Personal Blogs

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.

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.

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. 

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 

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:

• Independent Travel Training

• LRC induction

• How to use a cash machine

Their tutor training products include:

• Attachment and Trauma

• Autism Spectrum Disorder

• Dyslexia

• Learning Strategies

• Hearing Impairment

• Hearing Impairment (FE)

• Motor Coordination Difficulties

• Multi-Sensory Impairment

• Speech, Language and Communication Needs

• Supporting Wellbeing and Mental Health in School

• Understanding and Supporting Behaviour

• Vision Impairment

• Vision Impairment (Further Education)

Available here: https://www.oltinternational.net/our-courses 

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 

These seems like a sensible approach - if you can even get their attention once a week for 15 minutes ! 

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'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. 

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.

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. 

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.