Drop.io enables you to create simple private exchange points called “drops.”
The service has no email signup and no “accounts.” Each drop is private, and only as accessible as you choose to deliberately make it. Create multiple drops, add any type of media, and share or subscribe as you want. To make a drop just click the big red button that says ‘drop it’ (more)
If I know that I’ll have an Internet connection where I’m going to be working then this looks like a great way for me to bundle files for a course, take to a class, etc. without needing to carry my pendrive(s)!!! around with me. It’s so quick and easy that I envisage using it as a drop point throughout training days to create a categorised list of any resources discussed/used during the day. Participants can simply visit the drop point when back at school and copy down anything important to them.
Any number of new drops can be created for different groups/purposes - all free and very easy, there’s no registration or sign up but there is ample flexibility in terms of security options. See my first drop containing two MP3s for yesterday’s post and the two images for today’s.
I see this very much as a tool for temporary storage/transfer rather than as some sort of secure vault - just like my old friend the pendrive!!!
In his recent blog post, All about perception?, David Muir revived the memory of Billy Connolly’s monologue, Musical Appreciation (Mairi’s Wedding) . It took me back to my secondary school music classes - around the same time as the Big Yin put this out!
While we had no such comedic presence in the music classes of my schooldays, we were treated weekly to singing sessions from the old dog-eared book of ’standards’.
Needless to say, music periods were treated as an irrelevance. The outmoded syllabus, with no room to engage with music (and other subjects) on anything other than the teachers’ terms, had us seeking out our own routes to expression and learning. Our music happened at home and in friends’ houses and various garages around Dundee where we set up our tinny amps, guitars and drums to thrash out Communication Breakdown or Throw Down the Sword if the guy who could play the solo was with us that day. We were all into Zepp, Deep Purple, Lynyrd Skynyrd, (and Billy Connolly) and would have lapped up any help that could have helped us better understand how the music worked.
Music departments seem to have transformed themselves since I was at school in the late 60s and early 70s. They’ve moved with the times, brought in the right tools and regularly work with contemporary as well as traditional music. It’s now guitars, keyboards and drums rather than grand pianos, tambours, triangles, and singing (nearly) in unison. There’s been a natural and gradual adoption of the various technologies that have further supported teaching and learning as well as the writing and performance elements of their subject. As popular musical instruments such as guitars and keyboards have become cheaper, and recording tools more mobile and affordable, it seems an obvious transition to put these tools into the hands of the learners and to listen to what they can achieve when appropriately supported and encouraged by their peers and teachers.
Why are we so slow in other areas of education to see the relevance of ‘tooling up’ to offer more engaging opportunities to our, already, digitally aware pupils? Why do we spend so much time blocking teachers’ and pupils’ access to relevant websites and tools - financially negating our investment in some of the most significant resources that should be available for 21st Century teaching and learning?
Young people are turning in droves to the Internet, at home, to gain more relevant experiences in other subject areas. The National Year of Reading web site ‘Read Up, Fed Up’ recently reported that:
Compiling their own online blogs came fourth in the Read Up rankings and 80% of those taking part said they had written their own story, film, play or song.
National Year of Reading director Honor Wilson-Fletcher said: “Young people are web natives - exposed to a wider variety of reading material than any previous generation through the explosion of digital media.
“It seems not all adults are comfortable with this shift, and are often discouraging teens from taking advantage of this new reading landscape.
“Accessing the digital universe is absolutely central to life’s opportunities for teens.
“We may be only just starting to understand the dynamics of online reading, but adults need to feel more positive about it and to learn more about it.”
and that:
The National Year of Reading report shows that more youngsters are choosing online sites as a reading source.
Music in schools has shed many of its irrelevances - how will other subject areas fare if they fail to take account of the changed world that is already with us?
So, while Life’s Been Good to Me So Far and there’s no chance of a late-onset rock’n'roll lifestyle for me, I’m off to indulge in a Pandora’s Boxof permissible, proper reading - and listening - with a view to filling in some of the missing musical moments that I was starved of in my youth. Many thanks to the staff room blog of Auchenharvie Academy for bringing The Musicology Show to my attention. It’s a brilliant resource even if many of the follow-through links are off limits outside the US.
“There’s no longer any excuse! The secret is out! We teachers must embrace ’search’ for what it is - an effective and critical skill in finding and utilising sources available on the internet.”
