Sync Complete and Ready to Go

Posted on May 29th, 2008 in ICT, travelling by lynnehorn

What would you do without your iPod?  As we prepare to take S3 to France next week, my colleague and I have been using them a lot.  Apart from music to listen to on the way, I have also downloaded some tv programmes to watch on the journey (this is to avoid “2 Fast 2 Furious!” and any of its sequels much beloved on the boys I teach).

The class have been preparing a little memorial service - need appropriate music?  We have found lots on iTunes and downloaded, one of the class will bring speakers so we can listen to it.  I’ll also take pictures of the war memorials on my iPod so they can see the names on the war memorials here and in France.  We’ll be able to record the little service whilst we’re there and podcast it when we get back.

As if all that wasn’t enough, thanks to Joe, via his Tumbleblog, I downloaded the Métro map of Paris from http://www.isubwaymaps.com/.  Although you can’t really see the full map, you can see it joined together and can open up the bit you’re looking for - likely to rely on the paper variety in Paris, but very useful to put on our iPods in class for a bit of practical work.

From Dervaig to Crimea

Posted on May 25th, 2008 in cross curricular links by lynnehorn

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I’ve been looking over the last couple of weeks at local war memorials to see if anyone from Mull is buried at Tynecot which we are visiting with S3 next week.  I took the chance today to go for a walk at Calgary Beach, before visiting the old cemetery in Dervaig where I came across the grave of someone who died in Dervaig in 1912 aged 80, but who had fought in Crimea and India - what things he must have seen and how different from Dervaig and Calgary.

 

 

Blogging the Queen Live

Posted on May 22nd, 2008 in Uncategorized by lynnehorn

I have been thinking on and off today about how I started blogging thanks to Neil and Karen and will get round to writing my experience at some point.  However I was looking for pictures of the Queen in Liverpool today as I know someone who was there and came across this live blog from the Liverpool Post - they blogged the visit live updating with where she was and who she was meeting adding photos and videos, people could add in comments or ask questions as the day went on, however someone has added a comment questioning the value of the live blog and what it added to journalism.  I quite enjoyed reading bits of it just now and think for those interested who couldn’t be there it gives quite a good account of the day.  When you can’t actually be at an event and can’t access tv or indeed live internet streaming media it’s quite a good way to find out what’s going on.

The Magic Pen

Posted on May 19th, 2008 in ICT by lynnehorn

I read about The Magic Pen game on Teachers Love Smart Boards.  Ideal for Physics and Maths I think and very addictive - go on, have a go - you’ll be chasing little red balls and making new shapes for the rest of the night!

A Croissant for Excellence!

Posted on May 16th, 2008 in cooperative learning, cross curricular links by lynnehorn  Tagged , , ,

Title and pictures hopefully speak for themselves - S3 raised enough money to buy our poppy wreaths and send a donation to the Lady Haig Poppy Factory.

Media Scape Project

Posted on May 15th, 2008 in ICT, cooperative learning, cross curricular links by lynnehorn  Tagged

I spent a day at Ulva Ferry primary yesterday learning a bit more about media scape.  Ulva and Dervaig primaries last year took part in the launch of the John Murray archive - John Murray wrote some of the first travel guides and to celebrate the schools were invited to write a very modern travel guide.  Ulva Ferry primary have written a guide to some of the island of Ulva’s many interesting places - you have a PDA with the media scape called Ulva Walk downloaded to it, as you do the walk when you get a marked spot, a satellite sends your PDA a signal via GPS, it springs into life and you get the pupils of Ulva Ferry giving you a little commentary about where you are standing, as you move away it stops until you get to the next spot.

Funding has been extended to this year to involve all of Mull’s primary schools.  I am hoping to have my S3 pupils works with the primaries some of which will have only relatively young pupils next year - in return we will use the primary pupils as local experts and then make up commentaries to deliver the media scapes in French.

I managed to make up a little sample yesterday and was amazed that it actually worked!  As long as you have the right map satellites seem to do the rest.

Apart from the technology part of the day it was definitely a Carlsberg inset - if Carlsberg did inset they would probably be like this - stunning views, sunshine and a lovely lunch.  As we move into a new timetable (we change on Monday of next week) and Curriculum for Excellence then hopefully this media scape project will start us in the right direction.  In the meantime have a look at the views around Ulva Ferry primary - it has 7 pupils and you have to think that they are probably the luckiest pupils anywhere to go to school here.

Periodic Table of Rock!

Posted on May 8th, 2008 in ICT, cross curricular links by lynnehorn

I’ve seen many versions of Tom Lehrer’s “Elements Song”, but our chemistry teacher in school told me about this version - they’ll be dancing in the chemistry labs.

Using animoto to revise time

Posted on May 5th, 2008 in ICT by lynnehorn  Tagged , , , ,

Here’s my first attempt at making something with animoto to use in class - S2 have done time before, but I want something to remind them of the vocab before we start.  In fact I think this could be used at either the beginning or end of the lesson.  I did this be making a powerpoint (of clock faces found in google images), then saving the powerpoint as images, these were then uploaded to animoto and it did the rest. What I’d like to do is record a soundtrack for a video and see how that goes.  I used music from animoto, although I had thought to use Gwen Stefani’s “What are you waiting for?” which would have fitted well, but then felt that couldn’t go on here or YouTube without getting permission.

Shared Copy - very useful tool!

Posted on May 3rd, 2008 in ICT, cross curricular links by lynnehorn

screen-copy-grabbig.JPGThanks to Robert Hill for this useful tool called

Shared Copy - very easy to annotate and share websites.  I think it has many MFL uses (and lots of other subjects too).  I might use it for example to teach reading skills - here’s one I had a very quick go at, simple and easy to use, it can then be saved and shared with pupils.  Or indeed pupils can annotate the sites and share with others.

Here is the link to the one I did earlier - I think others can now add to it

http://www.africanimo.com.sharedcopy.com/animaux/ac57e44f2c80d0eb5d677ba85efbb5e4.html