Geek Salad

Phone update

2011-03-25T16:59:00.002Z

Looking back over my blog, I wrote a fair bit about using the iPod touch instead of my old Windows Mobile device (a Dell Axim). I moved on again last year, getting hold of an HTC Desire running Android. I love it. I can pick up home and work email, edit or read docs, spreadsheets, PDFs, sync with my Google calendar (I use Touch Calendar - better than the stock app) and - of course - do all sorts of other things like control my Media Center PC or play Angry Birds.

When I teach "future trends" in ICT, I always seem to end up pulling my phone out of my pocket. Today it was real time translation (interpreting really), which is (or was) a hard CS problem.

Amazing.

Android App Inventor and Kodu

2011-03-25T16:46:00.002Z

App Inventor has been around since summer 2010 and I've been playing with it since then (though recently I've hardly had the time!). I attended the Norfolk ICT Conference this week and heard several inspiring speakers (Ewan Mactintosh and Dawn Hallybone amongst others) talking about games-based learning and students creating stuff - "entrepreneurial learning". I know there are some projects going on to use App Inventor in the classroom but I haven't heard much about Kodu. Having looked at it last night the potential is enourmous: you very quickly create 3D worlds to explore, and add simple event-based control to build up game logic. The game can be played on PC or... Xbox 360. Interestingly, about 10% of my 9 students have an Android phone; more like 50% have an Xbox.

When I get time, I'm going to do something with these great tools.

Remote Potato

2010-01-21T19:50:00.001Z

... is a great app to allow web access to Windows 7 Media Centre.

More on iPod/iPhone for school

2009-09-20T10:42:00.003+01:00

Just a quick post today - when updating my iPod software the other day I got offered a free tool for enterprise deployment of the iPhone and iPod Touch. Now the iPhone has often been criticised as an alternative to a "proper" business smartphone or PDA, but even Paul Ockendedn in PC Pro magazine has now changed his mind and declared it "Fit for business". The reasons it got knocked initially have been slowly removed. First there were the applications (admittedly third party) which gave access to MS Office documents; next came OS3, which gave us copy and paste and Search (amongst other things); now there is decent integration with Exchange and the ability to manage profiles centrally (ensure passwords are used, manage apps, wipe data...). More information is available here. It seems to me that £149 for the new 8GB Touch is cheaper than a PDA with similar capabilies and offers much more besides.

Living with OS3 on the Ipod Touch

2009-08-23T19:28:00.002+01:00

It's time to come clean and admit I was wrong: I'm pretty disappointed with the improvements in Apple's recent revision of the operating system on the iPod Touch and iPhone. I was pleased to see various features, like search and cut & paste, but for me the killer app was bluetooth: I wanted a BT keyboard and headset so I could really use the Touch a bit like a mini PC for proper typing and get more from it as an audio device. I'd also hoped it would open the door to other 3rd party hardware like GPS modules, or even sensors for science experiments (at school the science team are currently testing some bluetooth sensors for a local firm that makes them).

Sadly, I've used search once, and copy and paste not at all: it's just too fiddly.

The crucial factor, though, is that bluetooth is completely crippled. It only supports audio out, not even allowing use of the microphone on a headset let alone other peripherals.

Looks like I might have to bite the bullet and go for an iPhone, or perhaps Apple have done enough with this (and potentially with their possible refusal to sanction Spotify in the App Store) to drive me to another solution. Anyone for Android?

Successful Intervention with the Edexcel Project

2009-07-26T10:15:00.006+01:00

Like a fool, I volunteered myself to spend the last 2 weeks of term working with a small group of year ten students who hadn't managed to sort out work experience placements. Most had a track record of poor attendance or behaviour at school. In the past, we have used an external organisation to provide ASDAN Wider Key Skills to this cohort but it wasn't going to work for this little group (or be cost effective).

I decided it would be interesting to have a go at the Edexcel Level 1 (or for some of them, Level 2) Project. In addition to the students developing their subject knowledge in a particular area and earning a half GCSE I had a few other objectives which should help them do better in all their other subjects:

Improve their research skills
Improve their ICT skills
Improve their communication skills
Improve their literacy and numeracy

I met the group individually about 6 weeks ago to explain what we'd be doing and find out about their interests, so we could establish a topic. I then asked our school librarian to get some books together and she put me in touch with the staff at the Millennium Library in Norwich, who kindly agreed to help us find books, newspaper articles and use the computers.

