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
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 EL
MOs 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!
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.
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.
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
During Term One, my Primary 7 class decided they would like to create a Class Newspaper. Within my class, as within most classes, I have pupils with challenging behaviour. I wanted all pupils in my class to be fully motivated throughout this learning context. I also wanted my pupils to have ownership of their class newspaper.
The pupils were eager to get started writing their articles. However, as a class we decided that it would be a good idea to establish a ‘planning wall’ first. One of my pupils asked if we could set up a Glow Group to compliment the planning wall in our classroom. My pupils were eager to add to their planning wall even when not at school. I set up an interactive planning wall using wallwisher.com. This allowed the children to add their ideas to a wall that they all could access at any time through a link placed within their Glow group. I initially asked the question, “Which features should we include in our newspaper?” This wall allowed the children to share their ideas, comment and add to them. It gave them an opportunity to give constructive feedback on each others suggestions. All comments made by the children needed to be approved by myself before they went live.
My class decided they wanted to give our newspaper a name. We discussed suggestions and they decided they would each vote on their favourite. I asked the class if they had ever voted online or by text using their mobile phone? I heard a unanimous chorus of “Yes!” I wanted to encourage all pupils to vote for their favourite newspaper name. I decided create an online poll using polleverywhere.com. Poll Everywhere is a free service that allows the children to vote within a teacher generated poll using their mobile phones and voting by text or by completing a simple web response form. I first saw this learning tool in action during an input given by a very innovative lecturer, Sharon Tonner, at the University of Dundee. All the children appeared to be very enthusiastic about being able to vote – including the less motivated pupils who I was targeting this learning tool towards. I felt that if I had all my pupils fully engaged from the offset of the project, the finished product would be more rewarding for them. Overnight, I had a 100% response to the poll – all of the members of my class taking part in the project!
As the project progressed and publication date was nearing, the pupils used Comic Life and Textease to create draft copies of their feature stories. The boys in particular were very keen to write up their reports of the latest school team football match. Pupils who would struggle to stay on task during a writing lesson were fully engaged with Comic Life.
There is one pupil in particular who exhibits challenging behaviour within the class. She has excellent ICT skills. I decided to give her the chance to be the ICT Consultant in Chief. She excelled in this consultative role. She was focussed and willing to show to the rest of the class how to modify and produce their paper. She clearly explained how to create a drawing in Textease, save it and then import it into Comic Life.
As well as producing a physical copy of the OL Record (Our Lady’s Record), the pupils were very keen to release an electronic copy of the paper. We used youblisher.com to create an electronic version of our paper. We created pdf’s of each page and used the online program to create our paper.
The pupils were proud of their creation. They took great delight in handing them out to family and friends at their MacMillan Coffee Morning.
Matthew Monaghan, Primary 7 class teacher at Our Lady’s Primary, Dundee.
Click on this link to our video presentation.
My name is Matthew Monaghan and I am the Primary 7 class teacher at Our Lady’s Primary School in Dundee.
During my final year of the BEd at the University of Dundee I had the opportunity to take an elective in Global Learning. During one of the module inputs given by both Peter Wakefield and Brenda Keatch, it was stated, “citizenship starts at a local level. It starts with you and your class“. This struck a chord with me. I have strong links with St Anne’s Primary School in Derry, Northern Ireland. I attended this school as a child and I also had the chance to work with one of the Primary 6 classes during the final months of the last school year.
Teaching a Primary 7 class gave me the perfect opportunity to develop a partnership with the Primary 7s at St Anne’s. The aim of this partnership is to allow the children in both classes to share their learning experiences throughout their final year of primary school. With the help of Siobhan Gillen, one of the Primary 7 teachers at St Anne’s, each pupil at Our Lady’s has been linked with two ‘Learning Partners’ from St Anne’s (due to class numbers). The project is in its initial stages. I plan to add to this post to update on its progress.
