Kellett School Technology Blog

Sliderocket

2011-12-07T10:59:00.004+08:00

Our year 4 students have been using Sliderocket to demonstrate their learning during their work on oceans.

The platform looks a useful addition to our work. It's relatively easy to use and has a helpful option to duplicate presentations. This means that students can work in groups and then duplicate the presentation to personalise their own section.

Thanks to year 4 students and teachers for working so hard on this project. I think we'll be coming back to look at Sliderocket again, especially if an education specific solution can be designed.

Kellett Tellit

2011-12-05T09:39:00.003+08:00

Well done to the Kellett Tellit team for producing a very readable and informative edition of their termly magazine, which can be read below. Good to see some stories looking at environmental issues, too.

Digital Photography Competition 2012

2011-12-02T11:06:00.003+08:00

Here's the info about this year's Digital Photography Competition.

What next for the iband?

2011-09-19T09:17:00.002+08:00

The premiere appearance of our iBand at last term's summer concert caused some comments and interest, not least among some of the students; one pupil arrived at school for the new year and sought out Mr Cox to find out how he could sign up for the band!

Some valuable lessons were learnt in the preparation for our performance of Lady Gaga's Poker Face, including how to make the most of limited rehearsal time, and the importance of being able to set up quickly and independently.

Maybe we need a space dedicated to this type of musical performance and expression. The clip below is now top of our wishlist!

Personalised Learning.... and frozen yoghurt

2011-09-14T13:31:00.007+08:00

"Personalized Learning is the tailoring of pedagogy, curriculum and learning environments to meet the needs and aspirations of individual learners, often with extensive use of technology in the process."

Personalised Learning is in the spotlight at the moment as teachers here begin to wrestle with what it really means. The availability of technology, although still limited within the primary school in terms of one-to-one connectivity, alongside the development of our virtual learning environment, iLearn, means that true personalised learning is now within our grasp.

But what does personalised learning actually mean in this world of multiple intelligences, different learning styles, neuro-plastic brains and all those things which teachers are becoming more aware of? The Wikipedia definition above is a good starting point, stressing as it does the word individual, and noting the aspirations and needs of those individuals, as well as the use of technology.

I have been trying to think of it in terms of the experiences our students have and yesterday it came to me.

During a trip to Central, my son dragged me in to Yoppi. Yoppi is a frozen yoghurt shop and it was the first of it's kind I had ever visited. It was a fascinating experience. Not only did I get to taste a very pleasant dessert, but I also gained some insight into what personalised learning is and why it is so important to our students.

How so?

Firstly, Yoppi looks new. It's attractive, shiny and modern and looks inviting. It's a shop that makes you feel welcome. Secondly, you as the customer can tailor your yoghurt to your requirements or needs.

There are three parts to the overall process. Firstly you can choose from any of four yoghurts to go in your pot. You can add them individually or you can get the machine to blend them for you. Two of the yoghurt flavours appear to be staple, in that they don't seem to change much, but the third and fourth flavours look like they change regularly. More of that later.

Having added your yoghurt to the pot, choosing as much or as little as you like and remembering that it's likely although not necessary that you will have added some of the flavours which are considered a staple, you then can choose from a huge number of toppings to add interest and taste to your choice. In other words, you can personalise your choice to your own desires whilst keeping the yoghurt as a base.

The last stage of the process involves your choice being weighed (evaluated or assessed if you like!) before you pay the bill, which of course is dependent on size.

At this point you can enjoy a totally individual taste, tailored to your needs, aspirations and desires!

Not only that, but you can also influence how your future experience might be by taking part in the voting system to add different flavours when they are changed during the next week. The opportunity to do this encourages customers to become empowered and engaged with the process.

And as for the technology, well, there's free wi-fi! What more could you ask!

The parallels with education are clear. This new type of food experience offers it's customers the opportunity to customise (within the confines of the staple flavours), enrich and personalise, seek evaluation, and influence future choices.

This is exactly what personalised learning should be about.

We could learn a lot from the frozen yoghurt experience. I'll be going back again next week just to make sure!

ICT Learning Journey

2011-09-14T08:11:00.003+08:00

At the end of last term we had a training day that focused on the technology journey that our students experienced from Reception to Year 9.

The presentation is featured below and allows you to see some of the technologies that students use to enable their learning. There is a substantial amount of embedded video within the Prezi so it may take a while to load!

ICT Learning Journey on Prezi

Digital Photography Competition 2011

2011-08-30T08:35:00.005+08:00

In the madness that always descends at the end of each school year, the Digital Photography Competition got lost amongst the masses of other things going on.

To put that right, here are the winners and commended entries. Well done to all those that entered, please keep taking pictures and enjoy your photography. It's a hobby that will stay with you for life!

New year, new challenges..

2011-08-30T08:25:00.002+08:00

As I said to the new reception parents at yesterday's coffee morning, our new intake of 4 year olds are likely to be the most tech-savvy/literate/immersed group of students we have ever had. Keeping those students engaged and enthused about their education in this tech-infused world is a huge challenge for teachers trained in institutes shaped in the last century.

As ever, this is the beginning of a long journey and ensuring these students continue to thrive, enjoy, and make the most of this incredibly exciting digital world available to them is always at the front of our department's thinking.

Welcome to the new academic year.

Parent tech Coffee Morning - Emerging Technologies

2011-06-14T13:01:00.004+08:00

Here's the presentation from our latest Parent tech Coffee Morning. Please note that many of the videos in this presentation are loaded within the Prezi to ensure they play in high quality. Because of this the presentation may take some time to load completely. Use the left and right key on the keyboard to scroll between screens.

Parent Tech Coffee Morning - Emerging Technologies

Parent Technology Coffee Morning 4 - Mobile Learning

2011-05-26T13:38:00.002+08:00

Here's the presentation that was given to parents at last week's Technology Coffee morning. It was a fascinating experience with so many people sharing their opinions and experience.

Parent Technology Coffee Morning - Mobile Learning on Prezi

Paramore in Hong Kong

2011-05-24T16:29:00.001+08:00

The news that Paramore will be playing Hong Kong in August reminded me of the time we created some Lip Dubs in our Computer Club.

I just had to go back and find the one of Paramore's "That's What You Get". It was great fun to make!

iBand

2011-05-12T10:48:00.000+08:00

Last week our lunchtime iBand activity started. 12 students from years 4 & 5 will be experimenting with handheld technology to see if they are able to produce a musical piece worthy of public performance.

They are using a number of different apps to produce their sounds, which are listed below with UK prices.

iPhone, iPod and Ipad Music/Sound Apps

iShred Live by Frontier Design Group - Free

Percussions+ by Crimson Technology – GBP3.99

Pocket Organ C3B3 by insideout ltd. – GBP1.79

SoundGrid by Vitaliy Pronkin – GBP1.79

iPhone and iPod Music/Sound Apps

Bassist by MooCow Ltd. – GBP2.39

Cowbell Plus by Frontier Design Group – GBP0.59

Guitarist by MooCow Ltd. – GBP2.39

Guitar Studio by Frontier Design Group – GBP2.99

iGOG Massive Drums by Wave Machine Labs Inc. – GBP1.79

iShred by Frontier Design Group – GBP2.99

Melody Bell by CONIT Co., Ltd. – GBP0.59

NLog Free Synth by Rolf Wohrmann - Free

Piano Studio by Frontier Design Group – GBP2.99

Real Bongos by Armin Heinrich – GBP1.19

Saxophone musicofx by mode of expression, LLC – GBP0.59

Theremin by Frontier Design Group – GBP0.59

iPad Music/Sound Apps

3D Drum Kit by Benjamin McDowell – GBP1.19

Well done to all those students involved. They've made a great start and who knows, they may well be up to the standard below at some point in the future.

Parent Technology Coffee Morning 3 - e-safety

2011-03-23T11:20:00.007+08:00

Last week saw our final Tech Coffee Morning for the term. The focus was e-safety and over 40 parents attended to look at a range of issues.

The Prezi below can be viewed to look at some of the ideas covered by clicking the play arrow and waiting for the presentation to download.

One of the clear messages from the morning is that we need to develop resilient, ethical digital citizens who use technology in a positive way. Trying to lock down their access and control what they do is not the way to do this.

We also looked a little at net monitoring software and discussed that whilst it might be appropriate for some families it is not appropriate for all.

For those interested in further reading, you may find some of the links below useful:

Childnet Parent Presentation

Digizen

Thinkyouknow

Many thanks for all those who attended this session. Dates for next term will be confirmed shortly.

Parent Technology Coffee Morning No. 2

2011-02-15T12:12:00.008+08:00

Our second Parent Technology Coffee Morning was even better attended than the first one with 56 parents arriving to discuss Games Technology. We were also joined by Frankie Tam from the Hong Kong Digital Games Based Learning Association.

The presentation highlighted why games are an important aspect of child development and how, as one of the most dominant forms of media in young people's lives, parents need to be able to understand the importance and intricacies of many of the games our students use.

We also brainstormed some of the concerns that parents have about gaming. The word addictive was used and we discussed what that really meant. Did it really mean addicted in the clinical sense or did it mean "liked a lot" or "would much rather be doing"! I inferred that parents might be less concerned if they thought their children were "addicted to reading" but to my surprise parents showed that they would be concerned by that too.

Research into the effects of games was touched upon as well as the way the media covers the issue.

Positive aspects of gaming were looked at and we watched a video of some of our students explaining the intricacies of Club Penguin.

We also looked at the way we use games to stimulate learning here at Kellett.

The Prezi shown can be accessed below;

Parent Tech Coffee Morning - Games Technology on Prezi

Resources from the session

Key Text;

Don't Bother Me Mom--I'm Learning! by Marc Prensky (Feb 14, 2006) - available in HK stores but you may have to order it

Other texts;

What Video Games Have to Teach Us About Learning and Literacy. Second Edition: Revised and Updated Edition by James Paul Gee (Dec 26, 2007)

Fun Inc.: Why Gaming Will Dominate the Twenty-First Century by Tom Chatfield (Nov 15, 2010)

Reality Is Broken: Why Games Make Us Better and How They Can Change the World by Jane McGonigal (Jan 20, 2011)

These books will help to gain a better understanding of aspects of game playing.

Areas for development at home

Design

Scratch; http://scratch.mit.edu

Atmosphir; http://www.atmosphir.com/

Kodu; http://fuse.microsoft.com/project/kodu.aspx

Play

Wolfquest; http://www.wolfquest.org/

Little Big Planet; (PS3 PSP) http://www.littlebigplanet.com/

Ayiti; http://ayiti.newzcrew.org/ayitiunicef

Darfur is Dying; http://www.darfurisdying.com/

Spore; http://www.ea.com.hk/spore

Professor Layton; http://professorlaytonds.com/

As in our first session the 75 minutes seemed to fly by and the audience was very positive and engaged with the discussion, offering their thoughts and feedback regularly.

Many thank to all those that attended.

Our next session is set for Friday 18th March and will look at the topic of e-safety.

Hong Kong 21st Century Learning Conference

2011-02-07T10:22:00.004+08:00

Next week sees conference season kick off with the 3rd Hong Kong 21st Century Learning Conference taking place at West Island School. Nearly 30 teachers from across Kellett will be attending to participate in a number of sessions and forums.

Big hitters Stephen Heppell and David Warlick will be the keynotes and I'm delighted to say that Katrina Hall has been chosen to present a session on the use of iTouch Apps in the Primary Classroom. Katrina has previously presented at the 2nd Hong Kong 21st Century Learning Conference on Games in the Classroom as well as on the use of mobile devices at the Hong Kong Handheld & Mobile Learning Festival at the University of Hong Kong.

The trailer for the session can be seen below;

Doodling

2011-01-19T09:33:00.003+08:00

Sometimes you see a video that just makes you drop your jaw! Having been introduced to Vi Hart via Twitter I'm now a devoted fan.

Parent Technology Coffee Morning

2011-01-17T14:18:00.019+08:00

Here is the presentation from the first of our Parent Technology Coffee Mornings.

Parent Tech Coffee Morning - Social Networking on Prezi - allow presentation to download before clicking on the arrow to scroll through - alternatively click More and choose Full-Screen

The focus in our first session was Social Networking, with the emphasis on the use of Facebook. Clearly this was a very appropriate place to start as over 50 parents were present for the session in the primary school gym. We looked at some definitions of Social Networking and discussed why it was so popular with young people today and why it has the opportunity for them to learn and utilise a variety of skills which they will have to call upon as they get older.

Having looked at the benefits we listed some of the issues and spent time finding out how to configure profiles and privacy settings.

