Mr Eldridge's Blog

Well we have made the first two editions of Soapbox, our Y6 iMovie programme. We have taken giant leaps forward on all fronts and have been delighted by the kind comments people have made. The children are buzzing. There is talk of putting together a ‘Global Soapbox’, but that’s a future project.

We have really benefited from having a school based MacBook Pro , if only I could have 4, so much more independent learning could be achieved. I have read that iMovie is less reliable on iPad if you know different, I’d like to know. We have a good green screen set up, but we are still struggling over lighting. As Nicole has blonde hair, she is vanishing in front of our viewers eyes! One to get right for episode 3.

At the moment the children are storyboarding, scripting and filming. Now I have two trainee editors as well. They will move on and train others. Astonishingly Flipvideo is enough to do the filming!

There has been an excellent post on http://bit.ly/zwJNfh The Educator’s guide to Copyright, Fair use and Creative Commons, this is by Ronnie Burt at Edublogs. We have tried hard to get this right and I am pleased we have.

I can see lots of uses for green screening in the class throughout school. I imagine that we will develop more in this area, again 3 more MacBooks are needed. Scripting would appear to be an excellent learning opportunity as well. The children are less keen to do this! :)

The other area that I have moved forward in is developing a Twitter network. This is far more useful than I thought it would be, everyday there is superb FREE professional development available.

I am creating a shadow Blog site on Edublog and that surely will go live soon. I want the connectivity that replying to comments brings.

We have a project run by Stephen Baker called ‘The Whale and the Snail’, http://snailandwhaleproject.edublogs.org/ ,this again is very promising.

Finally we have a new LCD Projector in class 3… Great. Now we can genuinely see what we do.

So all round a successful half-term. As always there is more to do, but right now we deserve to enjoy the moment. In the near future I’d like to get my head around GarageBand. I also am looking forward to Global Soapbox.

Well the green screening has finally happened and it appears to offer the suggestion of quite a break through. For a long time now we’ve been thinking of having a go at green screening. Now that we have launched the ‘soapbox’ series     ( http://hawesps.posterous.com/at-last-soapbox-episode-one ), we felt GS offers great opportunities for developing some video and editing skills.

We set up a home made green screen in an annexe room to a classroom and off we set. So what did we learn? Firstly that all the advice I needed was either available through videos posted by Mr Avery http://mravery.edublogs.org/ click on the videos link at the top of his page and go to news teams. These are really helpful videos because they show green screening in situ in a school.

We still have a problem with our lighting so I have bought two ‘soft light’ boxes, I’ll report back on how they help, or not. We have come a cropper with shadows, so we are working on that and we have just ordered a commercial screen from Amazon £100. The one we made is good but it has glitches and the new one will roll down and out and let us stand on it I hope.

Having you tube available in school is really helpful and there are heaps of suggestions there to be followed up.

The kids have played a major role in creating soapbox and episode two is looking good. We think we have addressed the problems relating to sound quality, that’s to be seen in episode two. We also bought a cheap tripod and that is really helpful. The flip video has worked a treat and having the MacPro is for us really useful, but I guess there are other ways of editing available for any system.

The other thing we did was to crank up the traffic to our site by having a go at promoting the post through twitter and that worked really well. 

So we are embedding our new learning and waiting for the screen and light boxes. The children are generating some good ideas to use in their programs, so everything is on the move forwards again.

I am so excited, we are so excited! We have broken through the technophobic barrier and created something that we are all proud of and that the children have played a huge role in creating. We have cebrated by buying a Mac Book Pro, just one, but it's ours. Now we have to set about lifting the bar and there are plenty of areas to improve in. But before we think about episode two, we need to salute episode one, we had a deadline and we made it!

The overall target is for the children to be flying solo by the final episode. We would like to try and have an episode every three weeks. For all the people involved, whatever their talents and abilities, this learning and teaching process has been fabulous.

None of what we have created here would have been possible without the initial ideas and genius of Stephen Palmer's fantastic class at Russell street School (the digital school), New Zealand. Their award winning series 'Street Talk' http://streettalk.edublogs.org/  is the inspiration upon which we build. 

The Street Talk series just got better and better, we hope that we produce something to share that inspires other non-techies to want to take part as well. 

Just a quicky about children having their own blogs. Some interesting thoughts at edublog http://bit.ly/xWSZt6 . I hope we move in this direction for 2012-2013, I still feel the need to build up staff skills and my own. There is of course the other point about the 'technology gap'. In England we have, to my mind, wasted a millions and millions of pounds on flawed initiatives linking to ICT. I doubt we will see any reasonable amount of money for these types of resources, for many years. So whilst NZ, Aus, USA and Canada move towards one to one and mobile technology, I'm planning on seeing if we can get a slate and chalk into everyones hands!

We have apparently got some workable technology in school once again, even though we have had to make some compromises. Essentially we seem to have 15 PCs that constitute a suite of machines and 20 netbooks that, whilst aging, work and we can use confidently with wi-fi within one classroom area. We can’t use our netbooks anywhere in school as was the original request and we have given up on the children being able to use the netbooks at home, as it apparently became technically tricky. The children have been asked not to customize their machines as they tended to load them with a lot of visual graphics that slowed things down to a stand still. It’s hard working in the back of beyond where downloads can be measured in KBs! per second.