I introduced the partnership to a very eager class by using Google Street View and the Bird’s Eye option that is part of Bing Maps to explore both schools and both cities from above. We explored the locations in each country.
I feel an important aspect of this partnership is that it is pupil led. I try to act as a facilitator as much as possible. My class asked if we could set up a Glow group for our project. They asked if it would be possible for the pupils and teacher from St. Anne’s to be members of our Glow group.
After a lot of discussion about what the pupils wanted to find out about Ireland, the pupils decided that it would be a good idea to tell the pupils from St. Anne’s a little bit about themselves. A pupil from my class suggested writing letters and posting them. We did this intially. However, within my class there is a wide range of ability. I felt that to engage less able writers, a different tool was needed. I introduced my class to a Voki. After a quick demonstration on how to create a voki and how to obtain the code needed to embed each completed Voki in our Glow group, my class decided that they all wanted to create their own. They were very engaged. My class were keen for their Irish learning partners to view the voki created.
I felt if pupils had the chance to see each other in real time the learning experience would be enriched greatly. With support from Louise Henderson, we have begun to use the Adobe Connect component within our Glow group to video conference and share our learning experiences visually. Adobe Connect allows all pupils to take part in video based discussions using web cameras and headsets in both classrooms. So far both classes have participated in an introductory ‘Learning Conference’. We used the ‘discussion’ layout. The focus of this initial conference was to give the pupils a chance to get to know their learning partners a little better. As the project progresses the plan is for a video conference to take place every three weeks. Pupils from St Anne’s have been studying the Victorians. Pupils from my class will be focussing on the novel Matilda by Roald Dahl as a learning context.
During each conference pupils from both schools will share their learning journey through Primary 7 and follow an agreed agenda. We plan to use the different functions present within Adobe Connect including the sharing tab. This gives both classes the ability to use the ‘whiteboard’ pod. We will be able to create and share flipchart slides, text and free-hand drawings in real time allowing a variety of lessons to be viewed simultaneously in both Dundee and Derry. My pupils are very excited about this.
As well as using Glow as a virtual learning environment, we have also begun to use LearningNI, the VLE used by schools throughout Northern Ireland. Pupils have access to a course created within LearningNI. This gives both pupils and staff involved a chance to use two different platforms. Both ‘learning spaces’ allow pupils to share their progress. Initially, I felt it would be better to focus on one VLE. However, each has its own unique features and benefits. Pupils are able to contribute to discussion forums set up within their course in LearningNI and within their Glow group. They can view each others Voki. Pupils from St Anne’s have begun to upload PowerPoint presentations they have created based on the Victorians to our course within LearningNI. Pupils from Our Lady’s can peer assess their work, posting their comments to the workspace within LearningNI. We have also begun to do this within our Glow group.
Within LearningNI pupils can view current new stories within the Newsdesk section. These are edited by a member of The Guardian team. They also have the chance to submit comments which can be viewed and shared across Northern Ireland as part of the ‘Have Your Say’ section. During the October holidays I visited the Primary 7 class at St Anne’s to talk about our partnership. Four of the pupils from St Anne’s had their comments selected by the team from the Guardian and they were displayed online by the Newsdesk.
My pupils asked me if it was possible to make the design of our Glow group more eye-catching. We used wix.com to create web parts which we could fully edit and customise after creating a free account. We created headers for each area of our Glow group which we have been able to animate and add music to. We have added these to our glow group using the XML code generated.
This is a very exciting project in which the pupils from both schools are fully engaged. They are naturally curious about each others experiences during their final year of primary school. They are counting down the days to our next video discussion!
Post written by Lorraine Munro
I’m an Early Years Practitioner in a Primary One (ages 4 and 5) class in Dundee, Scotland. I am also a Promethean Advocate. As a previous ICT Staff Tutor, I was interested in using gaming as a hook to engage young children with all aspects of learning. We often loaned out gaming resources to schools and early years establishments as part of an initiative to support learning in the classroom through Curriculum for Excellence, Scotland’s curriculum for 3–18 year olds. The Learning Teaching Scotland website has a dedicated area to game based learning.
