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Tech Coach rather than Learning Technologist

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Edited by Jonathan Vernon, Monday, 25 Nov 2019, 14:53

 

Google Teacher Center

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

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One tip, one lesson idea, one week at a time.

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

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How to develop an elearning culture - from Google

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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. 

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Forever the Schoolboy

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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. 

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Google Educator Level 2

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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. 

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The 'Office' Party

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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. 

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If only it were this simple - I'm a worrier !

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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. 

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SEND Independent Travel Training

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Edited by Jonathan Vernon, Monday, 18 Nov 2019, 14:33

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. 

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Here's one I made earlier: Thinglink tour of Music & Music Technology at GB MET

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https://www.thinglink.com/mediacard/1150051487406096387 

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Some fun: Adding images to 'Costing the Eart: Dry me a river'

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Feargal Sharkey, Environmentalist and erstwhile front man musician, talks watervoles and chalk stream ecosystems and their demise.

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What matters?

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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.

 

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All Aboard !

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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. 

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Thinglink Certified Educator

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Edited by Jonathan Vernon, Friday, 15 Nov 2019, 14:07

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.

 

https://demo.thinglink.com/thinglink-certified-educator-registration?hsCtaTracking=24f65307-0ea6-45f0-852a-6f545cc5e210%7C6e395fe5-e2fc-42f5-8f70-c9663abbf088 

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The 25th Anniversary of the revival of the Armistice Day Ceremony

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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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Not Time to Study Because I'm used to filling my time with Studying

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What happens when you add a degree to you day job / life is that you get to a certain kind of freneticism, of always having something to think about and to write about.

So I have filled time left by the vaccuum of a Masters Degree with; Digital Editor for an educational charity (The Western Front Association), Head Coach of a swimming club (Hailsham SC), and a Town Councillor (Green Party, Lewes) and assorted hobbies. 

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Heading out to take a series of 360 images

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Delighted that Stagecoach have been so supportive in my efforts to create an interactive 'Independent Travel Tour' for SEND students. They are not only OK with my taknig photos on the bus (just speak to the driver), but also offered to lay on a bus at the depot.

McDonald's, the favourite destination of the students, were good too.

A set of 360 clickable images in a 'Tour' will then taken the students from the college, across a couple of roads, to the bus stop, onto a bus, into town and through the shopping mall to McDonald's - and then back again!

I'll share the link here > 

All to be shot on a Ricoh Theta SC and stitched together on ThingLink. 

 

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So east to add enriching elements like sound and video

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Edited by Jonathan Vernon, Monday, 4 Nov 2019, 15:24

 

 

https://www.thinglink.com/video/1244292101298978817

This is a piece of voice over recorded by one of our performing arts students

There are also simply video clips on how to swipe in and out of the centre, and how to login to a computer

https://www.thinglink.com/video/1244289378725920769

The idea is that anyone will find it easy to create interactive 360 tours such as this for all kinds of different reasons. 

Where do you think the applications are going to be most powerful? 

 

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Skype with the Creator/Owner CEO of ThingLink

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Edited by Jonathan Vernon, Friday, 1 Nov 2019, 12:25

‘Beautiful images’ said CEO of ThingLink, Ulla Maaria Koivula

I had a delightful exchange with Ulla Maaria Koivual the Creator and CEO of the burgeoning interactivities platform ThingLink this morning. 

Being in Helsinki and over from the US she can more easily take up a Skype call. Otherwise this would have been late evening last night for her, breakfast for me.

I told my story, in part, with the ThingLink platform over the last 18 months. I couldn't honestly remember why or how I ended up trialing ThingLink. We had one 360 camera, bought a couple more and I started to take images. Then we looked for a host platform and tried more than one. At some point, probably because of an email making positive noises from ThingLink we got a free trial that was extended many times. Breaching some parameters summer 2018 when we got a lot of visitors I had to beg to keep us online until I pushed through a tiny spend shared between Learning Resource and Met Marketing. They were happy to oblige - keen to see the platform being used. 

I shared how interest in the platform would wax and wane and how I try to sell myself to tutors as their very own agency and support and facilitor. I offered reasons why something is not followed through: students back from holidays, curriculum and time pressures ...

I gushed about the recent upgrades:

Ease of creating a 360 tour with Thumbnails

Ease of adding text and massive plus for Immersive Reader for accessibility reasons.

And just added, on the fly, a bit of audio yesterday (this to a video clip of hands pressing the Ctrl, Alt an Delete keys at a computer keyboard.

Nervously I dug out on the fly the gmail sign ins for Marketing and for Learning and Ulla was immediately able to see what I was doing, the plan we are on and much more besides I am sure. 

I introduced GB MET and the advantages of being a vocational college covering things such as: construction, carpentry, aeronautics, motor vehicle workshops, performing arts, theatre, props and special effects, textiles, fine art and fashion and so on. 

Ulla, coming from a teacher background some eons ago - maybe 10 years I think,  wants the platform used in the classroom for collaborative project learning. Later I explained to someone how I saw this happening, say a trip behind the scenes at Glyndbourne with students taking images then tagging and annotating what they saw as a project to submit as course work. Then the act of doing this work itself embeds and ingrains the knowledge they have created and thought (and fought) over. 

My experience qualifies me as a Educator. I go beyond meeting the basic criteria. Am I the first person in the UK to gain this recognotion? 

Possibly!

It is hoped that I will be able to attend Bett Jan 23 to 26th in London and that some of the work I have created for GB MET will be showcased.

