In my new AST role, I've been working recently with schools who have Promethean boards over Smart boards in their classrooms.
Now I am a Smart user - I have always used their software, and choose their boards over Promethean when my school first got IWBs.
The main difference in the board itself is that Smart boards are touch sensitive, so you can use your hand to interact with it, and Promethean boards you need to use a pen. I prefer the Touch Sensitive board since it is much more versatile that the pen based systems.
So I have been working hard on learning how to use Activ Primary 3, the software that you use with a Promethean board.
My inital impressions, where that Activ Primary was a bit clunky compare to Smart Notebook. But on exploring further the two pieces of software are much closer in design that I had thought. (Just make sure you use design mode on Activ Primary)
Both have there good points.
Activ Primary has some very nice tools - that Smart Notebook does not, the ruler, protractor and dice tools are nice.
Smart Notebook - allows for a much nicer and cleaner interface and works alongside the windows (or mac) environment. I find text editing more fluid as well. The resource gallery is allow just easier to use and access.
Much of the other tools and options - though appearing slightly different work in the same or very similar ways.
Some negative points
Active Primary - awkward interface, the need to be in design mode to do certain things is confusing. My initial experiences with copy and pasting, from the Internet where frustrating.
Smart Notebook - more education specific tool set - this is improving though, the gallery has been updated in many positive ways. But there are more tools that should be developed.
What IWB to choose? Well for some school the choice has been made already. Keep doing what you are doing but, hope is not lost. Since both pieces of Software can be used on each others board.
Activ Primary does cost though where as far as i'm aware as Smart can be download and used for free.
The jury is still out, I know what I like and will be continuing to use Smart, though I will dabble in Activ Primary 3 for time to time.
Comments? Suggestions? What is best?
Take my vote.
http://www.prometheanplanet.com/uk/
http://smartboard.co.uk/
Wednesday, 31 October 2007
Tuesday, 21 August 2007
Encyclopedia's to use online?
With the use of search engines, what is the point of an Encyclopedia? We can just Google what I want to know, right?
Well something that must be remembered about the web is that it is not always 100% accurate. Its validity must be checked. I spoke about this before in reference to Alan November and web literacy.
An online encyclopedia is owned by someone, such as Britannica, or Encarta, so is much more like a traditional book, where we trust the content to be correct and checked. A lot of these online encyclopedia's unfortunately need to be paid for to get full access.
That's where Wikipedia initially seemed great, (full access and pictures) but of course as we all know Wikipedia is a great resource, but its is not always 100% correct, its validity needs to be questioned at times, because it is able to be edited by anyone. The website dos its own checks, but is not always on top of this, you can come across articles that state that it hasn't been checked. The site is clear about what has and hasn't been checked.
But I would be uncomfortable letting children loose on Wikipedia, it is not a child safe environment. That where this new Wikipedia Selection for schools comes in.
Visit the link below and check it out, and read more information about how it works.
http://schools-wikipedia.org/index.htm
Basically it is a chuck of the Wikipedia site that has been checked and edited by Wikipedia themselves and an outside organization. So we get the advatanges of full infomration with images. (lacking in the free encyclopedia)
It is free to download and thus host on your local server or just use the online site.
Its worth checking out.
Well something that must be remembered about the web is that it is not always 100% accurate. Its validity must be checked. I spoke about this before in reference to Alan November and web literacy.
An online encyclopedia is owned by someone, such as Britannica, or Encarta, so is much more like a traditional book, where we trust the content to be correct and checked. A lot of these online encyclopedia's unfortunately need to be paid for to get full access.
That's where Wikipedia initially seemed great, (full access and pictures) but of course as we all know Wikipedia is a great resource, but its is not always 100% correct, its validity needs to be questioned at times, because it is able to be edited by anyone. The website dos its own checks, but is not always on top of this, you can come across articles that state that it hasn't been checked. The site is clear about what has and hasn't been checked.
But I would be uncomfortable letting children loose on Wikipedia, it is not a child safe environment. That where this new Wikipedia Selection for schools comes in.