When I returned to school after the summer break, I was really excited to put my experiences into practice. In the last school year, we have used a variety of consoles and games to support our youngsters in their learning. This is our journey through the year…
We began by using two Nintento DS’ at the writing table. I introduced Pictochat to the children and they practised writing sounds and letters they had been taught by the teacher. They also liked to practise writing their name and it was a great way to encourage emergent writing. They enjoyed ‘sending’ their writing to each other and this activity was a real winner with the boys. They had no problem with the small stylus and, in fact, this really helped with pencil control.
We have approximately ten Nintendo DS’ and are using them across the school. It has been embraced and other classes have used them in different areas:
In Primary One, we then moved on to using the Playstation 2 with the Eye Toy. We used the game Play. I would give the children clear instructions on what game was to be played and the children would very quickly pick up the on-screen instructions. The area surrounding the game was set up to support number recognition and I would encourage the children to find their score on the number square. We also looked at Health and Wellbeing outcomes like sharing space, being aware of rules and turn taking.
We were lucky to buy gaming equipment for the school and purchased a Wii and Xbox with Kinect. Primary One children were allowed to try out the Wii and as we were doing a Health topic, we decided on FIT, which is a Dora and Diego game. Although this game is for one player, we had up to four children taking part at any time. One person held the Wii remote but all four children did the activities. Children won medals when they completed a routine so we decided to take this opportunity to support maths and every time the children won a medal they added it to our graph.
We also used the Wii game Just Dance as a whole class activity during our health week. We had four Wii remotes and everyone had a turn to hold the Wii remote and gain a score. This game was a huge success and is now one of our whole school Friday activities.
The next game we used was Yogi Bear. The children were engrossed in a Goldilocks and the Three Bears topic and I was looking at bears in my area. This game was less active, but we adapted the area to look more like Jellystone Park and although this was also a one player game we had two children participating at any time. This meant there was also a peer there to encourage and support when necessary. We moved the writing table beside the Wii area and this encouraged the boys to write and draw about their experiences with the game. Near the end of the topic, we had a Yogi Bear book. The children recorded their experiences of using the game in the book by drawing a picture and writing. Some asked me to scribe for them while others felt confident enough to have a go themselves.
We encountered a few difficulties using the Wii as it was a very popular activity and was very much in demand. This meant that not all the children were getting an opportunity to use the game, as some were always there fast and some would stay on for a while. We devised a simple laminated sheet of all the children’s names and a whiteboard pen. I scored off the name when a child picked the Wii and they weren’t allowed to go back on until everyone had a turn. Once all the names were scored off, we cleaned the name board and we could start again. We also had a ten-minute timer so the children were responsible for setting this when they began the game. We also discussed rules for the game with the children and displayed them. We reminded children of these rules regularly and these complimented our Health and Wellbeing lesson plan within our curriculum
As a school we had also purchased X Box Kinect with Kinectimals. As we had an Animals topic near the end of the school year, we thought this would engage our youngsters and give opportunities for lots of discussion about animals. It did, but also supported all areas of the curriculum. We had to look at a number of different elements to make this work for us.
The area needed to be big enough so the child using the Kinect could be found by the sensor, but we didn’t want children to be using this in isolation from others. This meant we also had to fit in some kind of seating for other children to watch, discuss and support their peer through the game without them also being picked up by the sensor.
At first, using our previous gaming organisation ideas, we all had a turn at interacting with and getting to know the different cubs. We then voted using ActivExpressions about which one would be the P1 cub. We then chose the cub, which was the Black Panther cub and then proceeded into the game. The children taught the cub tricks and played games with it. They supported each other in performing the activities and carrying out the tricks. Lots of different curricular areas were supported, from maths when one child read his score of 295 and others read instructions on the screen hitting literacy outcomes. Experience was gained in Health and Wellbeing outcomes when children showed how they led and supported the learning of others and showed genuine care and understanding in caring for the cub. Overall, this game had a huge learning potential. It is not as easy to use an early years setting as the Wii, but it was well worth the effort.
