My class finished a wee podcast episode today. As usual I find this a very worthwhile exercise in class.
Tag Archives: posse
Life in Links 53⤴
I am a fan of micro:bits too, these look like great lessons, nicely packaged. CC BY-NC too.
I’ve mostly been avoiding Twitter/X recently, but I still get emails. This looks like it might be fun in class.
I don’t really do much with spotify either, but looking for a poetry podcast I found this one and enjoyed this episode.
A wee bit technical⤴
At work I get emails about scratch. I often miss these or don’t pay enough attention. There is also a scratch blog on medium. I thought I could subscribe to that in an RSS reader. Couldn’t see a rss link so I searched for more information. Ironically the first two medium articles I found needed a paid account to read. Eventually I just pasted the link into Inoreader which did auto discovery. I also found the email archive on mailchimp and subscribed to that too.
It seems to me that it is getting harder to be a wee bit technical. Like hiding full URLs in the address bar, or making it difficult to find an episode page for a podcast to link to. No RSS link buttons or links to audio files. These changes may have been made in the name of simplification or to make pages a bit stickier but cause frustration here.
Listened #1 – How it got its name and if I ruled the world⤴
Join us, Richard, Elaine and Chris, our brand new podcast and our first ever episode, as we share our desert island apps, our favourite iOS features, our best bit of recent CPD and why we should rule the world! Before, we answer the big question, which is and will always be... How is learning be…
I was delighted to hear my name mention on this new educational podcast coming from a trio of Glasgow teachers. A life time ago I used to work beside Richard. Very much iPad focused but lots applicable elsewhere. I’ve subbed and look forward to hearing more episodes. There was some discussion about pupils as leaders of learning and I hope this might be a theme I can find out more about.
Hearing from very Apple focused teachers will be interesting for me. Although I’ve been Mac for all of my technical life and 1–2–1 iPads in my class for a good few years my tech interests/obsessions are not iPad centred so this should be CPD for me. Apple pencils seem to be transformative in Glasgow, I’ve never even picked one up.
The podcast is of a reasonable length and is split up nicly into sections, one of which was the teams favourite iOS thing. I’d agree with AirDrop, which I’ve hammered in class for the last 8 years. Unfortunately it has stopped working for us in school at the moment, not sure why?
It is nice to hear some Scottish educators voices. There was mention of podcasting in one of the presenter’s classrooms. I am looking forward to listening to that too. I still find it puzzling that podcasting does not happen more often with learners. It has amazing potential. The fact you don’t need much in the way of hardware and in Scotland Glow Blogs can provide the hosting for free for pupils make it to me compelling.
Nice name & logo.
N.B. the link is to apple podcasts, I can’t find a generic page.
Life in Links 52⤴
School
MagicSchool is your AI assistant for all things teaching. We think #TeachersAreMagic – and we are on a mission to fight teacher burnout with Artificial Intelligence.
Limitations
May occasionally produce biased or inaccurate information
Only has knowledge up to the year 2021
Cannot search the internet or produce images (yet)
A large set of AI tools for teachers, I’ve only tried one so far. I wonder how they will make money. Sign up for fee is the only thing I can see. I’ve used ChatGPT is a fairly casual way, making crosswords questions and cloze procedures for H2P.
Kevin’s Meandering Mind | Generative AI and the Writing Classroom: WMWP Workshop
Overall, our intentional message was not “the world is ending so ban AI” but more, “this is our new reality, so how can we start to think of AI as a partner to help us as teachers and maybe help our students as writers?” and I think that theme really resonated with the educators who joined us last night.
Also from Kevin, Write Out: Gathering Sensory Details for Haiku which if the weather permits and we can get to the woods I’ll try next week.
Holiday rabbit hole
This
from Tom Woodward
lead to a collection of links including: Dan Coe Carto – The Community Library 2023—Rivers Revealed
Lidar (light detection and ranging) is a technology that uses laser light pulses to create intricate three-dimensional models of the earth’s surface. These models can be used to create stunningly detailed images of rivers and floodplains. These depictions often reveal previously unseen channels where rivers have flowed in the past and invite viewers to visually meander along these pathways through both space and time.
And some local data Scottish Remote Sensing Portal makes me wonder how difficult this would be, it would be nice to do from places I know.
Glow Blogs
I also spent a fair bit of time in the wet weather on Glow Blogs help. Although the classic editor is default on Glow Blogs, we are getting ready for using Blocks. I’ve been updating information and using the blocks editor to do so. I’ve tried all the blocks and am now a lot happier using it.
Featured image: a montage of screenshots of some of the lined pages, my previous script had a few problems with cookie banners, so this one used Safari & takes screenshots. Not as elegant and I think there are a few daft decisions, but it works.
Listened to Radio #EDUtalk 5-12-12: Dylan Wiliam⤴
Dylan Wiliam, Emeritus Professor at the Institute of Education: Assessment for Learning in the Classroom, and From Teachers to Schools: Scaling Up Professional Development for Formative Assessment. Dylan Wiliam (@dylanwiliam) on Twitter Welcome to…
I was thinking of Dylan Williams the other day and remembered David Noble, my partner in Edutalk partner had interviewed him back in 2012. This was the second round of AIFL in Scotland.
I gave it a listen on the way to work this morning. It is a great interview. Dylan is very positive about teaching, makes some great points and David asks great questions. I think it is still relevant 11 years later!
Well, I think that Scotland did a very good job of kicking off this process right at the end of the 1990s, the early 2000s.
So I think that the original focus was very welcome, the idea of assessment is for learning. I think people got slightly seduced by the tips and techniques rather than thinking about this as being a vehicle for teacher learning. So I think it got rather, and this may be inevitable for any innovation, it got rather packaged as being a thing that schools could do. And many schools think they’ve done assessment is for learning, and so they’re moving on to the next thing.