The week before we started, the group met for an hour to establish rules and clarify what we'd be doing. Everyone created a mind map of the area they wanted to research, and I allowed students to have a totally personal choice here, as long as they could come up with a question which allowed for a range of responses:

Should boxing be banned?
Is gambling dangerously addictive?
Should smoking be completely banned?

When the fortnight began, we followed a similar routine each day: arrive by 9 and get a drink; work on the project for the first hour; learn a new skill for the second; further work on the project after break; literacy/numeracy (leading to the ALAN qualification) period 4; write up the day's diary and have a chat over a few games on the Nintendo Wii after lunch (assuming the other work was complete). We went into Norwich on the first Wednesday to visit the library (which was a new experience for many, and they signed up so they could take out DVDs and games in future). While we were there the students carried out a survey on the general public (scary!) about their chosen topic, which we then analysed and made into charts back at school.

So, how did it go?

Well, there was some poor punctuality, and one student dropped out entirely after the first couple of days, but the vast majority of the group attended regularly (more so than normal!), achieved the part or even full ALAN qualification (some at Level 2) and put together a project that both I and they are really proud of. Many of them dramatically improved their ICT skills in Word, PowerPoint and Excel, they can now structure a discursive essay and support their ideas with evidence, they can use references and produce a bibliography. When we looked at what they'd put together as a whole document (Introduction, Research, For, Against, Conclusion, Bibliography) it was a really impressive piece of work. On the last day, they were clearly nervous about presenting their findings to the group and one boy disappeared (ill!). The others stuck it out and delivered their presentations really well.

Conclusion

The projects haven't yet been moderated, but I'm hopeful we've got a range of responses from a B grade equivalent down to an F. Although it was tough going at times, I did enjoy the fortnight and I feel more comfortable with the Project as a form of intervention than some other qualifications, since I think the students genuinely learned a lot of transferable skills. I'm thinking about how we can use it next year as part of the overall arsenal of intervention techniques at our disposal. Anyone interested in the resources I put together to support the course is very welcome.

More on contacts

2009-06-20T11:19:00.003+01:00

Following on from my earlier post about managing contacts and business links as a school, I had a meeting last week with our "Work Related Learning Coordinator" who manages (amongst other things) work placements for students. We had a good discussion about both our requirements for a perfect system and the non-technical work flow problems involved in getting such a system to be widely and effectively used in school, since we felt that the key to it was getting staff to record when people come in and work with us so when we ring up we can say "I know you helped us out last Autumn with...." rather than a completely cold call. The best answer we came up with was for this to be managed at the reception desk, since all visitors pass through there and we couldn't really expect teaching staff to remember to update the details in Outlook.

We had a look at Sugar CRM, KeepM and Outlook, and the consensus was that a public folder in Outlook would be ideal. Since my last post, I'd found a great little article on customising Outlook contact forms (in this case, for estate agents, but it's applicable to any area). It looks as though I'll be able to set up exactly the fields we need (industry sector, for example). The only fly in the ointment at present is that I can't make the custom fields searchable. More playing required...

As an addendum, we both agreed that we needed some business cards for when we're out and about, so I'm going to get something made up and printed over at moo.com (which looks fabulous!).

Managing contacts

2009-06-06T09:25:00.006+01:00

We're a big school, with over 100 teaching staff and 1750 students. We're a specialist school, with the outreach work that goes with that, and we're heavily involved in the delivery of the new Diploma qualifications. Around 30% of our students in KS4 now follow an alternative to the traditional GCSE options curriculum. All this means that for a number of years now we've been forging links with other schools, colleges, businesses and other organisations.

We're not very good at it.

There are huge issues about schools working in partnership (and enormous benefits, of course) but today's post isn't going to look at those; we'll save that for a future edition. I've been doing quite a lot of work lately on building up our industry links and what I've noticed so far is:

there is a willingness on the part of companies to engage (especially small businesses) but they're not sure how;
it's difficult to build a genuinely 2-way ("win-win") relationship since the school actually has little to offer that the firms are interested in, short of a warm, fuzzy glow and a bit of positive PR;
I personally (and I suspect most teachers) find networking quite difficult - we're not used to it and don't understand the ground rules. (Should I have business cards or is that naff?);
This is an area you either do "right" and invest significant time and resources in building long term relationships, or not at all;
There's nothing that frustrates a company more that being contacted 4 times by 4 different people about the same thing. We have situations where something is promoted via our Work-Related Learning Coordinator, me, our Extended Schools Coordinator, through our newsletter to parents and any other staff who might know someone interested.

It's this last point I really want to focus on: surely there must be an IT solution to the problem of managing our contacts?

