Tech Tips Tuesday

Using ICT to Enhance Learning About 3D Solids

As I headed into Term 3 I had grand plans about integrating ICT into the Maths Program. We had great success earlier in the year with the use of Beebots and basic programming lessons to give purpose to the language around location ie. left/right/forwards/backwards/up/down. Given that, I had high expectations for the use of Makers Empire and 3D Printing as part of our learning about 3D solids. I wanted for students to be able to explore and build 3D solids on an iPad and then see them turned into a physical object through 3D printing.

Implementing the 3D Printing Task
We staggered our teaching program across the year level to allow for shared use of resources across the term and arranged for our ICT Coordinator to come and work with our Maths classes during the last week of our 3D Solids learning. When our ICT Coordinator came students logged onto Makers Empire with student logins and she taught them the basics of the different aspects of the app. Students had some free time to explore and then worked on designing a building that used the 3D solids they had learnt about in class. They selected the one that they wanted printed, calling it "This is it!" to make it easier for me to find when it came to printing.

All was going well until it came to the actual printing. We got some quick training on how to use the printer, but when I sat down to do it, it wasn't as easy as putting some paper in a printer and watching it do its work. The plastic didn't always come out smoothly where it was supposed to, so I had to sit and watch as it did its job to make sure it didn't mess up. These jobs were taking about 2 hours to print, so as you can imagine, I couldn't be there to babysit the machine the whole time as I had actual teaching to do! A couple of times the machine made a mess while I wasn't watching, leaving the jobs ruined and the nozzle in an icky mess.

A couple of jobs did make it through to completion, but only because I sat by the machine, cleaning gloopy bits off the nozzle as it worked. Then there were also the creations students made that didn't work because of their design. They looked great as digital creations, but when trying to print with plastic, they just weren't practical.

We haven't labelled it a complete failure yet, and maybe I'll get the chance to print a few more during the holidays, but it was far from a huge success! I am not ready to call it quits on 3D printing, I just wish our printer was a bit more reliable and easier to use. I guess I have a few more failures to work through before I'll be able to enjoy the successes. I'm sure the first paper printers were not without their faults either. I have vague recollections of the poor quality of colour printing from my teenage years.

Other Successes
That said, we did have some other successes using less complicated ICT technology this term. Students took photographs of 3D solids from different perspectives and created a PicCollage to share with others. These looked great when printed and we displayed them on the wall. They also built solids using construction materials and took one photograph of the net and one photograph of the solid and recorded the audio naming the solid using Explain Everything Classic. These were combined using iMovie and shared with the class for revision. In another lesson students built a 3D structure using blocks, took a photo and then demolished their house for another group to rebuild using the photograph as a guide.

When I look back over all the ICT successes with 3D solids, the problems with the printer seem minimal. My students still walked away with an excellent understanding of the names and properties of 3D solids and an ability to work with them in a range of ways.

What have been your early experiences with 3D printers? How did you overcome the challenges?

Tech Tips Tuesday

What does 1000 look like?

In Maths over the last couple of weeks I have been trying to build a better picture for students about what 1000 looks like. My pre-service teacher worked with them to create a poster containing 1000 grains of rice, and that got me thinking about other ways we could see 1000. I went to Google images and Flickr, but for many of the results, I didn't feel I could be sure there were 1000. We discussed this as a class and tried counting items in the images and then estimating from our counts. We discussed how great it would be if there were pictures we could rely on to give us an image of 1000.

So, we split into small groups and students created a plan for how they could represent a collection of 1000 items. We wanted to think of easy and cheap ideas that would be achievable within a few lessons. Some suggestions included:

• dots
• sheets of paper
• paper clips
• pencils
• Pokemon cards
• rocks
• paper-chain links
• pieces of Lego

Students worked on the plan and then used the support of other class members to pull it all together. These Flickr images are the result of our work:

I've created a Flickr group so that other people can add their own collections of 1000 items. Why not try this with your class?

Lost and Found

When we returned from our overseas trip in the USA, we were disappointed to discover that somewhere we had misplaced our old camera, which we had given to our son as a learning camera. While disappointed, we shrugged it off as just one of those losses. The little guy, on the other hand, was not so willing to let it go and often talked of how he missed his camera. So, I decided to put in a little more effort toward finding it. And, alas, we found out that we had left it at The Donatello Hotel in San Francisco. Our stay there had been fantastic and the staff were very helpful with tracking down the camera and sending it back to us. It arrived this week and we were very excited to see the camera again and to get a glimpse of the trip through the eyes of my little guy. 

