Though the Food Programme interview ballet dancers, nutritionists and physios at the Royal Ballet the lesson I took from the programme would apply to any age group athlete who needs to treat their body as a 'temple'. Uploaded to Planet eStream I cut two versions of the original transmission for relevance and length. I particularly liked the way food was referred to as a 'fuel' and how particular dietary habits were for the ballet dancers who had to cope with the rigours of training and multiple gruelling performances.
Personal Blogs
This morning I have gone through an older broadcast with Melvyn Bragg on the history of coffee.
https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/m000c4x1
These things I gather up serendipitously in the car then dig out on Planet eStream to make available on he college network. Also readily available on BBC Sounds.
Having shot a few short video interviews, and having had others sent to me some 5 were duly edited on Planet eStream and shared to view. Then further edited and from two interviews only 2 clips selected. I hope.
All to go into a Boardroom PowerPoint presentation.
Adding a Planet eStream plugin to PowerPoint appeared like an effort to crawl through barbed wire. Instead I downloaded the two clips and these can simply be embedded in the PowerPoint.
I go by the adage if it can go wrong it will go wong.
A successful day in JV's world of TEL. 2 1/2 hours with a SEND student and his Support Assistant clicking through 360 tours of the GB MET sites. It was wonderful to share his enthusiasms and to look at ways to follow this up by involving him in creations and additions to these.
An easy win too with Planet eStream, changing a student schema to a staff and uploading 4 campus shot interviews as 'College Network' and 'Staff Only' and made readily viewable in one place with the ability to add to these any variety of links or further content.
All this and as I complete three months doing the Social Media for Lewes Green Party I put up a piece linking to 'More or Less' on the Election in which the money raised by different parties is measured in time to count out a stash of £10 notes. No guessing for which parties come out of top. I was surprised to find the Green Party were ahead of the Scottish National Party though.
Should politicians be able to buy our votes in this way?
Ruth Alexander, BBC 4, imagined how long it would take to count the cash received by each political party at the rate of £10 note every sec:
1/4hr: SNP
4 hr 20 mns: Green
24 hrs: LibDems
3 days: Brexit party
5 days: Labour Donation
2 Wks: Conservatives
The easiestthing in the world in 2019 to shoot an interview and get it online. Not so. I shoot on an iPad. Easy. I manage without an external microphone as that requires as special cable. Getting this 5 mins clip from an ipad to a PC proves a nightmare: not via USB cable, not by email or dropbox. Eventually I use iCloud and transfer 'drag and drop' style.
Then where to edit and how to share?
We use Planet eStream as our College Network so that is where I put it. But it comes out like this:
A couple of hours later the video has been upload as 'Mobile Video' - it is the right way up, but now when I try to load it into the editor nothign happens.
I revert to YouTube. This is easy to upload. I then go into the editor and am hit with the unfamiliar. I have a stab at it. All it do is trim of the opening 6 seconds .... and I am told it could take 24 hours for the edit to go through
So much for simplicity.
Despite being a 'Learning Technologist' I put myself on the creative and instructional design side of elearning rather than the IT side of things. I don't take well to learning new platforms - but have to. My greatest motivation and drive is where I have a project goal that requires the software.
Today I have added a plugin to Wordpress which allows me to add 360° images.
Here are a few shots I took at Lewes Late Night Shopping last night.
The win is to be able to say to 'Creative Industries' here at GB MET who use Wordpress to create portfolios of their work that they can now include in these 360°shots too.
In this age where an educator must do everything themselves or it does not get done at all I am trying to master Google Forms in order to create formative quizzes.
Here goes:
A quick quiz to gauge your basic knowledge > WWI
Cerating a series of 360 Tours for SEND students is one thing - providing the level of detail that will support their curiosity and interest is another. With reading, though not understanding, often the issues, wherever possible Immerserive Reader is used on text.
https://www.thinglink.com/video/1246837831456784385
https://www.oltinternational.net/our-courses
Their UK base is a short walk from my college so meetings are easy to organise. The intention is to develop a project where we could work collaboratively. Say to do with Independent Travel Training.
We met at The TES SEND Exhibition in London last month
An hour of sharing background and ideas regarding SEND tutor support and the potential for creating content for SEND students.
Shared ideas on:
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Independent Travel Training
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LRC induction
-
How to use a cash machine
Their tutor training products include:
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Attachment and Trauma
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Autism Spectrum Disorder
-
Dyslexia
-
Learning Strategies
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Hearing Impairment
-
Hearing Impairment (FE)
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Motor Coordination Difficulties
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Multi-Sensory Impairment
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Speech, Language and Communication Needs
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Supporting Wellbeing and Mental Health in School
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Understanding and Supporting Behaviour
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Vision Impairment
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Vision Impairment (Further Education)
Available here: https://www.oltinternational.net/our-courses
I fear that being required and assessed for mastery is the go to position too often. It doesn't result in buy in, or useful application of skills to solving learning problems.
