Drew Burrett's Blog

Another first – Animoto May 13, 2009

Made an Animoto movie using the Cfe wordles I did yesterday, for want of any other images to hand.

I was hoping to get an idea of how easy or otherwise it’d be for pupils to use (assuming websense allows access – must check tomorrow).

Took a while to render, and I rushed the choice of music, but the result is ok. I think.

Comments please?

More Wordles May 13, 2009

Had a go at putting some CfE Third & Fourth Level Physics E&O’s together into wordles, mainly for brightening up my room, but thought they might help me to focus on the essence of each sub topic when developing new courses.

In no particular order -

My first Wordle May 5, 2009

After meaning to try a wordle for ages I finally had a go.

Not bad for a first effort eh?

Wow! Glow Meet is BRILLIANT! March 17, 2009

Just spent over an hour using ‘Glow Meet’ with Sinclair Mackenzie trying out the video conferencing and having a few scribbles on the white board.

I wanted to try it out before attempting a demo at Teachmeet:Physics on Thursday, where I’m doing a wee thing on using Glow in the classroom.

Another Glow evangelist – Jaye Richards -  had hoped to do a presentation on using the Nintendo Wii to teach sound & light, but is now unable to attend. There was a lightbulb moment, and Sinclair suggested trying to get Jaye to do her presentation using Glow Meet. Unfortunately this won’t be possible either, but it was a great idea.

Andrew Brown and Neil Winton suggested a link with a Glow Learn training course happening in Stirling on the same night. I hoped they were joking at first, but flushed with success, I’m now thinking ‘why not?’.

I was pretty unconvinced by Glow Meet when it was demonstrated at my Mentor training – I appreciated the technical prowess, but couldn’t see a way I’d use it for teaching.

Events like Teachmeets, distance learning for pupils in remote rural areas, CPD and subject meetings (especially ones in Inveraray) all lend themselves spectacularly well to Glow Meet. I’m hoping someone more influential than me (that’s pretty much anyone then) can take this idea and run with it.

Watch this space, or perhaps another space……

The Force is Strong…….. March 7, 2009

Saw this done at a SSERC course and thought I’d try it with some classes. To save the massive expense of multiple tins of tomatoes I got a pupil to video the demo using a busbi video camera.

Et voila!

Forces Demo

Its been a long time…. November 30, 2008

In a lot of ways too.

Its been a long time since I last blogged anything.

Its been a long time waiting for Glow to come into being in my locality. Its early days yet, but so far (ignoring niggles over functionality) I’m really impressed. Let’s see how the big, whole staff roll-out goes on Tuesday….

Its been a long time since I embarked on a project before carefully considering the possibilities – like setting up a National Glow Group for Physics Teachers. Luckily there were a few other like minded souls ready to share the task.

However, this gave rise to an unexpectedly venomous backlash against the group’s existence, those involved in it and Glow as an entity in general.

It seems that the act of creating a group to help teachers share ideas, interests and resources has more than a few of the physics teaching community up in arms. Glow has been described as ‘exclusive’ as access is strictly controlled to registered users; ‘obstructive’ as Glow’s structure allows users less freedom to grow their sites incorporating new features and techniques; and ‘divisive’ as not all teachers and authorities have access, nor do private schools or FE colleges.

Some physics teachers are demanding that the Institute of Physics (IOP) set up an open access forum in a similar vein. One especially vehement individual urged others to join him in starting a campaign of “SAY NO TO GLOW!”

Another solution was sought by Nick Hood – he has created a wiki (teachingphysics.pbwiki.com). This, like all wikis is open to all, and can be edited by any or all of its registered users (including me).

Both the wiki and the Glow group are in their early infancy, but will grow and evolve over time, possibly catering to different audiences (especially while Glow access is denied to some by their Local Authorities). But surely the fact that some people are doing something to allow colleagues to share, can’t be anything other than good, can it? I understand the anger of those excluded form Glow, but that issue is not with Glow, rather the Local Authorities who are denying their staff, pupils and parents access to this potentially revolutionary facility. By setting up National Glow Groups and using these to share throughout the country, surely we’re provideing those who have been excluded with more evidence of Glow’s worth, giving them a stronger position from which to argue for their authoirites to get on board.

How 'WebSense' killed my inner child September 16, 2008

It was supposed to be so easy…….

Finish up the S2 ‘Food & Digestion’ unit with a few problem solving tasks, a bit of ‘cross curricular’ with hints of ICT, Home Economics and Modern Studies, all wrapped up in some of the CfE capacities.

And then WebSense ruined it all.