The two major texts used as the basis for the talks are free and can be downloaded here;

A Parents Guide to Facebook;
http://www.connectsafely.org/pdfs/fbparents.pdf

Hanging Out, Messing Around, and Geeking Out;

http://mitpress.mit.edu/books/full_pdfs/hanging_out.pdf

Also a good idea to listen to danah boyd talking about young people's use of social networking;

Many thanks to all those that attended. If you have any feedback about the session or have a suggestion for future events, please let me know or comment in the space below.

The remaining dates for this term are;

Friday 11th February - Gaming Technology

Friday 18th March - e-Safety

Connected Camp

2010-12-03T09:41:00.014+08:00

Earlier this term I attended P6 Camp on the island of Wing Yi Chau in Sai Kung. Despite the fact that there was no wireless on the island we had decided we were going to try to make the experience more interactive and connected with the school community by using Twitter. Whist we would continue to use technology to photograph and record our visit, the use of Twitter would allow us to update our progress in real time.

We also used a couple of apps to track our progress, more of which later.

The micro-blogging service Twitter is an extremely useful tool, both as a means of communication and as a way of exchanging knowledge. Having used the service for nearly three years I am a big fan and would go as far as saying that it is an essential tool for teachers in the 21st Century, who need to continually strive to keep themselves up to date with new techniques, thinking and tools.

As a straight communication tool it proved to add an extra dimension for parents whose previous experience of camp was saying goodbye on the first morning and then opening up the bag full of unworn clothes on return.

Not only were we able to post text updates, we also used YFrog and Twitrpix to share photos, and TwitVid to post videos (although sadly students and colleagues within school were unable to view these due to the filtering service provided to us by PCCW!)

The service itself is very easy to use at it's basic level and I was hopeful that our community would see the opportunity to connect. I was staggered by how eagerly our parents used the service. Over 30 parents signed up to follow our tweets, with some of our photos being viewed over 150 times. Many parents took the opportunity to tweet back to camp to show messages of support and encouragement (or ask why their child wasn't wearing their hat?!)

There was also the opportunity for staff and students in school to follow the progress of camp. Many younger brothers and sisters were able to see what was going on. Three students in P3-10 were able to send greetings to their siblings, an act which must surely help to dispel and fears that younger students might have about their upcoming first camp.

All the feedback we've had since the trip has been extremely positive with parents saying that it added an extra dimension to the the whole visit.

It's certainly something we will continue to look at in the future whenever possible.

We were also able to use a couple of apps to track our progress, thanks to the iPhone. We used GPSMotionX to track our journey to Sai Kung, and Runkeeper to trace the walk from the pier to the camp. The screenshots below show some of the info we got back.

Thursdays; only Girls Allowed

2010-10-14T14:10:00.005+08:00

Terry Freedman in his most recent newsletter highlights the work of the Big Ambition "Girls in IT Month" which highlights technology as a positive and rewarding career path for girls. I know that Terry has voiced his concerns over this type of initiative in the past but I feel they can be a valuable element in the highlighting of tech choices for our female students.

We covered this issue a while back and more recently we have made a change to the format of our lunchtime sessions. Our ICT room is open most lunchtimes for students in KS2 on a daily rotation basis, although those with work to do have priority.

Most of the students who use the room play games of try out different pieces of software. There are a number of guidlines they have to follow, such as no inappropriate games or no use of video sharing websites and in general there are very few problems.

The vast majority of those who turn up to use the room are boys, sometimes as much as 80%. As a result of this I decided to change the timetable this year and made Thursday the day when you could only come to the room if you are a girl. The response has been amazing with most stations used every Thursday. All the girls think it's a good thing; "We're so grateful for you for doing this for us," said one of the students.

Interestingly, many of the games they use are the same as the boys, although more of the Webkinz ilk admittedly.

Thinking about this reminded me to look up the winning video of the Inkwrite Classroom makeover competition from a few years ago, which highlighted girls working with technology. The original link to the video no longer exists but it is still on Youtube and can be seen below;

Hong Kong Handheld & Mobile Learning Festival

2010-10-13T10:14:00.010+08:00

I was lucky enough to be involved in the organisation of the Hong Kong Handheld & Mobile Learning Festival held at the University of Hong Kong last weekend. Over 100 attendees gave up their Saturday to listen and share their experiences on handheld learning.

Two of the presentations featured teachers from our school; Miss Hall presented on her use of iTouch within the classroom alongside Serena Fan from ISF Academy, while Mrs Bookless, Miss Adams and Miss Hitchcox discussed our work with Games Based Learning. It's great to see our teachers sharing and discussing their practice with wider audiences, not only does it help them develop as profession

als by being able to explain their work, it also gives them the opportunity to discuss and share with teachers working in similar ways.

Miss Hall and Miss Fan's presentation can be seen below;

iTouch in the Classroom

Other presentations included using Nintendo DS consoles in the Chinese languageclassroom, Activote in Early Years and GPS on field trips. Keynote presentations by Professor Cher Ping Lim (HKIEd) and the Library of Congress's Kathleen Ferenz gave the audience much to think about and confirmed my own opinion that the use of handheld and mobile devices is an important tool in empowering students to engage more closely with the learning process.

Later in the day I moderated a forum panel consisting of Dr Daniel Churchill (HKU), Gilbert Ho (Apple Asia) and Peter Woodhead (GSIS). The panel responded to a video presentation featuring Tim Rylands, Derek Robertson and Dawn Hallybone, European based influential voices in this field. The discussion was extremely stimulating and covered such topics as leadership, relevance and emerging technologies.

Hopefully one of the results of the day will be an increased sense of community among those who have an interest in this type of learning. Feedback from the day was certainly positive.

Many thanks to all those presenters who worked so hard to produce stimulating and engaging sessions and also all those who turned up to share and learn!

Moon Festival INSET

2010-09-21T13:20:00.004+08:00

Whilst it's a long weekend for many this week, it's going to be a busy time in school as we host an INSET session on Friday. Focusing on preparing teachers to implement the ISTE Standards, the day will guide staff on how they can meet the five standards and performance indicators required;

1. Facilitate and inspire student learning and creativity
2. Design and Develop Digital-Age Learning Experiences and Assessments
3. Model Digital-Age Work and Learning
4. Promote and Model Digital Citizenship and Responsibility
5. Engage in Professional Growth and Leadership

We are lucky to be joined by Dr Daniel Churchill and Dr Bob Fox from Hong Kong University who will be speaking and running workshops. The day will consist of two keynote sessions and ten workshops, eight of which will be run by Kellett staff. It's excellent to see that we are able to provide professional development opportunities for our staff using our own expertise.

We will also be welcoming three colleagues from overseas FOBISSEA schools who will be joining the day and sharing their experiences.

The workshops range from subjects such as Google Apps and Docs, Data Handling in Maths, using Scratch, Twitter as a professional development tool, and using iTouch apps in the classroom.

As you can imagine, hosting an event like this has taken a large amount of organisation and I'm very grateful for the efforts of the ICT Team in making it happen, as well, of course, to all those involved in the workshops and keynotes.

Scratch@MIT Conference

2010-08-23T15:39:00.009+08:00

Wow, where did that summer go?!

Welcome back to the new school year. As ever this year looks to be a series of exciting challenges, just one of which is to spend more time blogging. The advent of Twitter has certainly cut down on my blogging but I'm determined to get back into it this year and help keep our community informed, as well as putting the world of education technology to rights too!

Last week's prep week wasn't quite as productive as I'd hoped largely due to the fact I was late to return after attending the Scratch@MIT event in Boston.

Massachussetts Institute of Technology (MIT) is pretty much at the pinnacle of academic technologies and is consistently ranked within the top five universities in the world. Attending a conference at MIT's Media Lab was a great thrill. The Institute has been responsible for LOGO and Scratch, two technologies I have used in schools a huge amount. Indeed, my first experience with LOGO was as a trainee teacher in 1986!

The four day conference gave me the opportunity to look at how others have implemented Scratch within their environments and to receive new ideas about ways in which it could be used in the future. We have been using Scratch since it was first released, initially in our Computer Club, but then within the technology curriculum. On Friday morning I contributed to a presentation looking at ways in which the technology can be moved into the Mathematics curriculum. It seemed to be well received, which was a bonus!

Below is a video put together by the amazing team that were recording the conference.

There were plenty of 'takeaways' from this conference, not least the reassurance that we are on the right track with our use of Scratch. We now need to look at implementing the program within different contexts throughout the school, not just the Mathematics or Technology curriculum. Areas such as language teaching and digital storytelling can also benefit and we need to pursue these this year.

There were a large number of international delegates present from outside the USA and a number of possible future projects were discussed.

Attendance at the conference strengthened my view that Scratch is the best piece of free software that schools can use. In fact, it may just be the best piece of software for education full stop.

Parents often ask me about software they can install at home that will help to develop their children. Well, the simplest answer is Scratch. It hits a number of areas, but crucially can aid problem solving and creative development.

Scratch can be downloaded (at no cost!) here.

Using Go Animate to create a presentation

2010-06-23T13:41:00.002+08:00

P5 have been experimenting with Go Animate

GoAnimate.com: Chris, louisa and Jasmine by kellett

Tessellation in Google Sketchup

2010-06-07T09:34:00.003+08:00

Students in P3 and P4 have been using Google Sketchup to investigate tessellation. After learning how to draw basic 2D shapes they then used tools such as the copy & move and rotation tools to help them to tessellate accurately. They then used the component tool to allow them to replicate patterns within their shapes.

Some students also created 3D solids, including a stellated octahedron. Below is a slideshow of some of our work.

Using Google Sketchup to Investigate Tessellation and 3D Shape on PhotoPeach

World Scratch Day

2010-06-02T09:54:00.001+08:00

Outstanding.... What now?

2010-04-27T08:48:00.015+08:00

I must admit, I dislike the word intensely, it's not something I think a school should ever say about itself, but I guess if somebody else says it about you then it's ok.

So OfStEd has declared that we are outstanding in every item of it's schedule. That's a fantastic achievement and a testimony to the hard work of the staff who consistently deliver across a huge range of school experiences.

From a technology point of view it will be interesting to see what the inspectors say. They were able to see a wide range of technology usage and commented to me on how the teachers and students were engaged with what they were doing. They certainly saw some innovative uses of technology; Web 2.0 (Shelfari), online Mind Mapping (Mind 42), Nintendo DS within Literacy, iTouch to support phonic awareness etc. OK, so these ideas aren't original but they are in the upper band of classroom innovation.

The report will hopefully highlight these as signs of a school that is continuing to improve. The need to continue improvement is keenly felt within the technology department - any tech department that wishes to be seen as outstanding must be constantly striving to improve, as the landscape changes continually.

I was delighted to see that Scott McLeod commented on my previous posting on OfStEd and I return to his words to help me evaluate what we need to do next.

The following extract from his closing comments at ASB Unplugged has been hijacked by me with some of my own additions.

"Most of you have yet to put a computer in every kid’s hands;"

No we haven't. We are 121 in secondary but in primary we're 124 - that's a decent ratio that I'm pleased with, but not when I see machines not being used. With other international schools in the region looking to extend their 121 programme into primary it may be something that we will consider in the future. Ultimately though, it's what you do with your kit that counts.

"Most of you have yet to incorporate online courses into your curricula in any kind of substantive way."

Guilty as charged - this is a huge challenge for us and will occupy large amounts of staff time during the forthcoming year.

"Few of you are teaching students to be empowered - not just responsible - digital citizens in our new information landscape."

We are making inroads here; schools have a responsibilty to ensure they produce ethical, resilient digital citizens, and we work hard on that. It does need to be a whole school approach and we need to enhance our staff development models.

"Few of you have a staff full of educators that are modeling active participation in that landscape."

Staff need to become more active in using the web as a means of professional development. This is explicit in the ISTE standards for teachers and we will be looking to implement these more widely in the future. It would be great to see more staff actively fostering a digital footprint and developing themselves as professionals online. We have teachers who are now using Twitter as a development tool and we need to encourage more to do so. By engaging with educators on a global level, the impact upon classrooms can be tremendous.

"As far as I can tell, none of you has robust student assessments at every grade level that target higher-level, more cognitively-complex thinking and doing and being."

Getting there. We have been looking at higher order thinking skills but we haven't managed to consistently develop them within units that use technology. We are aware of this and have made some progress.

"None of you has moved to a truly personalized learning environment for every student, one in which students’ progress is facilitated and perhaps assessed by technology and is organized around student competence and completion rather than age and grade level."

In truth we're a long way off this although various initiatives have helped us down this road. We're built around what Heppell might call the Victorian model as are most schools and I could only see us ever nibbling at this.

So, that's Scott McLeod's challenge for school improvement. I'm going to add a few more that I'd like to see us tackle!

We should be questioning our curriculum and examining it in the light of what technology can enable us to do and what our students can produce. We can't keep going on about 21st Century Learning without identifying what's 20th Century Learning and questioning it's validity. It's no good saying to hit HOTS we should be podcasting if we can't say what those podcasts should replace... newspaper reports, postcard and letter writing?

