Now that the AIM test is over it is time to get back to the real business of education J and so it was that we started podcast number 4. After divvying up the segments to the students we had groups scripting their segments as other classmates went about writing for our new wiki. It was interesting being the dispassionate observer to see how as soon as they thought they had the segment covered the pairs of students went to where the iPods live and carefully left the room. It was only about 15 minutes into recess that the last pair came back into the room and apologised for not getting their recording done quicker as a couple of teachers had come into the room they were working in. Interesting indeed to see that recording took precedence over recess time.
Equally as interesting was the fact that after recess two of the students went quietly over to the iPods and the Mac and began to download the voice memos and cataloguing them into a folder to ensure that they weren’t lost. I actually didn’t realise what was going on until I asked, thinking that instead they may have been indulging in Garage Band. Oh I felt quite silly and proud at their diligence at the same time.
Now that the AIM test is over it is time to get back to the real business of education and so it was that we started podcast number 4. After divvying up the segments to the students we had groups scripting their segments as other classmates went about writing for our new wiki. It was interesting being the dispassionate observer to see how as soon as they thought they had the segment covered the pairs of students went to where the iPods live and carefully left the room. It was only about 15 minutes into recess that the last pair came back into the room and apologised for not getting their recording done quicker as a couple of teachers had come into the room they were working in. Interesting indeed to see that recording took precedence over recess time.
Equally as interesting was the fact that after recess two of the students went quietly over to the iPods and the Mac and began to download the voice memos and cataloguing them into a folder to ensure that they weren’t lost. I actually didn’t realise what was going on until I asked, thinking that instead they may have been indulging in Garage Band. Oh I felt quite silly and proud at their diligence at the same time. BTW the students concerned were a mix of boys and girls.
As if to rebutt my previous entry, as I walked into school this morning with one of my teacher colleagues, (she teaches juniors), I was asked if she could borrow an iPod to record her students’ oral reading as a means of comparing their expression and fluency. What a neat idea and one I should have thought of myself. It would be very simple to send a parent off with a student and get them to read onto the iPod. The memo could then be downloaded and added to the students network file for comparison at some time in the future to judge if there have been improvements in either fluency or expression or both. Speaking from experience, without some form of oral record these judgements can be very hard to make. I shall very definitely be following this one though.
Despite having encouraged a number of other staff members to take the iPods I have to observe that save for a couple of notable exceptions it has been rather hard for these teachers to utilise them other than incidentally. There are probably a number of reasons for this including not having direct access to the iPods, (they are normally housed in my room), having to go to the trouble of downloading the content and then getting speakers to play them including getting the neccessary connections etc, (we only have one set of plug in speakers, though I have a set attached to my IWB) and developing authentic tasks for their use. This is not to say that any of them have given up on using them but it does point out some of the problems in making them mainstream.
One of my students proudly came in this morning to proclaim that on his memory stick he had a new Photo Story production that he had made at home whilst instructing his pre-schooler sister on how to go about using Photo Story. Now where will this all end 
?
So as to differentiate the Photo Stories from the general blog, I decided to set up a dedicated blog just for them. As the children have now begun to complete their narration, (thanks to the librarian’s office) I wanted to make sure that the files were not too large. Fortunately Photo Story allows you to export the movie file in a number of different sizes quite easily and I soon had the students exporting a large and small size format.
Setting out to play the files however I came across yet another of those niggling problems. This time it was the need to install Windows Media Player 10 as all previous players do not play the file. (A further problem is that the files are also only .wmv files and won’t play in Quicktime players or other players :(.
Having installed the player though, things ran very nicely indeed. Once I had files ready it was then transferring them to the school webserver and plotting the path to add the path as a link into the blog. Having fiddled with this for about 20 minutes I finally found the path and we were live. The URL is http://middlepstories.learnerblogs.org/ and the blog is called Middle P Stories.