Task 1 -

We wanted to find the price per kilo of some staple foods – potatoes, rice, chicken etc – to decide what you’d be able to afford to eat if you were on a low income, in say India, or a high income, in the USA , then discuss the relative benefits and drawbacks of each diet.

None of the sites that could have given me the cost of spuds could be viewed – every supermarket and price comparison site in the UK was blocked.

Now, I should point out that I wasn’t trying to buy a fridge, book a holiday or get a bargain on eBay. I was trying to find information that I needed to teach a lesson. To children. In a school. Apart from the obvious learning outcomes they’d have also been made aware that such useful tools exist on the web.

In the end we fudged it a bit and made up the prices, eventually getting to the end of the task despite the obstacles placed in our way.

Task 2 -

Use the laptops to tryout some revision websites – BBC Bitesize and skoool.co.uk.

By this point I should have known better, but hope springs eternal….

Half the pupils were fine, logged on, looked at the sites, watched the animations and did the quizzes – SUCCESS!

Not so for the other half, for whom WebSense had another surprise. It seems if pupils (I’m not sure about staff) attempt to view ‘too many’ blocked sites, WebSense blocks their access to ALL sites.

How are pupils supposed to  avoid trying to view blocked sites if they don’t know they’re blocked? Surely ALL pupils will eventually be blocked if this is how WebSense is going to work the system?

This reduced my lesson to an utter shambles, from what I’d thought was a pretty promising plan. It’s anyone’s guess what an inspector would have thought if they’d seen it. And it has finally crushed any will I had to incorporate more of this stuff into my teaching.

I know I may have been naive not to have tried the price finding task first and come up with a contingency, but should I now assume that half of my class will be disallowed from viewing ANY internet content and plan accordingly?

I’m no longer confident to integrate such tasks into my lessons – the barriers are too great and the returns too small. I used to get a real kick out of things like this just working – the pupils seemed to like it too.

Congratulations WebSense, you win.

How Brilliant is Microsoft's Worldwide Telescope? May 14, 2008

I’d love to be able to answer that question, but unfortunately my home PC is under spec’ed to do it justice – graphics card not up to the job of rendering the terabytes of images.

Nor is my school machine – lovely MacPCBookWinProXP – able to do it justice, simply because Websense will not allow it access to the internet.

I was quite excited by the announcement of the release of Microsoft’s Worldwide Telescope, as I hoped it’d make for some interesting ‘find out for yourself’ collaborative Web 2.0 work for the kids as part of our up coming ‘Space’ topic.

Alas, Websense feels it is unsafe to allow such programs (and Google Earth, Stellarium etc) to be used in the education of children. This piece of software is slowly crushing my enthusiasm for incorporating ICT into my teaching.

[I had to laugh when I saw Websense's corporate website - where they are selling themselves as 'Integrated Security for the Web 2.0 world]

Andrew Brown made an interesting observation on his blog regarding filtering – www.whereisab.co.uk

I wish there were some trust in the professionalism of teachers, rather than a blanket ban on everything until its proven to be’safe’. In the meantime, I’m thinking of abandoning any attempt at using ICT and going back to chalk.

Super School, Super Speed & Web(non)Sense February 28, 2008

At last, we’ve moved in to the new Hermitage Academy, and it is a truly fantastic place to be.

As well a first class building, we have loads of cracking ICT – Smartboards, Promethean boards and E-beams all over the place; a new campus-wide wireless network, with very fast links to file servers and ‘Click & Go’ that loads and updates in no time at all (no, honest!).

In addition, we also got a new warp-speed broadband connection – part of the Pathfinder initiative – running at about 32Mbps!!! Sites come up amazingly quickly -but only if they come up.

We’ve now changed from IGear to Websense, and I now appreciate what everyone was saying all along. It has raised the level of filtering from ‘exceptionally cautious’ to ‘utterly paranoid’.

Amongst the sites blocked today were the Institute of Physics Archive – blocked as an ‘educational institution’, and SCHOLAR (Heriot Watt University’s excellent VLE for S5 & 6 pupils) – which was ‘uncategorised’. Oh, and the web site for ‘Click & Go’ that we use to register using PDA’s in some areas of the school. And this blog.

Whilst I recognise the need for school pupils to be protected from inappropriate content online, surely we should be allowed to see something online?

This blog threw up another slant -

http://www.groupnewsblog.net/2008/01/websenseless.html

I’m sure there must be positives to using Websense, please feel free to let me know about them and add a comment below.

Teachertube December 12, 2007

Like youtube, but for teachers, and accessible through the school filtering! (for now)

http://www.teachertube.com/index.php