Stay with me for a bit of background information, and you may find a great opportunity for your school in today’s post.
Last year, Microsoft worked with four schools all over England to create a series of videos and case studies that described how these schools tackled nine different areas of school reform, such as change management, student experience,
learning outcomes, use of ICT, and so forth.
The schools that were featured have gotten a good deal of attention since the launch of these videos. Former Minister for Schools Jim Knight used one of these videos to open the BETT Show in London last January and personally wrote each of the schools a letter thanking them for their participation in the project. They are featured on Microsoft’s worldwide Innovative Schools Web site, and are shown to education audiences all over the world. The schools have all gotten visits from Microsoft executives, government officials, teachers and school leaders from many other countries.
We’re launching a new project with the DCSF to showcase schools who are using technology in innovative ways to engage parents in their children’s learning. As a part of this project, we will be creating a new set of video case studies and supporting materials with a new set of example schools. We are in the process of selecting these schools right now, and rather than go to the same schools we work with all the time, we thought we’d ask you – What is YOUR school doing?
If you think your schools is doing creative things using ICT to better involve parents, let us know! Email me (you should have this address memorised by now) at kriwea@microsoft.com and tell me what you’re doing.
For a look at the videos we created last year, visit our Innovative Schools web site.
Stuart and I have been visiting a lot of schools in the weeks – and now days – leading up to the end of term. As the conversations we’re hearing are all around planning for next year, we thought we’d try to provide you with a series of posts that may help you in the planning process. For the most part, these posts will just be short, quick ideas that will (we hope) inspire you in your planning.
Stuart and I have some ideas of things we’d like to share with you, but for this first post, we’d like to hear from you. What would help you in your planning process? What would make things easier? What ideas do you need – and where are you stuck for information or inspiration? Let us know – either by responding with a comment to this post, or by emailing me (Kristen) at kriwea@microsoft or Stuart at v-sball@microsoft.com.
We’ll do our best to address your questions in a subsequent post and if we can’t (and even if we can), we’ll pose the question to the rest of our readers.
Looking forward to hearing from you.
Did you know that 2009 is the International Year of Astronomy? It’s also 40 years since man first stepped on the Moon. Because of this, in my recent school visits I’ve seen a lot of teachers undertaking projects based around Earth and space. (Incidentally, as a child of the 1960's, I feel really old seeing this period studied in school as 'history'. Don't worry, Kristen - the 70's will be next!) I loved teaching about space when I was teaching. It was a great topic to develop pupils thinking skills and spark their imagination and creativity. The topic of space is ideal to utilise a range of rich ICT resources. I wanted to share one in particular. When I show this to teachers, they always ask two questions: where can I get it and how much is it?
The 'it’ I am referring to is Microsoft Worldwide Telescope (WWT), available at www.worldwidetelescope.org .
Worldwide Telescope Overview
WWT is described as ‘a Web 2.0 visualization software environment that enables your computer to function as a virtual telescope—bringing together imagery from the best ground and space-based telescopes in the world for a seamless exploration of the universe.’ Or to put it in simpler terms, the biggest visual playground of discovery that you could give your pupils.
Worldwide Telescope allows you to bring stunning visuals of the universe directly into the classroom. Pupils are able to interact with and explore the universe through terabytes of digital data collected and stitched together by the software.
There is so much great imagery in this application that the possible use in the classroom is endless. In terms of knowledge and information, it has everything you would need to meet the needs of the national curriculum. The visuals of the planets are stunning; they can be explored in 3D and pupils can ‘fly’ from one planet to another, discovering the order of the planets and their orbits. They can control this navigation in real time, so they can ask questions such as ‘What was the position of the planets on a birthday?’ or ‘What date will the planets all be in alignment?’
More advanced activities can be based around the electromagnetic spectrum, with astronomical phenomena able to be viewed as infrared and x-rays, as well as visible light. This is an astrophysicists delight!
Another great feature of WWT are the guided tours. Created by the development team and scientists from NASA, these give you tutorials of how to use the various functions of WWT, as well as detailed descriptions of deep space objects and phenomena. The best part of this feature is that pupils can make their own guided tours, using any of the imagery in WWT and adding their own commentary and even music.
With this being the 40th anniversary of the first moon landing, WWT has a wealth of imagery from the Apollo missions, including some panoramas of the scene that astronauts saw when they first set foot on the moon. This is a great stimulus for some creative writing or recording audio to accompany the imagery. If you use this in your lessons with footage from the actual moon landings, you are able to give your pupils a great learning experience.
