andykemp.org.uk

Well my self control wavered and I ordered an iPad and after a few days with it I wanted to post some initial thoughts…

In an effort not to repeat what everyone else has said on the topic I will concede that an iPad is not a laptop replacement, but neither is it just a big iPhone…

Let me talk about a few of the things I have used the iPad for in the last 3-4 days.

• Surfing the Web
• Safari (and the other browsers like iCab etc) are a fantastic way to browse the web in a comfortable and intuitive way…  I’m already finding myself sat at my desk a little less often!  Yes it’s not perfect, with no flash, but on the whole this hasn’t been an issue so far…
• Email/Twitter
• The email client on the iPad is excellent, and when they add the iOS4 features of conversation view and multiple exchange accounts it will be even better
• For twitter I have been using Osfoora, which whilst not perfect is a very pleasant way to read and post to my twitter feed
• eBooks
• I’ve had a bit of a look at iBooks and Kindle today and am not sure if it is for me, but will have a go…  With the ability to sync PDFs to iBooks, this might be very useful as a reference tool.  You could for example carry school handbooks, textbooks etc…
• RSS feeds
• I’m using Reeder for checking my Google Reader RSS feeds.  This is a fantastic app and is the first app that I have actually found better at managing and reading my RSS feeds then the google reader web interface!  Check it out!
• Notetaking
• I haven’t yet explored the wide range of note taking and office style apps, so have only used the built in Notes app.  However this is much more a comment about the virtual keyboard…  The keyboard is amazing!  I was so surprised how quickly I can type with it in landscape orientation.  I attended an INSET day on Friday with a group of about 12 teachers and I wouldn’t have felt comfortable having my laptop out to take notes as it would have been too intrusive.  However with the iPad on my lap I sat and took notes throughout the day.  One of the nice things about a virtual keyboard is that it is silent! None of the click-clacking, which again makes it a great tool for use in meetings etc, which coupled with its low profile (even in a case) means that you are not putting up barriers between you and the rest of the room in the way that laptops do…

There are definitely things that are not perfect yet.  It needs a good office app that is fully compatible with MS Office.  It needs a proper blogging tool something like an equivalent to MS LiveWriter (The current WordPress app doesn’t allow any formatting or inserting of images etc).  A built in camera would also be useful at times!

However that said I could see this being a perfect tool for the SMT in the school, a great tool for reading and performing some editing of documents on.  Keeping track of email, and task lists, and taking notes in meetings.  It is incredibly portable and light and a could easily be carried about around school.

I’m not quite sure where it would be useful for students, I still think that for students to get the most out of a tablet-esq machine it would need to work with a stylus as well as fingers.  However the excellent battery life (I got through two days of fairly constant use over Wifi and 3G before needing to recharge!) and the low profile makes it an interesting classroom tool.  Coupled with appropriate online tools it has the potential to be a very interesting classroom tool!  I can’t wait to see what people do with it in their classrooms!

As the Apple case is sold out everywhere I decided to go with a leather case and bought the Noreve Tradition iPad case, this has the same features as the apple case in becoming a typing or viewing stand but is made from a slightly more padded leather.  In addition it includes a fantastic ‘rails’ system which the ipad slides into so that you don’t have anything covering the beautiful iPad screen.  So far I am very impressed, even if it was a little more than I had wanted to spend!

Next step for me is to get a capacitive stylus and see how well that works and explore the potential for office document uses…

If you have an iPad what have you done with yours?

I have been asked to spec up a ‘show classroom’ which could be used to demonstrate the potential for ICT in teaching (specifically Maths), and could also be used by external visiting groups etc.

So I have been giving it some thought and this what I have come up with so far…

So the kit is as follows:

• Smartboard 690
• 2 x WXGA Projectors
• Toshiba Dynadock U
• ELMO P10S Visualiser
• TI-Nspire Navigator Wireless Graphical Calculator System
• DVI Switch
• Toshiba M750 TabletPC

Would love to know your thoughts.  Have I missed something?  Will it work? Any practical considerations?

Check out my presentation from the T3 conference in Atlanta this year by going to:
http://www.andykemp.org.uk/t3atlanta/

The Texas Instrument TI-84 calculator has been the dominant graphical calculator in schools for quite some time. But despite some tweaking here and there it has remained relatively unchanged for quite some time. So I was very pleasantly surprised to see a very significant free software upgrade to the TI-84 being offered this week in the form of version 2.53MP.