There were many photos like this:

And this funny one, which says to me: "What is that two-year-old doing with a camera?" (We don't know who this lady is, but she was one of the many photographing Lombard Street!)

And this one, my favourite, which we have unofficially named Reflections of Lombard Street

Now the little guy has got his camera back, he has moved on to learning about the zoom function and use of the flash. Yesterday he also took it further and learned about how the camera connects to the laptop to put the photos on our server! As one who loves to take photos, it's nice to know that he can get back to his experimenting without impinging on my own camera time!

It's fun to see what he captures, often by chance, in that moment when the shutter opens. One might wonder whether more guidance will help or hinder his ability to capture creative images. What do you think?

Tech Tips Tuesday

This Week's Tip: Photo Fun
For some quick fun with photo effects, Photo Funia is the place to be. It's very easy to use and the kids LOVE it! Why not create a moon scene display board and get your students to put themselves in a spacesuit? Students can put their face on money, or wanted posters and see themselves as Jedi masters. I got a bit carried away with this, making myself a cupid, Mona Lisa, Marilyn Monroe and body builder. My students said: "Mrs Ryder, you seem to be having too much fun with this!"

Preparation:
Take a photo of all of your students in good light and save these to a location that is easy for students to access. (Files need to be less than 8MB). Ensure that the website is not blocked in your school.

Lesson:

1. Students go to the website: http://photofunia.com/effects/
2. They select the desired effect.
3. THEY SELECT NOT TO HAVE THEIR PHOTO ADDED TO THE FACES SECTION OF THE WEBSITE (Some effects say this will not happen, others require students to tick the box).
4. They choose the image they would like to upload and wait for their picture to be created.
5. They then choose to save the image to an appropriate location (their folder).
6. Students can then print the image from this folder or use the file in other multimedia products

SO MUCH FUN!!

Update: Please be warned that from time to time, inappropriate scenes may be included in the effects. Use at your own discretion.

Tech Tips Tuesday

This Week's Tip - Experience the World Without Leaving the Classroom

Today I would like to share with you another great resource for educational videos and photographs. Explore has three main goals:

• to champion the selfless acts of others
• to create a portal into the soul of humanity, and
• to inspire lifelong learning

The videos are short and captivating. They shed light on life beyond the classroom walls and explore the experiences of people around the world. These snapshots spark interest and lead to further questions about the world and its people.

The resources on this site are categorised both by topic and by country, making it easy to filter for the materials you need. As long as they're not blocked at my school, I can see myself using these with students during those transition periods while I wait for students to pack up and come to the floor for the next activity.

They would also fit nicely into units of work on culture, animals, the environment, and music.

Tech Tips Tuesday

This Week's Tip: Explore the Galaxy

I am really excited about this week's tip and I'm hoping you won't have already heard about it, as it's been passed around in my Personal Learning Network (PLN) quite a bit this week. (From Silvia Tolisano on Twitter, to Paul Hamilton's Blog, to Teachers Love SMART Boards, to you! Will you pass it on as well?)

Tag Galaxy brings tagging to life and makes searching through Flickr photos fun. It's too hard to explain in written words so I made a little demo video for you. Please check it out and explore Tag Galaxy for yourself.



For more Tech Tips, click here.

Walk Safely To School Day

Today was Walk Safely to School Day, so I decided do participate by walking the 7 kms from my house. It was an awesome day for it, and I enjoyed catching up on my RSS feed and taking photos along the way...

Tech Tips Tuesday

This week's tip: Embedding your Photos with Ease

I've been using Blogger for a few years now (including my first blog New York, New York) and while I love it most of the time, I find it very frustrating when I want to add more than one picture. All the formatting gets messed up and I spend a good half-hour just trying to get the pictures to work for me.

On the weekend I wanted to upload photos taken at the Sculpture Garden of the National Gallery of Australia, and rather than go through the struggle again, I decided to give Flickr the chance to solve all my problems! I uploaded my photos to my Flickr account and stored them all in the same set.

