John @ Sandaig Primary

archive link | Perma linkComic Life

Some children in primary six have just finished a small project with Comic Life. Back To the Victorian Times using photos taken on our trip to Scotland Street School Museum.
The children really loved Comic Life. I wish we had more copies. It takes all the difficulty in creating a beautiful comic strip leaving them to think about what to show and stay. We made the simplest comic possible, Comic Life. has lots more features and possibilities.

archive link | Perma linkscotedublogs wiki 2

Playing with scotedublogs a bit, and I noticed there are some nice rss feeds avalible, for example Changes and comments on scotedublogs.
Looks like there some other nice thing, I am off to the sandbox.
The only things that might hinder using wikispaces in class are the google adds on every page and perhaps websense.
I wonder if there is a simple php wiki that doesn't need a database?
Update
Free Wikispaces for Teachers
Just websense to test tomorrow.

archive link | Perma linkscotedublogs wiki

Ewan has set up a scotedublogs wiki. Its aim is to create a directory of all the Scottish educational blogs that have been started.
Sounds good, I've added this blog and Sandaig Otters.

archive link | Perma linkIt is all too much

Following a post by Tim Lauer (who is manages to come up with wonderful stuff and ideas to use it in the class every week) Scuttle: Open Source Social Bookmarking Tool I found ScuttlEDU and finally a trackback to EduBlog Insights by Anne Davis from August last year, where she describes herself as scattered, covered & smothered by choice of web 2.0 fish to fry. I know who she feels, this post a is pretty pointless Friday one, except those links which are well worth following.

archive link | Perma linkBubbleShare in School

A short time ago I blogged about BubbleShare and wondered if it would get passed websense in school.
Well it did, I got interested and started thinking and then WebSense caught up:

I think there are some great web 2.0 apps out there that are just begging to be used in the classroom that we cannot get our hands on for safety reasons.

archive link | Perma linkA butterfly-watching system with WiFi PDAs

I found this fascinating post on pasta and vinegar via EdTechUK
A butterfly-watching system with WiFi PDAs
Which reminds me of presentation I saw at the EuropeanSchools Project in Finland last year where children used a handheld/moble to send info and pictures back to class. This seems a bit more sophisticated in some ways, the mobile device gets information back for a server.

archive link | Perma linkYou comment my class I'll comment yours

One of the first thoughs after watching Ewan's presentation was about commenting, he sugested that folk could organise commenting on each others students/children.
I've though about this on and off as I'd like to increase the comments my guys get.
One way would be to get my class to comment on other blogs, but this is a wee bit difficult to organise, we have two network pcs in the class and no lab. With a lab we could have reading and comment sessions omn other blogs, organisation is a bit hard without a bunch of pcs. I've also had problems commenting on some blogs we can read at school, but the comment run on site we cannot access through our filters.
I occassionally comment on other primary blogs on a what goes around comes around, sort of way. I started the Primary School Blogs suprglu to try and up my comment rate, but suprglu limits the number of feeds and quite a few primary blogs I've found disallow comments.
It might be an idea to start some sort of informal group of teachers who would regularly comment on other class blogs, in an informal but commited sort of way.

I am not sure how many Primary Teachers read this, but if you are up for some sort of Primary Blog Comment Exchange leave a comment here or drop me a mail, there is probably a sensible way to organise this so an idea for that would be appreciated. I'd be happy to host a list of folk / class blogs if that would help.

archive link | Perma linkThe Web 2.0 according to Ewan

If you are interested in blogging, podcasting and other web 2.0 tech in schools, get over to Ewan's place and grab the presentation of the lecture he gave at Jordanhill the other day. A wonderful intro and lot of great ideas, and food for though if you've started with this stuff.
It has sparked off quite a few possible replies and ideas for practice in my head.

archive link | Perma linkHow Much of a Blog Expert Are You?

How much of a Blog Expert are You?
Via The J-Walk Blog.
Five out of ten for me.

archive link | Perma linkPodcast resources

Podcast resources and Educator's tips seem to be full of useful stuff, from the Podcast directory for educators site.