I joined the ThingLink Facebook  Educators to be part of the community of active users.

 

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So easy and intuative

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Edited by Jonathan Vernon, Thursday, 31 Oct 2019, 12:57

Using ThingLink to create a simple, clickable, 360° tour of the Learning Resource Centre (LRC) at one of our 5 sites at GB MET for SEND students (Special Educational Needs and Disabilities) I simply shot this clip on an iPad, which uploaded to my Google Photos album. I could have edited but had no need to do so. Labelled and downloaded I simply added the clip which can play on a loop until the user clicks away. I clicked on a microphone 'audio' button and added a simple commentary and we're done.

What I did find however, is that using the text box with a video clip sees the clip severely cropped. Next time I will also shot some far wider frames, possibly with a bias to the right hand side of the frame, so that the automatic cropping complements the video playback rather than rendering it useless - It is hardly good practice to show someone the need to press the Ctlr, Alt and Delete buttons together if you can only see one button. The SEND students I am advised have the mental age of children under the age of 10. 

Here's the link to this frame : https://www.thinglink.com/video/1244289378725920769 


What do you think?

How might these be used?

Health & Safety training and tours of college workshops?

Visits to distance building sites?

Underwater interactive tours of underwater cave systems?

What happens if you shrink to the size of a pea and are then accidentally swallowed? 

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Creating e-learning for SEND Students

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Edited by Jonathan Vernon, Wednesday, 30 Oct 2019, 10:11

Now that the development phase is passing into review, first with an SEND tutor and then with SEND studens themselves I am learning:

    • Value of Video Demo: signing in to a the resource centre, logging in to a computer.

    • Importance of talking them through things we may take for granted.  

    • Pick out key things, in this case opening and closing times.
    • Add a quiz to this to give it emphasis and to engage them.
    • Tell them often. They love repetition and will return regularly to something for a reminder
  • As Immersive Reader provides, best to have text on blue, yellow or green background and use Comic Sans as their favoured font as it is less 'harsh' than others.

  • Not all have Smartphones, say 5 out of 14 have no phone. 

  • 360 headsets would be fun to use if we had them, but proper ones!

  • 85% are auditory, or visual/auditory learners

    • Though my learning from the OU is that these learning preference categories are a nonsence unfounded in any science. Rather in this instance it is a medical aid surely? Someone who cannot see, or cannot hear will have a preference away from seeing or hearing - naturally, with it having nothing to do with learning.

I am delighted to share this with the OU community and my followers. Thoughts and comments please!

I was delighted with the course tutor's response, though I'm mostly awaiting for a response from a number of the SEND students themselves. It has to work for them, and be adjusted, even reinvented so as to appeal to and to work for them!

https://www.thinglink.com/mediacard/1244284378704510977  

“Slick, professional … and a lot of clicking which they will love!”

 

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ThingLink tour of Learning Resource Centre for SEND Students using Immersive Reader

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The breakthrough over recent months is the ease to create one of these tours. Here the added benefit is text that can be read by Microsoft's Immersive Reader -  this makes accessibility possible with the user in charge over fonts, backgrounds and the way in which the text is read out.

Give it a go! Provide feedback. The tutor for our Special Educational Needs Students has given a resounding thumbgs up. It's the opportunity to click on lots of things, and to repeat peices they keep forgetting without having to forever ask for help (or not).

A few things yet to add and the approach will be developed once I am siting down with the students themselves to see how they respond.

https://www.thinglink.com/mediacard/1244284378704510977

 

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Kitting up to shoot video 12 Must haves

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Edited by Jonathan Vernon, Monday, 28 Oct 2019, 13:44

Video Production Kit

  1. PC with video card, RAM and screens

  2. Full HD camera with Manual 

  3. Memory - lots of cards

  4. Filters - for shallow depth of field

  5. Fluid head tripod e.g. Manfroto 501 

  6. Sound Recorder and Sound Recording Production  - Tascam or Zoom HR4N

  7. Headphones

  8. External microphone - e.g. shot mic AT83JB 

  9. Mic stand boom pole

  10. Lighting & Disk Reflector

  11. Editing Software like Hit Film Express or Adobe Pro 

  12. External hard drive

And some skill at framing, interviewing, planning, manual settings, light and sound, uploading, manipulating and editing ... 

https://youtu.be/E61zIyOM6ls

 

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Need an introduction to an easy to use interactivities tool ?

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This is ThingLink. Staring out as a tool for adding some interactivity to a 2d image now it embraces 360 images and 360 video and everything in between. You can add text and images, video clips and clinks. Text is now accessibility compliant was it works with Microsoft Immersive Reader.

I'm in a conference call with its creator and CEO Ulla Maaria Koivula and the head of development Ivan Kiprin on Friday to talk about their newly launched, or to be developed 'ThingLink Eductor' accreditation.

 

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New blog post

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Edited by Jonathan Vernon, Friday, 25 Oct 2019, 13:52

The idea is that musicians from around the globe perform one of three pieces, in advance, or on the day, the afternoon of Remembrance Sunday, before 3:00pm and put it online.

I've not sight read a pieces of music in over forty years, so I may struggle! And I don't have my flute anymore either. Once upon a time I played in a school orchestra and a school brass band. Those weren't the days.

You can get all  the details here: http://bit.ly/Play4Peace2019 

 

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The Digital Human

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I love this Digital Human. Great show. 

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