This upgrade brings some of the improvements we have become used to on the TI-Nspire over the last few years, specifically in the form of something they are calling MathPrint. MathPrint is the name that TI have given to the technology that enables users to enter mathematics the way it appears in the textbook. In particular this deals really well with some of the most frustrating elements of the TI-84, in making it much easier to work with fractions, logs of non-standard bases, summations, definite integrals, differentials at a point, and matrices.

The key new features are linked to a series of new menus associated with the shortcuts  , , etc…

The first of these , give you access to the fractions tools, with option 1 giving you a fraction template, option 2 a mixed number template, option 3 converts a top heavy fraction into a mixed number(or reverse), and option 4 converts a decimal to fraction (or reverse).

The second of these menus , gives you access to the main new templates including the modulus symbol | |, the summation template, derivative at a point, definite integral and finally logs to non-standard bases. Using these templates significantly simplifies the process for students, and eliminates the confusion of trying to remember the correct syntax for fnInt() etc. The final option logBASE() actually adds a completely new feature to the TI-84 in the ability to work with non-standard base logarithms.

The third menu , deals with one of areas of the TI-84 that I always found most frustrating; that is working with matrices. Previously on the TI-84 you had to define your matrices by going into the matrix section and defining matrix A and vector B etc and then you could calculate A^-1B to solve a set of simultaneous equations for example. With 2.53MP it is now possible to directly enter and work with matrices on the calculator screen, which greatly simplifies the steps involved in working with matrices.

Many of these features can also be accessed via the normal menu structure, however for those who are set in their ways and would rather work with the ‘classic view’ these new features can be turned off on the second page of the ‘Mode’ menu, notice this also now includes a handy option for turning on Stat Diagnostics, which is required for calculating regression coefficients.

Another very useful feature that is new to the TI-84 is the addition of a ‘history’. It is now possible to scroll back through previous calculations and answers and copy them down into a current calculation by pressing enter (this doesn’t work for outputs which are matrices or lists).

All in TI have done an excellent job bringing some of the excellent improvements of the TI-Nspire back to the classic TI-84. This will certainly breathe new life into the TI-84 platform, significantly reducing the complexity of using it for students. I suspect for some students this simplified and enhanced user interface will also result in less mistakes and as a result higher marks on their exams. Something I am sure my students will be grateful for!

It is great to see TI continuing to support their large customer base through development work on the TI-84, which is still widely used in schools across the country. However we should not pretend for a second that this puts the TI-84 on an equal footing with its bigger brother, the TI-Nspire, which has always aimed (and in my opinion, succeeded) at being more than a simple graphical calculator, but rather a full mathematical toolkit for the classroom. Therefore it is with great interest that I look forward to seeing what they manage to achieve next on the TI-Nspire!

You can download the upgrade from here.  Let me know in the comments your favourite new features…

Notes:

• Due to some of the changes in 2.53MP it also necessary to update the Catalogue Help App to v1.1
• To use 2.53MP with SmartView, simply download the OS file and install it by going to the ‘Load File’ option on the File Menu.

Schools are places full of media of various sorts, whether it is old tapes and videos to DVDs, and a variety of differing electronic files…  The problem with this is that schools have to maintain a wide range of tools to be able to play back all of these different things…  And in many schools that still includes the old TV & Video trolly!

However a lot of classrooms have a computer and projector in the room which is the obvious playback mechanism – So the question becomes how do we get all these different types of media into a format that we can easily playback via a PC (or Mac) and how do we store them and play them back?  In addition, with the growing popularity of VLEs etc how do we enable students to watch this media even when they are not in the classroom?

Things like YouTube are great (where they are accessible in schools) but they don’t allow you to show copyright material (that the school has a licence to show) and then use huge amounts of bandwidth!

I know some Schools who manage their media by ripping DVDs and storing them in a ‘shared folder’ which teacher can go to and can  play back the file in Windows Media Player etc..

We have a lot of media at school and still need to regularly record new shows off the TV and need a better solution to look after all this media.  I’m just not sure what the best way to manage this process is…

So how are you currently managing your media and/or what plans to do you have to simplify the media in your school?  Please let me know in the comments!

The world of Biometrics in Schools gets larger and more complex by the year!  I was particularly looking for Biometric Registration systems and saw a few options…  Not had a chance to look at them in great detail yet but these are the ones that caught my eye whilst walking round BETT.

