In an effort to kickstart this stalled blog I’m going to take a leaf out of the books of @dajbelshaw, @jukesie and @sboneham and do weeknotes, summaries of what I achieved, learnt, reflected on etc. that week. I’ll hopefully publish it every Friday.
They will get better…promise! 
Follow Doug, Steve and Matt’s weeknotes.
Pecha Kucha’s
At the Netskills planning meeting last week we all had to do a 5 minute presentation on a topic of our choice. Particularly enjoyed @carlvincent’s on agile project development (going to use this model to develop my next workshop) and @sboneham’s on the convergence of internet of things, web3.0 and mobile usage, although all of them were interesting and enjoyable. I tried to explain “slicing” as a way of assessing reflective learning through the use of Play-Doh (need a full blog post to demonstrate this). What did I learn?
- It’s liberating doing a presentation without any form of technology other than pens, a flipchart and cutlery.
- Be careful not to rely too much on a quirky visual hook, spend as much time on getting the verbal explanation right as well. It can also be distracting.
- 5 minutes is not a long time, pick a topic that you can comfortably cover in the time.
- If I’m anxious about a presentation it tends to go better than if I’m quietly confident. This is annoying!
- I’m my own worst critic. It probably didn’t go as badly as it did in my brain.
Augmented Reality
Thanks to Steve’s quick presentation I’m going to investigate spatial tools for a possible workshop/set of resources. I had a go using a range of tools over the week:
Hoppala – requires you to set up a of developer account on Layar and quite fiddly for non-specialists
Junaio – a much quicker route to sharing information about places to a network of friends.
Wikitude – the app I’d heard most about but I’m quite disappointed by, mainly because it doesn’t remember my settings and keeps crashing.
A full blog post will be forthcoming shortly but my overall impression was that the tools are still pretty crude. The second and third generations will be much more interesting especially if Google Goggles is as good as people suggest (please can we have it for the iPhone now!).
New workshops
Netskills is running a season of workshops in Newcastle and London in October and November. I’ve been writing the new one on Digital Storytelling and adapting the workshop on Blogging and Social Networking and Supporting the Student Learner Experience (not advertised yet) so they fit better with where technology is now. Really looking forward to getting these on the road.
Doug Belshaw’s Google Earth site
In preparation for the Google Teacher Academy UK’s launch, Doug asked for help compiling a site with guidance on using Google Earth for education. Being a geographer and interested in the tools I said yes. Doug’s done a huge amount really quickly and I’ve only added a little bit to the Advanced Use section. It’s a really useful resource for anyone interested in making the most of this fantastic application. Please contribute as well.
I had a wee word with myself about signing up to get involved in things and then not actually contributing. With so many collaborative projects and requests for help out there, there’s a risk of getting all keen, signing up and then not following through on commitments. I want to avoid becoming one of those people.
Diigo
As I’m using Diigo much more now for bookmarking and sharing stuff I’ve set it up to auto post new additions to my library on this blog every Sunday. I think this will be a further incentive to use social bookmarking more constructively.
I’ve also been setting up a series of “lists” on different subjects. Here’s my collection of links on Digital Storytelling. Check out the rest of my Diigo Library.
FOTiE 2010
I’ve not been doing a lot of horizon scanning recently so I signed up to go to the Future of Technology in Education conference in London on 1st October. I’m really looking forward to this as it seems to carry quite a buzz with it.
It’ll be great to finally hear Ollie Bray, James Clay, Miles Berry and Matt Lingard, all of whom I follow on Twitter but have never actually heard speak.
Of particular interest is James Alliban and Miles Metcalffe who are doing 2 20 minutes slots on AR and Geolocation (see above).
Steve and Will from Netskills will also be there. Come say hi!
And on a personal note…
We need a holiday Chez Chalk! It’s 4 months ince we came to Newcastle and we’ve not really had a proper break. Both Chalklets (elder and younger) seem to be at the end of their tether but they’ve been through such a massive change and dealt with all mummy and daddy’s wobbles remarkably well. They’re still my inspiration.
We failed to complete on the purchase of our house on Monday (someone else’s solicitors at fault) but we should be moving next Monday. One week either way isn’t going to make much difference in the grand scheme of things although I was a little repressed ball of fury in the office on Monday. Sorry, m’colleagues! 
After all that, I’m still thrilled to be in Newcastle.
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