As a Dundee lad, weaned on the Beano and Dandy, who later worked as a teacher in the school next door to the D C Thomson offices I’ve always had a fascination for stories told in pictures as well as words.
It was, therefore, with great interest (but no great surprise) that I read Emma Seith’s report in this week’s TESS on the potential use of comics and graphic novels to encourage reluctant readers.
Ever considered using Viz’s Fat Slags to spark a class debate about gender representation? What about using Jackie to teach history? Or juxtaposing Japanese manga and Shakespeare? No?
In all likelihood, neither had teachers gathered at the National Library of Scotland, in Edinburgh, until they attended a recent continuing professional development session on using comics in the classroom by Dr Mel Gibson – or Dr Mel Comics, “because there’s no point in doing a Google search for Mel Gibson”.
Nat Edwards, head of education at the library, introduces Dr Gibson as a leading scholar on comics and graphic novels. Her job, she says, is to “enthuse” the assembled teachers, but she also wants to dispel any idea that such literature is “mostly violent and full of awfulness”.
Comics are, she argues, a means of developing literacy. There is, for example, the Classical Comics range which includes Shakespeare’s Henry V and Macbeth; there’s Persepolis, an autobiographical novel by Marjane Satrapi depicting her childhood in Iran after the revolution; and The Tale of One Bad Rat by Bryan Talbot about a girl who has suffered sexual abuse. “It’s a book about the power of literature and art to make life worth living again,” Dr Gibson says.
She begins, however, by talking about manga, the Japanese graphic novel or comic. In schools it can be used as a means of exploring a different culture, Dr Gibson suggests, but it is also a “powerful vehicle for literacy and creativity”.
She continues: “Graphic novels are good at drawing in new and developing readers, but they also engage passionate readers, who will keep coming back wanting the next volume.”
The Secondary English Network based in West Lothian have been detailing their use of such materials on their exciting blog. These folks are fortunate to have events and exhibitions such asLocal Heroes: The Art of the Graphic Novel on their doorsteps with the associated lecture opportunities that go with them and I’m very jealous!! However, thanks to them for sharing their work so generously - it’s really great to follow what they’re doing.
Remember ComicLife software is available for our schools.
The new digital voice, that those of us working with text-to-speech have been waiting for, is soon to be available.
I reported a few weeks ago about Heather - the fantastic new synthetic speech engine from Cereproc - was to be provided to all Scottish schools through funding from the Scottish Government and she’s on her way!!!This will make a difference to the reading and writing experiences of many of our children.
Listen to Heather here:
Again, we have our friends at the CALL Centre to thank for pushing this initiative through the Scottish Government, making them understand the importance of such provision and bringing it to the computers in our schools soon.
The ATS Service has arranged a training day to help schools prepare for the inevitable increase in the number of pupils with Additional Support Needs who will opt to sit their exams using ICT.
Our friends at the CALL Centre, Edinburgh University have been developing this work with the SQA over a number of years now and have delivered training to large numbers of staff from schools around the country.
The Highland day is set for Tuesday 10th June and we hope to offer all our secondary schools a couple of places at this important event. The details of the course can be seen on the CPD Calendar but we’re targeting this at PTs of Support for Learning and SQA Co-ordinators.
Some of the schools who have been using digital question papers have begun to create interactive digital versions of other resources such as Prelims, NABs and worksheets and so we will look at tools and techniques for creating such resources.
The course presenters will be:
Paul Nisbet, Senior Research Fellow, Communication Aids for Language and Learning (CALL) Centre
Patricia McDonald, SQA Project Manager, National Qualifications Product Development
Margaret Dearman, Support for Learning, Buckie High School
Doug Dickinson is to speak with 40 Highland Heads and Deputes this Friday - he’s on a bit of a tour and we’re glad he’s able to come north to see us. He’s actually delivering in Strathpeffer Community Centre but the trip was organised via the Dingwall Office so I’ll allow him the alliteration in his latest post.
Dumfries (and Galloway), Dundee, Dunbarton (well nearly) and Dingwall … a Scottish tour !
Monday with over 100 teachers in Dumfries. Their first day back after the Easter holidays but what enthusiasm. We explored the changing definitions of text in educational contexts and looked at the wider picture illustrated by Article 13 of the UN Charter for children. This led us to look at the way Textease Studio CT handles multimodality, in particular the power of adding sound to text in a variety of ways.