Use a shared Word file on the network

Dead simple. Easy for staff to use. Shared. Gets backed up. Searchable. Not exactly high profile...

Use a public folder in Outlook

We run Exchange 2003 so this is easy to set up (in fact we did it last week in 5 minutes to see how it would work). This is clearly better than Word in that contacts are stored in a proper database format where you can group them into folders, add category tags and search on any field you like. You can manage permissions easily so it doesn't get messed up and people can send email directly. My concerns at this stage are how easy most staff would find this (and whether they'd remember it) and the poor "Notes" feature. I'd really like to be able to maintain a record of the people who get in touch with each contact (including when, and about what) and a list of the events they've helped out with. It can be done, but it would soon become unwieldy.

Use a blog

I'm coming to the conclusion that we need to be publicising the contribution of our partners much more extensively on our website (maybe through a "Community Blog") - it would definitely drive traffic their way. I'm not saying we'd keep actual phone numbers on there (although we could) but it would seem a good way of keeping track of events that our contacts help us with. I could imagine the tags list on the side acting as a quick menu for finding a company.

Build a custom application

Not that hard, but we come back to all the maintenance and support issues I've gone on about in the past...

Use a web app

There are quite a few contact management solutions out there. Some are free, some not. Here's a quick list:

Highrise is a paid for app by the well known 37 Signals brand. It looks really good, but is business-focused (unsurprisingly) and probably overkill.
KeepM is free and simple. I like it a lot actually, especially the "History" feature, but the problem here is the fact it requires another username and password for everyone and who knows how long it will last (or remain free).
Google Mail has a contacts feature. It's a bit like Outlook really (though the search is better) and I can only imagine using it if we didn't have Exchange. We'd probably create a new account and share it, but I guess there could be problems there with security.

For now, I'm road testing the public folder approach. I'm going to meet some of the main people who would be using whatever system we end up choosing next week to see what they think, so that should be interesting. If any readers have suggestions for other solutions I'd be keen to hear them!

Use an Ipod as a PDA

2009-06-01T21:42:00.007+01:00

Having bought an Ipod Touch to keep me occupied on the long haul flight to Cuba at Easter, when I got back I decided to see if it could replace my PDA (a Dell Axim X50v) for diary functions. The answer is a resounding YES.

The pros:

Wifi on the Touch is way better than using Windows Mobile. It was always a pain on the Axim to even get connected, but the Touch just finds the network and logs in, no bother. It recognises whether I'm at home or at school, remembers the settings and just works.

The on screen keyboard is better than handwriting recognition, if not perfect.

Itunes is happy to sync with Outlook on my school PC whilst syncing music, podcasts, movies etc at home.

It's smaller, lighter, sexier and the battery lasts a lot longer.

I can do basic editing of documents with a free App.

The cons

I can't use my IR keyboard that worked really well with my Axim. This meant that I could have a device in each jacket pocket whcih, when unfoilded and combined, gave me a mini laptop. Come on Apple - give us Bluetooth!

Document editing isn't as capable (though it might be with the paid for version of the App I got - I don't know and don't need it).

And that's it. The Axim is off to Ebay.

If you're not sure how to go about synching an Ipod with two PCs, the key is to select "Manually manage music and videos" on the "Summary" tab for the device in Itunes on the work PC, then enable Outlook synchronisation on the "Info" tab. More detail on manual syncing here: Manually manage...

On Learning Platforms

2009-05-31T12:51:00.005+01:00

I've been involved with the procurement, installation, training and ongoing development of 2 learning platforms now. Several years ago we felt the need to unify our existing systems (intranet, email, shared learning resource folders) and provide 24/7 external access to them (along with "My Documents"). At the time, we were slightly ahead of the curve and we struggled to get a solution that was really tailored to the education market. In the end, we went with MS SharePoint Server 2003, customised by a local firm. This was not without problems (like synchronising Class Server and Active Directory via CSV files!), but served us well until recently, when MS began to withdraw support for the old version of SharePoint and totally phased out Class Server (the "VLE" bit of the solution, which allows teachers to allocate work to students, mark it and give it back).

There is a new version of MS Learning Gateway which includes the free SharePoint Learning Kit to replace Class Server. However, the old issue of the whole thing looking like it was designed for business then rebranded remains. We decided to look around and found that things had moved on significantly in the marketplace. At BETT 2008 we tried out systems from the major manufacturers and decided that although there were many more systems and they were much prettier than our current offering, they didn't add significant functionality (and many reduced it). The only system we were interested in was Frog.

