Category Archives: CfE Curriculum Area

Podcasts at Braeview

May 1, 2012 Mr Christie Leave a comment

Podcasts at Braeview

As an alternative to past papers, a revision technique I use (which is perfect for filling a double period) is getting pupils to create revision notes on key exam topics and record them as podcasts.

Resources required: Audacity (on virtual apps), microphone, speakers/headphones, Glow Group (optional if you want to upload and share podcasts with other pupils).

Summary of steps involved:

1. Produce a list of revision topics/titles for pupils to randomly choose from.

2. Get pupils to write a study note/summary on that topic.
3. Pupils then use Audacity to record their study note.

4. Pupils can edit the track perhaps altering the sound of their voice using the pitch control.

5. Pupils Export the track as an MP3. (Note for Audacity to export as mp3 you will need the LAME dll file, which can be downloaded from the web)

6. Pupils can then transfer this to a memory stick or MP3 player. In addition to this as a teacher you could gather the class’s podcasts together and upload to the documents tab of your subject Glow Group so that pupils can share/pool resources.

Expressive Arts, Health and Wellbeing, Languages, Literacy, Mathematics, Numeracy, Other Big Stories, RME, Sciences, Senior Phase, Social Studies, Technologies

Advice for new National Qualifications

April 30, 2012 User deactivated Leave a comment

Education Scotland have today published advice and guidance, with exemplification in a range of subjects to support learning and teaching in the new NQs. More material will be published over the coming months.

The updated NQ website can be found here:

http://www.educationscotland.gov.uk/nationalqualifications/index.asp

Technologies

Visualisers at Braeview Academy

April 27, 2012 Mr Christie Leave a comment

Visualisers at St Paul’s Academy

In case you didn’t know, Visualisers or Document Cameras are basically powerful digital cameras on flexible arms which when connected through your computer and a projector allow you to share a magnified image of an object (a page of a text book, 3D model, pupils work etc…) with the class. When connected through the computer you can then annotate the image and/or record video and audio so that you could replay the demonstration at a later date to another class without having to set it all up again. There are a number of different makes and models out there I have been lucky enough to trial the following:

Easi-View Visualiser

Approx. Price £100

Slot for SD Memory card – No

Resolution (Megapixels) – 3MP

Image Capture Area – A4

Zoom – N/A

Remote Control – No

Avermedia CP155

Approx. Price £400

Slot for SD Memory card – No

Resolution (Megapixels) – 3.2MP

Image Capture Area – 330 x 248 mm

Zoom – 8 x Digital

Remote Control – No

Samsung SDP860

Approx. Price £450

Slot for SD Memory card – Yes

Resolution (Megapixels) – 1.39MP

Image Capture Area – 420 x 336mm

Zoom – 6 x Optical 8 x Digital

Remote Control – Yes

Elmo L-12

Approx. Price £600 (including tablet)

Slot for SD Memory card – Yes

Resolution (Megapixels) – 3.4MP

Image Capture Area – 420 x 334 mm (A3 size)

Zoom – 12 x Optical 8 x Digital

Remote Control – Yes

Promethean ActiView 322

Approx. Price £400

Slot for SD Memory card – No

Resolution– XGA (1024 x 768)

Image Capture Area – 350mm x 280MM

Zoom – 6 x Optical 6 x Digital

Remote Control – Yes

Avermedia V355AF

Approx. Price £600

Slot for SD Memory card – Yes

Resolution (Megapixels) – 5MP

Image Capture Area – 400 x 300 mm

Zoom – 5 x Optical 8 x Digital

Remote Control – Yes

In summary for me the most important features are the resolution of the camera, and the capture area if the resolution isn’t good enough then if you are trying to show a page from a text book up on the projector or through AB Tutor onto pupil’s screens then the text will be too fuzzy and illegible. Similarly if the capture area isn’t big enough then you have to keep moving the textbook to show different parts of the page. It is worth noting the two main types of mountings for the visualises, they either come with a goose neck flexible articulated arm which you can bend into any position you like, or the more expensive models have a mechanical arm which although lacking the flexibility to put into any position would seem more robust for a classroom situation.

The easiview camera is in my opinion fine for displaying 3D objects or perhaps doing some stop-frame animation, but as a document camera the image quality was too poor.

I found the other visualisers to be fairly similar in terms of quality and functionality, however my favourite to use and the one I thought had the best overall performance was the Avermedia V355AF. The thing I particularly liked about the V355 was laser positioning guide to help indicate where to place the document/object under the camera.

Two exemplar papers ready underneath visualiser

Zooming in to the relevant question

Two different pupil answer clearly displayed together on screen

Using AB Tutor software answers displayed on all pupil screens in the computing lab,
but also displayed on the multimedia projector.

There are loads of features I haven’t used or talked about in this blog, but to round it off visualisers are a great tool whether it is just to save money on textbooks, to quickly show off a good piece of writing to a class or to show a large class the insides of a computer or other small object.