Our latest piece of work with the Wii has come from our transition with our nursery children (up to age 4) moving into Primary One. The nursery children had used the Mii Channel on the Wii console to create Miis for all the children as part of a topic about themselves. This allowed each child to create a Mii with their hair colour, eye colour, face shape and even find the letters in their name. When the children moved into P1, the Wii console came with them. The children have been using the Wii Sports game and bowling. This has given me an opportunity to create Miis for all the children who came to our school not from our nursery. It has also meant that the children can find their Mii when playing the bowling game. Furthermore, this game allows me to observe children who can read numbers to ten and begin early addition.
Our experiences with gaming are still developing and we are always looking for ways to engage our young people. Our latest purchase has been an iPad and we look forward to how we can support our children through their learning in new and innovative ways.
Post written by Lorraine Munro, Dens Rd Primary School Dundee
Blogging with our class has helped me and my colleagues engage with parents in their children’s learning and the life of the school, and given an opportunity to consulate, communicate and open a dialogue with both learners and parents. I hope that by sharing our experiences, I’ll give you some ideas for starting your own class blogs.
I work in Primary One in Dens Road Primary School in Dundee, Scotland. Our Scottish Schools Digital Network, GLOW, introduced Glow Blogs and we decided to think about blogging as a way to engage parents. These are blogs based on WordPress. I wasn’t really familiar with blogs and wasn’t sure of their purpose, but we were really enthusiastic about trying to use them to engage parents with learning.
Parents in nursery (pre-school) usually have quite a lot of contact with staff, can ask about learning and see their child’s progress when they collect them. Moving into Primary One (ages 4 and 5) is slightly different. Parents tend to have limited contact and pick up and drop off at the school gate. Children are also notorious for answering ‘nothing’ when asked what they have been doing at school!
We embarked on using a blog to show parents the learning that was taking place in school and hopefully foster good home/school links. We called it Dens Road Primary One. At the beginning, we didn’t gain permissions from parents/carers as we only used images of areas or displays in the classroom. As this is a public facing blog, we knew that if we wanted to use images of children we would have to gain permission from parents/carers.
We started by sharing what our topic was and some of the areas of learning that children would have an opportunity to use during the school day. We also uploaded images of sound work that they were introduced to by the teachers and number work we were doing in the classroom. Here is an example of the type of images we used. These images were used when we were learning about growing and plants.
The blog posts were shared with the children every week and the children were encouraged to ask their parents to comment on the blog posts.
We put up some website links that children could access at home to support learning too.
The URL for the blog was printed on the bottom of our homework diary so parents were reminded where they could access it.
The comments that were made by parents were really encouraging. Here are some examples:
Chloe’s Mum – What fantastic sock puppets! Chloe is going to show her little brother Callum how she made hers this weekend so he can have one too! Keep up the good work primary 1.. Can’t wait to see what your up to next week!
Caseys mum – hi Casey really enjoyed Idris and had lots to tell me about him it is fun and interesting to look at the blog and see what Casey has been doing.
Donna (lee’s mum) – Hi, Really enjoying seeing all of the photo’s of the school. This blog is great. Look at it all the time. Enables me to see what Lee does at school. Keep up the good work. Thanks
kayleigh´s mum – I loved the caterpillar and the pictures.Thank you teachers for all your hard work . Kayleigh is so happy and everywhere we go she explains how wonderful her school is. When is the next party?
During snow week – when the school was closed for a week – we put up websites that the children could access and gave them ideas for having fun at home in the snow.
We put reminders up on to the blog about events in school, for example, as an extra way of keeping parents informed.