Although I've been less involved in the Frog implementation I'd say the key things we've tried to do differently this time are:

transfer files over for teachers, rather than asking them to do it themselves (the downside to this is that junk isn't cleared out)
involve the tech support team and admin staff (who will need to update content) much more from the beginning - with SharePoint we had a teacher who set the whole thing up and maintained it and when he left we were in trouble: I think this "sustainability" issue is the big one for many small or medium sized organisations and it ties into my comments on other systems we use or have created.

I'm still not convinced about the concept of Learning Platforms: I think 24/7 access to email, My Documents and learning resources is excellent (and the hit stats bear me out), and as a school we could make more of some of features like surveys and forums. I also think that the line between website and Learning Platform is blurring and we need to be smart about this process ensure there are simple ways for staff to update content so parents and students always have up to date information. However, it's the VLE bit I worry about. I really can't see the day (yet) when all work is set, completed and marked electronically. There are many obstacles to such a situation: individual access to computers all day at school, training, link to the school MIS, workload... let alone tasks which are just better done "by hand" (like making a papier maché volcano!).

Frog are working on a number of new projects, one of which is the Parental Engagement Portal. This looks interesting in the context of Online Reporting. 14-19 collaboration is another of their projects, and this is certainly an area which could benefit from joined up solutions to sharing data. I suspect that whatever is developed now will be OK, but stymied until SIF (Schools' Interoperability Framework) is properly in place across the UK. This standard should allow different systems in different schools to share data properly at last. We'll see!

I'm interested to hear how others are getting on with Learning Platforms, especially the VLE element.

Ipod Touch

2009-05-29T09:46:00.003+01:00

I love my Ipod Touch and today went looking for a free blogging app. This post is therefore being written with Lifecast! It was dead easy to configure with Blogger an option from the start-all I had to do was enter the username and password. So, it's free, easy to use and gets the job done: I recommend it.

I'll write a proper post at some stage about the Ipod touch - it really is a brilliant device and OS3 looks likely to bring some killer features like Copy and Paste and bluetooth: the latter would enable an external keyboard which would really remove the need for me to even consider a netbook.

I can see us looking at the Touch (or even Iphones) at school for SLT. We already all use Outlook for email and calendars (but don't share our calendars properly) and Itunes is happy to sync with Outlook; we also have mobile phones so we can ring each other in emergencies. As we've got wifi I could see us using something like the touch to access web apps like the school review / lesson observation system I wrote (which I'll share with you in a future post). This would be much more unobtrusive than a laptop but would save people typing in their written notes later.

Do you have an Iphone or Ipod Touch in use in school? I'd love to hear if others are using these devices already...

Fun tech projects for our festival

2009-05-27T09:10:00.007+01:00

We have a 2 week festival at school every year to celebrate our specialist status in technology (and the arts). I'm hoping to put a couple of "DIY" projects together for this year's festival and I think they'd be good fun for any school to try:

Build your own roller coaster ride
There was an item on The Gadget Show on Five this week where Suzi Perry and Ortis Deeley put together a simulated roller coaster in her front room (see the end of this video). The website is supposed to have details of how to do it yourself, but I can't find it. Hopefully I can manage without by downloading the software (No Limits Roller Coaster Simulator) and "hardware" (an old car seat welded to a metal plate with springs and handlebars - seemed to work better than it sounds!). Time to ask the DT department to get the welding gear out!

Try 3D gaming
Nvidia have released a consumer product (see PC Pro article) to enable 3D gaming on a home PC with a normal (if high end) graphics card. It uses an updated driver to read the Z-level data about the depth of objects in modern games, in conjunction with a pair of special glasses to produce a - reportedly fantastic - 3D experience. There are downsides: some people report that the system induces headaches, though the effect can be reduced by tweaking settings, and you do need a fancy monitor with a 120hz refresh rate: these currently cost over £200 in themselves. Despite these drawbacks, I'm hoping to convince a retailer to lend us the kit to show the kids what's possible. My local PC World couldn't help, which I think is a missed opportunity, but I won't give up!

A home-made 3D printer
I'm very lucky to have a very keen 6th form student, Nick, who wanted to build a Reprap machine. I'd read about it in PCW magazine but knew I didn't have the skills to be able to construct it. Follow the links for more detail, but basically it's a machine you can put together for a couple of hundred pounds which extrudes plastic to form 3D objects (like those shoes on the right). OK, it's not a commercial 3D printer, but it's great for prototyping and it doesn't cost£10k... In fact, it can make most of the parts necessary to clone itself! It's an ongoing project at Bath University and they are looking at developing new "print heads" for it to enable it to build other things, like circuit boards.

