Our new app

I have received a few favourable reviews on Twitter of our new school iPhone and Android app and was prompted today by the very generous Johannes Ahrenfelt (@ahrenfelt) to describe the rationale behind and the process of making it.

Since we began blogging just over a year ago as an Action Research Group on these very pages, it has become increasingly popular in school as a way of creating a reflective learning journal. We now have well over 25 semi official school blogs and many more if you include those kept by individual students and class groups. Tallis LAB has been influential in popularising the use of blogs and they have had a tremendous impact in a variety of curriculum areas, particularly those with a vocational focus. I think this must be for several reasons:

• they offer learners (young and older alike) an opportunity to curate the story of their learning journey
• they provide a platform for sharing great ideas and resources
• they are perfect for publishing a whole range of rich media content, in addition to text based reports
• they can be personalised so that the blogger has a real sense of ownership of their learning story
• they can grow in sophistication over time as the blogger becomes better acquainted with the technical issues
• they can support creative professional development for colleagues
  
• they can be linked to a host of other web based networking services
• they provide an opportunity for genuine collaboration with one's Personal Learning Network

I am sure there are other reasons but these are paramount from my perspective.

When I realised just how many blogs there were in existence and, in addition, how many other virtual networks had been created for learning in school (Twitter, Facebook, YouTube, Vimeo, Ning, Flickr etc.) I began to think that it would be amazing to share these with our whole school community. Then I stumbled across a recommendation on Twitter for iSites, a company that offered to help you create and publish your own iPhone app. As someone who really values the learning potential of the iPhone, I was immediately intrigued but dismissed the idea that, with my very limited technical know-how, I would be able to do it myself. Nevertheless, I checked out the site and began to dabble.

I very quickly realised that it was easily possible for me to gather together a range of feeds, design a simple splash screen and header (using some of the artwork created for us by the brilliant Tak! Design when they sorted out our school's graphic identity) and organise this content into suitable headings - blogs, twitter, video, photos, projects. The iSites interface is very simple. The only thing missing is a live demo of your completed app.

It has taken me a total of about 5 hours to create this app and cost only $25. When I felt I had finished it, I clicked the publish button with some trepidation. I didn't realise, at that stage, just how easy it would be to edit and republish on the fly (I have since altered the design and structure of the app about 3 times since it was published 5 days ago). I also wondered whether Apple would approve of the app since the projected audience for it would obviously be quite small given that it was so closely associated with one school.

It took about 2 weeks in total for the app to be approved first by the iSites team and then by Apple. Throughout the process, iSites kept me informed by email of each stage. I have since emailed them a couple of times with rookie questions and the responses have been relatively swift and useful. The Android app appeared before the Apple version by a couple of days. All very efficient from my perspective. I have since looked at other app design services but they appear to be quite a bit more expensive. I suppose it would be better to be ad free, but that seems like a small negative in a largely positive experience of app design.

I am hoping that creating the app will galvanise our thinking in school about the value of blogging, web 2.0 tools, social networking and eLearning generally. It would be great to have more curriculum blogs. We are already talking about using Twitter as out main news feed on the website and a discussion about a possible new VLE and the value of an institutional Google Apps account is well under way.

Based on my experience, I would strongly recommend iSites to any other school considering creating their own app.

Skills Swap and Skills Sessions

I have mentioned in the past that Mr. Nicholls and I have been trying to think of a way of making it possible for staff and students to exchange and learn new skills. There was a time when training for teachers happened in London hotels on special days out, but the problem was that by the time you got back into school you had forgotten what you had learned and there wasn't anybody around to ask. We thought that Skills Swap would be a good idea because it would be a flexible and fun way for staff and students to coach, mentor and support each other to get new skills. If you got stuck with something then you would know that there was advice and support in the building and this would encourage people to be a bit more ambitious and confident to update their skills. The idea is that people fill in a Skills Swap card and fill in what skills they would like offer and what skills they are seeking. You can click these links to see how to fill the card in and click here to get a blank card to fill in.

The other part of the idea is a rolling four week programme of sessions focusing on a particular skills area. To see what the first topic is you can have a look at the flyer and the explanation of how it works.