We have however started to get more out of our Flip Videos, which I have always liked and never been let down by. Their microphones are not the best and they get swamped with wind outdoors. However the video editor is as simple as can be and we have enjoyed beginning to use that.

I have found that the older children had become a bit fed up with kit letting them down and teachers have no time to waste, so getting things working has been essential. Thanks to Schools ICT most of the issues have been addressed.

Moving forward we are now exploring a presentation format that is a little different. I call it ‘Soapbox’. The end result will be a video of children exploring and debating issues that are important to themselves. In between we have to develop debating skills and technical competency through experience and self -assessment.

Our first session found the children moving around in the classroom setting up a ‘studio feel’ and working in the format of a ‘show’. All the dialogue was unscripted and therefore rough around the edges. I was pleased with the outcome, but should I share it? I thought yes, because whilst people who perhaps didn’t have the insight into our ambition might not understand our work, the children will be boosted by seeing their work out there and will believe that they want to improve it.  http://hawesps.posterous.com/just-for-fun

I am also very pleased with the new ‘Stories Around the World’ collaboration that we have been invited to take part in http://storiesaroundtheworld.edublogs.org/ . Again this offers an audience to children. For the less able it’s nice to either post short manageable comments, or longer supported posts. For the more able if they want to participate there are few limits.

I very much like the idea of ‘The Digital Staffroom’ and I am often moved by the kindness and generosity of the people that are out there. This is a very important aspect of blogging, building up a network of dynamic supportive friends.  http://sqworl.com/uxopzt

After this burst of enthusiasm and now having flags for 98 countries and 43 States…thanks Alabama…I logged onto the school website and found that it has disappeared. This is classic IT frustration, it might be fixed in half an hour, we might have to start again!

It is very pleasing to see a number of local schools are up and running with blogs and one or two have very recently contacted me to see if they can get cracking as well.

As long as we are happy to have a go and help one another we will achieve something that is good for our own professional development and very good for the children’s personal and technical skills development.

We've also made a little progress with Flip video, thanks to Mrs M at www.middlehampri2.posterous.com Again I hadn't realised that the movie making facility was so easy to use. Lastly we have had big problems with our wi-fi and netbooks at school. However we seem to have got these things back up and working. 

All in all blogging seems to be a community of schools activity. There are so many examples of lovely work, nice kids and generous teachers out there. More and more people are setting up micro projects and maybe for the first time, non-techies are actually supporting other non-techies, perhaps that is a big step forward?

One of the things that is hard to understand at school is that children just do not normally see it as we do! This lad LOVES his mechanical wind up car, he designed it, he made it and it goes forwards and backwards. Now it is true that he likes ICT and photography etc. However the age old truth that children just like playing and making things and then completing them with their imagination remains. I wonder how often we really do aim to meet the children's needs in a pure way? How often are we actually motivated by a sub-plot and is that inevitably the case, as we work in a school and are not actually independent of the academic system.

There are seven weeks left in this school year. As always there is much to sort out. We’ve made a lot of progress with our ICT work and hopefully we will regain our momentum. It has been difficult with SAT tests and holidays every other week! I really can’t remember such a disjointed school year.

We have brought back to life two PCs during the week off. We have replaced all the broken headphones! What is it with children and damaging headphones? The whole school is beautifully looked after and then there are headphones!

This week we have a couple of assemblies/collective worships drawing on the bikeabout blog http://www.bikeabout.co.uk/  I love this adventure and so do the children.

Again in the holidays I managed to find enough bits and pieces to put together a little data projector in the hall! No big deal for most of you, but if I get the sound sorted and a couple of longer cables we will have internet supported shared time!

We finished last half term with a rather rushed Skype call to Michigan, although it was a little chaotic at our end, we learnt a lot and should be skyping with Michigan and New Brunswick (Canada) this week.

An excellent child called Bethan is mad keen on setting up a part of our blog, specifically for children. This is good as she is in year 5 and so has another year to develop her ideas. So I am hoping that will be an exciting development. At the moment it is very embryonic. She is desperate to have a flag from outside of the UK, if you can help by one quick visit and a comment, she’d appreciate it! www.cs4k.posterous.com There’s not much to see yet, but she has a bucket load of enthusiasm and has also been caught out by the holidays. In addition we are always expected to limit children’s access to everything! I need to find out more about children running their own blogs.

We have collaborated well with Mrs Monaghan at www.middlehampri2.posterous.com and Mrs Eldridge at www.middlehampri1.posterous.com  Some really nice visual posts on both of these blogs. As there areat www.bartonpri.posterous.com it is great to see these teachers and others coming on board, where previously they felt excluded from all things ICT.

The other major thing is I have started try to Twitter  @davidweldridge  I can’t really find the flow yet, but I am hopeful that it will make sense in the end!

As I tell the children and colleagues, rule one ‘use your time well’. Let’s see how much we can do in the days that lay ahead.