To embed the photos as a slideshow:

1. Click on the set.
2. View photos as slideshow by clicking the little slideshow image
3. After viewing the show, click the share option that comes up when you move your mouse over the picture OR While viewing, click the share option that comes up in the top right-hand corner when you move your mouse there.
4. Copy the embed code and insert it into the html for your blog or website.

I was really happy with how easily this could be done and with how nicely it presents on the page. (I also like what I did with Jing today - check out those cool red arrows!)

Thanks for popping by today!

Tech Tips Tuesday

This Week's Tip: Take Note of the Beauty Around You

With all the buzz and hype of Web 2.0 - developing a PLN, connecting online, and finding open education resources - I sometimes find that I haven't managed to leave the house all day. I've been so busy doing 'stuff' online that I couldn't tell you whether there was a gentle breeze blowing, or whether the roses are blooming, or the colours in the sunset. Tonight I took my dog for a walk. I looked at the ants crawling up the bark on the trees. I noticed the sun setting over the mountain ranges. And it really is beautiful. So my tech tip this week is to take note of the beauty around you. Capture it, if you can, and share it.

Someone who does this particularly well is Tony Farley. Tony has created some marvellous videos of Beautiful Places in High Definition. The images are breathtaking and the narrative well thought out. Tony gives a description of the place and its history. He then gives you a moment of silence to experience the place for yourself. Tony finishes up with a poem carefully matched to the place he is visiting. Watching these videos is the next best thing to visiting the places in person. The quality of the filming is a visual delight. To view these for yourself, you can watch them streamed from the website or subscribe and download them through iTunes.

I plan to introduce these films to my students early in the school year. I will then get them thinking and talking about local nature areas within walking distance of the school. We will travel to these places, record the area through video, still photos and audio recordings. Students may choose to respond further through researching the area, and recording their thoughts or reflections in poetry. The images and narrative can then be combined through Photostory 3 or Movie Maker. To take it even further, I will help my students to develop a wikispace to share their reflections with others. We can open it up to other people in our school community who also enjoy this local natural environment.

Another suggestion (for those who cannot work with local natural environments) is to encourage students to connect Creative Commons pictures to poetry written by others or to create poems of their own to go with the images. I have done this with Kindergarten in the past - writing haiku poems about images from cut-up nature calendars. I've also done it with Year 3 by running a slideshow of images for students to select from and write a poem about.

I guess my main message this week is not to ignore the beautiful world we live in but rather to cherish and absorb it.

Tech Tips Tuesday

This week's tip: Make good use of your digital camera

I have an excellent camera that I keep with me to use throughout the school day and at home. It's a Kodak Easy Share DX7590 that I bought a few years ago, so I'm not sure what the equivalent is today. It has an automatic setting, but also allows for a range of manual options. It can also record short videos as .MOV files.

When I first began using my camera I tended to use it mostly for special occasions. I took the photos, but often that was where they stayed - as a file on a computer. This week, I'd like to share some suggestions for how you can get photos working for you in the classroom. This post is by no means definitive so please share your ideas in the comments.

Build a sense of community with photos of students

Early in the year I take photographs of my students and get them up around the room often as labels. When students see photos of themselves in their classroom they feel a sense of belonging. These photos come in handy for other purposes throughout the year. With young students I have created "Who am I?" classbooks where students write a few clues about themselves at the top of the page and glue their photo with a flap covering it at the bottom of the page. These pages are then compiled into a book. The same photo can also be used for the covers of "Star of the Week" books, a goal wall and portfolio cover pages.

Take photographs of students as they work and learn

Sometimes you notice new things about your students as you take photographs of them as they work. Looking through a frame helps you to zone in on that particular child and block out other distractions. These photographs can help you to reflect on how students are progressing with their development. They also provide visible evidence that can be shared with parents during discussions.

I particularly like to use the video function of my camera to capture students when they work cooperatively in groups. It is interesting to review these later to see how each person participates in the task. I'm often impressed by the sort of language I hear my students using as they work together to solve problems.

These photos and videos can be shared with the school community through a newsletter or added to the class blog or school website.