We need to look at how we can use technology not as a replacement tool but as a transformation tool. Let's use the new tools we have to collaborate, create and problem solve. We've made some good progress here but there's still a long way to go.

We need to foster a feeling of innovation, creativity and excitement consistently throughout the whole school by capturing the expertise we have and highlighting it and building upon it.

As all schools and organisations do we need to take a good long hard look at ourselves regarding the environment by using our technology in a greener way and utilising it to help us become more ethical and resonsible in our use of resources.

So, outstanding we may be and that's great news, but we've still got huge amounts of work to do and there's no question that we will be striving to achieve much more in the coming year.

The tag cloud is from our ICT School Improvement Plan (SIP) for the forthcoming year.

Earth Day - April 22nd 2010

2010-04-22T12:33:00.002+08:00

Today is Earth Day and millions of people around the world will be celebrating the 40th anniversary of this event by carrying out activities linked to the environment.

Reception children will be looking at Recycling in their ICT lessons, finding out what it is and working in Simple City.

In the spirit of Earth Day, below is the recent edition of Kellett Tellit - please don't print it out!!

iPad - A Game Changer?

2010-04-20T08:53:00.003+08:00

An interesting discussion on the iPad between Will Richardson and Warren Buckleitner, editor of Children's Software Review. I have to say I agree that the iPad has huge potential in the Early Years classroom.

Blogging - A Global Account

2010-04-18T13:29:00.006+08:00

I must admit, with the advent of Twitter my efforts at blogging have dwindled somewhat. That's a shame and hopefully I can try to post more often in the future, although workload often dictates that posts are sometimes all too brief.

Blogging is an excellent means of professional development for teachers; it can help them reflect on their practice and pedagogy and also act as a showcase for their work. It can also showcase the work of schools to the parent community and the wider world, including, of course, any prospective students.

Unlike school websites, blogs can be updated quickly with little technical knowledge required and whilst the ideal of developing a conversation is only achieved by the minority of blogs that shouldn't discourage teachers, or classes, from having a go.

This blog doesn't have huge readership - students and parents pop in to see work posted and it doesn't have the in-depth professional reflection of the so-called 'rock star' technology teachers - but even so it does get viewers from locations all over the world.

A reminder to me this week was when I checked the blog feed and saw that during the last five days visitors had arrived from the following places;

Boston, Massachusetts
Prague, Czech Republic
Elmira, New York
Sahuarita, Arizona
Boxborough, Massachusetts
Reading, UK
Distrito Federal, Mexico
Sheffield, UK
Waltham, Massachusetts
Askeby, Storstrom, Denmark
Houston, Texas
Alexandria, Virginia
Madison, Alabama
Meriden, Connecticut
Muncie, Indiana
Falmouth, Maine
Saint Neots, Cambridgeshire, UK
Middlefield, Massachusetts
Bloomfield Hills, Michigan
Dublin, Ohio
Rantau Panjang, Perak, Malaysia
Stockton, California

as well as Hong Kong, of course.

A large number were visiting the same post which presumably got mailed around, but it does go to show that blogging is a global communication tool - I must try harder!

Image: NASA / Goddard Space Flight Center

Inspection Time!

2010-04-18T11:47:00.006+08:00

So tomorrow's the big day, our OfStEd inspection begins. I thought I'd jot a few thoughts down prior to the event and then see how things develop during the week.

First thing to say is that I'm looking forward to the week. This will be my second OfStEd and it will be very different to the first one. At that point in time OfStEd was still reimageing itself after the days of Chris Woodhead when there was a real feeling in schools that inspections were a vehicle for criticism and little else. I was also a Deputy Headteacher in a large primary for that inspection and the pressures were very intense as I had wide-ranging responsibilities.

The pressure for this inspection is much less - OfStEd is much more focussed these days and whilst it can still be forthright in it's opinions (see Zenna Atkins!) in general they stem from a desire for improvement rather than any kind of hidden agenda.

Whilst the preparation has been demanding, from my own point of view I feel safe in the knowledge that what I do is interesting, challenging and relevant. The top OfStEd category is of course, outstanding. For any school achieving a grade of outstanding it's a testimony to the hard work of staff as a whole. I could never describe my work as 'outstanding' - not because I'm not confident in what I do, it's just not in my nature! It's a personality thing.

In any case, the pervasive nature of ICT within the curriculum means that the work students carry out within their ICT lessons as a whole is now only a small part of their ICT experience in school. In short, KS2 students spend 45 mins a week in the lab but should be spending much more time using ICT in authentic ways within the curriculum. So any comments on ICT within Kellett will hopefully reflect that.

An aspect of inspection which I think is very useful is it gives staff an opportunity to reflect upon their practice and pedagogy and look at what real learning is going on in their classrooms. The greater attention to detail in planning can help to focus ideas and move things forward. I know it has for me!

The evaluation schedule of OfStEd (see illustration for word cloud) talks a lot about schools using new technology but it's not clear what it means by this. PCs aren't new, nor is Microsoft Word or PowerPoint, or e-mail for that matter. What new technology might they see next week? Well, from a personal viewpoint if they come and see me they're going to see Y3&4 students using Google Sketchup to investigate tessellation & symmetry, and Y5&6 creating computer games for students to use within the curriculum. Both of these could be described as "new" technology don't you think? The Sketchup module is a progression for us, moving this excellent software down through the school, from the creative, design activities we use in Y6&7 to activities rooted within the Mathematics curriculum.

The Y5&6 module will be using 2DIY, by definition it's new because we've only had it for six weeks! This is definitely an example of how in a 21st Century classroom the teachers should be learning alongside the students - already the students have had more time on the software than me so we'll definitely be exploring together.

So that's me sorted, don't know how it will go down with the inspectors but I know the students will be engaged and challenged - I don't think you can ask for more.

What might they see elsewhere? It's difficult to find the time to work out what everybody's doing - it's easy to get wrapped up in making sure you will be ok - but I am expecting them to see;

Web 2.0 technology being used. Year 6 will be leading the way on this - having already used Primary Pad and Glogster (as well as Guitar Hero!) they will be collaborating online using Mind42 and Shelfari - hopefully the inspectors will clearly see here how new technology can impact upon learning - now that is outstanding in my mind!

Games as a stimulus for writing. Having used Rollercoaster Tycoon, Year 5 will be tackling a range of writing activities stemming from their time creating their own theme parks.

Laptops New technology? Not sure, but they will hopefully see that as a school we are committed to mobile learning.

Multimedia. They should see students constantly expressing themselves through audio, video and images - our relatively small resource of digital cameras, Flip video, Vado video and TTS Digital microphones will be as popular as ever during inspection week.

Nintendo DS - Year 2 will be using DS consoles and the game Nintendogs as a stimulus for their classroom activities. Inspired by the work of teachers such as Anna Rosvoll in Scotland this module is one of the things I'm hoping to get to see in the next couple of weeks - I'm fascinated to see how it goes.

iTouch - we love them! They work - immediately! Our small team of iTouches have proven to be very popular and have already impacted upon learning. I have no hesitation in describing Katrina Hall's work in Y1 using the iTouch as outstanding. These appear to be booked out for most of the week - I just hope we can find time to recharge them!!

So that's just a flavour of what's going on and what the inspectors might see. There's lots more too, Chinese Studies will be using laptops extensively, as will other year groups, and PE will be using digital video to analyse their work.

Do I have any misgivings or concerns about the week ahead? Well, if the school network falls over that could be problematic, but not much we can do about that. There will always be technical niggles, iTouch apart, ed-tech hasn't got to the light bulb stage yet (switch it on and it works) - but dealing with that in the classroom is part and parcel of the job - whilst it's true our support structures are stretched I've never been in a school that admits to having too much technical support!

What else... if I was honest I'd have to say that the National Curriculum is not exactly an inspiration for embedding authentic technology within the curriculum. Our move towards ISTE is a reflection of our desire to be more creative in our work and also to focus upon the professional development of our staff. I hope they see that reflected in what we do.

So, what would I like them to say about our use of technology?

I'd certainly like them to say that we are innovative in our approach, I'd like them to note that technology is being used for creative purposes as well as problem solving and that although research type activities and basic software skills are still part of what we do they are no longer the core.

That we are beginning to come to terms with what it means to enable our students to become responsible and active digital citizens in the 21st Century - we still have a long way to go on this but so does everybody!

I'd like them to highlight that some staff are prepared to work outside their comfort zone (no matter what that zone is) and commend them for it.

They should take note of staff who are developing themselves professionally through sharing and collaborating with teachers outside of their own school - this is a key characteristic of outstanding teachers in the 21st Century and a part of the ISTE standards for teaching staff.

I would also like them to highlight the outstanding (there, I said it!) progress we have made in the past couple of years, we've really moved technology along during that time. But at the same time it's important for them to be clear that we still have a huge amount of work to do, or in the words of Scott McLeod...

"I'm not sure you appreciate how far you still have to go."

Good luck to everybody this week.

iPad in School?

2010-04-16T16:25:00.001+08:00

Thanks to miss Hall we got a chance to have a look at an iPad today. Below is a video of Ava using Dino Mixer - an application which has been used a lot in P1 as part of their study of dinosaurs.

The iPad looks like it could have a wide range of uses in school and we'll be looking at how we might use them and how many we might purchase in the near future.

Kellett Cares ICM

2010-03-26T11:59:00.006+08:00

Here's a great video of our students working in the Philippines with children in the Kellett Cares Learning Centre. I could go on about global awareness etc etc, but the video says it all really!

P4 LOGO Work

2010-03-22T12:26:00.003+08:00

Here are some screenshots from P4's recent module using Terrapin LOGO. Please note, the music for this Animoto slideshow was chosen by Mrs Bull!

ICT & School Council Digital Photography Competition

2010-03-12T13:38:00.002+08:00

Here's a sneak preview from our recent competition. Many thanks and well done to all those who entered. The results will be announced by the School Council in the next couple of weeks.

2010 Photo Competiton Preview on PhotoPeach

FOBISSEA ICT Conference

2010-03-04T15:31:00.003+08:00

This weekend sees the third FOBISSEA primary ICT meeting. I was unable to attend the meeting last year but found the initial meeting to be very useful. I'm very much looking forward to the opportunity to share with others interested in using educational technology.

The last time I attended, my hotel had a great view of the Petronas Towers in Kuala Lumpar. This time round I am just round the corner from this very famous landmark. Any student who can tell me where I will be via email or through blog comments can have a Kellett point - easy!!

photo credit; Flick user daymin

Year 4 Games Based Learning

2010-03-04T15:03:00.005+08:00

It used to be that whenever you talked about Games Based Learning you would always have to start with justifying why you were including games in the classroom context. Thankfully, the need for that is less and less and you would actually have a hard time justifying why you are NOT using Games Based Learning in an authentic 21st Century Classroom.

At Kellett, games continue to have a major influence on our work with recent examples in Literacy with Guitar Hero, Samarost and Moshi Monsters. Next term sees a new initiative for us as we seek to build upon the work carried out in Scotland using Nintendo DS consoles. More news on that later.

Year 4 have also had the opportunity to study a simulation game in their ICT lessons based upon preparing for a natural disaster, in this case, a tsunami. These so-called 'serious games' allow users to use traditional game play techniques whilst allowing them to reflect on some aspect or issue. We've only just started this module but a number of parents mentioned the game during our recent parents evening so the link for the game is below. It also has a variety of other disaster scenarios, including a sadly quite topical one on earthquakes.

The site can be found here.

More Glogster!

2010-02-09T09:10:00.003+08:00

Two more videos to help with Glogster.

Glogster

2010-02-08T11:01:00.003+08:00

Now that PCCW have unfiltered Glogster it means that we are able to access Edu Glogster. We have a school account which allows you to create your own multimedia glogs. If you are in P5 or P6 Mr Dawes can give you an account and password.

Have a look through this video tutorial to give you some ideas. Remember that you already have an account, but you need to get the details first. Have fun!

Experimenting with the Kellett Dragon!

2010-02-01T11:01:00.002+08:00

Trying out a different way of adding the Dragon to the internet.

Chinese Studies Using Go Animate

2010-01-25T13:04:00.003+08:00

Here's a neat little animation made by staff in our CS team to help students revise daily routines and dates.

GoAnimate.com: Daily Routine by misschen

DomoNation.com: Dates by Miss Chen

Voicethread

2010-01-19T13:10:00.004+08:00

Voicethread is one of my favourite applications. Whenever anybody askes me about it I direct them to this video. Unfortunately, due to the strange way in which TeacherTube runs it's site, I haven't found a way of sending the video to non-members, so I've embedded it here instead!

Artist in Residence Work

2010-01-18T16:16:00.004+08:00

Examples from our recent Artist in Residence Project.

