Travelling with Technology
We carried a vast array of technology to us with Italy last week - a DV camera, 2 stills cameras and 2 laptops. On their own, these would have been fine, but of course each had its own charger and connecting cable, all of which had a fatal attraction for each other meaning bits of the day were spent unravelling them. One thing I’ve learned about travelling with technology with Partners in Excellence over the last few years is that a multi-plug adaptor is essential so that everything can be charged at once.
The Ski Trip blog was a great success with over 1,000 hits during the week - unfortunately we were unable to update each day as we couldn’t get online. The hotel’s wireless access didn’t work. There was free computer access in the reception, but it blocked all blogs. In the end we had to email back reports to our technician to put online. A trip blog is definitely worth the effort though as pupils love receiving messages and parents back home can keep up with what’s happening.
Travelling…
This morning I’m off to the wedding of friends, Sandra and Andrew here in Tobermory followed by the reception on the beautiful Ardtornish Estate on Morvern on the mainland.
Tomorrow I’m off to Pila in the Italian Alps - whilst the students and PE staff ski, I’ll be update our blog daily - you can find it here
Oh, l’amour!
To inspire my S3s today I played them a selection of songs starting with “Oh, l’amour” by Erasure whilst they wrote descriptions of themselves to find a bit of love and romance. I found songs by searching for “l’amour” in iTunes. And how times have changed, they couldn’t work out why “Je t’aime” by Jane Birkin and Serge Gainsbourg had ever been banned…
“We are the Web”
This short film on YouTube is a great introduction to the tools of Web 2.0.
The wonders of Bluetooth…
I love the freedom from wires and cables Bluetooth gives me. Today I recorded a set of directions that would take my S3s on a little tour round the top of Tobermory near the school. I did need a cable to download from the mp3 recorder, but…
thanks to the wonders of my Glow Mac and pupils’ mobile phones, I sent the files straight to them, no cables and wires, no charging iPods (much as I love my iPods, charging them takes a bit of time - one of S6 thinks he can build me a multi charger so there is hope!)
The class divided themselves into groups of 3/4 with one phone between them and one map. I sent the directions to each phone (I’m sure there must be a way of doing more than one device at a time, but we couldn’t find a way) and set off at intervals with their recorded directions. It was a beautiful sunny day, the technology worked well. I also suggested that they might take photos of any “landmarks” they passed to prove their route - so far I’ve seen a photo of the phone box, the church and a car (”just because I liked it, Miss”) - shame about their sense of direction as at least two groups appeared back coming from the top of a road I had though was a dead end…