So states Judy O’Connell on her fantastic blog before going on to provide really useful links to search sites, some specifically for kids, and a great tutorial that makes finding exactly what we want as easy as ordering your specially topped pizza!
“I would like a pizza with pepperoni and ham, but with no olives and no garlic.”
Here’s the good news: If you are able to order a pizza like that, you are able to use advanced “Boolean” searching on the Internet. It’s actually that easy!
The ATS Service had the pleasure this week of spending two days with staff from one of our special schools. We met with nine staff over the two days and made use of the excellent facilities and surroundings of The Storehouse of Foulis.
The time had been set aside to help raise ICT awareness and build confidence in deploying the various technologies in the context of teaching and learning for the wide range of pupils who attend the school. Writing about the days like this doesn’t reflect the buzz that existed as the teachers immediately saw the possibilities such tools could have for themselves and their pupils. I certainly left with new ideas as a result of the discussions and feedback we received.
All the teachers made voice recordings using Audacity software, took and downloaded photographs before making use of these in other software applications such as Jigworks, ChooseIt Maker2, and Softease Presenter. We painted using 2Paint a Picture and published using 2Publish+ from 2Simple software, looked at the benefits of click and drag software, Comic Life for picture story telling, and so on……..
The idea behind building confidence in these areas was to look beyond the keyboard and ‘through’ the technology to the opportunities for the pupils to express themselves and to give teachers a variety of tools to help build alternative resources - to change the way we teach and the way we allow the children to learn.
One teacher’s comments on the morning session.
There’s some discussion now to be had back at school then we aim to follow up, in more detail, any of the strands the teachers want to further develop.
Do you ever get fed up of reading through three lines of gobbledegook when you use a search engine? I find search results very unsatisfactory so I look forward to the development of this fledgling enterprise who are offering visual results. This seems to operate very like the ‘Quick Look’ function within Mac Leopard which is a real boon when looking through files that haven’t been named very carefully!!!!
You enter a vocabulary list of any words or data you want. (ex. SAT words, history dates, French-Spanish translations, etc.)
Quizlet gives you a specialized learning mode, flashcards, randomly generated tests, and collaboration tools for classmates to help you study those words.
You ace your test.
Here are some neat features:
Quizlet keeps track of the words you know and only retests you on the ones you don’t.
You can share your vocabulary sets with classmates and get email notification when others make sets for you.
You can import words from a file without having to retype them into Quizlet.
Quizlet has accent buttons for typing letters in foreign languages.
You can discuss sets (and gossip about teachers!) with classmates via instant discussion boxes.
Quizlet works in any language. If you can type it into your keyboard, you can study it on Quizlet.
Efficient scheduling algorithm, so you don’t waste time on things you know well
Support for languages using different scripts through unicode
Support for pictures, sounds and html formatting
Can be integrated with LaTeX to display mathematical formulas
Support for three-sided cards, e.g. foreign words where you are interested in written form, pronunciation and translation
Can be run from a USB key
Can display some basis statistical info on your learning process
Keeps a detailed record of your entire learning process for analysis
Your cards can be organised in categories, which can be activated and disactivated to control your learning process
Clean, deceptively simple user interface, yet fully customisable for advanced users through configuration files and plugins
Available in English, German, Spanish and Dutch
Support for a large number of import and export formats (text, XML, Supermemo, Memaid, …)
Both of these aim to assist in the memory process by allowing the preparation of sets of Flashcards & Answers that can be used by pupils to learn then test themselves. Must be great for language acquisition, for learning new vocab, for learning specialised vocab………
I’m sure that this could be used to set up word walls for dyslexic pupils - and combining the set with the facility known as Scatter (where you clear the screen, against the clock, by matching words to their meanings or associations) should be a great way of varying the overlearning process.
These are easy to prepare and deliver and, once signed in, you can download sets of data already prepared by others on a wide range of topics. Once you’ve created sets of your own you’ll be able to share them with colleagues all over the world.
As the learning and testing takes place on the web, pupils can, theoretically at least, use these whenever, wherever!!!!!!!!
While many of you may just want to do exactly what the title of this blog suggests - learn the basics (with the possibility of much more) of a language in small bite-sized chunks - my reason for flagging this up is more to do with possibilities it signals for teaching and learning. Thanks to Andrew Brown for the heads-up on this - read his more eloquent post here.