P6

P5

P4

P3-10

P3-11

P3-12

P2-7

P2-8

P2-9

P1-4

P1-5

P1-6

Christmas iTouch?

2010-01-06T08:53:00.009+08:00

I didn't get an iTouch for Christmas as I already had one (did finally get a Livescribe Pen though - hurrah!).

However, I am aware that a number of students received an iTouch from the big man in red. If you've been playing with it already you'll probably agree with me that it's a fantastic piece of kit.

Here's a note for parents though. If you are running filtered or controlled access to the internet via your PC or laptop, your filter software will not apply to the internet access via the iTouch. In other words, net access via the iTouch is unfiltered.

Now, in an ideal world that would not be a problem. There would be little inappropriate content on the web and all our students would be perfectly capable of using the iTouch in a responsible manner. Sometimes though, that's not always the case and it's perfectly understandable that parents feel the need to take precautions.

So, what can you do?

Well, the iTouch itself has settings which can disable various functions, such as the web browser Safari and the Youtube App as well as access to the App Store itself. Disabling these is an option, but if you want to go down this route then you probably should have purchased a standard iPod rather than the iTouch!

If you want to disable these functions , click Settings on the main screen, choose General, scroll down to Restrictions, Enable Restrictions. You then need to create a restriction PIN (which you should write down somewhere safe so you can always remember it!). You can then choose which services you wish to disable (all the fun ones!!).

If you need any further information on this, click here.

You might also consider a third party piece of software that allows you to monitor and control net usage on the iTouch from your own computer. There are a variety of paid solutions available, the most popular seemingly being;

Mobicip

iNet Safety Bubble

Safe Eyes

If you use any of these applications please let us know how you get on.

At Kellett we have begun to experiment with the use of iTouch in the classroom. We have a small pack of six so far. P1 children have been using them to work on their phonics and later this week Miss Chen will be looking at how to use an app called Finger Lite to teach Chinese Studies in the secondary school.

Running to Keep Up

2010-01-04T09:29:00.003+08:00

Having been involved in educational ICT for over ten years I'm painfully aware of how difficult it can be to keep up with changes in technology and allow our students and teachers the opportunity to enhance their learning using the most appropriate tools. The shift required by everybody involved is enormous, and by everybody I mean students, teachers, parents, the whole community.

My New Year's Resolution is to keep going! To try to help us keep up and to continue to encourage innovation and creativity. Our recent purchase of a small pack of iTouch devices is just the beginning of what I hope will be an inspirational year for our students.

Maybe the following is just around the corner;

Thanks to Bill Boyd for this.

Farewell Mrs Pattle!

2009-12-21T21:10:00.007+08:00

Imagining ICT running smoothly at Kellett without Mrs Pattle is impossible! However, that's just what we are going to have to do when we return to school after Christmas. Friday saw Mrs Pattle's last day at Kellett, indeed her last day in Hong Kong as she left that evening to return to her native New Zealand along with Mr Pattle who recently secured a position at a university there.

Pam has been at Kellett for over six years, intially as an ESA but then as ICT Manager and for the last term as Database Manager, although she was still very much involved in the day-to-day running of ICT, providing just-in-time support for students and teachers alike.

Pam's contribution to the development of Kellett's ICT has been immeasurable; she provided a link to the work of Jessica Brown and had a detailed understanding of the legacy of Kellett ICT and knew everything about why and how we were where we are. It's essential that we are able to build upon her work to ensure we continue to make the right decisions about our future paths. Having lost that understanding of past progression that is going to be very difficult, but I'm positive we can rise to the challenge.

One of Pam's great assets is that she was always able to look at things from a variety of viewpoints; system and hardware management, educational and pedagogical perspectives and carried out her duties with a friendly and helpful manner. Staff always spoke very highly of her and her departure will be a huge loss to our support structure.

I spent three years and a term working with Pam and it's no exaggeration to say that I wouldn't have been able to do my job without her. Her support was always invaluable and when the next history of Kellett is written it will need a serious amount of text dedicated to her!!

So, it's with a huge amount of sadness, but also best wishes for the future that we say farwell to Mrs Pattle. Good luck!!

Alphabet Thinkers Keys

2009-11-13T10:43:00.002+08:00

Here's a great little video by our P2 students using the Alphabet Thinkers Key to organise their research on Neil Armstrong as part of their study on Famous People.

An A-Z of Neil Armstrong

Artist In Residence

2009-10-08T10:50:00.004+08:00

The week beginning the 2nd of November sees Tom Wood visiting Kellett as Artist in Residence. This project will rely heavily upon ICT and we have been busy preparing for it for some time now, not least trying to learn the basics of the GNU Image Manipulation Program (GIMP) students will be using to manipulate their work.

Tom Wood has prepared a video giving some background to himself and the project. This is an extremely exciting venture and we look forward to sharing the results with you later in the term.

ICT INSET Day

2009-10-05T13:02:00.005+08:00

While the National Day/Moon Festival celebrations were a great opportunity for students to enjoy a long weekend, staff were hard at it on the Friday, attending a training day looking at our use of ICT and considering how we can encourage our students to become more 21st Century literate by providing them with appropriate classroom opportunities.

The day began with a presentation on how technology has impacted upon our lives and the implications this has for our classroom practice. We looked at evidence of students learning outside of school and at ways we can provide more authentic uses of technology within the classroom.

Staff then attended a variety of workshops on the following subjects;
Five Websites You Can't Teach Without!
Creating a Wiki
Using Computer Games in the Classroom
Voicethread
Kellett Kit - easy to use tech in the classroom

The afternoon session was spent looking at teh ISTE Standards for students and considering how we can use them within our curriculum.

The day was a very positive experience and it's a clear sign that as a school, we are determined to maximimise the use of technology to the benefit of our students. many thanks to all those attended and a special thanks to all those who presented some great workshops!

ICT INSET Day from Clive Dawes on Vimeo.

A Big Weekend

2009-09-17T09:58:00.004+08:00

Around 500 delegates are expected to be present at HKIS for this weekend's 21st Century Learning Conference. I'm delighted that 10 teachers will be attending from Kellett and look forward to their views on the huge array of presentations and keynotes they will see.

Good luck to three of our teachers who will be presenting their work on Games Based Learning at Kellett. The Slideshare of the presentation is below. It doesn't include the audio or video but gives you a good idea of the sorts of things they'll be talking about.

I will be sitting on a forum discussing Games Based Learning and offering my views and opinions, which should be fun, if a little nerve wracking.

Keynote speakers include Wes Fryer and Robyn Treyvaud, who visited Kellett last year; it will be good to catch up with what she's been up to since we last met!

Games At Kellett

View more presentations from clived.

PhotoPeach

2009-09-08T08:49:00.004+08:00

The news that our photo slideshow provider, Bubbleshare is about to close down is a bit of a disaster. Our slideshows have been viewed over 9000 times there and it's a great way of showcasing our work.

Originally, we used RockYou for this purpose, which remains an excellent platform too. Sadly, and for no good reason, our ISP, PCCW decided to filter RockYou in school. Despite lengthy protests on our behalf, their rigid (and flawed!) policy persists, meaning we have to look elsewhere.

Thanks to my Twitter network, we have started to experiment with PhotoPeach, and here's our first try, which is a repost of work we had on Bubbleshare. The images show students working with the computer game Samorost in Literacy and Drama and will be used when three of our teachers present at the upcoming Hong Kong 21st Century Learning Conference.

Good luck to them and fingers crossed that PhotoPeach meets our needs!

Using Samorost in Literacy on PhotoPeach

Academic Year 09/10

2009-08-31T11:08:00.002+08:00

The ICT Room is in disarray with laptops, leads and boxes everywhere...

That can mean only one thing... it's the start of a new school year!

Staying In Touch

2009-07-11T17:33:00.007+08:00

The long summer break in an international school means that it can be a challenge for staff to stay in touch with each other.

In our absence there have clearly been issues back at Kellett with the web site and the e-mail system. I understand these are being tackled and the system will be up and running within the next few days.

For all those who have been looking for the Kellett site and been redirected to this blog via search engines, I'd like to apologise for this situation and reiterate that it will be rectified as soon as possible.

Interestingly, it's at times like this when other, often derided forms of communication help out. During the past few days I have conversed with other staff on school matters via both Facebook and Twitter. Thank goodness for reliable old social networking...

If you need to contact me, please use the Kellett ICT Twitter feed (to the right of this post) or leave a message in the comments below.

Thanks

MrD

School Closure Activities

2009-06-17T08:24:00.007+08:00

With the school currently closed, there may be some of you at a loose end!

Here are some suggestions to keep you actively involved in ICT. I am still at school and looking forward to hearing from you.

P4,5 and 6. Visit http://www.scribblemaps.com/ and create a map. It could show your year group camp or a recent holiday or two! I've created one showing the locations of FOBISSEA Games events here; http://www.scribblemaps.com/#id=fs7yR2RlxI

P2 and P3, visit www.kerpoof.com and have a go at creating a picture. If you're feeling a bit more ambitious why not try making a video within the site.

If you're in Reception or P1 why not visit a couple of our favourite web sites if you can get somebody to help you! http:/www.boohbah.com or http://www.poissonrouge.com/

Good luck! If you have any problems, e-mail me or comment in the space below!

FOBISSEA 2009

2009-06-15T14:47:00.003+08:00

Well done to all those that particiated in a memorable FOBISSEA Games last week. Hosted by Kellett School, Hong Kong, other schools competing were Taipei European School, Taiwan, ELC International School, Malyasia, BIS Vietnam, St Andrew's Rayong, and Regents, Pattaya.

Below is a copy of the video shown at the Gala Dinner... a very rushed edit compiled throughout the games!!

FOBISSEA Games 2009 from Clive Dawes on Vimeo.

Digital Photography Competition

2009-06-15T12:02:00.006+08:00

Photographer Beulah van Rensburg recently visited Kellett to cast her expert eye over our entries to the Digital Photography Competition. Beulah has worked with Kellett students before and is well known for her stunning images created from everyday household objects. There is a great opportunity to view Beulah's work at the Fringe Club in Lower Albert Road, where she has an exhibition from the 19th-29th June. More details can be found here.

Beulah was given the very difficult task of judging this year's competition, choosing a winner for each year group as well as an overall winner. She was very impressed by the standard and was amazed by some of the images taken by our Reception pupils. Given her expertise as a photographer, Beulah was able to explain what it was that made each photograph special and what techniques she spotted that our students had incorporated into their work. Having spent a lot of time looking at the photographs myself it was fascinating to hear her opinion and seeing her point out aspects of the photos that I had missed.

Beulah gave up a large amount of her time to judge the competition and we are very grateful to her for doing so. I'm looking forward to returning the compliment and going to view her exhibition later this week.

Below is a slideshow of each year group winner and runner up as well as the winner of the Best Portfolio, which appear at the end. I'm sure you will all agree that the standard is very high. Many thanks to all those that entered, we had over 500 individual images entered!

BubbleShare: Share photos - Easy Photo Sharing

Online Learning Project

2009-06-03T09:09:00.009+08:00

Last night saw the launch of our collaborative online learning project here at Kellett. This exciting new venture involves Yew Chung and Chinese International Schools working with ourselves to investigate student use of online learning spaces.

The basic outline of the project is that older, experienced users of the programming language Scratch mentor younger users from a different school in the use of the software. Their communications will be entirely online in our purpose built learning environment and will be outside of school time.

As teachers, we are increasingly aware of how the dynamics of education are constantly shifting and how students have access to a huge community of learners and 'teachers' outside of school. We hope that this project will give us an insight into how this community can be used to enhance the learning of our students.

The project is likely to begin next week on the completion of our online environment and students will be involved for around eight months. At various points we will be updating parents about the progress we are making and expect to feed back to the wider education community in the new academic year, most notably at the Hong Kong 21st Century Learning Conference in September.

We are also grateful for the involvement of LEAD who will be evaluating our results when the project is completed.

Below is a copy of the presentation given last night.

Same Old, Same Old

2009-05-26T08:11:00.004+08:00

After a hard fought season, the Kellett Staff Fantasy Football League came to a less than thrilling conclusion at the weekend with reigning champion Mr. Lovell retaining his title by a comfortable margin. Runner up Miss Lewis finished a gallant and somewhat unlucky second after leading the competition for the vast majority of the 38 weeks.

In third place for the second year running was Mr Dawes, representing the accumulated brainpower of the ICT Department.

Unfortunately there was a familiar look to the bottom of the league too, but to save embarrassment we wont be discussing that here!

A special well done to Leo who was the winner of the first Kellett Student League. no mean feat as there were nearly 100 entries in that event.