LiveRegister:
Live Register is small robust box that has a fingerprint scanner used for AM/PM registration.  A student simply places their finger on the scanner and a second or so later they are marked as present with this data being passed on to SIMS.  New this year the system also allows ‘Signing in/out’ so that 6th Formers and Boarders could use the system to indicate they are going off-site or returning.  The boxes are about £550 each plus software licence – I reckon an average sized school could install this for about £15K.  They were also demoing a version that included a 7″ display screen which looked like it might have some potential!

DRS:
DRS have been in the registration game for a long time being the main supplier of OMR forms used in many schools.  They also offer a e-registration system which looks quite capable and again feeds into SIMS.  Their system for signing in/out requires a separate scanner to be setup for this purpose  which would work really well if most people leave via reception etc – but wouldn’t work as well on our wide site…  Their boxes were about £850 each (which included one main terminal and 2 subsidiary scanners)

Aurora:
Aurora are very much the wildcard entry into the world of school based Biometrics as rather than the traditional finger-print approach taken by others this uses ‘facial recognition’.  The student walks up to the box, enters a 4-digit pin then the internal camera checks the person matches the pin and registers then (again passing data to SIMS).  This is technologically an interesting solution, but with the added element of the need for a pin and the fact that the boxes are around £3,500 this is not a cheap or simple solution – however definitely one to keep an eye on!

The strange but appealing product that also caught my eye whilst wondering round wasn’t related to registration but would be great addition to any school already using biometric registration.  It is called “Password Manager” and was made by BioStore.  Whenever a student forgets their password they simply go up to the machine place their fingerprint on the pad and it creates a temporary password for the (valid for 30mins) so they can login and reset it without having to bother the ICT techs…  All this happens in about 7 seconds – Would be great for the start of terms!!

There are lots of good online Word Processors out there but at the end of the day they tend to all just offer a subset of the features of a locally installed Word Processor.  So imagine my surprise to find such a fully featured system independent web-based Word Processor which offered something new! (loosely web-based – it is Java based and looks like it uses Web-Start technology)…

What WriteOnline does that makes it really special is it offers graduated support for those who find writing difficult.  For example it supports writers by reading-aloud individual words or sentences.  It offers a clever prediction engine that attempts to predict what you are trying to type (including phonetic spelling – i.e. type in ‘fiz’ and it will offer words like ‘physical’ etc.)

In addition to this it supports multiple word-banks depending on the task at hand and writing-frames (i.e. sentence starters).  One particularly clever feature was the ability to create Mind-maps and then use the completed mind-map to create a word-bank which can be used to write the essay.

All in this looks like an excellent tool to scaffold learners who find writing difficult (for whatever reason – young students, SEN, EFL etc).  The tool can be accessed from any computer and also includes a version that can be installed locally (where internet connection might be an issue such as a laptop).

A nice feature is the Moodle integration which allows you to create an activity which specific wordbanks etc within moodle.  Students then complete the writing in WriteOnline (which can be saved as a draft to Moodle) and then submit it for marking.

All in this definitely looks like a tool worth some consideration!

To get a better idea of what WriteOnline offers I thoroughly recommend having a look at their Video Demos

Some of you will remember that last year I spent a lot of time investigating VLE options for my school before finally deciding on using Moodle as temporary measure as we couldn’t find anything that did exactly what we were after.  For those who haven’t read my original post on my personal opinion of the various VLE offerings that I wrote last year you can find it here

So this year at BETT I wasn’t really looking for anything that might fall into the VLE category (although I did have my eye out for things that could integrate into moodle!) so I was very surprised to be so completely amazed by a new product to the market (launched on the first morning of BETT) called OPENHIVE.

Much like Frog, OPENHIVE isn’t selling itself as a VLE but rather as a Learning Platform – and in both cases this is a much better description as what they aim to achieve is much more holistic platform within which most of the school’s ICT sits.  Both aim to offer tools for various areas of school life – portals, email, parental engagement, etc…

There are however a few key differences:

OPENHIVE is a modular system where you can pick and choose parts of the product without adopting everything, where as Frog is pretty much an all or nothing product (with the exception of Secure Gateway & Parental Engagement bits which I believe are chargeable extras).

The second major difference is that OPENHIVE is cloud based (meaning all the data is hosted remotely) whereas Frog is a physical box within your school.  This has ups and downs in both directions. Cloud based means remote management and service agreements for up time etc, but also means that it is difficult to fix problem yourself as you don’t have full access to the server…  Also there are the concerns about hosting all this data on someone else’s server (especially data about students – i.e. parental engagement)

There has been a lot of talk recently about the traditional VLE being dead and that people should be looking to form their own Learning Platforms by using a combination of Web 2.0 in conjunction.  What commercial Platform al ‘Learning’ products aim to achieve is a level of integration between tools which is difficult if not impossible to achieve using a collection of disparate tools.