Take photographs of students as they play and share fun times with friends

I take lots of photos of the fun experiences we have throughout the year. These events often create positive emotions for students and the photos help students to relive these experiences. Collections of these photographs can be made into a Photo Story or Movie or viewed as a slideshow throughout the year. I received a digital photo frame for Christmas which I plan to use to play photos of the students throughout the day. (As a side note: Today I learnt how to pixelate faces with Gimp!)

Take photographs of student work to discuss as part of a lesson

Photographing is a great way of capturing the hands-on experiences of students during a Maths lesson. I took my class out to the playground to explore the concept of position - under, over, between, through etc. The students posed for photos in a position on the playground. I then printed them out straight away and we made labels to go with the images eg. "Hannah is between the bars".

Another time students worked in groups to make buildings out of 3D shape blocks. I took photos of the buildings and then put the images up on the interactive whiteboard for discussion. Students named the different 3D shapes that had been used. This allowed for everyone to have a good view of the buildings without the issues of students crowding the building or blocking someone's view.

As a spelling lesson, students worked in groups of three to make words with a common rime. As soon as a group had made a word they brought it to me and had their photo taken. They then went off to make another word. We then used the digital images to review the words and select spelling words for the week. (Faces are cropped her for privacy but were present in class activities).

Take photographs during excursions, special school events and cooking sessions

Photographs help to aid memory when students sit down to write. If you want students to write a recount of a special event photographs are a great visual aid to assist with ordering the events and including details. When writing a procedure they provide additional visual information which may be difficult to explain in words. These recounts could be made into a PowerPoint slideshow, Photostory or movie and shared with the school community online.

Capture moments of interest to share in class

If you have a camera with you when you're out and about (even as an application on your phone) you can be on the lookout for images that will interest your students. I have captured rainbows, dragonflies, cockatoos and hot air balloons to discuss with students in class. This is a great way of bringing science into the classroom without a lot of fuss. It also provides the opportunity to show how science relates to real world experiences.

Take photos for students to use in their artwork

Students can create multi-media artworks including photographs of themselves as the subject. I have seen classes where a photograph was taken and cut along the line of symmetry. Students then drew in the other side of their face.

Recently my students were creating an underwater scene of The Great Barrier Reef. One student asked if we could include a photograph of them pretending to swim as part of the collage. Students lay on the floor and posed for photos which were easily printed and included in the artwork.

Take photos of students with their parents at the school

When we have a learning journey at our school I keep out the camera to take photos of students with their parents as they demonstrate their learning. You can capture some really lovely moments during this time. These photos also remind students about their parents' interest in their learning.

Tech Tips Tuesday

I've been struggling over the last couple of days, trying to work out what to give you as a tip today. There's the USB TV tuner I bought the other day, which has been providing me with television - but that's not much use unless you need TV, and I'm not satisfied enough with one of the connector pieces to recommend the particular brand I bought. In fact, I'm tossing up whether to take it back to the shop - and fight the last-minute Christmas shopping crowds.

Then there's a cool painting program that was recommended to me by @teachernz on Twitter. It's called ArtRage 2.5 (the free version) and makes for a fun play with paint without all the usual mess associated with painting. This picture is my attempt at playing with paint this morning. See how paint like it is? It 'runs out' when you haven't 're-dipped' the brush and mixes with colours you paint over.

But what I really want to give you this close to Christmas, is something you don't have to install, or spend money on, or give a lot of thought to. Something simple and useful that you can come back to once the Christmas dust has settled.

This week's tip: Flickr in the Art Lesson

Often when teaching an art lesson, I want to provide my students with visual inspiration while they work. I've done this in the past with posters, photo books, or objects. Earlier this year I started accessing Google Images for relevant pictures to help students get ideas. The problem I found with this was that I had to click through the pages, or pull photos onto a slideshow prior to the lesson.

Later in the year, I discovered how Flickr could work for me. Simply type in the search item eg. 'geckos' and up comes all the relevant photos and videos. Click on the slideshow icon on the top right, and it will play through all the images. I can now set the slideshow going on the interactive whiteboard while students work at their desks, and if it comes to the end, one of the kids jumps up and sets it going again. You can set the slideshow to go at a pace you want, and if you want to pause it at any time you can. There are also descriptions written by the photographer that may add more information to the topic you are covering. A couple of my students found these photographs really engaging and created quite detailed artwork as a result.