World Scratch Day - Hong Kong Event

2009-05-18T11:52:00.011+08:00

It's great that a group like LEAD exists in Hong Kong to help raise the awareness of technology opportunities within the curriculum. Even better that they were able to organise an event to mark the second birthday of Scratch, the interactive programming language devised at MIT.

Hong Kong's event, which added to events in over 40 other countries took place on Saturday at the Cyberport, a fitting venue to consider technology within the curriculum.

On show were a number of Scratch presentations from local HK schools, including the amazing Sawing Down the Tree game. The standard of presentations wa extremely high and I was left a little bemused after a Year 5 student showed me his complex and entertaining presentation. It's clear that there's some great work going on in HK schools and this was a great opportunity to observe, and dareisay, think of ways in which we might be able to catch up!

It was then down to work, as in my haste I had mistakenly signed up for the 'Advanced' Workshop! Edmond from LEAD gave us the complete technical lowdown on how to use external Pico boards with Scratch and it was a fantastic opportunity to play with buttons, sliders, audio and light sensors. We certainly need to add some of these to our stock as they are a great way of adding that element of external control to presentations.

Back to the theatre for a session on how Scratch has made an impact in local schools and well done to the translation team who were brilliantly efficient in allowing colleagues from the international school community full access to the discussion.

Another session on using Web 2.0 tools within Scratch followed after lunch. We covered some of this stuff with Year 6 earlier in the year and hopefully the new version of Scratch may have an improved picture editor so that this type of work can be done within the interface. Nevertheless, the session was useful, it was good idea to use Audacity to add your own sounds and the pitch altering tool made for some fun effects!

BubbleShare: Share photos - Easy Photo Sharing

The final session initially involved colleagues from local secondary schools talking about the new secondary curriculum and how Scratch was being used to help with ideas involving, creativity, design and problem-solving - it was great to hear those words being used.

The day rounded off with a panel discussion focussing on A New Paradigm of Teaching and Learning featuring Jane Harris (CIS), Dan Everest (YCIS) and myself. We discussed our feelings about the importance of Scratch within the creative 21st Century curriculum and outlined our collaborative project (more on that later!). We also touched on the importance of games within the wider curriculum, assessment and a number of other issues close to our hearts!

It was a bit un-nerving sitting on a sofa in front of an audience, but moderator Dr Felicia Tsang ran the session well and I only felt stupid the one time!

Well done to all those involved on the day and we look forward to building upon this good work to spread Scratch out of the lab and into the classroom where it belongs!!

World Scratch Day - Hong Kong

2009-05-17T13:00:00.006+08:00

Firstly, apologies for the lack of blogging recently. It's not that there's nothing going on, in fact, it's completely the opposite, which is one of the reasons for the lack of blog posts....

That, combined with the 'R' word... r_ p _ _ _ s - no prizes for guessing what the least favorite occupational hazard involved with teaching is!

Anyway, yesterday was World Scratch Day and Hong Kong was one of 42 countries involved, with an event at the Cyberport. I'll add a full report of the day as soon as the other r_p _ _ _s are finsished, but here's Mitch Resnick and Karen Brennan to give a bit of background and flavour:

Education Leadership Summit

2009-04-26T09:00:00.006+08:00

So, day one of Apple's Education Leadership Summit. Firstly, what a pleasure to see so many influential, creative people come to HK to talk to the education community. Heppell was the same as ever, completely engrossing, and what a bonus to see Greg Whitby, hadn't expected him to be there. A good excuse to embed one of my fav vids (below).

Over 200 schoools from 21 countries represented, a truely global event.

First up, Dave McMaster of Canadian welcoming all and talking about their tech journey. Then Tom Kelley from IDEo with a hugely entertaining session on innovation. Some really interesting definitions of the types of innovators and a real bonus, a FREE copy of his book. I was too cool to get in the line to get him to sign it though, maybe I'll sneak it to him tomorrow when nobody's looking.

Vivienne Stewart from the Asia Society was next to speak concerning education and globalisation. Her words struck a real chord and have massive significance for a school like ours. Our "Islands of the World" project with among others, Martha's Vineyard and the Orkneys is a start, but we clearly have much to do in fostering the sort of collaboration and understanding she talked about. As usual, it's all about giving teachers explicit support and the time to explore the possibilities available to them. Hopefully our upcoming International Day can be a springboard for more of this work.

Lunch was an extended one, purposely I assume to give people the chance to connect. I was lucky enough to meet Noah Katz from Renaissance College's Digital Technology Team. One of the features of events like these is that just when you think you might be beginning to master the skills, concepts and knowledge you need to move forward, you meet somebody like Noah who makes you realise the journey has only just begun. He was naieve enough to give me his contact details... big mistake, Noah!

A discussion panel on 21st Century Leadership followed by a breakout session gave us greater opportunity to explore global collaboration and some good ideas from Greg Israel.

The day ended with John Couch, VP from Apple Aducation talking about Apple's Vision for Modern Education. All you need to know about John's session is that it was due to finish at 5.30 and at 5.50 on a Saturday evening, everybody was still sat listening.

With events like this there's little chance for deeper reflection until the event is over, so the above is a brief, rushed summary of Day One. I'm off to Day Two now!

Apple Conference Countdown - Bring It On!

2009-04-23T16:12:00.008+08:00

It's fair to say that I'm pretty excited about this weekend's Education Leadership Summit at Canadian International School. I've spoken to quite a few teachers who are attending in the last few days and it seems I'm not the only one! Clearly Hong Kong is ready for this type of event now and it's to Apple's credit that they have assembled such an impressive list of speakers and persuaded delegates to attend from all over Asia. It's important that the ed-tech community here in HK builds upon this weekend and moves forward, not only at our own conference in September, but also in the future.

Hopefully, more exciting collaborative projects like the one documented below will be born this weekend.

On another note this will be the first major conference I have been to since the "Birth of Twitter" and I suspect that it will be a major feature of the conference, providing an interactive back-channel to the proceedings and enriching the conference experience for delegates. Twitter is a great tool for teachers. It helps them to learn. Yes, it has been trivialised in the media to an extent, but it's helping teachers to connect and converse with each other. Without Twitter, we would not be involved in the Islands of the World project, which came about through a Twitter contact.

Thanks to Tom Barrett (again!) for pointing out US Principal Bill Carozza's blog post with regard to teacher's use of Twitter - well worth a read. He makes the telling point about the tool;

"Twitter and its ability to form a PLN has been one of the most useful professional development instruments in my 25 years in the biz"

So, I'll be sure to have my laptop charged ready to tweet the weekend away...

During my teaching career I've heard the word's "Thank goodness it's Friday" mentioned a few times. That's how I feel... I can't wait to get to work... on Saturday morning.

Global Collaborative Project

2009-04-23T15:14:00.006+08:00

You know that you are beginning to win the battle when a student approaches you at the end of the lesson and asks if you can post links to what they've just covered on 'your blog'....

So...

P4 have begun to look at the global collaborative project on islands that I've been tweeting about a lot recently. We looked at the project Wiki and also located the other schools using Google Maps. We spent time looking at Hong Kong Island making sure we knew the districts so that we could explain them to a student from another school.

During the next session we will begin to assemble the resources we need to present information abour our island life and about our school. As we were looking at satellite images of the skyscrapers in and around mid-levels we thought about how the students of one of the schools in the project might feel about our island. Their island, in the Orkneys of Scotland has a total population of 70 - most of the buildings in mid-levels have at least that number living in them!

Google Maps is a great resource for studying your own locality as well as that of others - here's the link.

For this of you who want to explore Hong Kong a little more why not take a look at out Google Earth quiz from last year?

If you would like to know more about our global islands project, the Wiki can be viewed here. We've only just started but hopefully more should appear shortly.

An Apple a Day

2009-04-20T08:40:00.005+08:00

This weekend sees Apple's Education Leadership Summit taking place at Canadian International School. The gathered array of keynotes and workshop leaders are as impressive a group as I've seen in one place and the whole event promises to be extremely interesting.

A number of staff from Kellett will be attending throughout the weekend and I hope it proves to be a rewarding experience. I'm really looking forward to hearing Stephen Heppell speak having attended Schools for the Future conference he was leading many years ago.

The conference is perhaps an indication of Apple's determination to conquer the education market in Hong Kong. They appear to have made a conscious decision to target this area and it's good to see a company clearly committed to working in our sector who understand the issues and who can work with teachers to develop pedagogies.

Their strategy appears to be working. A recent unscientific poll I carried out in some of our classes shows that Apple are now the dominant home computer in many year groups.

For the first time ever in my teaching career I heard one of our Apple pupils utter these immortal words; "Man, I really hate Windows" !!

Visiting HKFYG HQ

2009-04-19T17:15:00.013+08:00

During the Easter holiday I was lucky enough to be invited to a meeting with LEAD (Learning through Engineering Art & Design) at their Hong Kong Federation of Youth Groups headquarters in Quarry Bay. Along with Joanna Cheung from LEAD, Jane Harris from CIS and Dr Felicia Tsang (LEAD Project Consultant) we discussed the upcoming World Scratch Day and the Hong Kong event which will take place at the Cyberport on Saturday 16th May.

As can be seen from the agenda I will be sitting on a panel discussion at the end of the day tackling "A New Paradigm of Teaching and Learning". During the meeting we discussed some of the issues surrounding this topic and how we might as a group support teachers in their understanding of how teaching and learning might look in this technology-rich era. It was an extremely interesting meeting as we covered many aspects, including how teachers are learners as well as students these days and how some teachers find that concept difficult to come to terms with. In relation to Scratch we also looked at different formats of assessment and discussed how teachers could use formative assessment within their work.

I'm really looking forward to the day at Cyberport and to meeting teachers from the whole of Hong Kong who have been using Scratch in their classrooms, as well as supporting those who are yet to use it.

In the two meetings I have had with representatives of LEAD I have been extremely impressed by their knowledge and understanding of education technology and it is clear they have been undertaking some fascinating creative projects in HK schools. I'm looking forward to developing our relationship further.

Easter in HK

2009-04-17T20:28:00.004+08:00

Easter hols are almost over, hope everybody had a good one.

Here's a few of the places I visited, maybe you've already been or you're considering going there at some point. Anyway, here are a few thoughts.

First up a visit to Shau Kei Wan to the Museum of Coastal Defense. Based within and around a coastal fort the museum documents Hong Kong's relationship with the surrounding sea and the various conflicts that have occured on it. It's a great way to spend half a day, especially if the weather's not too hot and there's plenty of interest in the different historical displays, which are broken down into different time zones. As an added bonus, there are some big guns to look at as well!!

Next up was Wonder Park Plus, situated on the 6th floor of the World Trade Centre in Wan Chai, this much hyped Japanese gaming centre has long been on my list of places to visit. Whilst it's true there are a huge array of fantastic arcade games available within the centre the problem is that they are all in the adult section. It's hard to understand why games such as Virtua Tennis and all the motor racing games there are deemed to be only suitable for adults. All that's left for the under 16s are the grabber type games which are frankly a waste of time. Wonder Park Plus gets a big thumbs down from me, I'm afraid. My junior sidekick was not happy there!!

Given it was the holidays that means it was necessary to visit some of the great shopping areas in HK, namely my two favourites! No, not IFC, but 188 gaming mall and Sham Shui Po Flea Market. Great fun as always.

So, refreshed and rested it's time to start a new term. There are some really exciting things going on in ICT this term, not only at Kellett but in the wider HK ICT community as well.

More on these developments soon. Meantime, here are some of my holiday snaps!

BubbleShare: Share photos - Play some Online Games.

Kellett Is a Nice School

2009-03-30T09:22:00.005+08:00

It's important to make that clear before we continue with this thread! The short films you are about to view bare no relation to what school life is really like at Kellett!

Year 7 students have just completed their English/ICT film module. During the module they are encouraged to look at aspects of movie making, including scripting, directing and editing. They also have to story board their films, file a shooting schedule and arrange for props and locations themselves. Important lessons include how to frame action and how to ensure continuity within their films.

Three of the completed films are shown below.

This is the second year we've worked on this project and again it has been a huge success. Working with a much larger year group was challenging but the students rose to the challenge and applied themselves really well. A great job!

If Teacher Tube is downloading slowly, the movies are also hosted on our Youtube page here.

School Visits

2009-03-24T09:11:00.015+08:00

It's always good to get out and visit other schools to see what they're up to.

Last week I was lucky enough to visit two schools in HK for completely different reasons.

First up was Yew Chung Inernational School in Kowloon Tong. I met with Dan Everest from there along with Jane Harris from CIS to discuss our use of the programming software Scratch.

We've all used the software in completely different ways and it was good to talk about what we had learnt and share our expertise. Yew Cheung have been using Scratch in their Literacy lessons to enhance student understanding of MacBeth, whilst CIS have embedded their work on Scratch within Numeracy, using it to explore shape and space. At Kellett we've been using Scratch to investigate aspects of computer game design with our P6 and Y7 classes.