We also blogged with another P1 class, as our school was celebrating its 100-year birthday. The other school, St Andrew’s Primary School in Dundee, is a very new school. The children took photos of our school and I put them on the blog. They helped me write the blog post. The other school took pictures of their school. We looked at the photos and commented on the blog posts.
We used tags to build a word cloud of the popular posts and made it easy for people visiting the site to find areas that they were interested in.
We added a ClustrMap widget to the blog and we soon saw that it was getting lots of visits from around the world. This gave us an opportunity to share a totally different learning experience with the children.
We looked at the world map and discussed different countries names and where they were. We had some parents who had relatives abroad who were visiting the blog and children were able to discuss this in the classroom. We also looked at how many people were looking at our blog every day. Nearly 3500 visitors and we are still very popular!
Blogging in Primary One has been a great way to help engage with the parents of our pupils. Some things we will look at next include promoting the use of the local library for free Internet access and having drop-in sessions at the end of the school day as a way of reaching parents who don’t have Internet access so we are truly inclusive.
I have recently been lucky enough to have been given a Promethean Board to use in the Active Learning Zone area I work in. The children in P1 are well used to using the board in the classrooms with the teacher but I needed them to use the board with little or no adult support. The youngsters know how to calibrate the board so I was confident they could do this with support from their fellow pupils if necessary.
I decided to allow the children to use the Active Inspire software and just let them play with it. They drew pictures, wrote their names, changed colours, pen size and drew shapes. The only support I gave was to show them how to do something if they asked, eg. How do I get a new page? How do I change the background colour? Children choose the Promethean Board as an activity and up to three can go there at once although only one can use the board at a time. The children watch patiently and give instructions and help to the person on the Promethean Board when needed.
We have moved on to drawing with a purpose. A recent health topic looked at the different parts of our faces. I had a display next to the Promethean Board to remind them of the different parts of the face and gave instructions that the activity on the Promethean Board today was ‘drawing your own face’. I also left a mirror for them to check how they looked so they could copy. The children were asked to write their name on the flipchart page before they finished. Here are some of the pictures they drew.
The children have become really confident with the Active Inspire software and really enjoy creating and sharing their creations with each other and on their P1 blog. We also print off some of their activities do keep in their individual Folio of Work which is a reflection of their time in P1 which they can share with their parents. The children have become confident individuals who can share their learning with others.
Lorraine Munro, READ Early Years Practitioner, Dens Road Primary School, Dundee.
The Land of Me, Eric, Buddy and Willow have finally arrived in Dundee for some exciting adventures with our Early Level community! I think they’ll love it here as they’ve already enjoyed so many adventures with children throughout Scotland and England. Not content with being the birthplace of marmalade and the home of the fabulous new V&A building, our Dundee school children will now be welcoming three furry and feathery newcomers to our classrooms.
Following the incredible early success of The Land of Me project run by the Consolarium with our Dundee Nursery Schools, our Primary Schools wanted to get on board and continue to promote transition and active learning.
[kml_flashembed movie="http://www.youtube.com/v/-txFGOzPhek" width="693" height="560" allowfullscreen="true" fvars="fs=1" /]
The Land Of Me has been fully promoting ICT, Active Learning, Creativity and Language skills with our Early Level pupils in our Curriculum for Excellence. Pupils have been engaged and motivated to progress through the exciting chapters, discover the characters and continue their adventures away from the computer with the multitude of printable resources. They have been engage in imaginative play, collaborative tasks and have had great fun and enjoyment doing so! The animation is beautiful and it’s been a real joy sharing this fantastic resource with our community of early level pupils and practitioners in Dundee. Find out how Bernadette Donald from Wallacetown Nursery has been pioneering the use of The Land of Me.
Land of Me can be found in the Start Programs menu on Dundee curriculum computers. If you have any feedback about the resource I would love to hear from you. Just leave a reply to this blog post.
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