But, I haven’t yet answered the second question teachers ask, which is, how much does this great resource cost? Well the answer is, absolutely nothing! Amazingly, this resource is completely free. At this point in my presentations, teachers usually gasp and quickly write down the download URL, www.worldwidetelescope.org
Stuart blogged recently about Innovative Teacher Dan Roberts winning Becta’s award for Next Generation Learning in the South West of England. Yesterday I had the opportunity to attend the London ceremony for the Teaching Awards.
Microsoft is working with the Teaching Awards this year to present an award and to bring one lucky head teacher with us to the Innovative Teachers and Innovative Schools Forums in Brazil in November. Together with the Teaching Awards, we ran an essay contest asking head teachers the following question.
What factors do you see as essential for a teacher’s professional development to successfully engage learners in a 21st century curriculum and how does technology play a role?
We’ve received some great responses to this question from head teachers all over the country who are doing some interesting and varied work in providing professional development for their teachers. It’s going to be a difficult job selecting only one head teacher to accompany Stuart, Ollie, Mandeep and me to Brazil, but I’m certain that we’ll end up with someone who can really benefit from and contribute to the conversations at the event.
Tuesday’s London awards were really inspirational. The event opened with a short talk from Olympic athletics champion Sally Gunnell, who spoke about being inspired by one of her PE teachers. She described this teacher as strict, making the girls go outside to do handstands so that she could make sure they all were wearing navy blue knickers to match their uniforms. (Not sure that would fly in schools today…) But what was most important to Sally was that the teacher believed in her and encouraged her to do something she might not have thought to do on her own. In Sally’s case, as a daughter of farmers from Essex, that something was joining a running club. And the rest, as they say, is history.
This sentiment was echoed throughout the awards, in the testimonials gathered from teachers, governors, pupils and parents in support of each of the Teaching Award winners. I loved the comment from one pupil, saying about their teacher that “It’s as if she’s teaching only me, even though I know I’m part of a whole class.”
For the first time this year, Becta offered the Next Generation Learning award, which is what Dan won. At the London awards, the winner of this award was advanced skills teacher Dan Lea of Gearies Infant school in Guilford. Dan’s bio was extremely impressive – his pupils use blogs and YouTube to communicate their learnings to their parents, and they even hold a film festival of pupil-created films. And these kids are 4 years old! Dan works with 11 schools and uses video conferencing to help other teachers to use technology in their teaching.
I was truly impressed by all the award winners today. It was a great way to spend an afternoon. Stuart and I will keep you updated as to the head teacher who is selected to join our team in Brazil. Look for more opportunities like this in the coming school year!
I can’t keep up with Stuart’s humourous posts lately, so I’m not even going to try. It’s too early on a Monday morning for me to come up with funny puns on pop culture. I’m just going to tell you about something else that Microsoft is offering for free.
A few months ago I wrote about Microsoft’s Peer Coaching curriculum, where we work with schools to train their teachers as ICT support coaches. These coaches can then help other colleagues in their schools to examine their own practice, improve their lesson design skills and better integrate ICT into whatever they teach.
We’ve piloted this curriculum with schools and local authorities in England and Scotland since our initial training in November of last year. We have also worked with the Specialist Schools and Academies Trust and a university to accredit this curriculum for 60 credits toward a masters degree for any teacher or trainer who takes the course (available in September). The schools are making great progress with their coaches, and we’re assembling the facilitators, their coaches and even some head teachers from the participating schools in London on 10 July for a follow-up meeting to discuss progress.
At the end of this meeting, from 15:00 – 17:00, we’re opening up the room to anyone who wants to learn more about the Peer Coaching Programme. We will talk to you about the curriculum and how you and your school can get involved in our upcoming – and FREE - facilitator trainings, the first of which will be in October.
You will also have the chance to speak to facilitators and coaches from the schools already using this curriculum, and hear from one of the head teachers about the impact it is making on her school’s professional development.
The event will be held at Microsoft’s offices in London on 10 July, and is open to anyone who wants to attend. If you’re interested in joining us from 15:00 – 17:00, please RSVP to me (kriwea@microsoft.com) so that we can plan for necessary space.
(If nothing else, this event will be a chance for all of Stuart’s fans to meet the man behind those witty blog posts in person.)