Whilst our experiences are clearly different there were some common trends for all of us.

Firstly, the usefulness of Scratch as a classroom tool is obvious. It is engaging and stimulating for pupils and there is an easy entry level for those students who need to work at a basic starting point.

Secondly, the scope for students to extend and self-explore progression in the software is enormous. Tasks can be open ended and exploratory in their nature, which means students can continue to expand their horizons within the environment at their own pace.

Thirdly, we all agreed one of the marked successes of working with the software was the emergence of experts within the classroom who take on the role of mentor with their peers. These self-acting "pupil teachers' are able to add their advice and insight into the software. Students seem to naturally accept this type of help and have far fewer hang-ups about it than teachers do.

The days of the 'sage on the stage' are long gone. It's simply not possible for teachers to have a wide enough experience and expertise on new software and we need to accept that's ok! That can be quite a difficult thing for teachers to do and can be a major barrier to 21st Century Learning. Most students don't have a problem with it.

As a result of our discussions and sharing we now have a bank of good practice using Scratch and we are now formulating ways we can develop this further. It may be that the upcoming World Scratch Day Event at the Cyberport in Hong Kong gives us the opportunity.

Saturday May 16th is World Scratch Day and events are taking place around the world to showcase and introduce the software to teachers who are new to the platform, as well as those who have more experience. HK's event is at the Cyberport and the programme looks to contain some interesting sessions. I will be meeting with the group involved in organising the event shortly, so will have more information then.

My second school visit in as many days was to Canadian International School. I accompanied our new ICT Strategy Manager, Billy Ling to look at Canadian's successful implementation of the Apple platform into their school. It was certainly impressive and gives us lots of helpful information as we look to develop our infrastructure for the future.

One of the key aspects of schools progressing in the the 21st Century is the ability they have to share their expertise, either through a teacher's own development of their personal learning netoworks, or through good old fashioned sitting down and talking face-to-face! Without that things would be so much more difficult.

Another Great Application

2009-03-19T14:52:00.010+08:00

I'm pretty sure it was Lee Kolbert who first pointed out what a great web site Today's Meet is. Originally designed to run as a back channel during conference presentations, this excellent tool offers a time limited, Twitter style communication platform that could be used by classroom teachers.

Last week I asked our teachers to use Todays Meet to think of ways that it could be utilised to help teaching and learning.

This is what they came up with;

If you are watching video footage as a stimulus, children can enter their first responses as they watch the footage, note taking on a forum basis
I can see this being used as a homework tool. Set a problem to be solved and the children respond and can see all other responses
I'm wondering if this can be used across a year group so all three classes could see peers comments on a common topic e.g. Cross class collaboration
This would be great for evaluating artists' work. All children can respond to the art work at the same time as well as responding to each other
It could provide a platform for older pupils to have discussions for group homework. Providing an open "room" for ideas to be easily shared.
Students could post arguments for science ethics topics, either for or against and then discuss in class
Students can make a brief comment on a text I have set them for homework!
It would be amazing as a homework tool for our Big Talk Topics - children can post comments about the topic as well as the 'dinner talk'
Real time peer assessment of presentations.

These are just a few ideas complied over a rushed Friday - there's clearly lots of scope for using this tool and we'll be trying out some different ways in the coming weeks. If anybody is using this in an educational context, please let us know!

The Non-Netbook

2009-03-13T11:44:00.004+08:00

I love this video which is currently doing the rounds and is beginning to attain cult status as viewing figures go through the roof. It is apparently the result of an impromtu walkabout by a teacher in a classroom at the Science Leadership Academy in Philadelphia.

The ensuing conversation, whilst being very funny, raises huge issues and questions with regard to how our students see their use of knowledge resources.

We could of course discuss the implications that this has for us as teachers... but I don't have a spare 20 hours to consider it at the moment so I'm just enjoying it instead!

My favourite bit is when he clicks on the word to try to get some context help.

Music and ICT

2009-03-11T13:10:00.006+08:00

Following on from our photography module, most year groups will now be spending a few lessons looking at Music in ICT. It's fair to say that these two areas of the curriculum are very closely related and it's not unusual to see students using laptops in the Music room rather than instruments.

Early lessons involve creating sequences and working with loops. We use 2Simple's Music Toolkit to cover a lot of the objectives, but also make use of some web sites too.

An old favourite is the BBCs One Studio Sequencer which is no longer being updated but does still work! This is an excellent site for creating sequences and some great tunes have already been made.

Some younger students have been looking at Super Duper Music Looper. There is an online version which although very limited, does show how music can be painted into timelines. The adding of sounds into a timeline is an important skill and students will be developing this type of skill throughout the module.

What's Going On in ICT??

2009-03-04T11:14:00.008+08:00

Dear Parents, and other interested parties!

Ever feel the need to find out what we're doing in ICT?!

It's always a bit of an eye opener when I talk to parents and show them the work we're doing in ICT and they say something like; "I never realised you did that sort of thing."

The ICT curriculum has come a long way in a short amount of time and as I've said before, if you think it's changing fast now, just wait and see what happens next! Keeping up with current developments is a real task for teachers, but it's important they do so if they are to successfully embed technology into what they do and provide students with challenges that are real and relevant.

One if the ways I keep in touch with developments is by using a Personal Learning Network (PLN)of colleagues, ex-colleagues, friends, leading thinkers in ed-tech etc as a basis for my ideas. Sometimes I read what they're up to via their blogs (using Google Reader), sometimes I'm in closer contact via forums or Nings, but more recently I've invested a bit of time in Twitter.

I've had a Twitter account for around about a year, but after my initial efforts at updating I sort of gave up on it. However, it has now begun to become a more widely used tool in education and in society itself. High profile users of Twitter include Lance Armstrong and Stephen Fry and their use has been highlighted in the media. Use of the software around important world events has also raised awareness.

Having revived my account I now find that more people I know and want to discuss my work with are using Twitter and that meaningful conversations are beginning to take place. I'm sure this will be a help to my own professional development and therefore impact upon the work of my students.

As well as my own account I have also set up a Kellett ICT Twitter account and will use this to update what's going on in our lessons (hopefully) on a day-to-day basis.

If you already have a Twitter account and would like to follow us, our account name is kellettict, or you can just click on the Follow me on Twitter link in the right hand side of this page.

If you would like to know more about Twitter, you can visit the web site, or see what Wikipedia has to say about it.

We look forward to you following us!!

Crazy Talk in Schools

2009-02-27T11:52:00.001+08:00

Year 8 have been investigating the facial animation software, Crazy Talk.

What ways do they think Crazy Talk could be used in an educational context?

The Wind of Change?

2009-02-13T13:18:00.010+08:00

In a blog post last December, leading HK ICT Consultant Paul McMahon talked about the wind of change blowing through the Hong Kong education community, ironically after a visit to Kellett School!

Paul's position enables him to visit and run workshops in a variety of contexts and I was interested to read his upbeat take on progress within the region.

For those of us who remain impatient with regard to curriculum change and aspects of 21st Century Learning it can be easy to forget the changes that have occurred during the past couple of years. At the time I read the post it was rather cold in Hong Kong and I remember feeling that it wasn't so much a wind of change I felt, but a chilly draft! The chilly draft of change doesn't quite have the same ring about it.

Two months later and my sceptcism about his post may be beginning to waver somewhat.

During the past few weeks there have been a number of developments that indicate that the pace of change is beginning to pick up. Maybe Paul is right, and the draft I was feeling is much more:

As a result of sharing work at our Scratch seminar, some like minded teachers have got together and are planning a joint project. Initially this will be a case study of work carried out at Kellett, Chinese International School and Yew Chung International School, but there is a chance that this could be the start of something much bigger, hopefully in the way of student collaboration or mentoring.

Hong Kong will be thrust into the limelight of the technology in education world when it hosts the 21st Century Learning Conference in October this year. Around 500 educators will be attending this event to look at how learning and teaching might look and feel in the current technology rich environment we live in. I'm delighted to be helping out on one of the steering committees and I'm looking forward to a stimulating and challenging event.

Kellett has it's first class blog! It's really exciting that we are continuing to forge ahead using technology, giving real purpose and audience to our students. It will be fascinating to see how our P1 pupils use their blog and the interest it provokes in the community. Please visit and comment here.

We are currently looking at the ISTE Guidelines on the use of technology in our school with a view to implementing them as support for staff and students alike. To allow interested parties to contribute to the discussions a number of staff are collaborating on Google Docs to formulate ways in which Kellett can take advantage of these guidelines. Members of the Senior Leadership Team have also begun to use Google Docs in this way. This is a great development as it allows teachers to work in a more efficient way and helps to overcome the never ending problem of endless e-mails with amended documents attached. Well done to Year 7s for being the pioneers with Google Docs. They have set an example for staff to follow.

None of these developments or ideas were in place six months ago, but they may soon become part and parcel of what we do on a regular basis.

As I've said before, if you think things are fast now, just hang on as it's going to get faster.

Wind turbine image by Brentdanley

No posts!

2009-02-11T08:32:00.003+08:00

Not much activity on here recently, so does that mean nothing's going on? Of course not, just that there's a few too many 'schooly' things going on! It comes with the job!

Lots to consider and discuss in the next few weeks, including our annual Digital Photography Competition, preparations for the HK 21st Century Learning Conference in October, interactive camp using Google Maps and some great new web sites to consider.

In the meantime, here's our Alphabet Challenge winner. Well done to Saffie! Her technique was not what I was expecting, but she is likely to be called into action for end of year reports next term! (Joke).

Alphabet Challenge - How Fast Are you?

2009-01-21T13:10:00.003+08:00

P4 pupils have been looking at keyboarding skills and have been trying to build up their fluency and accuracy. One site that looks purely at speed, as opposed to finger position etc is the Alphabet Challenge.

It's all very simple, you just have to type the alphabet as fast as you can.

So how fast are you? Let us know in the comments below. The speed of some pupils is amazing!

You can visit the site by clicking the link here.

Which M&M is your favourite?

2009-01-20T14:25:00.002+08:00

Year One pupils have been looking at Data Handling in their ICT lessons. First of all they looked at pictograms and found that it was very easy to create presentations using ICT, although maybe it was not so much fun!

They then went on to look at more complex graphs using Data Sweet. The real life question they were asked was:

In bags of M&Ms and Skittles are there equal amounts of each colour?

We weren't sure of the answer, so we carried out an experiment to find out. In groups we counted the number of each colour and recorded our results in a tally chart. This helped us to work out the totals for each colour.

BubbleShare: Share photos - Play some Online Games.

We had to type into the software to help create a graph, adding a title and inputting the data. This was quite time consuming although it was easy to see those pupils who are quite used to keyboarding at a fast pace. Most pupils were able to save their work and print out their results.

To our surprise, there was a huge variation in results, some bags had quite close totals whilst others were a long way apart. With the use of ICT we were able to interpret the data efficiently and find out what we wanted to know.

Internet Explorer 8 Beta

2009-01-20T13:42:00.001+08:00

Just don't.... trust me... don't!!

New Toys

2009-01-14T09:09:00.009+08:00

So what did you get from Santa?

After a highly optimistic series of Christmas letters, here, and here, I was hoping for a bumper festive season. Oh well, it's not long until Santa visits again!

On returning to school though, some late presents were waiting for me. Our order from TTS in the UK finally arived and we've already had some great fun exploring the two peripherals we bought.

First out of the box, was the handheld USB microphone which I mentioned early last year. These look extremely useful and clearly have a wide range of curriculum uses. Unfortunately, three hours after I opened the boxes, the P5 teachers stole them off me and I haven't seen them since! Apparently they are being used extensively by P5 students in a series of interviews. When I get them back I'll be sure to test them out and plan to use them in KS1 after Chinese New Year.

BubbleShare: Share photos - Easy Photo Sharing
Our 6 ProBots also arrived and Computer Club have been taking them for a test drive. These programmable cars build upon work carried out in the Foundation Stage with Bee Bots and add a degree of complexity to our study of Control Technology. Not only do they cover directional control, the addition of light, sound and sensors mean that they can be used throughout the primary years.

We all look forward to seeing them put through their paces!

Don't Panic

2008-12-17T15:05:00.008+08:00

With a huge number of teachers strugglling with illness the possibility of leaving the safety of the ICT room and working in a classroom all day reared it's head today. We were warned last night that this might be necessary due to the likely absence of several at a staff meeting after school yesterday.

Having attended a meeting regarding a forthcoming conference in Hong Kong until 9.30 last night (more on this later), preparation for a full day in the classroom was always going to be a bit rushed. However, armed with ideas from the likes of Tom Barrett and Derek Robertson I decided to try a little experiment and teach the day's lessons with the help of a Nintendo Wii.

