CC Image - Brendan Wilkinson - A-NC-ND

I’m going all gooey about AudioBoo at the moment. It’s sat around in the perpiphery of my vision for a while now but in the last month or so I’ve started to see it as a really useful addition to my network of tools, especially now I’m a JesusPhone user.

If you’re not familiar with AudioBoo have a look at their site and check out the video intro.

Here’s why I’m gushing:

It’s simple – Using the iPhone you can go from recording to publishing in a matter of clicks. The audio record function allows you to pause during recording and append. It won’t allow you to chop your audio around in an Audacity stylee but adding too much functionality would get in the way of the simplicity. I can live with that.

It’s social – There aren’t as many people using AudioBoo as Twitter, for example, but it still has the same mechanisms for following and you can also comment on Boos bringing your network in on the act.

It’s fun – Sound is overlooked, I think, but still plays a massive part in our lives. I love the idea of taking sound snapshots and sharing them. Listening forces you to take things more slowly and experience the world differently.

It’s mobile – I’m surprised by the quality of the audio you get from recording on an iPhone (none of that compressed MP3 gurgle you get with many online audio recorders). The fact that it’s mobile means that you can record your thoughts regardless of location and allows you to easily bring in other sounds and voices where hulking round large amounts of equipment or dragging someone near a laptop aren’t feasible. I find it really useful for reflecting on conferences or other events where I’m likely to be on the move or in a hotel room immediately after. The iPhoen’s great but trying to type an extended blog post on it would make me want to cry. It also helps you to capture serendipitous bits of discovery or random thought in awkward places bringing informal and formal learning together.

It’s personal – Hearing someone’s voice, especially when they’re speaking conversationally and not off a script is a great way of feeling your getting closer to someone. It gives you more clues about emotion and personality than you would get from written text.

It’s spatial – As a failed geographer I still love the idea of landscape and space and I’ve done work with schools before where students have captured sounds in a location and then mashed them together in Audacity to create soundscapes. AudioBoo geotags your recordings but it will also let you export your recordings as mp3 for use elsewhere (see handy tip)

It’s connected – Boos are public, sharable, embeddable and you can link to other apps like Twitter, Facebook to get your recordings out to your network quickly and easily. Adding a hashtag into an AudioBoo title when you’re linked to Twitter automatically hastags the Tweet which saves retweeting later.

Oh, yes. It’s free!

As a learning tool it’s something powerful to include in the arsenal for capturing formal and informal experiences and introducing a sense of play into things.n I’m going to be investigating more about the possible applications of digital storytelling in FE and HE soon and AudioBoo is likely to figure quite prominently.

You can listen to my Boos here. Also check out Doug Belshaw’s Thinking Digital conference chats here.

Right, I’m off to run through a sunny cornfield hand in hand with AudioBoo while recording the pretty birdsong.

CC Image - /Joe on Flickr

I have to be careful not to get too excited when a gizmo lands on the desk for us to evaluate at Sheffield East CLC. Having said that I was really looking forward to getting my hands on the iPod touch after hearing so much from other schools and CLC’s about using them.

I’ve had a few weeks to play with one now, although we haven’t used them with students yet, so I thought I’d capture my initial thoughts as an aide memoire for later. As with most things my opinion is likely to change but at least having this as something to refer back to might be useful.

What the iPod does is documented much better elsewhere so I’m not going to discuss that.My main point is a question, really, based on a conversation I’ve had with my boss. It’s this…

To what extent does the iPod Touch actually contribute to pedagogical change?

I start from the assumption that mobile learning is about transforming how learning happens as well as when and where.

The iPod is a great device for delivering content which is what it was designed for. It’s fun and a breeze to use for listening to podcasts, watching videos, looking at websites etc. It gets a lot harder when you try to actually create stuff and contribute.

Text input is fine for short spells but that gives quite a narrow field of ways of getting students to contribute to their own learning. If you want students to capture audio you’ll need to invest in earphones with built-in mic (which can cost up to £20). There are some nice audio apps (AudioBoo being one) but transferring sound out for use elsewhere can be a pain.

The lack of camera for stills and video is a big miss and would open up the door to myriad possibilities for developing visual literacy.

Also, a browse through the apps store for education titles is pretty uninspiring (although there are exceptions – I hope to do another blog post about some of my faves in the near future). Most are about drill-and-practice skill honing or showing information (sometimes in quite engaging and attractive ways, mind).