Soren

An assessment framework for creative learning

The following ideas are taken from an assessment framework for creative learning produced by Vaughan Clark, an old friend and an ex Tallis teacher, who works at Eton. He is responsible for running a Saturday School focused on developing creative learning. These statements are therefore designed to support the self, peer and teacher assessment process for students on the course. They look better presented in a grid but I'm blogging this from my phone and I'm a bit limited in desk top publishing power. The skill levels increase gradually in sophistication beginning with basic competence and, in theory, concluding in advanced level creative learning attributes.

I wonder if these level descriptors might be useful for us at Tallis in finding ways to assess creative learning competencies? Might they help us identify, describe and communicate important features of creative learning? I wonder if we should try to create some kind of handy guide to creative learning for staff, students and parents? Could we work with a designer to make it really exciting and visually coherent? Maybe we could even collaborate with Vaughan and his colleagues at Eton in putting it together? What do you think?


* Movement from a rigid thinking approach to a more flexible approach

* Begins to generate a range of ideas and plays with their form

* Asks a range of questions about those ideas and forms and begins to challenge the conventions and structures behind them

* Risks asking a range of questions from a range of ideas that leads to significant analysis based upon the degree of success of the questions and statements in generating new meanings

* Problems are being resolved through a clear process of challenging questions that are based upon testing a range of possibilities, some of which may be unsuccessful, but which lead to a resolution

* A growing understanding of how to apply knowledge networks

* Begins to understand the core concepts within the subject domain and can apply questions to discover these

* Begins to use the core concepts within the subject domain (e.g. Physics) to seek to resolve the key problem

* Begins to develop an understanding of how to use technologies to resolve the problem by testing ideas

* Makes judgements that are becoming less dependent upon received knowledge

* Judgements about the value of ideas are becoming more independent

* A range of co-existing alternative ideas and interpretations have been considered

* An understanding of other factors that help to shape judgements, such as social and cultural contexts are beginning to be considered

* The final product is the result of clear independent judgements

* It shows a richness of texture of ideas which lead to the possibilities of analogies and metaphors being generated by the audience

* A range of connections and relationships of ideas/knowledge/understandings of meanings has been articulated clearly

* Progress in the degree of motivation displayed in resolving the problem

* An active role in attempting to generate meanings and understanding is evident.

* An understanding of the value of learning within a social community is understood and participated in

* A degree of control is sought over the shaping of ideas and relevance of questions, but also a willingness to experiment and explore ideas is increasingly evident

* Problems are being anticipated and questions are generated increasingly independently to lead to action and production

* The value of questions, ideas and resolutions is considered and their significance is considered in generating new meanings

* Evidence of engagement with learning communities beyond the studio room are evident, e.g. further, wider reading; parents, etc

* The success of the product is evaluated independently with increasing self-confidence

* Defining characteristics of the meaning of the product are coherently articulated using a rich vocabulary which demonstrates a developed understanding of the subject domain and the contexts in which that subject domain is interpreted

* The learner clearly demonstrates ownership of the product


- Posted using BlogPress from my iPhone

Word it out

Made with WordItOut

One of the frustrations of the excellent Wordle word cloud application is that it's difficult to embed the finished cloud in another website (especially if you're working on a PC). Word it out appears to have solved that problem. Once you have created your word cloud, it is saved online and you can embed wherever you like. Job done!

The example above is taken from the recently published, complete Ofsted report on Creative Learning.

Our Student Voice Prezi

Student Voice at Thomas Tallis School on Prezi

This is the presentation we created for the Student Voice: Are We Listening? event at City Hall on Thursday evening. Raihan, Billy, Seb, Tom, Amber (remember her?) and Chenai all took part and were a real credit to the school. They described some of the many ways we have developed our Student Voice initiative at Tallis but with a particular emphasis on student authorship and social networking via the internet. We have already received positive feedback from the event organisers and we are expecting a visit from friends at Islington Arts and Media School in early March to find out more about each other's School of Creativity plans.

Web n Play

I received a lovely email from Sydney on Wednesday following our meeting the previous afternoon. She was clearly very impressed by the group's ideas and creativity. I thought I could use Sydney's notes from the meeting as our minutes. I am meeting Lisa Sproat today to see how we can find ways of inviting some primary schools to get involved. I will post after the meeting to keep everyone updated. Thanks again for all those who attended, and also for Billy for chairing the meeting.