“inevitable for any innovation” – My emphasis.
Aiko
After listening to this I though I might like to grab some quotes so remembered I’d downloaded the free app Aiko, which is an AI-powered audio transcription, and ran the audio through it. After a hiccup when the app though the language was Welsh it seemed to do a great job. I’ve added it to the original post. David & I alway regretted not being able to provide accessible transcriptions of our broadcasts/podcasts. I am wondering about picking out some other episodes to transcribe. The audio is not attributed to the two different speakers, but I think it is easy enough to understand.
Radio Edutalk
Radio Edutalk is a project I am extremely please to have been part of. We were a bit ahead of the podcast curve, but it gave me an amazing opportunity to talk to all sort of amazing educators. It ran from 2009 till 2019 starting as an open to any contributor, mobile podcast and developing to include regular internet radio broadcasts which were archived as podcasts. About EDUtalk has a bit more information.
Life in Links 51⤴
Some links and interesting things I’ve noticed over the last couple of weeks
Cardboard
I like using cardboard in school, some inspiration.
2023 C.A.M.P.The Cardboard CollectiveThe Warehouse
As a working artist, I engage with kids as co-creators, seeking to share knowledge and expertise in context as ideas unfold and discoveries are made. I also share the art research processes and methods I use in my own art practice, as we take on projects big and small.
Amber Dohrenwend, Artist – Cool Tools
Amber Dohrenwend is an American artist based in Marquette, Michigan. She constructs post-consumer cardboard sculptures, costuming and installations.
Amber Dohrenwend build an art installation out of locally recycled cardboard strips.
Tech
A tool to help you explore FFmpeg filters.
My use of ffmpeg is very basic indeed, mostly taking images and making video from them. This is much more advanced. I remember trying to make a video grid. Altough that post claims a quick try it took me a while and gave me a real headach trying to expand the grid. FFmpeg Explorer has an example that shows you how with a click. (can’t recall where I got this one, but thanks)
TiddlyPWA — TiddlyWiki Storage & Sync Solution
Have you ever wanted to combine the power and customizability of TiddlyWiki and the convenience of a modern offline-friendly, encrypted, synced notes app? Now you can! With…
HT Joe I use TW a bit at a beginners level. This looks nice and the syncing is interesting.
Media
My daughter sent me this, nice.
Rear Window Timelapse – Jeff Desom
Meticulously assembled using After Effects and Photoshop, Rear Window Loop is a large scale projection that shows Alfred Hitchcock’s 1954 masterpiece as a never before seen panorama.
We were watching a tv show about Hitchcock, reminded me of this video.
Worrying
Daring Fireball: Twitter/X’s Descent Into an Antisemitic Cesspool
Antisemitism is more than just a form of bigotry and hatred, it’s a millennia-old conspiratorial crackpot worldview. And Elon Musk is seemingly sinking into it.
Still the social network of choice by schools in Scotland.
The featured images is a montage of screenshots of some of the links. I’ve done that twice, so made an AppleScript.
wwwd – John's World Wide Wall Display 2023-07-08 17:04:01⤴
Nostalgia. Recently I’ve seen teacher’s “apps” created with PowerPoint or Keynote I wonder what we could do with HyperTalk in Keynote?
Bookmarked: Generative Ai in Education⤴
Bookmarked Degenerative AI in education by .
But what if, instead of being generative of educational transformations, AI in education proves to be degenerative—deteriorating rather than improving classroom practices, educational relations and wider systems of schooling?
I’ve read this a couple of time, and probably need a couple more.
I guess, like other technologies that have entered the classroom, we are very much in the hands of the powerful. We get the technology we are given. Usually at a low cost, but perhaps at a high price?
As a side note, Jetpack now offers to change the tone of what I write with AI. Here is the humorous rewrite of the previous paragraph:
Oh boy, here we go again! So, like with all these fancy gadgets invading our classrooms, it’s like we’re in the mercy of the almighty powerful people. They just hand us whatever technology they please, usually for a bargain, but are we really getting a steal or selling our souls? I mean, seriously, the price we pay might just be way more than we bargained for! Can’t we get some high-end tech without compromising our wallets and our sanity?
Life in Links 48⤴
I’ve not posted links for a while, these are some of the things I’ve found interesting in the last couple of weeks.
Technology
- Ian Betteridge on Meta and Mastodon
- Chrome is turning into the new Internet Explorer 6 – The Verge
- The Opt Out Project Yes, you can live without Big Tech. If data is the new oil, then I’m here to help you go electric. via Joe Jenett
- delightful creative tools again via Joe
Education
- Hello World RSS Feed podcast feed from Raspberry pi folk
- Environment data logger | micro:bit for next session in school?
- Hedy – Textual programming made easy Hedy is suitable for kids aged 10 and up and designed for classroom use. Teachers can use our free, built-in lesson plans, but can also author their own lessons and load these into the Hedy user interface. I’ve never tried text based coding with pupils, afair
Sounds
- Episode 1: The Apes of Gibraltar – Fearful Symmetry intereguing podcast, I’ve only listen to this episode, hard to describe.
- Worldwide Weather | Joe Woodham Worldwide Weather is a lo-fi foley adventure. Featuring wailing guitars aboard hypnotic tape loops, gale force bass VI and squally seagulls.
Nature
Featured image found with Openverse, attribution copied from the caption. Winding Chain – Triple Square Link with Wooden Spacers, 5½-inch Pitch, Wrought Iron, 1850s-1870s by Photographer: David Thompson is licensed under CC-BY 4.0