I don’t buy the idea that by giving a student a mobile device so they can access delivered content anytime and anywhere makes it a learner-centred experience. You need to maximise opportunities for  the learner to record and reflect on their own experiences and the iPod isn’t quite there yet although it’s a step in the right direction.

They key thing, though is that the device on it’s own isn’t going to be transformative other than perhaps adding novelty or increasing engagement. The learning culture around the device needs to find ways of using its capabilities to allow the learner to create and reflect more easily.

I’m not down on the iPod. I love it as a device. I just think that anyone investigating it as a learning tool should think as much about the environment the iPod will be used in as much as what the machine can do.

What are your thoughts on the iPod? Put me straight if you disagree…

igot-U Tracker

It’s not often I write about bits of kit but I’ve been having a bit of fun with this wee gem for a few days now. The i-gotU tracker has been around for a little while and has previously featured on MerlinJohn but we got our grubby mitts on one last week.

Briefly, it’s a GPS tracker that is about the size of a memory stick that logs your position at roughly 6 second intervals while it’s running.  Get it back to a laptop, plug in the USB cable and with a few clicks it has mapped your route on a Google Maps background.

The really clever bit happens when you take a camera with you. As long as the clock in the camera is set correctly you can upload the pics to the @trip software at the same time as the GPS data and it will add the pics to your route. Text can be added later.

You can make your trips available online or save them in formats that can be viewed on Google Earth. Have a look at the @Trip site for more examples to download.

Shire Brook Valley

Have a look at this example I did last week. There’s a really good nature reserve near us that we have used for projects before (good for industrial heritage, geography, science) and I strapped my boots on, took our trusty EOS450D and pretended I knew what I was doing. Felt like a proper geographer for the first time since uni!

You can easily see applications for this. For starters…

• Field Trips – either you make one before you go to familiarise students with a location/topic or get them to make one after they’ve been.
• Science – Mapping specimens in an ecosystem (e.g. change in plant species on coasts)
• Local history projects
• Maths  – looking at speed, time and distance relationships. (Graphs are available in the @trip software although I don’t think you can export data).
• PE - tracking a cross-country runner or cyclist, comapring the difficulty of routes (it will also show elevation).
• Art - create a photography walk for an art project.

I had one or two little glitches running the software and lost data from one test trip completely but apart from that it’s a dream to use. I like the idea of any kit where the interface is 2 flashing lights and a dirty great button. After our previous nightmares with GPS it was a relief.

The ability to export to a Google Eart KMZ also means that you can combine it with GE’s audio tour function opening up a whole new avenue that I haven’t explored yet.

Have you used the igot-U? Share your experiences, good or bad…

It’s had a bit of interest mainly thanks to the current debate about whether the VLE is starting its death rattle (see Steve Wheeler’s blog for the start of hostilities!).

But I want to inaugurate the D-ed pool with one of our well-intentioned cul-de-sacs; the Siemens Fujitsu EDA.

Hopes were high for this device a few years back, a ruggedised PDA, preloaded with GPS and a host of education-friendly software. We bought a class set with European funding for a local history transition project to use with the excellent Mediascape.

The project was well planned by the local teachers and Sue Finnigan our assistant manager, and it was all going splendidly – until we tried using the EDA’s in the field…

As an idea they were great but design flaws and software problems meant they’ve stayed in the cupboard.  It was little things like:

• the promised class-set charging dock never materialised
• the rubber casing hides the charging light so you can’t see if they’ve charged
• GPS problems meant accurate fixes were just about impossible
• The camera and sound recorder was so poor quality they were unusable
• You could create slideshows in the EDA but they were impossible to export to view on a PC
• they used Windows Mobile 5 - eugh! Not good for education.

The overall feeling was of a device that despite some nice software ideas (Red Halo) they’d been bodged to fit a particular market niche without a huge amount of though or care. They were discontinued pretty soon after release.

I know Wolverhampton LA used them extensively but have moved on now. We just never had any joy out of them.

And they just weren’t cool enough.

Was your experience different?

…and it would be great to get contributions.

I’m hoping to make this a recurring feature.

What technology is sitting in your cupboards gathering dust? Not just the stuff which is obsolete, but the stuff which had huge amounts of cash and time lavished on it and then came to nothing.

I’m curious to know if there’s a pattern and whether that pattern can inform ICT strategy for learning. It could also be quite funny.