If anyone has any other fun (and relatively cheap!) projects to suggest I'd love to hear about them.

Assessing Pupils' Progress

2009-05-24T18:16:00.004+01:00

We're currently getting to grips with the pilot materials for APP (Assessing Pupils' Progress) in maths, English, science and ICT. For readers who don't know anything about this I'll give a bit of context; everyone else can skip this bit. With the end of SATS tests at KS3, the DCSF is keen to ensure teachers' end of key stage level judgements are secure; APP is supposed to provide a criteria-based framework which helps teachers to look at the entirety of a pupil's work in one subject over a key stage and make a judgement. It can be used to track progress as pupils move through the key stage and to suggest next steps (in the best traditions of Assessment for Learning). For the full description, click here.

Most of the teachers at our school don't have an issue with the principles of APP (now that the prescriptive maths units aren't seen as compulsory) but we all recognise the difficulty in managing the assessment process. It's not too bad in ICT, with only 3 "AF"s or "Assessment Focuses"; in maths there are 6 and in English there are currently 8 (before you add in speaking, listening or handwriting). Within each AF there are criteria at each National Curriculum level.

The theory seems to be that each child will have a large piece of paper (or 3, in English!) and the teacher will highlight or tick off criteria as work is done and milestone assessments take place. The problems seem to me to be:

How do you "back up" this data? (It has to last 3 years).
How do you share the data with the student, parents or colleagues?
How do you manage the process of assessing work so that only those AFs which are relevant are shown (thereby making life easier for the teacher)?
How do you get an overview of the performance of a class (or multiple classes) in order to plan intervention activities?

I know I can't help but look for ICT solutions where they aren't always necessary, but this seems to me to be a classic situation that calls for a database. Unfortunately, once again the MIS manufacturers look to be behind the curve on this, with our own Serco offering not integration for criterion-based assessment at KS3, but a separate product called Alfie, which appears to create online tests for students to gauge their level. This isn't bad in itself, but it seems to be missing the point of APP...

As we move towards Online Reporting (which must be in place by September 2010 for all secondary schools), surely we need to be making APP information available to parents? The solution for now at our school is likely to be paper-based, though I'm working with the maths team to develop a web database solution (and, predictably, the ICT team are already using a custom database). The aim will be to allow data to be entered for a single assessment, but for it to be reported either as an overview of a child's achievement or that of a group of students. Naturally, as a web application it will be multi-user and easy to back up. If you're interested or you'd like to help, get in touch! The sticking point is sure to be integration with Facility, so let's hope Capita, Serco et al pick up on where this is going and develop something themselves.

MRBS - Meeting Room Booking System

2009-05-23T18:20:00.001+01:00

I spent a few minutes this afternoon helping a fellow Edugeeker sort out some issues with MRBS. I first came across MRBS a couple of years ago when we were looking for a system to manage room bookings across our school site. It's a free, open source system written in PHP which is pretty easy to set up and customise.

The particular problem we faced (as would most UK high schools) was getting a two week timetable with holidays in the middle into a calendar application. I did a lot of work on this and came up with a process using MS Access which could be done at the start of each year or after a major set of changes to the master school timetable. This was fine, but I wasn't very happy about foisting something I'd knocked together with sellotape and bits of string onto our data manager, or about guaranteeing its reliability in what would be a critical system for the school. (If you want to see what I did, leave a comment - I'm happy to share). Off the back of that I played at creating a web app to convert a teacher's timetable into Outlook format. I nearly succeeded - you're welcome to try TimetableConverter, but as I write this it's not fully functional and won't be until I spend some more time on it (this summer?).

There were two other issues which prevented us from choosing this excellent piece of software, and in my experience they come up pretty regularly in the education sector and are applicable in many situations:

It would require staff to use yet another system, with all the username/password shenanigans and extra training that entails.
We couldn't find a company with the relevant expertise to support it at a reasonable cost.

We ended up using an extra module for Facility CMIS (sold by Serco) which does the job OK, but it's not something teaching staff can use easily. MRBS was far superior in terms of the interface, but it was just too much of a risk due to the lack of support out there.

I think there may well be a market for a company with the skills to set up, customise and support MRBS (and get the LDAP element working so active directory takes care of the authentication). As schools open up more and more of their sites through the Extended Schools initiative, this is only going to become more necessary, and the public who are looking to make bookings are going to start to expect to at least see what's available online before they call.