details for two machines)
This way you will have computing capacity to match your GPS units.
More information about how to upgrade to Google Earth Plus and its benefits
Do comment on this post, if you have any other queries or have another solution.
If you are making Digital Video for the classroom, here are a few pointers to make life easier for teachers:
- 1-4 minutes is great for Key Stage 3 (ages 11-14)
- 5-20 minutes is great for Key Stages 4 and 5 (ages 14-19), where a more in depth exploration of a topic may be useful (although short clips are also still useful)
- attention in the classroom can be lost in the blink of an eye, so it’s great if video can be integrated into interactive whiteboard software - the most commonly used is the SMART Board software, Notebook
- Notebook currently only supports Flash Video (.flv and .swf) and so Digital Video should be downloadable in either of these two formats
If you are a teacher looking to integrate Digital Video into your SMART Board resources:
- SMART Board have written instructions for inserting Flash Video into Notebook versions 9.5 and above
- Kent NGFL have written guidance for converting existing video files in other formats into Flash Video
Good luck and have fun inspiring the next generation.
As part of the preparations for the HSBC Offscreen Student Expedition 2008, Jamie Buchanan-Dunlop travelled to Lebanon to investigate how to galvanise a massive online audience for the expedition to the UK in July 2008.
The Offscreen Education Programme used the Digital Explorer model on the joint expedition in February 2007, giving it a design edge inconceivable a year ago.
The next collaboration sees 8 students and 4 teachers from Lebanon, Bahrain, the UAE and Oman come to the UK in July 2008. Whilst in Beirut Injaz Lebanon and the British Council organised a Youth focus group to look at technology and web trends amongst teenagers in Beirut and beyond (download the full report - pdf 44k).
There were a couple of interesting points. The first that Facebook has complete dominance as the social networking platform amongst young people. The second was that call rates on mobiles are prohibitively high and so there is a large text and bluetooth culture. Interestingly, the dominance of Facebook made RSS an anathema and Flickr obsolete. Some still used YouTube, but again the video functionality of Facebook was a big factor.
If you would like to discuss these matters, please join the Offscreen in Lebanon Facebook group.
The first in a series of 10 UK workshops supported by Google took place on Monday 12 November in Swansea. Jamie Buchanan-Dunlop was joined by 12 educators from South Wales to learn how to create virtual fieldwork using Google Earth.
It was great to be on the road and bringing this kind of training to educators who cannot get up to the courses in London. Duncan Hawley (Geography PGCE tutor at the Swansea Institute of Higher Education) was our host for the day, and made the excellent point of developing a deeper pedagogy for the work. Based on his feedback, we will look to develop a deeper range of links and resources on Digital Explorer’s Google Earth pages and host an online forum where educators from all over the UK will be able to discuss how they are applying the methodology in their classrooms and in the field.
For details on future roadshow courses visit the Royal Geographical Society website.
The courses are supported by Google and run in partnership with the Royal Geographical Society (with IBG). Digital Explorer has received generous sponsorship from Garmin and Olympus in providing equipment.
‘Ideas that can change the world’ launched at Microsoft on Tuesday 13 November. Pupils, teachers, entrepreneurs and the inspirational gathered to turn the amazing ideas that young people have for a better into reality.
There are already some amazing ideas emerging from their work with young people. Some ideas focus on compassion, others on technology and there are some extraordinary ideas from young people about money. If you are an entrepreneur, a scientist, a teacher a youth worker or someone with a passion about making positive change happen do get in touch to see if you can help.
If you are a teacher then please have a look at their amazing cookbook for generating world-changing ideas in the classroom (pdf download).
See the Ideas that can change the world website for more information or join their facebook group.
One other thought…
Please, please, please don’t host your video only on YouTube or similar media-sharing sites. Only the most enlightened schools haven’t blocked these.
By all means use a service such as tubemogul to propagate your video on a number of sites. This will mean that young people can access your content on their own terms outside of school.
I am looking to develop a hosting service for teachers, schools and other developers of educational web video. If you don’t have the ability to host web video at the moment and want your films to be viewed in the classroom, Digital Explorer should be able to help sometime in 2008. Busy times ahead!
There are two things that I have noticed when using web video in the classroom. The first and most pertinent is pupils asking me to enlarge the player to full-screen. When using media players such as Windows Media Player or Real Player this is fairly simple. The complication comes with embedded flash video. In a Year 11 Citizenship class examining the issues of debt and aid, I used video from the Make Poverty History website. The problem was that the videos could not be enlarged. This left some of the less enthusiastic members of the class fairly disgruntled.
The solution:
- use a video player that has the functionality to enlarge to full-screen (the best I can find is Jeroen Wijering’s excellent flv player)
- ask your school IT department to upgrade to Flash version 9 (this will mean that the enlarge function will work)
- produce video using the .flv format, which will ’stretch’ without the image becoming too blocky
The second issue is the 10-20 seconds gap between pressing play and the video starting. This is enough time for young minds to wander or assume that their teacher is a technological incompetent (I still hold that by some quirk, teachers’ ability to function a DVD/Video player has a strong inverse correlation with their length of time in the classroom). This is a mistake that we made (as with the one above) on the Offscreen Student Expedition, by having a black screen and a boring pre-loader (the small animation that shows as the video gets ready to play).
The solution:
- have an still image rather than a black screen before the video plays
- think about having some interesting animation going on so that pupils know that something is about to happen (nothing too extravagant)
- or maybe use some attention grabbing optical illusion that will keep their attention (if you stare at the dot below for long enough the grey haze recedes)
I have been thinking about what makes excellent and engaging blogs from the field, both from my experience setting up the site for the Offscreen Student Expedition 2007, looking at other expedition blogs for the classroom such as Cape Farewell, and planning what changes to make for the next Offscreen Student Expedition in 2008, bringing 8 young people from the Arab world to the UK in July next year.
These are some inital ideas, please let me know what you think.
1. High quality digital journalism
Today’s web-users are more discerning and sophisticated than ever before, returning only to sites that both provide high quality information and can relate their stories with appropriate, timely and professionally produced digital video, images and writing.
2. Integration of online social networking tools
Web-based social networking tools, or Web 2.0, can be integrated to increase user interactivity and provide the necessary platforms to create and cultivate an engaged online community.
There are a host of free services out there and it would be a shame if you did not make use of the likes of YouTube, Flickr, Facebook, Skype, SightSpeed, tubemogul, Brightcove, etc. (thank you to Rick for the last two)
3. Fit-for-purpose educational content
If you are developing content for the classroom, make sure that you are in touch with pupils and teachers. They are the ones who will be able to tell you if the content you are providing is relevant and if the look and feel of your site is engaging for a youth audience.
4. Cutting-edge expedition communications
Updating a website from the side of a mountain or the middle of a desert is theoretically pretty simple. The difficult part is making sure that there are as few problems as possible when you are in the middle of nowhere and making sure that you produce content on time. After a hard day’s expedition, do you really want to cut a short digital video and upload content ready for the morning assembly back in London? Planning how and when digital content is going to be created and updated is essential for a good blog.
5. User-based navigation
Navigation and user-interface need to take into account end users’ requirements and design needs, rather than just the organisation’s preferences alone.
6. Best practices in appropriate moderation processes
Original content submitted to websites or blogs by the spectrum of users must be moderated in a timely and responsible fashion. This ensures that users establish and retain trust in the organisation, and prevents inappropriate content from appearing on websites.
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