Hope to see you there!
To collect another award of course…..
Regular readers of our blog will know all about the Chickenman, aka Dan Roberts. He is one of our most proactive Innovative Teachers and award winners. But he's not just all
feathers and eggs; his work is highly motivating for his students bringing Dan a number of other accolades. His Recharge the Battery project was nominated for a Times Educational Supplement award, shortlisted for the best E-Learning Initiative. And now, he has just won a National Teaching Award, The Becta Award for Next Generation Learning in South West of England. This what the judges said:
Senior staff at Saltash.net Community school knew they had found the right man for the role of Head of Science when they first saw Daniel Roberts teach. The deputy head who observed his lesson said: “There was a really imaginative use of podcasting, the Interactive whiteboard, video clips and Macromedia Flash Player. There was lots of the ‘wow factor’ and ‘awe and wonder’.”
Since his appointment in 2007, Daniel has developed the use of ICT in learning with a firm belief that teachers should use it to teach – rather than teach children to use it.
He knew that a very high level of stimulation and interest could be generated within the classroom through using the latest ICT, technology and Accelerated Learning methods. He had already been researching specifically how multimedia technology, such as video and podcasting, could be used to help develop the new KS4 Science curriculum.
Daniel is an exceptionally creative and imaginative thinker. In one project with Year 11 students, he encouraged the use of hand held video players, podcasting and mobile phone cameras, to monitor the progress of eight rescued battery hens. The project came to the attention of Microsoft as part of their Innovative Teachers’ Programme, and eventually earned Daniel third place in the world at the Innovative Teachers’ Forum in Hong Kong last November. He has also been asked to present at the BETT Show on the impact of ICT on the learning, growth and development of young people.
Daniel is currently exploring the use of Twitter to make students’ homework more engaging and interesting, and is converting an old unused school cupboard into a Big Brother-style Diary Room, where pupils will be able to discuss their learning experiences and how these can be improved.
One student said: “Mr Roberts empowered me to learn in ways that meant I was in control of my learning. He made us work really hard but always there was the element of fun.” Meanwhile, a colleague said Daniel’s style inspired and engaged students. “I have witnessed students departing from his lessons feeling ten feet tall!”
Judges said Daniel was “clearly a champion for the use of ICT as a tool for 21st Century learning”.
Well done Dan, we are all very proud of your achievements and it’s richly deserved. You can congratulate Dan here.
You can download Dan’s award winning recharge the battery project from the Innovative Teachers Network.
Where will the next Susan Boyle or Leona Lewis come from? Well, with another great application developed by Microsoft Research (the other being AutoCollage – available for free on
the Innovative Teachers Network) it could be from any one of your future lessons! As a primary school teacher, I had to teach all national curriculum subjects, and that included music. Now, you may be surprised to learn that although coming from the ‘land of song’, I have not been blessed with the Welsh innate ability to sing (only good looks and a passion for rugby). I'm afraid this did not make planning a simple task for me. I solved this by using a variety of strategies, including commercial schemes, pupils supporting pupils and a number of ICT tools. This approach was good enough, and one of my classes even produced their own CD of tunes.
I think it would have been a lot easier if I had Songmith, an inexpensive piece of software from Microsoft Research that automatically generates musical accompaniment to match a singer’s voice. If I were still teaching, I would use this in a music lesson, allowing pupils to write their own lyrics to a well-known tune and then record themselves singing the lyrics into Songsmith. Songsmith will add the percussion and melody, allowing pupils to very quickly produce their own songs, which can then be used as an MP3 file or as soundtrack to videos, for example.
The interface is really simple, you are able to chose from a variety of choices including music style. The only setting that needs to be decided before recording is the tempo. Recording only requires a microphone and is started by clicking the red button. The application counts you in, and chords and percussion are added as you sing. Pressing the stop button completes the recording. Every aspect of the song can be changed and adjusted apart from the tempo. When the song is finished it can be saved as an MP3 file.
I think Songsmith, whilst it should never replace the use of real instruments, certainly has a place in the music curriculum of primary and secondary schools, although music ‘purists’ may disagree, but I would welcome your thoughts and comments.
I think Songsmith provides an ideal opportunity to utilise the learning power of music and support auditory and kinaesthetic learners in all areas of the curriculum. It could be used in a ‘John Davitt style event - Do the properties of a triangle as a blues song’ . Used, for example, at the end of a lesson, it would be a great way to get pupils to recall the main learning objectives of a lesson. Having the class sing the lesson outcomes to a song of their choice and recording it in Songsmith. This is a real fun way to recap a lesson. The finished song could even be made available for students to download.
