archive link | Perma linkSupportBlogging!
SupportBlogging! has been set up to provide an opportunity for students, teachers, administrators, parents, and others to help promote an understanding of the benefits of educational blogging.Interesting Wiki, well worth a visit. It hopes to balance some of the negativity aimed at social networks. Email list too: http://groups.google.com/group/supportblogging.
I am really beginning find wikispaces.com wikis useful via there RSS feeds. I can watch the changes at scotedublogs without leaving the comfort of my feed reader.
archive link | Perma linkI looks like Henry Mancini
Well according to MyHeritage face recognition - celebrity matches (not in Safari). Seems I also look like Placido Domingo and George Cloonly but not as much as Henry.
(via Jeff Wing)
archive link | Perma linkLearning styles
I always wondered about these, mostly because I've never had a result that pleased me when doing the test. An interesting wee bit in the http://education.guardian.co.uk/egweekly/ Wrongly labelled by Frank Coffield who say:Next time you see a learning styles questionnaire, burn itand goes on to report on some research on learning styles:
Our reports reviewed, systematically, 13 models of learning styles and concluded that this area of research is theoretically incoherent and conceptually confused. I listed in the reports 30 dichotomies, such as "activists" versus "reflectors", "globalists" versus "analysts", and "left brainers" versus "right brainers". We should stop using these terms. There's no scientific justification for them. You can check that. Shake your head gently. Does the left hemisphere of your brain move independently from the right? Or do they seem connected?and
Students need knowledgeable, vocationally qualified and caring teachers, who can enter into a dialogue with them about how to become better learners, as well as what it means to be a painter or nursery nurse.My own view of learning styles has alway been, some sorts of learning needs a particular learning style so we better have more that one we can use. And if we label a child a this learner or that learner is that any better than any other sort of labeling? Technorati Tags: education, learning styles
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archive link | Perma linkEwan's married
Well I missed this until I saw it over at Bob hill's blog in the sprit of summer experimentation her is Ewan's wedding via the flickr API and phpFlickr: tagged: mcleroux2006 (it might take a while to load...)Nice cake!
archive link | Perma linkTagging Teachmeet06 II
A while back I produced an aggregator for Tagged: elive2006 pulling together del.icio.us, technorati and flickr tags. I've spiced it up a little now switch from using the flickr RSS feed to using the Flickr api with phpFlickr.This has been a lot of fun Flickr has incredible educational potential (check out David's recent posts) and the apis along with phpFlickr make using it a treat.
As of now there is not much at Tagged: teachmeet06 (this will change as more things get tagged teachmeet06), but the Tagged: elive2006 will give more of an idea of what is going on.
I used the Lightbox JS v2.0 javascript to display the images nicely when the wee ones are clicked.
It is amazing how you can pull all this stuff (rss, api, javascript...) without knowing a lot about any of them, just borrowing freely available tools.
Performance of the above pages may not be great, they are served from my livingroom not exactly Hitchhikr, but I am learning.
archive link | Perma linkGrange in China blog
Tomorrow, Wednesday 12th July, a group of students from Grange Academy in Kilmarnock will set off on a journey of a lifetime. Their destination? Kunming in China, where they'll be learning Mandarin Chinese and taking part in a range of cultural and educational activities which will allow them to experience China first hand.One to watch: the Grange in China blog
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archive link | Perma linkTeaching 2.0
via Tim Lauer: Flickr Export creator Fraser Speirs has a job teaching at Cedars School of Excellence just down the road. He is blogging at Teaching 2.0. A very interesting addition to the Scots Edu-blog world!I've used the old free version of Flickr Export for a while and a useful appleScript for posting to del.icio.us by Mr Speirs so look forward to reading his blog.
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archive link | Perma linkMore Than Cat Diaries: Publishing With Weblogs
I,ve been reading CogDogBlog for a while but I must have missed More Than Cat Diaries: Publishing With Weblogs which was a presentation for the New Media Consortium 2005 Summer Conference. At communicate06 Peter Ford used wordpress as a presentation tool, but the Cat Diaries takes this a lot further, the Blogger Presenter Slide shows how, css magic. Technorati Tags: cogdogblog, blogger, education, css, bloggingpowered by performancing firefox
archive link | Perma linkGoogle Maps Again
After seeing David's Ardrossan Childhood Memory Map using flickr and seeing his flickr inspiration I've been working on my Google Maps Experiment again, this one is a memory map of our holiday last year. It would have been a bit more interesting if my LaCie external drive with all my photos had not died.Or look at a larger version.
I had a try with the maps at school, but my javascript skills (well lack of skill) had ensured that it only worked on safari and firefox. I've now fixed it so that it works on IE (and therefore in school). I need to clean up the editing interface (and remove a ton of debugging alerts) but I hope to do that over the next few weeks. You can still try it out if you like.
The LaCie mentioned above was my backup drive for space reasons I had moved my iPhoto library onto it too.
BTW if you've not looked at David's Flickr Posts (and this one and more) you should, a huge set of ideas and resources.
archive link | Perma linkxFruits
Following my lilina experiment I passed the same OPML file to xFruits and it seems to aggregate the feeds: scot edu blogs 1, looks like there is a bit to explore here xFruits does various things with rss feeds including conversion to pdf. I am not sure why you would want a pdf of a rss feed, but the app will also convert rss to web and something for a mobile phone.Technorati Tags: rss, opml, scotedublogs, xfruits
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archive link | Perma linkSummer Holidays
Ewan was talking about what to do with your blog in the summer. Well i am not going away so I've a few things line up to do:I am working on a site for David which will end up here I am quite happy about how it is going and seem to be learning a little MySQL.
I am also going to be organising blogs for the primary schools in my cluster, but I'll leave that until August. Meanwhile I am going to try and fix my google maps experiment and play with Supercard so that I can post on my other blog.
Away from the box, I'll go some walks, take more time to cook than usual, play some tai chi and do something on Jenny's allotment. It is hard being a teacher some time