OPENHIVE is built on top of Microsoft SharePoint, a very powerful but complicated environment.  What OPENHIVE have achieved that (in my opinion) no one else has managed to, is to build a tool for use in schools which is simple and visually appealing but retains the power of the SharePoint environment.  This has been done by using Silverlight (broadly Microsoft’s equivalent to Flash) as a front end for much of the UI.

For me the really appealing things about OPENHIVE was the integration of MIS data throughout the system.  Timetables in Outlook, links to Groups, clear data for Parents, with the addition of Instant Messaging, Shared Whiteboarding etc.  Plus all the native stuff that you get from SharePoint all in one coherent package.

The personal appeal of OPENHIVE is that it offers the very real potential to integrate the diverse range of tools that we use in school (Citrix, ClickView, Office 2007, Outlook, SIMS, etc) into a complete coherent system which is accessible from anywhere (and anything!).  This could really change the way in which our students work online and have a profound effect on their experience of school.

Also from a business perspective, the fact that they have recently been purchased by Capita gives confidence that they are not going anywhere soon.  Coupled with the fact they have built it all on open standards to BECTA’s regs give a lot of confidence.

I’m really excited to see where this goes as it has the potential to really change the way in which the online part of a school and its associated data work…

The one thing that worries me is the cost – I have heard some VERY large numbers floating about for cost per head which could easily price it outside of the reach of the majority of schools…  I’m hoping that they find a sensible price range which enables schools to get on board with this potentially school changing technology!

Take a look at their website for a few more details: OPENHIVE or follow them on Twitter @openhive_net

Hopefully in due course OPENHIVE will add some screencasts to better show off their Platform, but for now the intrepid @daibarnes managed to record some video of the platform whilst at BETT which gives a useful overview of the product.

Having been a long time TabletPC user I have always been a bit sceptical about the benefits of IWBs relative to their high costs, but this last year I have had access to a SMART board in my classroom which I have found really enjoyable. I am still mostly a TabletPC user and still do most of my A-level/IB teaching sitting at my desk, however with lower school classes the IWB can be really useful – but it is still very expensive for what I use it for…

The problem with IWB boards for many schools is that most teachers use them as glorified projection screens and rarely if ever use the ‘interactive’ element making the costs unjustified! So when I saw the interactive DLP projector on the TI stand at BETT I was blown away. Rather than attempting to explain how it works I suggest you watch this:

Basically it enables you to use the ‘pen/wand’ both directly on the board or at a distance.  The accuracy is pixel perfect (and there is no calibration ever!) and it works on any surface with no other hardware!?!  All in these are likely to retail for around £1,000 which is MUCH less than a projector and IWB!

For those needing a mobile IWB this is the perfect solution as the projector also included DisplayLink technology (which is what I use in my Toshiba DynaDock) which means you only need to plug in a single USB cable and you get Video/Audio(via projector) and IWB elements instantly (again with no calibration!)

Also they offer a wireless connection over UWB where you plug in two USB wireless dongles and you get all of the above only wireless which would be fantastic with my tablet PC!!

This technology is likely to appear in a number of projectors from different manufacturers over the coming months but the one on display at the stand was the:

InFocus IN3902/3904

Keep an eye on this technology I think in a few years you will see this in lots of classrooms as old projectors need to be replaced (particularly in the Independent Sector where IWB are still not widespread) with the current type of IWBs being reserved for users who specifically need ‘touch’…  Time for the IWB market to do some innovating!!

Strange experience this week seeing myself in the Guardian.  I was asked to do a quick telephone back in November interview as part of an article about the launch of the new TI-Npsire Activities Website called NspiringLearning.  Then a few weeks later they sent a photographer down who spent 20mins with one my classes taking pictures.  The journalist wasn’t sure exactly when it was due to be published but thought sometime in January…

I had meant to keep my eye out for it, but the first I knew about it was when a friend emailed me in the afternoon to say he had seen my picture in the paper!?!  Anyway all in it was a fun experience!

If you want to read the article you can find it below:
Professional development: how can we cope with a fast-changing ICT schoolscape?

Apparently the supplement it was published in was also handed out in all the BETT bags on Friday!?!