Ha! if it isn't during a teacher's sessional hours when the stdents are on holiday the training won't happen. And in the holidays they are not paid to come in. So what is the incentive to learn new tech skills other than for personal satisfaction, curiosity and ambition?
Just in Time Support for Teachers
What's in a name? Twice the salary. A consultant rather than some kind of IT or Tech guy.
Learning Technologist
Tech Coach
Instructional technology coach
elearning Consultant
Guru
These seems like a sensible approach - if you can even get their attention once a week for 15 minutes !
Many schools are seeking out ways to support teachers with this shift in mindset. Popular support models include:
- Coaching model, where teachers work one on one with colleagues for lesson planning, technology skill building, and demo lessons. Large group workshops are held for entire school or district faculties.
- Trainer of trainers model, where selected teachers receive specialized training with the expectation they will train their fellow colleagues.
- Early adopters model, where early adopters of technology share best practices at any opportunity.
We have gone exclusively down the Trainer of trainers model - and not being hugely successful. As a Learning Technologist I am see as the early adopter. The regime and the way people are employed on a 'sessional basis' makes it difficult to bring teachers/tutors/profs in for training for the time it takes to get them up to speed and confident, let alone providing time to develop suitable materials.
I don't like to spend too long learning a new task - 45 minutes for a 'single period' or '90 minutes for a double' class if I remember.
This is the case today as I skip between laerning H5P and parts of Google Educator 2 from blogging to YouTube. Here my efforts to have a go at livestreaming via my YouTube Channel are scuppered.
Anything can be postponed when there is no deadline to get this done.
I'm moving on to take the Google Educator Level 2 certificate - because I have failed twice to pass Level 1. They are different things. Both cover very familiar ground, but for me there is something overly finickity about Google Educator Level 1 that I can never get.
Of course, it isn't me who needs this knowledge, it is our eductors, our tutors and teachers. I cannot take it for them. I cannot create their coursework for them either. I can support them, but they have to come to the party ready to play.
I've attended very few of these over the years as I have been freelance for much of the last 30 years. My fisrt Christmas Party was with JWT the London Advertising Agency - in the Dorchester. There's been nothing bigger than that since. These days its booking out the pub.
Still, this one is on 12th December. I've declined being an official observer during the count for Lewes District at the Lewes Leisure Centre, and have the 13th off too. So I can drink and dance, take the train home, oggle at the results all night as the come in and recover the following day.
Or, given the way it is going, sulk for the rest of 2019 and plan how my wife and I can move back to France where the children already live and work.
What's not to worry about?
Friday 13th December
Mass starvation
Mass extinction
Catastrophic weather events
Authoritarian Government
World War III
No future for our kids
Wealth in the hands of too few
The Crown series II spells the end of the Royal Family - its a dirge which paints a poor picture of the Queen.
Meanwhile I'm stitching together a 360 tour for SEND students to make the journey from College to McDonalds (or Greggs) and by way of contrast a 360 tour of the German Cemetery at Langemark.
It's all joined up - from College, via three pelican crossing, a bus and a pedestrianised zone with mized traffic use to one of the student's favourite destinations - Greggs!
This will have a collection of 360 images linked together with close ups of key parts of the journey, such as the Pelican Crossing request button and the Red and Green Man, the electronic guide to when a bus is due, then on the bus using a swipe card, taking your seat, and knowing when to press the Stop Button before getting off. Then navigating the street in the right direction towards the planned destination. This might be Greggs, but can also be McDonalds.
Feargal Sharkey, Environmentalist and erstwhile front man musician, talks watervoles and chalk stream ecosystems and their demise.
It matters to make a difference. My goal is to create elearning that meets a need or tackles a problem NOT to indulge a person, department or institution by creating sexy creations which many bells and interactive whistles that achieves nothing.
Working with Special Education Needs & Disability Students could not be more sharply and clearly defined as making a difference - and in a digital environment where many of them feel confident.
Working in education the ever present pressure though is on resources: financial and human. We cannot and could not operate as an agency taking a brief, calculating needs and costs and schedulnig the work load for a team of people to then research, write and execute.
Here I have to make do being a 'Jack of All Trades' and work around the limited availabiity of teachers.
Courtesy of Stagecoach I got on a bus to take a series of 360 images that will then be stitched together into a clickable 'Tour' for Special Educational Needs students' Independent Travel Training.
This will shortly have sets of clickable tags, a video clip and hotspot and perhaps a simple quiz.
It's official ! I know my stuff. I can use all the tools and teach others how to use it too.
ThingLink Certified Educators are asked to complete several expertise modules as part of the certification process. The educators are required to complete 5 modules using all ThingLink features and share their work.
At the 2019 Armistice Day ceremony at the Cenotaph yesterday organised by The Western Front Association and now in its 25th year, Cerys Matthews read from Dylan Thomas's poem 'And death shall have no dominion'.
> VIDEO : http://bit.ly/33zVPAB
I am the Digital Editor for The Western Front Association - the website, social media and newsletters are my responsibility. I took an MA in British History and the First World War to get my head into the subject and to justify my position. I could spend a lifetime researching the topic.
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