Kristianstill

‘The effect of a very small change in the initial conditions of a system which makes a significant difference to the outcome.’

Our touch typing experiment? This term we are introducing every ICT class (year 7, 8, 9 and 10) with just FIVE (hence a very small change) minutes of touch typing using the typingweb free resource. In summary, Typingweb is

• 100% free
• Web-based, and can be access anywhere
• Teaches typing technique
• Provides progress statistics

Here is the education bit. A warm front to lessons, students arrive, login, access Tyingweb right from the intranet page. Punctual students get the first 5-7 minutes practice that provides a transitional phase into the lesson, students who are a little tardy get less time or miss out. No more disrupted or staggered starts.

To extend this, my mentees get a further 4 x 15 minute sessions of mentor time as we meet in my teaching room. My mentees performance in just 2 weeks has more than doubled, and as it is web-based some students are now practicing at home. In ICT lessons,students typing speeds is pretty constant, but students are eager to arrive and disappointed if they miss out on typing web time.

We hope that if the students progress to typing with 10 fingers and thumbs that will be a serious improvement on the two index fingers the majority are using now and an valuable life skill they will continue to use long after they leave Hamble College.

No, not ’shut up and move on,’ but a rather impressive in browser image editor, SUMO. Yes, I like our Serif draw, but more and more we (staff and students) are using GIMP as their image editor of choice. Now Dr Pic was neat for quick touch ups, picnik was good for photos, SUMO is designed for image creation rather than editing. SUMO offers selection tools, gradients, paint bucket, layers and blending modes and some filters as well. Add brushes, opacity and others (the symmetry tool is neat) and its an impressive tool.

What makes this site interesting to me, is the community behind it. Sumo has a fully fledged community and gallery. Will our students be able to share their art with more people than walk the corridors at Hamble College? Really, if you have time go and look at the art on show.

Another blocked site by the Hampshire filters. Not holding back, we asked for agreement from parents and students to use photo hosting site Flickr to share their fantastic memories from this trip. The students from the Barca 08 trip have shown that they are comfortable with this technology have uploaded over 250 photos to share. We even have one of the students administrating the site. These images has been used to create mini movies, slideshows and scrapblogs, and as a consequence many of the smiles have resurfaced on the faces of both the staff and students.

So today we took the work the students created in class and uploaded a range to AuthorStream. The motivation to get their work on the site was impression. I also learnt a few teaching points for E(ngage)-Learning and was left with one or two questions to reflect on;

1. Although I created a short presentation about using AS, actually creating an account needed a little more structure. Perhaps a slide or screencast. Even though we had talked about online safety, this must be reinforced.
2. The structure of the activity must be very clear, so that the work chould be completed and perhaps checked before going online, (emphase the size of the viewing audience, perhaps the ratings/feedback they receive might reinforce that point?
3. Tags, I forgot to explain the importance of tags. As yet you can not yet create groups on AS, tags would be a very good way to search for students work and create “groups.”
4. Q. How do you encourage students that dont want to post? We had one student who was less than positive.