Keeping reading records as ‘live’ sound recordings was the innovation here as many teachers had not imagined that they had the technology to do this simply and quickly. Tuesday in Dundee with 60 or so enthusiasts in a fantastically impressive hall with a huge presentation screen. Again we looked at the way Curriculum for Excellence had a clear focus towards the future and how the definitions of text opened up opportunities to look at multimodality, blogging and social networking.
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.
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.
I’ve been using an ASUS minibook now for 3 months and its Linux operating system has posed no difficulty despite the fact I’d never seen Linux before. It’s fast, uncluttered and appears to be extremely reliable. I would continue to use the machine the way it is apart from the fact that it’s not clear how, after finding Linux versions of software, you actually install it.
While the techies are all getting excited about adapting the Linux interface to allow for the installation of more software I decided to take a more traditional route to the software we know and love??? by installing Windows XP!!!!
Armed with my external USB DVD drive, a fresh, legal copy of Windows XP(SP2 - essential), and my ASUS support disk I set about the task. The instructions were fairly clear and almost exactly accurate and the whole process went off without a hitch. It did take about an hour and a half to complete but the OS worked as it should, the machine still seemed quick and so I set about installing some software.
I popped our usual anti-virus software on first then installed Penfriend XP - one of our favourite prediction packages. I was becoming concerned that if I kept adding software to the default location that the machine’s remaining storage space would soon be full to the brim so my copy of Softease Studio CT was placed on the SDHC (8GB) card that I’d installed earlier. The card accepted the software and it all runs very sweetly. MS Office next?????
While all of this is exciting - especially in terms of portability - the additional costs of XP and the SDHC card added £100 to the machine’s original £199. As an experiment it was good but I think that at £300 I’d be tempted to go for a laptop with more capacity.
So unless a cheap pre-installed version becomes available - it’s time to learn Linux (Here’s a useful starter) and find new software I think - especially after reading these blog entries:
While at the two-day SICTDG conference last week the subject of text-speech voices came up. Wearing my ASN hat I chipped in the comment that there was a voice under development that would be called Heather and which would have a Scottish voice. I didn’t realise when I spoke that it was already on the open market.
However, don’t go rushing out to buy it - our colleagues at the CALL Centre in Edinburgh have negotiated a deal with the Scottish Government to licence the voice for all Scottish schools. It should be available by summer 2008.
This is a high-quality SAPI5 voice module that will be accessible to all software that can make use of this protocol. It should work in Softease, Clicker5, WordTalk, and BrowseAloud which will read PDFs - the files that are used in digital exams from the SQA.
Text-speech software has always split opinion so it will be interesting to see if we reach a state of harmonious agreement once the excuse of the ‘American’ voice is no longer an argument???
The software has been developed by an Edinburgh based company called Cereproc and you can listen to a couple of examples of Heather’s speech here
Honeycomb - Softease’s Web-based collaboration and creativity environment, which gives pupils a safe and educationally-useful way to make user-generated content.
If you’ve ever wished you could harness the enthusiasm and creativity that your pupils display at home on social networking sites that can’t be used in schools, this is the answer. Pupils can host multimedia content about themselves, their interests, their schoolwork!?!? in a genuinely collaborative way.
CapturaTalk software reads text out loud that has been captured from a photograph or an electronic document – and it operates on a mobile phone (the award-winning TyTN Pocket PC Smartphone).
The speed at which it’s possible to capture and listen to significant chunks of text is impressive and the voices are good but it all comes at a price - £900 - £1000.
Developments are ongoing so that speech will be directly available within text messages - at the moment they have to be text files.
The software is available separately if you already have a high spec smartphone.
This interactive software - based on Clicker 5 is a fantastic tool for teaching and reinforcing language for young pupils or those with English as an additional language. There are to be 3 packs to begin with: At School, In the House and In the Street.
The tasks are structured in small but worthwhile incremental stages, accompanied with good graphics, to develop word knowledge. The software also provides for practice of the spoken word.
Any school with pupils from other countries should have a look at this.
Mult-e-Maths provides teachers with a fantastic set of maths tools all on one screen to help present difficult visual concepts to pupils at all levels of the primary school. A site license is £375 - definitely worth a look!!
iRead,from the same software stable, offers a set of reading and literacy activities that provides teachers with the opportunity to develop their pupils’ awareness of literacy through creative use of multimedia and multi-sensory ICT.
The ATS Service will be demonstrating all of the software and hardware mentioned here in the very near future to schools in Highland.
As a Dundee lad, weaned on the Beano and Dandy, who later worked as a teacher in the school next door to the D C Thomson offices I’ve always had a fascination for stories told in pictures as well as words.