If you want to get involved;

• either stick a comment on this post or tweet me preferrably with a  link to a picture.
• Tell us the story behind the gizmos/software etc.
• Give us some of the background to your institution.

If I get enough responses I’ll do an occasional post with the most interesting ones (with links back to contributors).

Image – Vin60 on Flickr

BECTA’s done quite a helpful article on it here. It puts some useful numbers on the topic but I think the general advice is there are too many problems with moving data round the network. Basically, the size of the files needed to work in HD are MASSEEEEEV! and are likely to reduce your servers to blancmange if you try to do it on the network.

The simple solution is to use the biggest, most powerful PC you can get your hands on in school and work on your HD project off the hard drive. Not always easy if your systems manager has locked users out of making changes to the local machine but it’s worth negotiating with them to find a solution. Our systems guys have installed a product called Deep Freeze on our network which preserves a machines settings to prevent any tinkering (rebooting a machine sets everything back to a pre-ordained point) and it also give you a partition of the hard drive you can save to called Thawspace. It’s neat.

The other question you should ask yourself is why do we we need HD? Not many people can actually watch it at home and rendered HD videos still take up a fair bit of room. Also what’s the educational value of doing something in HD rather than standard definition? The process of making an HD project is pretty much the same for  normal DV, although you might engage students more in something they see as being “prestige” and cutting edge.

In short, is spending time and resources on adapting your systems to HD actually going to be worth the expense?

For us, that answer is still no for anything other than landmark projects.

KEEP UP!!

To claim that PDA’s are about to transform education is something that could have come from an article 3 years ago. I had to double check the year on the article.

They quite obviously haven’t for a number of reasons but PDA’s as a technology are dying a long, slow agonising death. Who would buy a PDA now, anyway? It’s all about smartphones and iPhones. PDA’s are expensive, difficult to use (thanks to Windows Mobile) and decidedly not sexy. Why should a school forkout  thousands of pounds to equip their students with soon-to-be-obsolete technology?

I can forgive the Indie this one discretion – probably wooed (as my boss pointed out) by a well timed press release from Wolverhampton. 

What is more disappointing is that I found it through a link from the BETT show website, THE premiere education technology show in the UK.

Come on, chaps. You’re supposed to be showcasing the future!

 (NOTE: Damn, can’t find the seminar page that linked to it now but it definitely was there!!)

A question that comes up a lot is accessing the platform. It’s not always easy to book IT rooms for non IT lessons and what happens when the students get home and they have no access to a computer or broadband.

The latter problem may be sorted out by Gordon’s latest education initiative.

As for computers at home and in the classroom what about something like this?

Advent Netbook (pingpong ball for scale)

Things like them have been out for a while and are selling like hot cakes – big advertising push for the ASUS version this Xmas. To keep costs down they usually come with open source operating systems like Linux which makes running Windows apps a problem but they will run XP.

Down sides are that there is not a lot of storage once you have installed all the software and battery life won’t quite make it through the school day if you’re always on wireless. Also, they’ll struggle with memory heavy apps like video editing.

But is that really a problem?

• Storage problems? If you’re using a learning platform for activities, use that as the storage medium.
• Lack of sufficient memory? The majority of the stuff students do in the classroom does not require bags of memory anyway.
• Battery life? OK, not so easy to solve but you aren’t going to use these constantly though the day and wifi connection can be toggled on and off when needed.

Plus the main bonus is that kids LOVE them! We’ve had dozens of classes though this half-term using our set of  35 Advent Netbooks (pictured) and the buzz is amazing. Nearly all of them say they want them for Christmas. The really powerful, monster quad core machines we’ve got round the walls for video editing are soundly ignored!

Picture a school where each student has their own mini laptop as part of their kit. Either bought by the school or paid for in part or full by parents through a subscription they could transform lessons into ICT-rich activities on the spot without having to book time in the IT suites. 

A few models are available. Check out:

• Asus EeePC
• Acer Aspire

Avoid the Sony models, by the way. Over priced and over designed.

5-way headphone splitter

We discovered these a few weeks back looking for headphone splitters for a classroom set of laptops. We needed them for group work on media editing avoiding drowning out the whole room with tinny laptop sounds. Most splitters cater for 2 headsets but we needed more for groups of 3 or 4.

It’s called the Rockstar by Belkin and it’s really an iPod accessory but works fine with computers. We got them for around £6 each from a regular business IT supplier.

Nothing revolutionary but though it might be useful for someone.