Sydney's Notes:

They would like to work with between 2-4 primary schools
They want to do the project before the end of this academic year
They want to involve Year 11 students in the project, which means we have to run the project over the last three weeks of term, due to exams
This will mean that we have to condense the normal project schedule (8 weeks), which is fine so long as the primary schools are willing to dedicate a lot of time to it over the last 3 weeks.
I stressed that WebPlay Local was a very flexible model and that we could adapt it to fit our needs, although we needed to decide what those needs were and also to find out what the priorities were for the primary schools
We discussed, but did not decide, the platform that the project would be delivered through. We can of course use Thinkquest, which is what we currently use, but as we are increasingly running our projects on learning platforms, and as there is a mandate to get primary schools using learning platforms, I suggested that maybe it would be good to use the authorities. It as also mentioned that you use a series of collaborative tools that we could use, there is only an issue of internet safety for primary school students. A decision still needs to be made on this.
I suggested ways of involving the Tallis students could include: performing in the secret meeting, acting as Jet Set and Go agents online and possible in-class (helping with local walks etc). Helping with the secret meeting (ushers etc, helping to create the final travel guides (these don’t have to be ppt or websites, they can be videos – plays, newscasts etc).
I said that we would work together as a group to adapt the curriculum
here was talk of involving primary schools that you are already doing professional development work with on media (video, photos etc) and that the project could reinforce the skills they have been learning
I had also mentioned how impressed I was with the deaf students whom I met while I was with you. I suggested that maybe it would be worth working with a primary that has a deaf unit and feeds to Tallis and then involving some of the students we met in the project, including signing all our resources and a performing/signing at the Secret Meeting. I would be really interested in pursuing this idea.
I explained that the normal fee for primary schools to do the normal WebPlay Local is £500 and that we would stick with that and provide all the coordinating and extra design/management time for free. (because it’s really exciting and will be really fun!)
I stressed the importance of moving quickly because of the time constraints. I said we would have to have a deadline for a decision (and for having primary schools involved) in two weeks, so let’s say 19th Feb?
I said that if we decided to move ahead the first thing I would do would be to meet with them again and bring our normal project management plan, which we would fill in together. I think this way of working would give them valuable experience at project planning and management, in addition to the benefits they will get out of the project themselves.

Web n Play

Just a reminder that Sydney Thornbury from Web n Play is coming to talk with us on Tuesday. We'll meet as usual up in room 208 after school. Billy will be chairing the meeting. Try and grab a moment to check out their site to get a sense of what they do.

Soren

Bubble logo

In advance of tomorrow's meeting with the publicity team I thought I would share one of the logo options. What do people think? I tried another one with some dots, an exclamation mark and a question mark, but that met with spousal disapproval. Thanks to Freddie Darke for the bubble drawings.

Soren

The Measurement Shop

Check out the latest Tangled Feet project, The Measurement Shop. There are so many ways to measure things and so many things that can be measured. How happy are you? How can you measure happiness?

This project looks like another great opportunity for us to think about learning at Tallis using the talents of a fantastic group of actors and performers.

Web 2.0 and Prezi

I've just managed to upgrade my Prezi account to the new, free educational version. It was a bit tricky because the form of my email address had to match a school website (e.g. .com) and our system doesn't work like this. I eventually realised that I could use my Tallis LAB account which is another tick in the box for Google Mail as far as I'm concerned.

Anyway, I was browsing through some really great Prezis when I found this one. It gathers together a lot of the ideas about and a rationale for using Web 2.0 tools in the classroom. It's American ( I still don't really know what K12 means) but applies easily to our experiments.

Just thought I'd share it with you and encourage you to get on board with Prezi. I still like Keynote, but Prezi is a whole new ball game.

P S Thanks to those of you who have joined the OK LDN Ning. More about this soon.

The Future of Learning

The always interesting Stephen Heppell articulating the connection between technology and the development of creative life-long learners.

iPhone app

I've just finished creating an iPhone app for Thomas Tallis School using the amazingly easy iSites.

The app, which you will soon hopefully be able to download from the App Store via iTunes, is a collection of all the blog feeds that are related to the school. At the moment, these are almost exclusively arts or creative learning based but, eventually, if blogging takes off, students and staff will be able to access the latest information about the school and the curriculum using this app. There is an Android version of the app on the way for anyone without an iPhone. Even now there are an amazing 25 different feeds from a combination of Blogger, Tumblr, Twitter and Flickr sites.


I'll let you know when it becomes available on the App Store. Exciting times!