Visit the link below and check it out, and read more information about how it works.
http://schools-wikipedia.org/index.htm
Basically it is a chuck of the Wikipedia site that has been checked and edited by Wikipedia themselves and an outside organization. So we get the advatanges of full infomration with images. (lacking in the free encyclopedia)
It is free to download and thus host on your local server or just use the online site.
Its worth checking out.
Scrapblog's Part 2
This is it my scrapblog.
Such a nice piece of software to use.
It has some issues which I'll go into in another post, but the results speak for themselves.
Check it out.
Such a nice piece of software to use.
It has some issues which I'll go into in another post, but the results speak for themselves.
Check it out.
Thursday, 9 August 2007
Scrapblogs...
I have discovered this very powerful tool called scrapblog.
Basically it is a online slide show generator. It is a powerful piece of kit. It allows you to add text, draw shapes, add backgrounds, import photos and videos.
The real power is the way it interfaces with youtube for videos and a number of photo hosting sites. (You can also upload, it interfaces with PhotoBucket, Yahoo! Photos, Flickr, Webshots and Facebook) Web 2.0 in action.
I've been using it to create a holiday scrapblog. I've uploaded my pictures to flickr and then just import them into my scrapblog.
The screen shot show what it looks like. It is very easy to use and can create some great pieces of work. The website has loads of examples since these are created just like a blog.
Check this one out... http://www.scrapblog.com/viewer/viewer.aspx?sbid=54249 and then look at the community page.
Linking this back into education. I've been reading Anthony's Blog and he has been exploring ICT and the skills needed within the Primary Frameworks.
This tool can be applied to a number of areas. For example:
In Y2 when design a website is offered as an activity. - sracpblogs could be a useful tool, along with wikkis.
Year 6 Non-fiction - Unit 4Formal/impersonal writing(3 weeks) - children create a guided tour presentation.
ICT Applications in Literacy - Multimedia - Shows all the possible uses of Multimedia software - scrapblogs would fit in aith all these areas.
Thats all for now - ill post my finished scrapblog later in the week.
Wednesday, 1 August 2007
Will it blend?
Holiday surfing and you come up with some weird stuff.
Check this out. Not one for the kids though. Enjoy...
http://www.willitblend.com/
Check this out. Not one for the kids though. Enjoy...
http://www.willitblend.com/
Wednesday, 27 June 2007
Alternative to maps.google.co.uk?
Someone showed me an alternative to http://maps.google.com/ - this allows you to see very detailed aerial maps and of course is linked to Google earth.
http://maps.live.com/ - a Microsoft run version of Google maps. Very similar, but with one major difference that you can see views of certain areas from different angles. (North, South, East or West) This is all achieved from with the Internet browser.
Check it out - (Anthony this one is for you)
http://maps.live.com/default.aspx?v=2&cp=sk9n7hgr2r3r&style=o&lvl=1&tilt=-90&dir=0&alt=-1000&scene=7694281&encType=1
Nic
http://maps.live.com/ - a Microsoft run version of Google maps. Very similar, but with one major difference that you can see views of certain areas from different angles. (North, South, East or West) This is all achieved from with the Internet browser.
Check it out - (Anthony this one is for you)
http://maps.live.com/default.aspx?v=2&cp=sk9n7hgr2r3r&style=o&lvl=1&tilt=-90&dir=0&alt=-1000&scene=7694281&encType=1
Nic
Wednesday, 20 June 2007
Amimation Day 2007
Today I attended yet another useful ICT course. I was an animation Day and basically allowed us to explore and use some of the different pieces of kit and hardware out there. This was tied in with where could this be used in class.
First the curriculum side - The basic message is that animation can be used in lots of subjects, it is not an ICT only activity. (Though in an ICT session you could teach the skills needed.)
The limit is only how imaginative you want to be. Animation lends it self well to telling stories or explaining things. In science you could make a water cycle animation, in geography an animation to show cliff erosion, in history you could show what the ancient Greek Olympics where. The list is endless.