Kristen and I have been experimenting with Songsmith and have shared number of ideas with teachers and the response has been very positive. You can download a trial version of Songsmith, available here. This has six hours total use, which is more than enough to develop some ideas and record songs for the rest of the term.
Harri is 9 years old and spends most of his time playing football. I know this from the number of times he collects his ball from my garden. He has a digital world, but it is not what 
you would perhaps expect. He doesn’t use a laptop; the laptop in his family is his sister’s and it's used for ‘talking to other girls, yuk!’. He doesn’t have a mobile phone, but helps his Dad use his and plays the games on it. When he does use the family computer, it’s to watch re-runs of the Formula 1 Grand Prix on BBC iPlayer. Disappointingly, in school, he says he and his classmates ‘don’t do a lot on the computer.’ But even so, Harri’s digital world is vast, complex, connects him globally, allows him to communicate, and enables him to be be challenged and solve problems. It is also focused on one device, the Nintendo Wii. His Mum asked me, (due to Harri’s constant nagging), if I could connect his console to their broadband connection (after all, I work for Microsoft -- I must know how do to these things). Working with Harri in close attendance, I somehow managed to do this. Within minutes he had set up a game of ‘Mario Racing Cart’ and was trying his hardest to beat Paulo from Brazil. In a blink of an eye, this nine year-old was now interacting with other game players from all over the world and beating most of them as well.
The thought struck me that perhaps the technology that we are expecting pupils to use in our schools is not set up to engage pupils like Harri. The nature of their at-home interactions with technology, such as with the Wii console, has given them a completely different set of expectations. This idea was further reinforced to me when I came across this article that describes how to use a Wii controller to control a PowerPoint presentation using Plex for PowerPoint. You need to download an free application called the GLOVE Programmable Input Emulator. I downloaded the necessary files and followed the instructions to install, set up and create my own script, which does require some technical knowledge -- but I had Harri to help here. This setup didn’t take long and we were soon able to control a Plex for PowerPoint presentation with a flick of the wrist. (If you try this, don't worry about not having a sensor bar, it worked without that.) Harri thought this was great. Now you may think that this is just technical gimmickry, but remember Harri will be 19 when the technology that Kristen described in this post -- and that is illustrated in this video -- becomes a reality.
This vision of the future may be here sooner than we think, Windows 7 has multi-touch functionality, and then of course there is the Microsoft Surface, which are beginning to appear in schools in the UK. Finally, and this has just been announced, Project Natal for the Xbox, technology that allows controller free interactions, through natural gestures and movements. This would be fantastic for the kinaesthetic learners in our classrooms.
Its clear to me that the pupils and students in our classroom are ready and perhaps already demanding such ways of interacting with technology. We need to think about how we can allow them to do this. if you have any ideas of how this is being done, then please share them here by leaving a comment, or add them to the Innovative Teachers Network.
So, what’s next for Harri? He is continuing his world domination of ‘Mario racing cart’, as he marks each person he has played (and beaten) on a map on his bedroom wall. His biggest challenge, however, is to convince his Dad to allow him to have the BBC iPlayer installed on his Wii console, and then his digital world will be complete.
Do you ever have those moments where you know you’re forgetting something that is so blatantly obvious it’s practically staring you right in the face? Stuart and I have weekly discussions about what to tell you about in this blog, and somehow Learning Essentials, a great FREE resource to help you use Office in your teaching, completely escaped us. Luckily our colleague Ray wrote about it last week, and we’ve stolen from his blog here:
Learning Essentials is a free add-on for Office, which contains a set of tools to help teachers and students. Things like curriculum templates, and toolbars for Word, PowerPoint and Excel to help students and teachers get started on projects and stay organised during them.
- Teachers get things like handout and presentation templates, marking rubrics, bibliography tools, maths symbols, and a simple "Create Test" wizard.
- Students get tools, templates and tutorials to help them get past "Blank Page Syndrome", language tools and templates, and tips and tutorials for managing projects and producing high-quality work.
You can find out all about Learning Essentials on the worldwide Microsoft education website, which includes links to download. It works with Office 2007, Office 2003 and Office XP (that pretty much covers everybody!). If you want to see what it can do, then take a look at the Learning Essentials Tour.
