morag.macdonald

I am now the proud owner of a PS2 courtesy of eBay. Although my sons have one I couldn’t really snaffle it for school without them noticing. Youngest son is very happy as the parcel which arrived contained about 6 games he did not have plus Guitar Hero and a guitar!

Now I am a classically trained guitarist with o “grade ” music as one of my qualifications. I strum a few tunes for the children at school and occasionally at home, get out my music stand and footstool and play a few classical pieces to keep the fingers nimble.

But hey ” I love rock and roll, put another coin in the juke box baby!”

The rather cheap looking plastic guitar that I have just purchased is so much fun. Hand /eye co-ordination, keeping time, 3 levels of difficulty and about a dozen hits to choose from.  A classical guitarists lot is quite a lonely one….no band , piano or orchestra, but with this, even when you hit the wrong notes, the band plays on. There is the added bonus of the crowd, cheering or jeering ( depending on accuracy) as you play.

Today at school after the first Activote pod session I did with a P5 class I was told by one of the pupils “You Rock!”

Hey, that’s what Guitar Hero keeps telling me!!

I noticed a new PS2 game today called Buzz, The School Quiz. Now all I need to do is get organised and set up at school……..but if I take it in to school I won’t be able to play it when I get home!

The Christmas Card project was in full swing today. P7 organising committee to the rescue!

12 Primary 2’s had to do their cards which they drew on the whiteboard. Two of the P7’s helped them select tools and use the pen which was the first time the P2’s had used the board.

A letter to parents, composed and typed out by the committee, and the organisation of each piece of artwork in a polypocket with order form and letter was ably carried out by the children under my direction. We decided that working to a time limit and under such pressure to have things ready by 3 o’clock was really hard work. Well done P7.

Due to printing and computer crashing problems some children will have to redo their designs on Monday, but all of  P1-4 and most of P5-7 got to take their designs home. The artwork will be collected next Thursday and the packs of cards will be back by mid-November.

All I can say is “Thank goodness it’s Friday!”

Just back from the Scottish Learning Festival at the SECC. I have really enjoyed this years event as I was  not presenting or responsible for a young bear , able to take time to find out the things I needed to find out about.

First seminar was about the BBC online archive service which will soon be available . A huge range of video clips covering every topic you can think of and which will continue to be expanded, was described by both a secondary and a primary practitioner in the context of their subjects. An explanation of how to download and embed the clips into Powerpoint was provided. I assume that the clips will embed into other software such as Keynote, Kidspiration or Promethean’s ActivPrimary/Studio.

I spent some time chatting at the Apple stand to ensure I buy the correct adaptor for the Mac to projector. The guy I spoke to was an Apple educator who was also able to give me a quick tutorial on I Can Animate which I hope to use with the children this session. I then popped over to Kudlian who produce the software and spoke to them about FreeText which I had trialled last session with the 30 day free trial and had really liked. At only £95 for a site licence, it would be an excellent word processing tool for our Macs and is available to download for PC.

I spotted KidPix 3 at the same stand and had a look. The KidPix 4 that I have been using with the children for their Christmas cards is produced by Riverdeep, but may no longer be available at a reduced cost through LTS apparently. I suggested to LTS they may wish to talk with Kudlian , as their version looks excellent, and integrates with the iLife applications on the Mac.

My next seminar was entitled, “Creating a pedagogical meeting place in Primary One” presented by Kevin Kelman, head of Burnside Primary in South Lanark. Kevin spoke inspiringly about the changes they have made to the methodology used in the P1 and now into P2 classrooms to create more learning through play activities. Having used the smooth transitions model of working with my infant class at Tighnabruaich I was very interested to hear how they had approached this. I have certainly gained some inspiration and hope to develop some of the ideas with our own infant classes.

I spent some time at the Smart stand getting a tutorial in the use of their boards as we have both theirs and Promethean in school. I do like using my finger to do the bizz on the Smartboard but prefer the ActivPrimary interface (so far).

I attended the TeachMeet07 event at the Science centre and after some whistlestop presentations on a wide variety of topics, experienced a very novel dining experience at Kubla Khan’s with the rest of the crowd, courtesy of Softease. I was surprised that this Mongolian diner did not have yak on the menu, but I have now tasted crocodile, which may have eaten a zebra which was also on the menu!

I also went to ‘Using interactive technologies to inspire young musicians’ presented by John Self from Promethean. John is one of those people whose enthusiasm and pleasure in what he does really comes across and I was really delighted to see his use of the PS2 and Promethean board. I have been using a little Garageband with P7 who really enjoy creating their own tunes using chimebars, glockenspiels and xylophones. I want to hook up the PS2 microphone, having used Eyetoy before with my infant class. I now want Guitarhero as well. What a blast!

After John’s session I filled in the card which would be entered in a prize draw taking place at 2:30 at the Promethean stand. Prizes included an iPod shuffle, software and a set of Activote pods. I duly crowded round at 2:30 ‘cos you had to be there to actually win one of the 12 prizes on offer.

After a card was drawn out, you had to come up to the board and reveal your prize by dragging away a square and revealing the prize below. The first winner got the iPod shuffle………….the second card …………..the guy wasn’t there………..the third card……….I knew it was mine………….I had used my new pink ink pen to fill it in (I don’t know why!)……………….Morag Macdonald come on down………. 11 squares to choose from………..a bit of hesitation…..top left……and result.!!!!! I have won the set of Activote pods….am I chuffed, or am I chuffed. So thank you very much Promethean and I assure you I will make good use of this fantastic prize. A perfect end to a fab two days.