News 20/01/13

Recently I got to use ELMOs latest compact visualiser (MO-1 MOBILE VISUAL PRESENTER) and I have found it very easy to use and very practical for the classroom. For more information click here

The MO-1 is tiny, and I can easily put it in my laptop case along with my laptop. The visualiser can be mains powered or just powered through the USB connection which again adds to its convenience. Having used a number of other visualisers I can confidently say for me as a normal class teacher overall it is the best I have used. If you need really high resolution images say for Technical Drawing then perhaps you might need one of the top end models but for everyday use the MO-1 is great.

What have I used it for? The MO-1 is good for showing the whole class an object that is on my desk through my projector and if you are in a computer lab with AB Tutor it can also then be shown on pupils screens at the same time. When delivering a recent training session on Flipcams I used the visualiser liked to my projector and ABTutor to show people a close up of the camera buttons and screen as I was demonstrating functionality. With my S5/6 Digital Creator class, pupils have used the visualiser with I Can animate to produce Stop Frame animations, the software picked up the visualiser on pupils computers without drivers needing to be installed, and the fact that the camera is fixed makes animating very easy allowing pupils to keep their hands free for animating rather than having to perch a webcam precariously somewhere . The MO-1 has other functionality like the ability to run by itself and store images directly to an SD card but I have not had the need to use this yet. Priced at around £280 the visualiser is more affordable than most of its rivals too and you can get it in different colours if that interests you!

Senior Phase, Technologies

Arduino at Braeview Academy

April 26, 2012 Mr Christie Leave a comment

Arduino at Braeview Academy

Education Scotland have a facility called CPD Consolarium whereby teachers can sign up to the Glow Group and then make a bid online for software and hardware which if successful you can use for loan period, the condition being that you give feedback through a Wiki created for you by Education Scotland.

This past year I have had a loan of Arduino kits which are programmable boards to which you can motors, lights, sensors etc.. and then by plugging the board into your PC using a USB cable you can then write computer programs and upload them to the board. I used the boards with my Advanced Higher pupils and also arranged for Chris Martin from Dundee University who has some experience in this field of physical computing to deliver a workshop to my Higher pupils with his wheeled robots made from Arduino boards.

Rather than repeat the information on the blog the link below takes you to the wiki I am working on.

https://wikis.glowscotland.org.uk/0001398/Consolarium/Other_Technologies/Arduino/@Braeview_Academy%2c_Dundee

I strongly recommend putting in a bid for some kit as Education Scotland has a huge amount available from Nintendos to PS3s. If my bid is successful I hope to try out some other programmable boards that they have made available.

Expressive Arts

Wallacetown Nursery School

April 23, 2012 User deactivated Leave a comment

At Wallacetown Nursery School the children have been learning about the work of famous artists. By using the Bear Hunt story as a focus for our art we were able to discuss ways which we could recreate the story. By looking at the work of Jackson Pollock we made mud pictures which involved the children working together to create large pieces of work.

We looked at some of Claude Monet’s work and created our grass and water pictures which allowed the children to be creative.

We also learned about cave paintings and created our own using tissue paper prints and black paint. The children became very familiar with the work of the artists and enjoyed exploring the story of Michael Rosen’s We’re Going On A Bear Hunt.

All Posts, Literacy

Literacy across Learning at Menzieshill High

November 29, 2011 User deactivated Leave a comment

Menzieshill High School has been running a new course for S1 this year. This Literacy across Learning course, run jointly by Mrs Brining of the English department and Miss Scott the librarian, focuses on the crucial literacy skills required throughout the school. We are working with departments across the curriculum to develop the skills pupils need and we are having a lot of fun along the way.
This video shows us demonstrating good listening skills: Listening skills

Please visit our Literacy across Learning blog to find out more about what we have been doing.

Glow, Languages, Senior Phase

Using Glow Learn to support listening skills in Modern Languages

November 18, 2011 User deactivated Leave a comment

I’m Lesley Young and I’m a teacher in the Modern Languages department in Grove Academy. As the final stage of the Chartered Teacher programme, I had to carry out an action research project. I chose to research listening acquisition and listening skills and focused on Higher French. A large part of the research project related to metacognitive strategy instruction, but I also created materials to help pupils with sound discrimination.

Learners at the beginning and intermediate stages of French sometimes find it difficult to recognise words they know when they hear them. They have not learned the correct pronunciation, or they have poor knowledge of the rules of liaison. I developed a booklet and sound files on pronunciation and liaison and created a Glow learn course. Pupils were taken to an ICT suite and introduced to the course, and the listening activities were then issued as homework for the holidays on Glow learn. From August onwards, almost every listening activity done in class was uploaded onto Glow learn. I painstakingly copied cassettes onto CDs to rip the tracks into MP3 files. We are lucky that the activities we do in class mostly have been written and recorded by our language assistants (unfortunately no longer employed in school), so are not subject to copyright restrictions. The MP3 files were issued as homework and pupils were asked to listen again, along with the transcript which I also issued. If they had had difficulty identifying the sounds that they heard in class, they were asked to read the transcript, anticipate what the words will sound like, and then listen to the MP3 file whilst reading the transcript. Finally, they were advised to listen again, without the transcript, trying to visualise the words. (This advice is taken from a recent research study into the listening skills of AS level students in England.)