You can download it directly from the website – choose the International English version of the download, which comes with a range of foreign language capabilities added.
Let us know if you’re already using Learning Essentials, and if so, what you’re doing with it. We find that very few people know about it - which makes sense considering that we forgot to mention it!
Planning is probably the most disliked word in the teaching profession (apart from inspection, that is). From my experience it dominates your time as a teacher. You have a variety of planning to undertake: lesson, weekly, short, medium, long and individual, to name just a few. You have endless planning meetings -- even meetings to plan for planning meetings. Planning can suck the life out of you, and for me (and I suspect many of you), it became a real chore. (Even now, when Kristen calls a ‘planning’ meeting, I break out in a cold sweat.) But I may have found the answer to every teacher’s planning woes: The Random Event Generator created by John Davitt.
I first encountered John Davitt when I heard him speak at an Innovative Teachers Event held by Saltash.net Community School. I was totally wowed by his ‘off the wall’ style and his thoughts and approaches to learning struck a real chord with me. But it his Random Event Generators that I think are a stroke of genius. A Random Event Generator is an application that 
generates a series actions you 'Do' and end products you do them 'As', to help you create an activity for students to undertake. You can get the idea by visiting here. The Do and As activities are randomly selected from a list. This list is always being added to and updated, so it always worth checking the wiki for future additions. There are a number of different ‘flavours’ of generators, these include the web-based versions on John’s website, a twitter version (follow @raggler), and an iPhone version, still in its early stages of development. I am just not clever enough to adapt these (and I don’t have an IPhone), but there an Excel version, which is fantastic, created by Richard Clarke and available here. The Excel version enables you to very easily change the DO and AS lists. I have been using it to make generators that focus on different activities for teachers at our recent Innovative Teachers forum in Vienna and at meeting of primary school teachers in North Wales. It also means you can create lists that have a specific focus and context, such as for a subject, theme or revision. Here are some examples generated for a science theme day.
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I think these Learning Event Generator have a real place in developing 21st century skills and thinking in the curriculum, but here’s a real scary thought: What if you could use Random Event Generator to plan a week’s teaching. Could it be done? Would it be productive? I don’t know the answer, but how exciting would that be? Maybe a week or even a day is not feasible, but I think some lessons could be created around using Random Event Generators. Once exam pressures are out of the way, it may be a good experiment to try with your students.
You can find out lots more about John Davitt’s thoughts and ideas at his website, www.newtools.org and his blog. I would also strongly suggest you get hold of copy of his book ‘New Tools for Learning’, as it will challenge the way you think about learning.
It’s that time of year again. You are looking in your wardrobe and last year’s fashion and nothing fits --everything seems to have shrunk over the winter! Surely I haven’t put on that much weight, you think! Then you realise how dusty and tired looking everything is. So before you know it, you're shopping, buying new clothes, dusting, painting and generally giving everything a spring clean.
Kristen and I have felt the same way latley, so we've put on our virtual aprons and picked up our digital dusters and given the UK Innovative Teachers Network (ITN) site a good spring clean.
First, we have completely refreshed the welcome page of the site. Now when you sign in to the site, not only you will see some different graphics and a refreshing new colour scheme, but you'll also get a new layout. We have tried to add more information to the home page so that you are able to see in more detail the activities that going on within the network. (Stay tuned: we’ll be adding some more feature articles shortly.)
You also have easier access to to other areas of the site via a simple navigation menu on the left hand side of the home page. This makes accessing free resources such as Peer Coaching and Enquiring Minds a breeze.
Accessing some of the free resources we offer through the Innovative Teachers programme has also been made simpler. From the welcome page you can get the free download of Microsoft AutoCollage, which lets you make photo montages. You can also download the ITN Web part, another free resource that allows you to access the site and its content directly from your learning platform.
But we are not stopping there - there are many more exciting changes on the horizon! Soon you will be able to sign in to the ITN using your Windows Live ID, making registering and logging in even more convenient. And there will be even more free content to download, such as videos on how teachers are using Microsoft applications in the classroom.
To tempt you even further, Kristen and I have been working really hard to let our colleagues in the States, who produce the Innovative Teachers Network, know what teachers want in terms of a support network. We are sworn to secrecy in terms of details, but we can tell you that we suggested an Innovative Teachers Network that has the feel of Facebook with the flexibility of the tools that are part of the Windows Live portfolio. They didn’t say no.
