Bascially you control a robot by giving it commands. Use programmer-style logic for more complex levels that include functions to re-use.

Well its fantastic and its had the ICT rooms packed to the rafters. Its got me thinking, what does it offer thats so entertaining?

Easy to start. Quick short levels that get progressing harder. A fun wee character. Challenge, the later levels are certainly taxing.

My colleague has been creating screencast WINK manuals to help, only this evening I found that YOUTUBE has beaten him to the finishing line.

‘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.

What does it cost? For the most part FREE.

How it could be used for teaching? There are a range of options here.

Most Web polling software are free and they require no technical knowledge. Lets take a look at a few, but there are plenty more than that. Note the key differences are HOW users vote and How you interact with the site.

1. The very first polling software I used was SurveyMonkey. I used it to gather student feedback about the course. I then used this information to develop and steer the course. In the post 16 sector, gauging and responding to the students was very important. Still a very powerful tool, basic subscribers (FREE) are limited to a total of 10 questions and 100 responses per survey. So good for a cohort or group but if you want to go beyond 100 respondents, and up to 1000 or gain access many more features, there is a cost. 8/10

2. Micropoll- This web poll service doesn’t require registration and you can create a quick poll by simply typing all the possible choices in a text box separated by new lines. Great for quick hit question. Micropoll provides a variety of colored themes and you can embed polls in websites either as JavaScript or a Flash movie. You get to see poll responses on a world map and the paid version also supports SMS polls.

3. Google Docs – Simply fantastic. Create a new form in Google Docs with a range of questions styles. Its already been used to gather cross college data in our establishment. With the help of some online colleagues, we have added the function of instant grading. Here is a highly developed spelling test formwith extras, marked instantaneously – now I have your attention don’t I. Or how about lesson review forms for students to feedback to teachers. Here is a form for Unit 4 from the OCR Nationals, two groups in two separate rooms competed against one another. Tom Barrett does a great job with Google Docs. With the pros, come the cons. Poll embedding options in Google Docs aren’t very convenient and users can’t see the results after voting but you can convert answers to gadgets….. but that’s another meal.

4. PollDaddyis the most popular online polling software focused as an online solution. A free account from PollDaddy allows you to create surveys and polls for your website, blog and social network profiles.

5. StrawPoll – This is an interesting service that lets you run live polls on Twitter. Good for your PLN not necessarily for school.

6. Poll Everywhere – This could be a student poll, but also good for conference or staff CPD participation. I hope to work with Poll Everywhere in the New Year. Although fine as a web poll, Poll. Poll Everywhere also offers SMS Polls where people can vote though text messaging on mobile phones just like polls conducted on TV or radio. The basic plan is free though it only allows 30 votes per poll.

There are more, Notifu, Vizu Polls and Toluna. The question is, what works for you.

Which polling software is right for me?

All the services discussed above offer some unique options. For instance, Notifu allows polling via email while Micropoll lets you create polls even without asking for your email address. So, if you are doing a poll with students and want to use the result instantly or present the results go with Poll Everywhere, their ppt integretion is very neat.

If you are a doing a presentation in a conference room and need opinions of participants over a certain topic, try Poll Everywhere again, hoping everyone has either a phone or laptop they can join in with.

If you need polls for embedding in web pages, Poll Daddy, the free version of PollDaddy offers unlimited polls and unlimited number of votes, however you will need the Pro version for if you want to prevent fraudulent multiple votes from the same IP address.

For use with students and staff responses, I dont think you can beat the ease of Google Docs. Certainly if you want the students to fill in data, then Google docs rocks. Bring the data to life with Google Gadgets or Many Eyes.

Polling in action….

For me it is the ’scissors’ argument. Do you hide the scissors away from the children, of course you don’t, you show them how to use them safely…. perhaps this is not the forum for banging this drum.

So to the second question, ‘how do I get THAT Youtube video?’ or shall we be more generic and say all FLV videos from popular online websites? Its often a two stage process, getting the video and then converting it to a Windows friendly file type. Here is my new answer for 2009, thanks to another RSS posting.

YouTube FLV Downloader from Moyea, (along with a range of other products, some free and some not). A simple way to download, store, manage and convert your FLV videos from all video sharing sites so YouTube, Yahoo, Google, MySpace, iFilm, Dailymotion, Metacafe. There are even some simple tutorials on how to use it. So that’s the second question, I fear the first question will be long standing.

We now also have Live Sync which allows you to sync any kind of file to the 25GB of space that Microsoft’s SkyDrive online storage service now offers. Now this has potential. I had read somewhere that the LIVE OFFICE would include OneNote? I have not seen evidence of this yet? Anyone?

Regardless we move forward. I am considering to use a folder and group to develop a group of Moodle ICT teachers. A place to share information and documents. I let you know how we get on – my only reservation with this option is that the Moodle group will set up a Moodle LP for this purpose.

In reflection, I realised that this information may be welcomed by our students parents, guardians and carers. A full review is far beyond this forum, however I thought that I could share some links and tools with you.

Within College we have an infrastructure of whole-college awareness, designated responsibilities, acceptable use policies and procedures. We also have a range of tools to help us filter and monitor students online activity. What is readily available for you to use in the home?

Information: Parent Centre is a government support advisory service covering a wide range of topics. Simarily Child-net offers a host of projects, presentations and interactive materials designed to support the role of parent, guardian or carer.

During my conversation, the focus quickly turned to ‘Messenger.’ the hugely popular chat service. Interesting Microsoft have responded to parents call for assistance and recently launch their FREE Family Safety module offering safer browsing with Web site management for parents, including monitoring of MSN Messenger.

Now there are many more technology topics we could discuss, Thinkuknow outline the most widely used online tools. Should you have any further topics you think we should be discussing then emailThis e-mail address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it me.

This ties in nicely with my investigation of the WINDOWS LIVE options.

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.

The project has been developed, in association with LEAs and Teacher Unions, to support teachers and educators in addressing their ever-increasing workloads by funding the provision of 750,000 USB memory sticks across the UK. Simply register and they will send you your FREE USB memory stick preloaded with a range of educational resources. The project launches at BETT 14-17 January 2009.

http://www.memory4teachers.co.uk/index.asp

Now a reminder to self – in GIMP we are trying to create the posters for ICT at Hamble College. What if we created the artwork for the next SSAT conference and sent it in??

In the debrief the discussion moved onto question style, introductions and plenaries. There is a whole section on thsi blog dedicatied to this very topical, quizical. We noted some simple introductory ICT games, some new and some very dated, but they are gems! Following the discussion I realised it has been some time since I have made real good use of the tools posted here myself. It just goes to show you may not be able to teach a old dog new tricks, but you can remind him of those learnt previously. I hope to see them in some of his (and my own) future lessons.