Our Literacy lesson would have been spent looking at Endless Ocean and using the underwater environment to stimulate writing, whilst Wii Sports Golf is a great way of tackling aspects of mental maths.

Soon after arriving in school it was clear that a number of our ill members of staff had dragged themselves out of their sickbeds to man the classrooms - why do teachers do that?! - so I wasn't required.

Undeterred though, I set about trying to get the Wii to work on one of our Promethean whiteboards. The video was no problem but the sound proved to be tricky and a few different combinations of speakers and adapters were required before things were sorted. Ms Li had a quick spin with Endless Ocean and proved herself to be an excellent diver. First glimpses of Endless Ocean indicate that it could indeed be used as a stimulus for writing and as soon as I can convince one of the class teachers or year groups to dive headlong into an ocean based cross curricular project I'll be all set!

Our P4 class were the first to use the Wii as we used the golf game as a way of practising addition and subtraction. Golfers hit the ball whilst their classmates worked out how far they had hit by subtracting the distance left from the total distance of the hole. The maths worked fine, but as anybody who is familiar with golf knows, it's not really that simple as the ball rarely (for me) goes in a straight line. P5 students did a similar activity, but as they have been using spreadsheets in recent lessons, they had to calculate the distance hit by entering a formula into the cells.

Students in both classes worked enthusiastically and enjoyed the novelty of the Wii as a context for their work. The activities we worked on were fairly simple and were only really an experiment to see whether the device could be set up to run in a classroom. Now we know that it's possible and some simple tasks have been started, we now need to look at how we can create a more comprehensive module of work like the one Derek Robertson talks about in the link above.

Scratch Seminar

2008-12-17T09:48:00.012+08:00

Monday evening saw a number of interested teachers gather at Kellett to share experience and expertise of the programming software, Scratch. Teachers were enthusiastic in sharing what they had done and future collaboration was discussed.

We were lucky enough to have Jane Harris from CIS attend the meeting and it was fascinating to hear her views. Jane has worked extensively in Scratch and presented at MIT's Scratch Conference last summer. She has been working in Maths lessons with groups using the software to investigate aspects of Shape & Space, e.g. tesselation, rotation and transformation. Student understanding of these ideas appear to have improved significantly as a result of her work. This is a clear example of how the 'traditional' curriculum can be taught using aspects of technology and I look forward to trying out some of her ideas here at Kellett.

I have been mightily impressed with the work our Year 6 and 7 students have created this term in Scratch and I'm hoping to extend this further down the school. For students who want to use the computer during the holidays, Scratch is an ideal medium for experimenting and creating. Amzingly, it's completely free and can be downloaded from here.

Those wishing to investigate Scratch further might like to look at the Delicious page we've set up for Scratch. You could always let us know of alternative Scratch resources by adding them in the comments below.

ICT is for Life, Not Just Christmas!

2008-12-15T09:53:00.009+08:00

It's amazing how many hits this blog gets from search engines with text like "ICT Christmas activities" at this time of year. Our post about Christmas web sites from last year often appear in the results and directs traffic towards us, which is great.

However, it does suggest that there are people who see ICT as a convenient stocking filler at this time of the year! Whilst there are some fun Christmas sites out there, there's some that are a bit dull!

I quite like the Snowflakes websites that can be found on the web. Last year we highlighted the Look and Feel site as being great fun, but the definite favourite this year is the online drawing site Myoats, which has a stunning snowflake creator.

In a rare display of ICT Christmas spirit(!), P3 students used the creator to make their own images which were then made into an Animoto slideshow:

Google Lively - the protest spreads

2008-12-12T12:44:00.009+08:00

I'm a big fan of Google, I think they do some great things that impact hugely upon teaching and learning. We've used loads of their tools at Kellett... Earth, Sketchup, Maps, Docs, Picasa, and sometimes students even use it for searching!

However, their recent decision to shut down Google Lively at the end of December has caused dismay amongst many in education who see the opportunity to extend classrooms into virtual environments as an important strand of 21st Century Learning. Whilst it's true that major virtual grids exist elsewhere, such as Second Life, the ability to create your own rooms and customise them for your own students offers huge potential.

Education is still only just dipping it's toe into the possibilities that virtual worlds afford us, but it's companies like Google with it's track record of creating innovative tools for educators that should be leading the way, not bailing out without giving leading innovaters time to experiment and share their practise.

A huge well done to Vicki Davis in leading the way on this. Her students have been using Google Lively as a means of investigating aspects of Digital Citizenship and quite rightly they are dismayed at Google's decision to pull the plug. They have recently held a protest to try to convince Google that they should change their minds and they have the full support of our Year 8 students who have begun to explore Lively.

Education takes time to discover, investigate and formulate strategies for using new tools. They can't just be adopted because they look good, they need an educational context to justify their use. Two years ago we looked into setting up a Kellett Island in Second Life but the cost was prohibitive. Lively offers us the opportunity to do it for free but we need more time to structure our approach.

Please give us the time, Google. You can sign the Google Lively Petition here.

What do our Year 8 students think?

Scratch at Kellett

2008-12-11T09:40:00.006+08:00

After two successful modules of work taught at Year 6 and 7 all students have produced a project built in Scratch. Year 7 students have also uploaded their work to the internet and commented on each other's creations.

Next Monday a few HK teachers will meet at Kellett to discuss the use of Scratch in the classroom. This is an exciting opportunity to share expertise and experience and take our use of the software to the next level.

If any HK teachers reading this would like to attend please feel free to do so, just let me know.

Oliver Postgate

2008-12-10T08:23:00.003+08:00

Sad to hear of the death of Oliver Postgate earlier this week. For those of a certain age, Postgate was required viewing in the days when there was very little children's tv, with programmes usually aired at lunchtime and early evening. There was certainly no 24 hour channels showing endless cartoons.

Whilst Bagpuss seems to be the most remembered of his creations, it wasn't a favourite of mine. It was merely a pretender to the best small children's TV programme ever made...

Using Computer Games in Literacy

2008-12-02T15:43:00.032+08:00

As anybody who takes a vague interest in this blog knows, I am very keen that students have opportunities to use computer games within their studies. Tim Rylands and Derek Robertson are two educators who have pioneered the use of COTS (commercial off the shelf) games within the classroom, using them as a means to making the curriculum more engaging and culturally relevant.

Robertson's work is particularly interesting as it attempts to add academic validation through a research project looking at the use of Dr Kawashima's Brain Training. His recent invitation as the keynote at VITTA shows that people are beginning to take note.

Our ICT curriculum here at Kellett has a module in each Key Stage 2/3 year looking at computer games. This also informs work on games design at the top of KS2 and into KS3. However, the real importance of looking at games is in the wider curriculum. For two years we have worked on a module using the simulation game Rollercoaster Tycoon as a basis for Literacy work at year 5, tackling aspects of persuasive language and research. The point with this type of activity is that the computer game is merely the stimulus for pupils, similar to a text, an image, or even a visit.

Last year our Year 5 students were introduced to the online game Samorost2, a problem solving activity. They loved the game and the difficulties the character faced so much that many of them carried on working on the problems at lunchtimes and at home.

Inspired by the work of Kim Pericles in Australia I sat down earlier this term with P6 teacher Katie Hitchcox and introduced her to the mysteries and intricacies of the first Samorost game. From there Miss Hitchcox planned the use of Samorost into her Literacy work; a two week module looking at story settings within a fantasy genre..... here's what happened.

Students were introduced to the game and encouraged to work in small groups to solve the problems and help the main character to save his planet. Interestingly, whilst many of the adults involved in this project had found the problem-solving aspects quite difficult (impossible, actually!!), the students worked well together and had clearly plenty of digitally native experience in this type of activity. Although the seven levels of the game were challenging, by the end of the first Literacy session most of the groups were nearing completion.

After spending time with the game, students then discussed aspects of narrative writing, taking notes on each scene before looking at creating powerful openings to their stories. To enhance their understanding of narrative, setting and character, the class then moved to the Drama Studio where they used a variety of techniques to help them understand the situation and feelings of the characters. Many of the pupils felt this was very helpful when they were working on their writing. Alongside the specific tasks within Literacy there was an ongoing writing task requiring pupils to write a story based upon the game. Most of the work was done in class using laptops.

What is Samorost?

Working As a Team

Samorost in Drama

Using Samorost to help Writing

Persuasive Language with Samorost

Writing Example 1

Writing Example 2

During the second week of Literacy, students focussed specifically on the fishing scene from the game, using figurative language to describe setting and including personification, simile and metaphor. To extend their work further, students also looked at the genre of advertising and created an advert for a future release of the game, Samorost3 assumably!

The images below are extracts from pupil work, click the arrows to move through them.

More to follow!

Year 7 Scratch

2008-11-26T08:33:00.002+08:00

Both Year 6 and 7 have continued to look at the programming language Scratch in the last three weeks. Whilst P6 have begun to look at controlling images of themselves within the Scratch environment, the Year 7s have been considering aspects of computer game design whilst creating simple games that could be played by younger students.

A number of the games are very playable and include important aspects of game design, such as scoring, timers, levels and targets. The study of Scratch not only helps students to understand aspects of Control Technology, it also encourages review and refinement as well as offering a relatively simple path into the world of programming.

Hopefully a few of the games will be available for playing shortly.

Parent Resources

2008-11-19T15:10:00.006+08:00

Day three of Robyn's visit began with a session for Educational Support Assistants. The staff listened intently to Robyn and there were lots of questions at the end!

Feedback from yesterday's Parent Forum continues to be positive and for those who wish to read further or who couldn't make yesterday's meeting, here are a number of resources to help you out.

A summary of Robyn's discussion with parents is now available and can be viewed here.
Childnet International offers a variety of resources to support students, teachers and parents. Click here to visit
Digizen hosts a variety of resources including the film Let's Fight It Together used with our older students. Click here to visit
Kidsmart is another good source for support and parental advice and includes an interactive presentation which is a great help. Click here to visit
Symantec also offer a set of resources including a checklist for parents. Click here to visit

Parent Forum

2008-11-18T20:22:00.009+08:00

Day Two of Robyn Treyvaud's visit kicked off with an early morning session with the Kellett parents. Over 60 parents gathered in the Auditorium to hear Robyn speak about the experiences of young people today in their online worlds and how they can be supported. She stressed how our students see online as an extension and enhancement of their real-world existence and how it can be used to build upon friendships and relationships rather than replacing them.

She also talked about the importance of connectedness for our pupils and it was clear that much of what she said struck a chord with our parents. Sadly, the session only lasted for 70 minutes. I suspect that most present would have been quite happy to stay and listen to Robyn talk all day!

The initial feedback from the session was very positive;

"the talk today was fantastic, great lady in tune with parental concerns but still able to talk to children"

"A very good talk, good update and positive"

Robyn has made the text of her presentation available to parents and these will be ready shortly. She also has a Delicious account where you can access some of her links;

You can access the resources by clicking here.

After the parents had left the Auditorium it was non stop for the rest of the day as Robyn ran four sessions for pupils at KS2 and 3. Yet again she was able to connect so well with students that they discussed their issues honestly and openly. The sessions were also extremely valuable to those members of staff that attended.

Staff were able to listen to Robyn again after school as she reiterated some of the aspects covered in the earlier Parent Forum. Tomorrow morning will be an opportunity for our Educational Support Staff to meet Robyn.

During a series of meetings tomorow key staff will discuss events from the week and plan how we can move forward as a community to come to terms with what Digital Citizenship means.

Creating Resilient Digital Citizens

2008-11-17T20:48:00.007+08:00

Digital Citizenship expert Robyn Treyvaud joined us today for the first of three days looking at the challenges and opportunities that face young people today.

After a tour of the school Robyn spent the first part of the morning discussing aspects of Digital Citizenship with staff. We touched upon safe and appropriate conduct, copyright, illegal downloads, cyber-bullying and a myriad of other subjects in a fascinating conversation.

Robyn then spoke to the P3 year group about their experiences using the internet and fleshed out how our students use the net and what issues they are concerned with. Robyn's manner encouraged the children to be reflective and they produced some extremely thought provoking comments, particularly on the subject of pressure from advertisers.

After lunch it was the turn of P4 who discussed a wide range of internet use, including blogging, games playing and illegal downloading. As in the earlier session, staff present were fascinated to hear the extent to which our students are immersed in the net and the types of activities they get up to.

At the end of the day Robyn spoke to the Early Years staff about how they can work with pupils to ensure positive use of the amazing resources available to our students and also discussed Digital Footprints.

A busy but fascinating day! Tomorrow promises to be just as interesting with Robyn starting with a Coffee Morning with Kellett parents, as well as sessions with our older pupils.

More to follow.

Dear Santa... Part 2

2008-11-13T13:24:00.005+08:00

Even though I spend a lot of time using a keyboard I do still use a pen or a pencil on a daily basis, using a notebook to make notes on lessons.