So watch this space -- as soon as we can give you a look at the next version of the Innovative Teachers Network, we will!
We may have a conference for you. 
(Let me just clarify something, because it confused me at first. This conference is for teachers interested in Computing – how computers work and how to program them, rather than ICT – how to use computers. If you teach Computing or are interested in teaching Computing, read on.)
Thursday 18 June and Friday 19 June, the Computing at School working group is running a conference titled “Computing, the Next Generation” at the University of Birmingham. Here’s what you can expect (taken directly from their Web site):
Looking for inspiration to breathe more life into your lessons?
Are you frustrated by current opportunities for teaching Computing within ICT?
Do you struggle to find dynamic resources to engage your pupils?
Do you wish to enhance your own skills… to keep pace with your students who seem to ‘know it all already’?
Then join us, for a unique opportunity to hear from practising teachers and educators about developing computing in our schools. Experience first hand the magic of computing from the people behind the wonderful cs4fn website. Have fun with Tim Bell from New Zealand, and explore how to teach computing without a computer! Learn to use Greenfoot from the master, Michael Kölling and engage pupils’ interest by exploring the Computer Science inside their phone, mp3 player, or game console, with Quintin Cutts.
The conference is sponsored by The Council of Professors and Heads of Computing and Microsoft Research, and as such, it is FREE to attend. Just go to their web site (http://www.computingatschool.org.uk/) to see the conference programme and download the registration form.
I know, I know – with the near summer weather we’ve had until recently (at least here in SE England), it’s difficult to think of anything but summer holiday. In this post, however, I’m going to ask you to think past your long-awaited and much-deserved summer holiday to your new school term next autumn.
In September, 2009, Microsoft and a Danish company called Congin will launch The Climate Mystery – an Altered Reality Learning Universe about the global climate challenges. From September to December, The Climate Mystery will involve participating students in an epic online story that will pretend to be actually happening, in real time. The dramatic online story will climax during the COP15 Climate Summit, held in Copenhagen. 
Our Innovative Teachers heard about this project from one of its creators, while we were in Vienna. Scottish teacher Ollie Bray wrote about it on his own blog HERE. Let me try to explain what it could mean to you.
The Climate Mystery is directed at students age 12-16 and aims to “hook” them with dramatic, fictional events, engaging them in a social network and allowing them to interact with online learning games – all based on the premise that soon they will be involved in saving the global climate.
The Climate Mystery can be implemented as a blended learning process, and can absorb different roles in lessons on climate issues. It can be the main element in the lessons on climate, a motivating introduction to the subject - or an element for gathering and evaluating within a larger educational framework. In addition, The Climate Mystery can be used in the students’ free-time. The aim is for the game to be so engaging, that the students stay with it beyond their school-related obligations.
Teachers are provided with a large array of materials (everything from a teacher’s guide to suggested lessons, to possible student work and assessments) to allow them to use these “real” scenarios to teach about global climate challenges.
This the second such “Altered Reality” learning experience introduced by Congin; the first was available only in Denmark and was a huge success, with students thinking that the events they were seeing unfold were actually happening. Kids were logging on to the social network and communities at all hours of the day and night trying to help the “star” of the adventure find his way to safety – and thus save the world from certain disaster.
All information you need on The Climate Mystery can be found here: www.theclimatemystery.com This is also where you can register your interest and ultimately sign up your class to play the game.
So before you get too far into the stress of exams – and the bliss of holiday – do a little investigation into using The Climate Mystery in your classes next year. Think of all the extra time you’ll have later when you don’t have to plan as many lessons from September to December!
Many secondary schools I visit are busy creating comprehensive libraries of content to support their students' learning. This content is often shared across a learning platform of some kind. It’s not really my field of expertise, being a primary school teacher, so I admit that am not fully aware of the processes and the tools that are being used. But as I have seen plenty of resources created in PowerPoint and Flash, I wanted to draw your attention to a free application from Microsoft Learning. The Learning Content Development System (LCDS) is a free tool that enables you to create high-quality, interactive, online courses. You can then publish those e-learning courses by completing the easy-to-use forms that seamlessly generate highly-customized content, interactive activities, quizzes, games, assessments, animations, demos, and other multimedia.
Creating a course in LCDS couldn’t be easier. When you start the application, you are presented with a simple course module structure. You can add and delete elements as you wish. Clicking on the title of each part of the course, you are able to select a template from which you can build that specific piece of content.