archive link | Perma linkAppleScript and blogging

So I've been playing with AppleScript and blogging today.
After reading Lazy Mac OS X: Weblog links sidebar and http://www.livejournal.com/doc/server/ljp.csp.blogger.html
The Blogger API does not support the use of post titles (subjects). To set a title for your post include the title wrapped in <title> tags in your post body.
I can post to this pivot blog and a wordpress one: My Vienna Links via appleScript.
AppleScript can collect various information to post (eg the Vienna Links, latest iTunes or anything else AppleScript can get.)
Not much use in school as we don't have macs on the network, but if I was in a school with macs I'd really be investigating this, it would be fairy simple to make a SuperCard project to collect info and post to a blog, or just make a very simple interface for children to blog with.
I am pointing the the MetaWeblogAPI Service in both pivot and wordpress but using the Blogger API, which seems simpler than the MetaWeblogAPI, but I guess if you were serious about this you would use the metaWeblog API or the Movable Type API

archive link | Perma linkTesting AppleScript

Posted via appleScript

archive link | Perma linkRecent Reading

I've been hampered from keeping up with news by a really terrible adsl problem at home, my connection to the net has been down for hours at a time every day this week, often in the early evening when I do most browsing.
Will limited time I've been mostly Flagging interesting stuff in Vienna, then to avoid actually reading and thinking about this I wrote a wee appleScript to produce a set of links from the posts in Vienna's currently selected folder. you can't set the folder via appleScript so I need to select the Marked Articles folder manually and then run the script, this is the result today this:

Becomes this:

Daily Update -- January 4, 2006 Wednesday, January 4, 2006 13:34:14
Ewan @ Jordanhill Saturday, January 14, 2006 14:36:55
A good blogging day! Friday, January 6, 2006 00:59:51
The quest continues Wednesday, January 4, 2006 21:17:26
Education Session at PodcasterCon Tuesday, January 3, 2006 11:32:59
easy wikis for educators - pbwiki Friday, December 2, 2005 20:26:04
Web 2.0 Companies I Couldn’t Live Without Friday, December 30, 2005 08:48:40
A Fantastic Conference Saturday, January 14, 2006 14:30:55
Online Games in Education -- This Year Could be the Big One Tuesday, January 3, 2006 17:02:33
2006 Online Edublogger Conference: Learning Is Conversation Thursday, January 12, 2006 22:05:41
Jordanhill University of Strathclyde Gig Friday, January 13, 2006 14:00:10
AbiWord Tuesday, October 11, 2005 04:12:15
Hillary Meeler featured in Education World! Wednesday, January 4, 2006 22:39:43

Some great posts in there, locally David and Ewan have been increasing the numbr of Scots Education bloggers, in some cases by offering a mars bar.
If you use vienna you might find a use for this applescript: (or be able to improve it, I would like it sorted by date) (more)

archive link | Perma linkGoogle Earth UK Primary Curriculum - Lessons and Resources

Google Earth UK Primary Curriculum - Lessons and Resources
I got a comment from Tom who has set this up. Google Earth obviously has some great potential. I can't use it in School yet because it is not on the Networked machines. I don't think our machine meet the System memory (RAM): 128MB minimum requirements either.

archive link | Perma linkGoogle Earth Mac

I mentioned I had tried the Beta.
Just downloaded the final from 'Get Google Earth'
And I though that my terms planning was well under way.

archive link | Perma linkIncoming Linkage

How blogs can make the link and Podcasting: a case study both on an education guardian.co.uk/ micro site quote me. Hopefully this should increase the number of comments the children's blogs are getting. It certainly cheers me up a bit, valadation for afar, just like comments on the children's blogs.

archive link | Perma linkHolidays slipping away

When I am not eating, drinking, visiting updating webpages or walking along the canal in the mirk, I have be mostly browsing and avoiding writing 7 things(I'll try this soon David).
Interesting stuff I've found:
retrievr - search by sketch via Tim Lauer
Weblogg-ed Tech Tools For Learning links to a nice pdf.
Tools for the TEKS: podcasting intro
another podcasting intro
A ton of posts at: 2 Cents Worth almost made me comment, but I am too far into the holidays to think that much.

And I have managed to switch my browser habit to a Vienna one for reading blogs.
All this means I am avoiding a wee bit of assessment I have to do before Monday.

Found a few Sandaig mentions too:
Sandaig got a mention in the "Podcasts for Educators" Weblog Highlights from 2005 where they play a snippet from our podcast along with some other school podcasts.
Anne Davis: What's going on inside your head? says I seem to be spending a lot of time in Scotland lately. Really good things are happening there. which should be encouraging for us scot-edu-blog folk.

archive link | Perma linkDragon on its way

Dragon on its way

archive link | Perma link2 Cents Worth » Year End Reflections

David Warlick's Year End Reflections list the milestones in his development: dramatic lunges upward, as a discover something new that so thrills my sense of the possiblities that it is like being violently lifted to a new plateau
I was delighted to see:
# 1990 - Hypertalk (another programming language and even more magic)
as one of the milestones, HyperCard has been sadly neglected by Apple. Thankfully there is still SuperCard which I use every day and blog about here. Unfortunatly I can't use it on the School network (pc, and teachers can't install software), but SuperCard could let children to all sorts of cool things very simply (say create web pages). teacher can make fun game (some of mine are here).
I give a lot to be able to use SC in the class with a network connection.