Weekly Update Bulletin – Update 70

A very busy week at school this week, hence the lack of posts here on igeog, but I am currently planning some blog training for school which will take place over the next couple of weeks, so I will be adding materials to the pages and to the front blog as and when they are completed.

This weeks ICT update bulletin includes a hazards special with a large number of links to support case study work on this weeks floods in the UK. There are a variety of news reports from the BBC and Guardian looking both at cause and effect as well as a selection of links to both pictures and video.

Severe floods have also affected both Pakistan and Texas over the last week, whilst parts of Europe have experienced a heatwave!

Weekly Update Bulletin – Update 69

I have just published Update 69 on Geobytes and it can be downloaded in pdf format here. It includes news of a new photo competition for young geographers with some excellent prizes. There are also some very interesting news stories this week, including the case of the disappearing lake in Chile! I hope people find something of use – thanks as always to anyone from SLN who has contributed links to the forum.

VOKI – new approaches – Geography Vodcasts?

Having read this post on Joe Dale’s excellent blog for MFL teachers I was immediately enthused by the possibilites for using this excellent new (and free!) tool in the geography classroom and in online resources. Voki enables users to create an animated avator for expressing themselves online, either in their own voice or using text-speech recognition to bring their avator to life in order to deliver a message. The Avator can be completely customised with choices of ‘realistic’ people through to anime characters and speaking animals! You can alter their characteristics from hair through to clothing and even set your own chosen background from a large selection! The avators are purposefully designed for personal, non-commercial use and are intended to be embedded in blogs or social network profiles such as MySpace.

There are a number of potential fun, educational uses for such a tool. Voki has been created by Oddcast who are also responsible for SitePal. Whereas Voki is free, SitePal is designed for corporate use and is therefore a pay for use tool. Just like Voki, SitePal allows you to design speaking, animated characters for embedding in websites but with greater flexibility and choice (as would be expected) than the free version, Voki.

Rich Allaway on his superb website GeographyAlltheWay, has been making excellent use of SitePal characters for a while in producing excellent online resources for his Geography students such as this Niagara Falls activity and The Spiny Cactus Bar Murder. As you can see, these animated characters can really help to bring the tasks to life and add another dimension.

Having a free version of this which could therefore be made use of by both staff and students seems to me to have great potential! Potential educational uses are already being discussed on the internet and include amongst others reminders for students, recapping at the end of lessons , and the potential for putting a face to podcasts.

Having a real interest at the moment in the use of podcasts I thought I’d see if I could transform one of my Coasts revision podcasts into a simple ‘vodcast’ using Voki. Unfortunately a drawback of Voki at the moment, seems that like a number of other free gadgets it is difficult to embed in wordpress. I have however successfully embedded it in blogger and my example of a simple Coasts Vodcast can be seen here. Another limitation of Voki is that at the moment (I don’t know if this is likely to change?) there is a restriction on the length of audio that can be uploaded which seems to be about 60 seconds. There is however flexibility as to how audio is added, either by phone, directly by microphone, uploading an existing mp3 or even making use of text-speech recognition (this in particular makes it very quick to create).

Uses in the Geography Classroom?

• a fun way of providing feedback to students?
• making announcements / deadline reminders on websites?
• use in the creation of online resources, using animated characters to introduce tasks and to lead students through an activity (such as that already carried out by Rich Allaway with his SitePal characters)
• animating podcasts / use for creation of revision activities (although time limits use to some extent)

Of course as well as staff using the tool to create more media rich online resources and activities – surely this would be great for use by students, just as Joe Dale suggests for the MFL classroom. In Geography students could be given the task of creating a 60 second precis of a particular topic or concept for revision which could then be shared through a department website or blog. Students could also use these as a presentation tool for homework activities, particularly as more and more students start to create media rich outcomes. Can anyone think of anything else? It would be interesting to share any ideas people have (please use the comment facility)

ICT Updates

The GeoBytes/ICT Update is produced weekly with the aim of promoting the use of ICT in teaching and learning in our department. As well as providing an overview of updates to our Geography website (www.geobytes.org.uk) it includes an overview of Geography in the News, new geography related opportunities, subject specific weblinks, and professional development in the use of ICT as a teaching and learning tool. It is also used to highlight new ICT based resources for sharing in the department. Many of the links have been suggested by geographers through the ever flourishing SLN forum and the update also includes new ideas and articles collated from some key geography / education blogs. The bulletin is always posted on the GeoBytes website and an archive of bulletins can be found here. Although in places this is quite department specific there are many links which are useful to all geography teachers. This weeks bulletin, Update 68, can now be downloaded.

Taking Geography Forward

Ollie Bray, geographer and deputy headteacher at Musselburgh Grammar School writes an excellent blog exploring both his responsibilities at Musselburgh Grammar as well as his role as East Lothian Subject Support Co-ordinator for Geography.

Earlier this week Ollie spent a day working with Brighton and Hove Geography Teachers looking at “Taking Geography Forward”. As well as looking at the basics (such as internet, video, images etc.), Ollie spent time looking at new tools for teachers (such as web 2.0, blogs, podcasts etc.) as well as giving consideration to how to access and manage online information as a 21^st century teacher and Geography futures.

Ollie has produced an excellent online handout which supports his presentation – this includes his powerpoints, written notes and embedded YouTube videos. There is a wealth of information here for all geography teachers and many inspirational ideas to enthuse geographers and get them used to using new technologies to enhance teaching and learning in the geography classroom.

• Taking Geography Forward Part 1 – Introduction
• Taking Geography Forward Part 2 – Getting the Basics Right
• Taking Geography Forward Part 3 – New Tools for Teachers
• Taking Geography Forward Part 4 – Building a new KS3 curriculum
• Taking Geography Forward Part 5 – The 21st Century
• Taking Geography Forward Part 6 – Geography Futures

As well as introducing new technologies Ollie’s handout contains lost of valuable tips for use of old favourites such as search engines, powerpoints etc. and is well worth taking the time to read. It is also worth keeping up with the rest of Ollie’s blog which never fails to inspire!