Whilst it's inevitable that examinations will soon offer the option of typed answers, the ability to write fluently (if not neatly) is an advantage, as it the ability to type speedily and accurately, of course.

The next item in my Christmas list looks a real winner and could even have some uses in school for students, although the price might be a little offputting.

The Pulse Smartpen offers the ability to record audio files and download to a PC or a laptop and can seemingly synch the audio to your handwriting.

It sounds amazing, and if anybody has seen these on sale in HK, please, please let me know! The only downside for me is that on average I lose around 3.7 pens a week.

Thanks to Merlin John for pointing me to this. Here's the ad;

I bumped into Merlin John at BETT earlier this year and his blog is a favourite in my Google Reader. Without him, it would have taken me much longer to find out about the Smart Table, another great application from Smart. As a Smart refugee living in a Promethean world it may be a little ambitious adding this to my list, but one can only hope!

Digital Citizenship

2008-11-11T13:20:00.006+08:00

Next week promises to be an exciting time at Kellett as we will be joined by Robyn Treyvaud for the first three days of the week.

Robyn is founder of Cyber Safe Kids and is a renowned speaker and trainer on all aspects of Digital Citizenship and the ways young people use the net. During her time at Kellett she will be running sessions for all KS2 and 3 students and working with staff to develop policies and coursework to reinforce her ideas.

She will also be speaking at a special Coffee Morning held on Tues 18th November in our auditorium to which all Kellett parents are invited. She will discuss the issues that face parents and suggest ways of coming to terms with the world in which our young people live.

We look forward to seeing you there!

Rising To The Top

2008-11-10T13:16:00.002+08:00

It's true what they say, you can't beat age and experience.

The first few weeks of the Fantasy Football season saw the students out in front, but as the season has progressed the teachers have begun to dominate matters. In fact, as of today, five of the top six spots are filled by the teachers.

Clearly they know much more about football than the Kellett students. Oh well, keep trying!

A small glimmer of hope for the students might be that current leader, Ms Lewis and 4th placed Mr Hulbert are this week celebrating the arrival of Katie Jane, born at the weekend. Many congratulations to all of them and here's hoping they still find time to manage their teams!

P3 Animoto Slideshow

2008-11-06T15:14:00.007+08:00

P3 have just finished their Art in ICT module and it was a great success. We studied the art of Bridget Riley and used ICT to mimic some of her methods. Firstly we looked at the artist's early drawing in black and white and used a template to master the fill tool in Colour Magic.

During the second lesson we looked carefully at some of her coloured paintings and used templates to mimic them. We made effective use of ICT by saving our work continually after making changes, thereby enabling us to create a much bigger portfolio of work.

The later lessons involved students creating their own templates to fill. They used the Snap-to-Grid tool to help them create grids before filling them with colour and again saving lots of versions of their work. Some of their designs were amazingly intricate, as can be seen from the Animoto slideshow above.

There was some really creative work in the latter part of this module and the P3s worked really hard. Well done!

All the KS2 students at Kellett now have their own Animoto accounts so they can make their own slideshows on aspects of their studies.

Scratching Around

2008-11-05T10:17:00.018+08:00

P6 students have begun to use Scratch in their ICT lessons. This brilliant piece of software from MIT is a great learning tool, allowing access to theories of programming as well as creativity.

We have been looking at different ways of learning the software, either progressing through a series of tutorials provided by Learnscratch.org or simply playing with the software and trying things out. Interestingly the results varied between classes with those set the task of investigating through play appearing to have a better understanding of the software than those who were working through the tutorials.

Learn more about this project

However, the tutorials do contain some excellent ideas for extended projects which we will be visiting in the next few weeks.

Scratch is an extremely engaging piece of software, students quickly become immersed in the intricacies and require little in the way of support from the teacher and are at ease with methods of self-support or helping each other out;

"How do you get rid of what you've drawn?"

"Right there."

Another great aspect of Scratch is that it's completely free and downloadable from the MIT website. It's a must have download for all students at the top of KS2 and up (or maybe even younger)

You can download Scratch here.

For those digital immigrants who like me require the security blanket of organised tutorials, LearnScratch is a great place to start.

Christmas Lists... what's on yours?

2008-10-30T14:00:00.015+08:00

With Halloween done and dusted the approach to Christmas begins in earnest. As much as you might try to fend it off, a school is the last place for a Scrooge to be as November progresses.

As is the custom, it's time to start composing your letters to Santa Claus and given that sometimes he just can't get hold of the most popular items, it's good to get your requests in early. Given that some of the tecchy things on my list are likely to be in short supply in December I thought I'd look at what's likely to be in demand now.

Top of everybody's list is bound to be the newly announced Nintendo DSi, released in Japan this weekend and seemingly already available to pre-order here in HK. The new DS is slightly smaller and boasts a built in camera and web browser. This is excellent news for those of us who firmly believe that consoles like the DSi have an important role to play in learning.

Finding publicity material on the DSi is not so easy given that it's only available in Japan at the moment, but here's a clip;

The past year has seen an effort by Sony to make inroads into Nintendo's dominance of the 'family' or 'educational' game market. Their new Playstation Eye peripheral has added a new dimension to what their games can offer and the Eye Pet looks like being a great success;

The idea that players can become truely interactive with a game is a big step forward and will make games much more engaging to a wider audience.

Talking of making games more interesting to a wider audience, how about a DS game where you can pretend to be a teacher? What a great idea! One of the games in Ubisoft's Imagine series is Imagine Teacher, a game where you play as a new teacher making your way in a new job.

You have to plan your weekly timetable, mark you books and make sure your class progresses well as you attempt to create "the school of your dreams"!

Alarmingly though, the publicity warns that you need "be careful of those who want to stand in the way of your success"..... what could they mean by that!!?

For those that need a more ambitious entry on their list, how about a train? This one requires you to wind it up with a handcrank and costs around $40,000. You do need quite a large space to fit it in though. It would go nicely in our Reception Covered Area...

From previous posts I've made it's clear that I believe mobile technologies in education will become increasingly important in the next few years. Therefore, I'm grateful to HK Ed-Tech Consultant Paul McMahon for pointing me in the direction of the 3M Mobile Projector. At around $3000 this is a very affordable piece of kit and although it lacks the phone functions that will be with us in the next year or so, I could see lots of applications within school.

So, that's just a few initial ideas for my list, now I have to convince Santa that I really have been well behaved and deserve all of the above!

Sham Shui Po

2008-10-21T21:47:00.011+08:00

A trip to Sham Shui Po is a good opportunity to browse the computer mall and market stalls and pick up a few goodies.

On the crowded MTR on the way there I was near to a group of three children (prob Y7/8) all of different races who between them had around five devices and spent the whole trip completely engaged with each other and their technology, listening to their music via shared headphones, viewing images on their cameras and constantly making phone calls, sending photos to each other.

A few things struck me as we travelled northwards. Firstly, how at home they were with their technology. They were competent users who used their devices as part of their everyday lives, socially and recreationally. Secondly, how can we transfer this enagement and this seamless use of technology into the classroom? Yes, we're making progress, but we must keep trying to extend what we do. The everyday use of technology musn't stop at the school gates, it needs to be completely embedded into the curriculum. Our students have an entitlement to that.

I like the manifesto/vision statement of a local school I read recently which stated that students should use ICT for 25% of the time they are in school. That sounds reasonable at primary level, depending on the sort of ICT they were doing, of course.

In recent weeks we've begun some exciting projects at Kellett using ICT, and not just in the ICT suite itself. Our new Flip Ultra video cameras (pictured left) have seen a lot of use in both KS1 and 2 whilst Year 7 and 8 continue to progress with Google Docs. On the horizon are some extremely exciting projects using our new facial animation software, Crazy Talk, and looking at games as a stumulus for writing at P6.

I'm really looking forward to continuing to embed technology within the curriculum and a few more goodies from Sham Shui Po will help a little! Our Flip Ultra sits proudly atop a new "Gorilla-Pod" "type"(!) tripod purchased on my recent visit. A few spare sets of headphones and smaller animation tripods were also bought on the day trip...

Crazy Talk

2008-10-16T13:27:00.010+08:00

Students working in Computer Club have been experimenting with the facial animation software Crazy Talk. They have added images of themselves into the software and created animation points on their faces so that the tool can animate in a realistic fashion.

They have then added speech to their models and synchronised the sound and the movement together. One student has even added his speech in French.

Crazy Talk is an extremely sophisticated, but simple to use piece of software that could be used across the curriculum, especially in Literacy, Humanities and MFL. Hopefully we will have the chance to use it in wider applications during the forthcoming year.

Now that they have mastered the basic techniques, Computer Club will be revisiting Crazy Talk throughout the year.

Peer Review in Google Docs

2008-10-15T09:52:00.016+08:00

Year 7 have started using Google Docs to evaluate presentations made to the class. Each student gives their presentation and is then reviewed by their peers using a shared Google document. The use of Google Docs means that the whole class can contribute to a single document thereby giving valuable feedback.

You might expect (and I did), this type of activity to be dogged by technical issues, but it was actually fairly smooth with all students being able to log on wirelessly to the network from areas where there is usually little multiple access (the gym and the auditorium).

Student log-in to Google Docs was efficient in the most part and they were able to access the individual review file of each presenter without problems. As Google sets a limit of 10 users working simultaneously on each file there was a little wasted time for those that weren't quick enough to get in first! We need to work on this a bit and adapted so that students could comment on one of two presentations at the same time.

On the whole the quality of student comment was good, but because of the short amount of time they were permitted to write, there was not enough depth to their comments. We need to allow for more reflection and stress the difference between peer review in the classroom and the adding of comments to a Youtube video. Each has merit, but to support a classmate in IMPROVING and REFINING their work, the two are different.

Comments included;

That was really great!
it was the best presentation so far!
I loved it!!!

Which fall into the supportive category and may make the student feel good, but they don't identify what it is that is actually good. As far a peer review goes, the above are limited. More helpful comments included;

it was quite short and wasn't formal enough
great pictures and good formal language
very clear and well presented
You used good expression and talked about the pictures referring to the text
You actually looked at us, not many people can do that
you need to face us more than the screen
i liked the pics, the font was good
Next time just try to not hide the words behind the photographs

So, where next with this project?

There are more presentations to be seen with one more lesson before half-term and another straight after. Students need to look again at the comments they have made and also address the issue of precisely where they comment. The default position is the top of the screen, which soon becomes cluttered. The use of Insert, Comment allows for colour coding of postings so that everybody can see who has written what. The revision history is another way in which the updates of the document can be followed.

Although we've only scratched the surface of Google Docs so far, it's clear to see that it has huge potential within the classroom, allowing for simultaneous student collaboration.

KS3 students have also started to use Google Docs in English

Logo

2008-10-13T11:52:00.005+08:00

P4 are looking at LOGO at the moment. The study of LOGO is an excellent introduction to the world of programming and leads to a variety of more complex work later on, such as using Scratch and Flowol.

With influential voices such as Marc Prensky advocating programming as an essential part of learning, LOGO is a great start. For those that want to follow up their work on LOGO, a free version called MSW LOGO can be downloaded from this page.

Left to their own devices.

2008-10-13T11:07:00.006+08:00

Last year the General Secretary of the teaching union the NASUWT in the UK made a comment that must have haunted him ever since when he said; "Teachers would be grateful if pupils just brought a pen" when discussing students bringing gadgets in to schools.

His words were generally met with derision and rightly so. Our students are familiar with a huge array of technology and it's part of our role to help them to use it in a positive way. The mobile phone is a device often banned in schools, but with the vast majority (95%+) of secondary students owning them they could be a rich resource within the classroom. The new breed of phone has a number of functions which can allow for personalisation and innovation and apparently contains more computing power than the first Apollo space launch - don't ask me to reference that, it's just something I heard!

A research paper just released by the University of Nottingham in the UK looks at how secondary schools can use mobile phones to help learning.

Amongst other things, the report outlines 15 ways that students can use their mobiles;

Timing experiments with stopwatch
Photographing apparatus and results of experiments for reports
Photographing development of design models for eportfolios
Photographing texts/whiteboards for future review
Bluetoothing project material between group members
Receiving SMS & email reminders from teachers
Synchronising calendar/timetable and setting reminders
Connecting remotely to school learning platform
Recording a teacher reading a poem for revision
Accessing revision sites on the Internet
Creating short narrative movies
Downloading and listening to foreign language podcasts
Logging into the school email system
Using GPS to identify locations
Transferring files between school and home

Some great ideas there and many worth following up on. Being a complete dinosaur I'd never even realised you could use your mobile as a stopwatch... a really useful tool in the classroom.

Elizabeth Hartnell-Young's research work makes fascinating reading and a full version can be downloaded here.