This series of podcasts shows just what is possible in terms of offering an ongoing, structured programme of learning via downloadable chunks of spoken information. This podcast has been picked up by millions of individuals who want to learn and have found a means of doing so. It’s such a good example of podcasting that Coffee Break Spanish is currently the second most downloaded series from iTunes in the United States, behind Oprah - and the guy who presents/teaches the course is a west coast Scot - Mark Pentleton. The podcasts are apparently recorded in a very simple studio at this guy’s house and they have proved immensely popular. But even at a simpler level than this it is now possible for us to provide texts/information for pupils to listen to, teaching support for those of us who need stuff repeated, materials for absent pupils, for disrupted learners, for encouraging parental involvement, sharing expertise in remote areas, using the materials anywhere, anytime, and much, much more ………………………….
My four year old son is picking up Spanish from watching and listening to Dora the Explorer and he was listening with great interest to the first couple of Mark’s podcasts as I was listening while driving to work. (A wee experiment is on the cards!!!)
The ease with which these high quality resources can be accessed and used by individuals or teachers must eventually convince ICT doubters that getting to grips with technology is a necessity and not an option.
So, as my son overtakes my lifetime’s achievement in languages, I’m only glad that I have access to teachers/sharers/contributors from all around the world - and from just along the road!!! - so that I can, at least try, to keep in touch.
Due to an ongoing staff shortage it has been impossible to run the courses that we normally do throughout the year. However, we we’ve been having withdrawal symptoms from not being in contact with teachers and schools for CPD and have decided to put together a few days which we hope will be useful.
First up, we’ve invited independent ICT consultant, Doug Dickinson , to speak to Head Teachers about developments and new technologies that will affect our schools over the next few years. He’s going to talk about the educational use of multimedia tools, podcasts, and social networking. Doug’s a non-techie ICT supporter and he’s very enthusiastic about getting the most exciting tools for teaching into the classroom. We hope the Heads who attend will be able to guide their teachers towards the integration of such tools throughout the curriculum and across all subject areas. (18 April, 2008 - am & pm sessions)
Under our own steam, we’re offering up 6 dates for courses - two of which are ‘out of hours CPD’ as they’re to be held during the first week of the summer holiday.
Switching on to the digital classroom. (12 May, 2008 & 30 June, 2008) An opportunity for teachers who want to develop their use of ICT in terms of presentation of materials via data projectors and wireless technology/interactive whiteboards. Teachers will have the chance to consider how they can develop teaching and learning materials as well as having the opportunity to see and use a range of software resources that may be new to them.
Clicker 5. (4 June, 2008) Although Highland hasn’t upgraded to Clicker 5 many schools have gone ahead and bought this much improved version of the software. Clicker 5 works slightly differently from its earlier versions and so those making their own materials will benefit from this day where the ‘edit mode’ and its functions will be explored. We’ll also be able to show participants many of the available resource packs that are available and how to make use of the re-vamped ‘learning grids’ website for the obtaining and sharing of resources. If time permits there will be a chance to see and use the WriteOnline and the New to English materials produced by Crick software.
Blogs, Podcasts, and Wikis. (5 June, 2008 & 1 July, 2008) A day for teachers who have not already used or started a blog, recorded a podcast, or worked on a wiki. We’ll hopefully have participants starting their own blog and wiki pages during the day and giving consideration to how these might be useful within the classroom or as a professional development tool. It’s hoped that we’ll evaluate the day by way of a podcast rather than in the traditional paper-based way. This is a ‘high participation’ day so we’d ask those signing up to come along prepared to talk and write about matters that are important to them!!! We’ll fit in as many Web 2.0 gizmos as we can - all for fun!!!
Creating Audio (Resources). (20 June, 2008) We hope to get teachers making use of the audio options that are available to them in their computers to: create podcasts, talking books, responses from pupils. We’ll look at how Windows Media Player and iTunes can, by themselves and in combination with MP3 players/iPods, support teaching and learning through the accessing of downloadable podcasts, stored music, video, slideshows. One discrete section of the day will look at the setting up of an audio library - an important inclusion strategy for all schools to consider to help promote the engagement of poor/reluctant readers with literature.
c