Normally in school I do not mention Christmas until December at the earliest, but this year as we are doing a Christmas card project I have had to introduce the Santa’s and snowmen a tad earlier than usual.

The children are really enjoying using Kidpix or ActivPrimary to design their cards. The older children are using the ActivPrimary on the PC laptops. Having prepared a few examples at home on the Mac we then discovered that the PC version 3 on the PC’s was bereft of the many lovely backgrounds and bits of clipart available on version 2. On checking out the Promethean website the missing clipart is available to download………….but how long would that take and as we are experiencing access to the internet problems since the technicians replaced the routers we can’t get online to do it. The children though are very inventive and at all stages are coming up with some super ideas for their cards. Here is a sneak preview of one of the designs.

Today 2 of our intrepid ICT technicians arrived to sort out some of our long list of woes. We now have wireless internet access throughout the school and various glitches with various PC laptops were addressed. I was also able to ask lots of questions and clarify a few things.

This afternoon with the P6/7 class we looked at the Activ Primary software and tried out the camera tool. On the Promethean Planet website I had seen a groovy tip from another teacher on the use of the camera tool. Check it out for the “Kangaroo trick”in the video “resource library”. Good fun and gets a big thumbs up from the kids.

We also had a quick look at Get the Glass, an American site from the California milk marketing board. Join the Adatchi family and help them avoid being sent to Milkatraz as they try to get some milk! Great graphics and sound track.

Yesterday working with P7 and doing music I had shown a little bit of Garageband. Today during their ICT time I demonstrated some more and with the use of the IWB the children were able to add loops and rhythms of their own choosing. The rest of the children practised using the camera tool and explored the ActivPrimary software. As they are using the PC version on the laptops they found the resource library less user friendly than the Mac version. 4 of the children worked on Garageband and produced their own tracks by the end of the session.

Life as a Principal Teacher with responsibility for infants and Pre-5’s has certainly widened and changed this year. As I mentioned previously I would be doing McCrone cover in the infants and helping with the introduction of the new reading scheme. Working with the infant classes would also enable me to introduce and help embed ICT skills into the curriculum, as well as working with the Interactive whiteboards which are new in school.

My timetable is varied and interesting as I am actually providing McCrone cover for every class in the school as well as management cover for the P7 Principal Teacher where I am teaching music and PE! I am spending a couple of sessions introducing the whiteboard to the Pre-5’s each week and have bought a rucksack for my laptop and a pair of hiking boots for all the stair climbing !

At the moment I am using the computer suite which houses Macs and PC desktops with P1 to 4 classes. P5 to 7 and it is the PC laptops in a box. I am growing to tolerate a PC but they are still not my favourite. During the last couple of weeks I have gradually installed the ActivPrimary software onto the laptops which takes at least 20 minutes per machine. The children are really wowed by the software and the board in general andare highly motivated.

I now know the names of nearly all the 280+ children in the school which is a really nice part of the job. Having taught in a small school for so long I was used to knowing every child, so now I am getting to do the same in Dunoon Primary.

So far, so good. Today with the P7’s I hooked up the midi keyboard and did a Garageband demo. A couple of the children who play piano gave us a tune and tomorrow during ICT time we will have a closer look at this amazing software.

I also want to introduce an enterprise activity to raise funds for software. A couple of years ago at Tighnabruaich we used APFS to make individual Christmas cards to sell. The children produce a design which parents pre-order and which is then turned into a pack of Christmas cards with their own child’s exclusive design. Many art techniques can be used but I got my class to design it using a paint package on the computer. The results were lovely so I am going to give it a go!

I have also been busy with the Promethean online training, where I had to start over as they had revamped the initial training and all my previous results were gone. Having passed all the new assessments I have been unable to access my certificate to prove my skills. Hopefully it is just a system glitch and I don’t have to do them all again.

I am going to SETT, or the Scottish Learning Festival as it has now become. How frustrating it will be to see all those wonderful resources and not have any money to buy them………..ah well cest la vie!

Following a visitation from my friend and guru Marlyn, I am now much more savvy with Garageband. Some time ago I got a midi keyboard and had a devil of a job getting it to work. I even had a telephone conversation with edublogs dad to try and get it working. Anyway….we have success. What fun we had trying out the keyboard, I even dusted down my guitar and managed a choon, using the PS2 microphone to pick up the sound and the iPod speakers to boost the volume!

The kids will have great fun too I am sure laying down a few tracks…yet again gobsmacked by the technology.

Having honed my blogging skills on Blogspot I just don’t really like Edublogs. I can’t seem to get the same aesthetically pleasing look to it and, as I have said before I am a visual learner. Perhaps it is the same as the Mac v PC argument although I know Mac’s are much better!

But I know that I will have to get used to using the PC’s at Dunoon and who knows I may get to like them. I am though rather fond of Beebots and will make use of them in my ICT integration next session. I have ordered some Beebot resources with the school’s supply of Tesco vouchers. Sparklebox is again an excellent source of Beebot mat pictures and I will get the children to create their own.

I have a new Teddy which the children called Fudge…….I feel a different name coming on CT for short ( computer ted!!!).

Anyway , another teddy project could be arranged. I am also thinking about an e-beam for the wall where you can see the whiteboard. This would free up the Promethean board to be used elswhere??

So many possibilities!