Wednesday, April 20, 2011

Surfing in Scotland

Its beautiful weather this week. Makes me look forward to my annual surf trip with a couple of friends. I can't surf, but getting into a wetsuit,hauling my board over the beach and getting pounded by the waves for a day or two always does me good!

Along with hopeful longings for surf this week has come a disappointment;

Every year for ever I have attended with interest, the Scottish Learning Festival in Glasgow along with thousands of other educators from this fair land. This year, we submitted an application to take a seminar there to showcase the amazing changes that we've seen since the advent of iPad. Yesterday we received a polite rejection of our submission. This rejection caused me to think about where we stand as a country in our attitude to technology.

It was at the Learning Festival a few years back, we began to hear of the existence of technology that would revolutionise the classroom, bringing interactivity and collaboration to lessons and opening up a world of possibilities for the teacher. The words 'interactive whiteboard', began first to be whispered and quickly shouted by keen enthusiasts who thought that these would transform our classrooms and learning.
Schools bought in, big time.

Whiteboards and, shhh, blackboards disappeared and schools across the country fitted projectors and interactive boards by Smart and Promethian into every classroom. Today, it's hard to find a classroom without one.

We went on courses to see them in action, downloaded the latest software and spent hours and hours (and hours) creating content for lessons that children could drag across the screen, reveal by removing screen shades, match, copy, group and link.
These were exciting times and, for many teachers, represented a first plunge into a world where technology invaded the classroom. Some older staff resisted the tide of change and head teachers across the country battled to change attitudes in order to keep up with this latest craze.

Let's not be too snooty about these efforts and this enthusiasm. Just because we look back and see so many flaws in these devices, have moved on incredibly and now enjoy interactivity in the classroom that goes way beyond allowing a child or small group access to pre-prepared material on the board.

These were the days when schools finally adopted technology wholesale.

It's such a shame now, when we all know that these boards have not transformed our classrooms, that their interactivity is minimal, that the software is flaky and that content creation for them is more time-consuming than paper lessons ever were, and when we are blessed with more and more affordable 1:1 solutions such as iPad that are truly interactive and open up worlds of potential for learning and communicating that our country seems to shun such advances. I don't know why our SLF seminar was rejected, possibly they don't favour private, Christian schools or dont want to showcase technology that they think is unaffordable.

Maybe they think it would upset the sellers of interactive whiteboard who have paid good money for stands in the conference hall.

One thing is for sure; you can't stop the tide. Once one wave has broken, it's no good looking wistfully after it and refusing to turn around. There's another wave coming, bigger and more powerful than the last.

Come on Scotland, surf's up!

Tuesday, April 5, 2011

Results: P6/7 Observational Drawing with iPad

Here are some of the 'fruits' of today's lesson!
















Posted using BlogPress from my iPad

Art : Brushes




This morning I taught a lesson on the visual elements that I have taught many rimes over the past 15 years.
We looked at observational drawing of fruit and vegetables - subjects which artists of all varieties have loved over centuries.
We had a look at examples by Monet and Gaughin and discussed where we could see the visual element of line, shape, colour and texture were present. We then discussed tone, what it is and how we see it in pictures. At this point we began painting. It's a lesson I like and so do the kids. Today, for a change I used the iPad.
We used the app 'Brushes'. It has huge potential in art and I've used it for various things before - layers, silhouettes, contrast and colour lessons etc. I've never used it for such a classic painting lesson with such a young class.



Wow!

I was impressed with the levels of engagement. I was impressed with the enthusiasm of the children who 'can't draw'. I was impressed with the way they smiled when they made and mistake and lovingly pressed 'undo'.
I was also impressed with the results and, perhaps more importantly, so were they.
I'm sure I will do the lesson again with 'real' paint but I'm also sure that when I do, the children will have increased confidence and freedom to experiment, and that I'll already have some excellent examples of real learning to display on my classroom wall that they've emailed me from a truly excellent art app.







- Posted using BlogPress from my iPhone

Friday, April 1, 2011

iPad Band Project Continues...

After our coming Easter holiday I'm taking an elective block of lessons with a S1-3 group. We're going to try an push the iPad band thing a bit further.

Obviously GBand has had a huge impact on what's possible with music on the iPad but I want to do something that opens the feeling of playing in a group with other musicians to the children.
I'm thinking of seeing if we can come up with a number of songs to arrange for iPad band that have a message of change, or revolution. Songs that parallel the sort of changes we're seeing in education and perform them with the iPad band. Any suggestions would be welcome.

The setup I currently have is;
A fairly old 10 channel mixer going through an amp and into some speakers which are also not ideal but are the best I could lay my hands on. Cables to connect iPads to mixer channels. Belkin headphone splitters to allow instrument to be grouped - strings, percussion etc.
One of the problems that has previously been apparent is the difference in quality between apps when played through the mixer. Some, like Six Strings, have high quality samples which transfer with virtually no hiss. Others, generally cheaper apps for instruments such as accordian and bagpipes (!) have much poorer quality sampled sounds which come through at much lower volume and with annoying hiss.

Hopefully there will be parity across the quality of samples in the GarageBand instruments, these are generally all of a higher quality than the other apps I have with the same instruments.
It's an exciting project which opens to children who may not be at all musical, or at least not think they are, the experience of playing in a band. An experience which many of us have loved musically and socially. I hope also it may inspire some to go home, dig out the old acoustic guitar they got for Christmas in P7, and start to make music.

Here's hoping.

100 Word Story from Yesterday

I thought I'd post the 100 word story I blogged yesterday. It's not completed by any stretch of the imagination but will give you an idea of what I was on about!