Having gotten all of the preparation for the AIM testing out of the way it was time to get back to grass roots and making another podcast. As we had “lost” the “Personality of the Week” recording between podcasts we had to go back to the personality to ask permission to re-record the segment. This was rather embarrassing as the personality involved is our new principal. Fortunately we had not burned all our bridges and Jane was more that happy to go through the “gruelling interrogation” for the second time. This time around the students also suggested a whole new segment called place of the week. This has given the students concerned an authentic reason to research which they were soon doing.
This time around the students were also using the new Garage Band 3 which has a slightly different packaging and look. There are more pre-packaged and novelty loops that the children seemed to be attracted to in the way that they like to use all of the transitions and effects in PowerPoint the first time they use it. All this meant that a lot of the loops were not as generally appealing as on previous casts.
This time around also the children have become a little more performance oriented not necessarily to the best outcome. A couple have tried to use “radio type” voices which detract from their presentation. Another segment also introduced a foreign name for a student from the class. We have since spoken about this and the class agree that the authentic is best.
In order to ensure that we don’t accidentally overwrite or lose iPod content, as in the Principal interview I have decided to train a number of students in downloading and managing the iPod content. So far this is working very well.
Our problems with the mikes and other noise during iPod recordings have pointed up another big problem with traditional school and classroom setups. To best record you need a small room that will not be intruded upon but which is observable from a classroom for supervision purposes. Apart for the librarian’s office our school only has a couple of other unsupervised spaces. Schools wishing to follow down this track may need to rethink how they set up spaces and may need to include a dedicated recording space in any upgrades or rebuilds.
It was lab time once again and I was all ready to get the students to add the narration to their P/Stories. I gathered all of the headphone mikes I could find in the school, (5 in total) and fortunately I had some time to go into the lab before the class. Attempting to connect them to the desktop computers however I came up with yet another of those annoying problems that can be overcome but not without time being applied. To record with the mikes would need a slight change to the configuration of the sound input but as students don’t have privileges to make these changes without changing the privileges this left me without sound recording access.
Thinking quickly I got my wireless laptop and called up individual student’s work. Fortunately my students are trustworthy and appreciative of other’s equipment so I felt confident that they would use the laptop properly. Another problem I had not taken into account also was the possibility that having five or six narrations simultaneously happening in the lab may have proven very distracting. Fortunately again, across the passage from the lab is the library with a nice vacant library office. After a quiet word to our very co-operative librarian I soon had two children in the office recording away. Again using the “teach two students and leave one behind to tutor the next learner” model we soon had a production line happening. The other students were gainfully employed manipulating transitions and tutoring other students who were a little further back in the process.
After showcasing some of a couple of student’s iPod homework there was renewed interest in taking the iPods to get the data. One of the students came up with a really neat idea to use a ziplock bag as a take home storage for the iPod. This encouraged me to remind the students of the middlepod blog and that their reflections were also valued. Soon a couple of the students grabbed some free time to reflect away. This had a side benefit in that it enabled I and some others of the students to make comments on their ideas and work. This has helped to generate more interest in the read/respond aspects of blogs that until now had been lacking a little.
Another weekend and another chance to spread the good word about Web 2.0 and some of the things associated with it. This time it was at the STAV Primary Science Conference. Unfortunately I was only able to attend on the Sunday of this 2 day program however I had offered the usual session on Blogs, Furls, wikis and podcasts and once again. (If you are interested you can see most of the material covered online using the Blogs and Furls link from Simply Science at http://users.pipeline.com.au/jpearce/default.htm). It is interesting to look back a year. I had offered a similar session at a national conference about this time last year and had four participants. This year at the State Primary Conference I had the full house of 20. What a difference a year makes.
Once again I had way too much material to cover in the hour allocated, (try there is enough in all of this for a couple of days), however as a taster, I hope that enough of the participants will have gone away, at least knowing more about the terminology. I am sure from the questions asked however that I will soon be joined in the blogosphere by some new converts.