In this example, we are going to make a multiple choice question based on the Innovative Teachers Network. In this case, questions and answers, along with feedback are entered into the template, this is then saved. When the course is run, this question looks like this.
This is a very simple template, but there are a range to choose from that allow you to combine text, video, and Flash files. Others will generate simple animated sort and tile games. Some really interesting templates allow you to create interactive thinking skills activities, such as an adventure game and drag and drop activities.
This application allows all teachers to create online courses and revision materials for their students. It is very simple to learn and requires no programming or media authoring skills. The generated course is SCORM compliant and compatible with Internet Explorer 8 and Silverlight. It is also available as a number of files that can be compressed and downloaded as single file to be shared over network. You can see some examples of courses created using the LCDS here. They are all ICT focused , but give you a good idea of what is achievable. A great example is Microsoft’s Digital Literacy course, which was created using this application.
I introduced LCDS to our award winning teachers at the UK Innovative Teachers Forum, and we had some great feedback from them. They could see this being a valuable tool for schools and suggested some other uses of this application, including allowing students to create their own courses and revision materials for each other. Another great suggestion was that in many schools the use of YouTube is blocked by the local authority, rendering some great resources are inaccessible. By downloading a YouTube video and building some activities around it using the LCDS, the video and its associated work can be made available to students.
If you are considering or currently developing content for your students and are looking for tools to allow you to do that, then the Learning Content Development System is a great application to start with.
Microsoft has some great adverts running at the moment, where kids show how easy it is to use a PC. Take a look at this one, on the right, in which Sam (aged 7) creates a panoramic picture of his 'Land of Robots’ model. I didn't think too much of this until a primary school teacher asked me where she could get hold of the software to do this. I thought that maybe other teachers were thinking the same thing.
Sam is using Windows Live Photo Gallery, which is a free download that you can get HERE (you will need a Windows Live ID to sign in). When I first heard of this application, I thought it was just a way of viewing photos. Little did I know just how wrong I was.
Not only does Live Photo 
Gallery index all your photos and show the particular details each image. It also draws together a number of digital imaging tools into one place. As with many programmes, you can make a range of simple adjustments to your images to alter the colour, brightness or size. If you need to carry out more complex editing, you can open the image directly into your preferred photo editing software.You can select and publish collections of photos to online albums and Flickr. Emailing images is very simple, with a great function that allows you to reduce the size of the images before you post. (Read this post to get an idea of how much I like this feature.) There is also a simple slideshow feature. But it’s the Make and Extras features that really make manipulating digital images child’s play.
From the Make menu you can select a number of photos and easily make a movie using Windows MovieMaker, where you can add a soundtrack, titles and commentary. The Make menu is also where you go to post photos to a blog or burn them to a CD. And it's here where you will find the Create a Panoramic Photo command that Sam uses in the advert. For once, something that is that easy to do in an advert is easy to do in real life. I made this panoramic view from my office window during the recent snow, and it took only seconds to create.
Window Live Photo Gallery also draws into it two of our favourite applications on the Innovative Teachers Network, Photosynth and AutoCollage. Don't have AutoCollage? Get it for free for your school at the UK Innovative Teachers Network. (Kristen's blog from earlier this week explains this in detail.)
When installed, both applications appear on the Extras menu. Simply by selecting your photos and then clicking on either of these applications, you can create a synth or collage in a matter of moments.This will save you so much time in lessons, making it much easier for students to see the images they have collected and make decisions about best images to use. Imagine how cool this would be on an interactive whiteboard, with multiple students being able to work collaboratively on a collection of images.
It's likely that other photo application will be able to be added to the Extras menu, so it is worth checking back to see what becomes available. At the moment, the only other application available is Microsoft Image Composite Editor, which is a more advanced photo stitching application. So if you crave more control over your panoramic images than what Windows Live Photo Gallery gives you, download this add-in.
Windows Live Photo Gallery has changed the way I access my photos on my computer, and I think it will make any classroom activities using digital photos so much more productive and rewarding for you and your students. It has also changed the way I take photos; now that I know I have easy access to a variety of tools, I am taking more images specifically to create panoramas, synths and collages. I suspect your students will begin to do the same.
I'm Stuart and I am a PC!
You can see more examples of how easy it is to use Windows Live Photo Gallery at THIS LINK.