Literacy is where a lot of focus can be placed in the form of using animation to support story telling. Animation is a great example of a multimodal text, which is a flash way of saying a story with moving pictures and sound.
It is important to note at this point that children need a clear plan on their heads of what they are doing when animating, so using a storyboard is essential. This process requires children to think about what they want to do and then go back and edit it if needed.
Why use animation? The most obvious reason is motivation, animation is cool and exciting. But motivation links back to my post about Alan November, it has the scope to give children a much greater audience, by sharing their videos with other children and classes in school and with a wider audience by sharing their video's online, again only increases motivation. Animation also encourages collaboration as animation is not a solitary activity, it requires many people to get involved to get it just right. Children need to plan and then assign roles as to who is animating and who is recording, you might even have lighting and prop making.
On to the hardware and software - Over the course of the day we used. 2animate, Digiblue movie creator and Stop Motion Pro. We used Digiblue and Logitech cameras.
2Animate is a nice animation package that allows you to easily create, stop motion drawn animations. (Though I think you can use a webcam as well.) The animations save as an animated gif.
Despite past reservations of the Digiblue (I have experienced some annoying technical problems) they performed well on the day. The message I got is to keep them plugged in. Below is what me and Jack from Mossford Green created. We where very pleased with the end result.
We continued exploring stop motion, but moved on to use Stop Motion Pro and played around with choma key, which is basically green or blue screen. It took a while to set up but the results where exciting. Below is the video. (I will be updating it with sound later.) Just so you know the image of the town hall is what as added using the chroma key. The background was green really.
Stop motion animation was great fun, but very time consuming so keep that in mind when planning to use it, it might be a few weeks work.
Overall the day was great fun and really allowed us all to explore the software and hardware, so now we are all much more confident using it in school.
First the curriculum side - The basic message is that animation can be used in lots of subjects, it is not an ICT only activity. (Though in an ICT session you could teach the skills needed.)
The limit is only how imaginative you want to be. Animation lends it self well to telling stories or explaining things. In science you could make a water cycle animation, in geography an animation to show cliff erosion, in history you could show what the ancient Greek Olympics where. The list is endless.
Literacy is where a lot of focus can be placed in the form of using animation to support story telling. Animation is a great example of a multimodal text, which is a flash way of saying a story with moving pictures and sound.
It is important to note at this point that children need a clear plan on their heads of what they are doing when animating, so using a storyboard is essential. This process requires children to think about what they want to do and then go back and edit it if needed.
Why use animation? The most obvious reason is motivation, animation is cool and exciting. But motivation links back to my post about Alan November, it has the scope to give children a much greater audience, by sharing their videos with other children and classes in school and with a wider audience by sharing their video's online, again only increases motivation. Animation also encourages collaboration as animation is not a solitary activity, it requires many people to get involved to get it just right. Children need to plan and then assign roles as to who is animating and who is recording, you might even have lighting and prop making.
On to the hardware and software - Over the course of the day we used. 2animate, Digiblue movie creator and Stop Motion Pro. We used Digiblue and Logitech cameras.
2Animate is a nice animation package that allows you to easily create, stop motion drawn animations. (Though I think you can use a webcam as well.) The animations save as an animated gif.
Despite past reservations of the Digiblue (I have experienced some annoying technical problems) they performed well on the day. The message I got is to keep them plugged in. Below is what me and Jack from Mossford Green created. We where very pleased with the end result.
We continued exploring stop motion, but moved on to use Stop Motion Pro and played around with choma key, which is basically green or blue screen. It took a while to set up but the results where exciting. Below is the video. (I will be updating it with sound later.) Just so you know the image of the town hall is what as added using the chroma key. The background was green really.
Stop motion animation was great fun, but very time consuming so keep that in mind when planning to use it, it might be a few weeks work.
Overall the day was great fun and really allowed us all to explore the software and hardware, so now we are all much more confident using it in school.
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