There are two main advantages of Glow learn for sharing sound files with pupils: 1) there is unlimited storage space 2) although it’s time consuming to upload files, it’s easier than asking each pupil to bring in a blank CD and copying the tracks onto CDs. The disadvantage of Glow learn (compared to Scholar) is that although you are able to check that the pupils have accessed the task, you cannot actually tell if they have opened the file, and cannot tell how long they have spent on the activity. On the other hand, they are able to copy the files onto their own ipods. Pupils tell me that they have been doing this and seem appreciative.

All this listening should of course lead to an improvement in their speaking and pronunciation as well as their listening. As most pupils seem to feel compelled to listen constantly to their ipods, I feel that we should be exploiting this and providing them with educational listening whenever possible.

All Posts, Dundee Active Learning, Expressive Arts, Featured, Health and Wellbeing, Health Promoting, Other Big Stories, Parental Involvement, Second, Technologies, Transition

A year in the life of Barnhill P7

November 16, 2011 Mr Smith Leave a comment

Our P7 pupils at Barnhill were involved in keeping a pictorial and video diary of the year. We then created a movie file and used free music from glow to play over the top of our images and videos. Have a look at the video below which is streamed through our glow wiki page. The children loved making this and enjoyed the ICT aspect but also learned much about working co-operatively.

https://wikis.glowscotland.org.uk/@api/deki/files/30368/=Barnhill_P7_end_of_year_film.wmv

All Posts, Featured, Languages, Literacy, Other Big Stories, Second, Third

‘Find your inner zombie’

November 11, 2011 User deactivated Leave a comment

I was excited to enter my newly qualified teaching year on the advent of Curriculum for Excellence in 2010, and was looking forward to delivering creative lessons throughout the curriculum.

Teaching English, I found I had endless opportunity to not only create new lessons but modify existing lesson plans. The Secondary English curriculum requires pupils to experience a wide variety of writing genres, which cover the main writing outcomes. Towards the end of the year, my S1 pupils were required to write a transactional piece. The purpose of this writing task is to convey information, and topics such as ‘how to care for a pet’ are used.

Throughout the year, I attended a few TeachMeets and listened to various speakers discuss how to motivate. In one visit, we had a speaker from the Scottish Book Trust who told us to ‘find our inner zombie,’ as the children really engaged with this current topic. Although I had discussed Zombies with my pupils when we discussed childrens’ books, or T.V. programmes, I had never integrated them into my curriculum before this writing task.

The whole school cross-curricular week was approaching, and this time the topic was Rapid Response. I chose to engage with this theme by discussing disasters with the intention of creating a transactional piece of writing.

We started off by researching past disasters, hitting reading outcomes throughout this process. The pupils engaged with the texts they were using and gathered information, summarised, organised, took notes, prioritised and created new texts (Eng 3.12a, Lit 3.14a, Lit 3.15a, Lit 3.16a, Eng 3.17a) from these pieces. We then compared environmental disasters with chemical, nuclear and man-made disasters. Using real-life examples from newspapers, the pupils then used the computers to find a story of a person who had survived these disasters.

By investigating real life stories, the pupils were able to engage with the effects of these disasters, and explore the causes of these incidents. By using these stories as stimulus and exploring other people’s rights we also hit Health and Wellbeing Outcomes. The pupils found the causes of some man-made disasters thought provoking, and we were able to have moral discussions about this.

The outcome task I set the pupils was related to the Zombie phenomenon. We moved on from disasters to discuss apocalyptic versions of disasters, focusing on The Bee Movie and more science fiction type scenarios. We discussed a zombie apocalypse at great length and the information the pupils could bring to the discussion was immense! During this discussion, we examined old ‘Protect and Survive’ adverts from previous decades, which the children found very intriguing. They discussed the various media that can be used to convey information. At this point, we delved into various types of transactional writing, which ensured the pupils could be successful in this task.

The pupils created a Microsoft Publisher brochure entitled “How to Survive a Zombie Apocalypse.”

For higher ability pupils, their brochure contained a lot of writing, whereas the lower ability pupils concentrated on features of informative writing, such as bullet points, sequential instructions, and simple facts. Pupils then used ScribbleMaps to scribble on a map of Dundee and alert the public to the safe zones, water supplies, infected areas, and shelter zones. The pupils loved designing routes through their own town and engaging with local landmarks and shopping centres in order to create their map. Creating this map also served as an opportunity for assessment of understanding, literacy and cooperative working.

Each pupil gained a lot from this unit and were all engaged while creating, and then presenting their brochure. Some pupils extended this further and showed examples of what tools were needed to survive, while some focused on the basics of the task. I think making this extremely relevant tapped into some of the more disengaged pupils, and was therefore an appealing task from the start. The work speaks for itself, and I am currently using the same template for an S3 class. Watch this space…