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I have been working on a project using Scribble Maps. The idea of the project is to show the locations of historical monuments that can still be seen and visited. So far I have added prehistoric sites such as the Long Man of Wilmington and Stonehenge as well as Roman sites including forts on Hadrian’s Wall and the remains of several villas. The map can be viewed here. When viewing the map you can click on one of the pushpins to bring up further information about the site.

The initial idea was to colour code the sites according to which historical period they belong to but I am now considering creating a separate map for each period. The advantage of having all sites on one map means that you could just look at your local area and see all sites nearby. However this could mean that the map becomes overcrowded especially when zoomed out. I would welcome any comments and suggestions about this project. How do you think it could be of use in the classroom?

I promised delegates at the event that I would post my slides and notes on-line.

The slides that I used are embedded below:

The notes from the presentation are in eight parts:

• New Technology and Outdoor Learning: Introduction

• New Technology and Outdoor Learning - 1 of 8: Geocaching

• New Technology and Outdoor Learning (2 of 8): Educaching

• New Technology and Outdoor Learning (3 of 8): Using Mobile Phones

• New Technology and Outdoor Learning (4 of 8): 4 of 8: Bing Maps and Google Earth

• New Technology and Outdoor Learning (5 of 8): Activities with purpose - Open Street Map and Microsoft Photosynth

• New Technology and Outdoor Learning (6 of 8): Using Blogs

• New Technology and Outdoor Learning (7 of 8): Inspiring Stories

• New Technology and Outdoor Learning (8 of 8): The Curriculum

On Monday I displayed an image of a famous landmark to my year 1 class and explained that it was a postcard from Barnaby Bear. I then asked them to describe the building and recorded their descriptions. While they waited to record their description they were recreating the image using 2Paint.

I then combined the best of the descriptions using Audacity and uploaded them to Audio Boo.

Have a listen and see if you can decide what building was shown on the postcard.

http://audioboo.fm/boos/122046-guess-the-building

Are your students getting bogged down in revision for exams this term. Or do you just find that the sunnier evenings make those ‘i’ve lost my homework’ excuses a bit more frequent?

If so, you might find an innovative new homework planning tool useful for your class.

Show My Homework allows you to set homework by a calendar and for your pupils to simply find and response to assignments on time. Check it out.

The service is still in testing, so if you would like to see more, or you spot a bug do get in contact with the site’s founder, Naimish Gohil at Henry Compton School, London.

This month I came across a great new whiteboard tool for teachers (Scribblar) which enables anyone to start an online whiteboard session and invite their class to view it from any networked computer. Especially useful for home tutoring, when you can upload a screenshot of a document you are looking at and discuss it with a pupil in a different location.

It has all the text and drawing features you’d see on ActivBoard or Smart Notebook, but it does currently lack animation features. At Teachable we looking at ways we could allow easy import of Teachable lessons into Scribblar – do tell us if this would be useful.

I know there is something similar in the Glow system for Scottish teachers, but this is the first such tool I’ve seen that is free for all teachers to try. Using it across a school would cost less than £1000 a year, and it is so simple to use that no-one should require training.

We’ve always thought textbooks have had their day, but this view has now been endorsed by no less than Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger.

From the beginning of the next school year in August, maths and science students in California’s high schools will have access to online texts that have passed an academic standards review, rather than buy any new textbooks.

‘Online teaching resources for maths and science texts that have passed an academic standards review’ … that sounds a bit like Teachable; and we include interactive whiteboard content as well.

The key reason is that textbooks are no longer thought to be good value for money. California spends approximately $350m on teaching resources, and is facing a big budget deficit – a bit like the UK. If education authorities are forced to cut either staff or textbooks, then most schools and parents would rather keep the staff. And that choice may soon come to the UK, which spends around £350m on equivalent materials.

So, although not all schools are equipped to make best use of fully online resources, the move towards Quality Assured online content is speeding up.

Textbooks are going. And no, they won’t Be Back.

I’m intrigued by the disconnect we see between ICT advisors we talk to and the teachers who use our site. People who advise schools on ICT use are usually concerned about whether our content is compatible with a virtual learning environment; the teachers are just concerned that it is high quality and easy to adapt and use in the class. All our files are licenced to use on a VLE (for our school subscribers), but we don’t provide them along with complex metadata – it is often simpler for teachers just to drop them into the online courses / folders of their choice.

My personal view is that the ‘SCORM’ standard adopted by a lot of digital content producers to fit into a VLE is just not suited to most primary and secondary school situations. It was developed by the US Military to make stand alone eLearning modules more compatible, and so many of the tags are not that relevant to school presentations and worksheets. In a way that only military equipment can be, it is also insanely overspecced for the job it is trying to do.

We’d be very happy to comply with a simpler common standard, and we are looking at ways to standardise some of tagging.

I’d be interested in hearing if anyone things we should be providing Teachable files in ‘VLE compatible’ ZIP file format. At the moment our development priorities are elsewere.

Just as our article on Facebook and social networking pointed out, there is a fine line between personal and professional life online. This time it’s a teacher in Scotland who is being investigated for inappropriate Tweets during class.

“Have three Asperger’s boys in S1 class – never a dull moment! Always offer an interesting take on things.”
Another said: “The thought of having some of my S4 beyond exam time doesn’t bear thinking about – for them as well as me I suspect.”

Twitter is completely public by default. Unlike Facebook, you don’t have to get permission to read someone else’s posts. So it means any of your students as well as your friends could be following you. Be careful what you tweet for!