Fun On Friday #100: Bananagrams

I have recently become obsessed with a word game called Bananagrams - a game that is described as: the anagram game that will drive you bananas! I had never heard of this game until I was given it as a birthday present but am now a full convert.

Essentially, you get a bunch of Scrabble like tiles in a bag (a bag in the shape of a banana!) You have to form the tiles into crossword style combinations. However, unlike Scrabble, everyone plays simultaneously. There is no hanging about waiting for your turn and each hand is completed reasonably quickly. Also there is no scoring, so no need for paper and pencil. And a final endorsement is that our youngest daughter and compete successfully with her English Teacher mother, so while an extensive vocabulary is probably an advantage, it does not on its own guarantee success. Instructions on how to play can be found on the official Bananagrams site.

Normally, the Fun On Friday post links to an online resource, so you may be wondering why I'm featuring a board game here? (Well perhaps more accurately a table top game!). It features because, it is available as an online game in Facebook, Bebo and Myspace as well as a download for the iPhone/iPod Touch/iPad.

If you don't already have a facebook account, signup now and look for this game - it really is that good!

Fun On Friday #99: The View From Above

Contrary to popular belief, the Great Wall of China is not the only man made object visible from space. Various Internet sources claim that you can barely see the Great Wall of China from low orbit. Some objects, however, are clearly visible in the satellite images from Google Maps and thanks to Jesse Vig at the GeoGreeting site, you can use buildings, lakes and other features to send a message:


Even better, the site gives you a link that you can send to people so they see an animation of your message being formed along with details of what and where the letters are.

Literacy across learning? Geography, Art and Design with a bit of ICT thrown in for good measure ...or just good fun?

- Posted using BlogPress from my iPad

LWF11 - Tim Rylands

Tim Rylands talking about telling stories: talking, writing and asking questions. Games like Myst and Epic Citadel create a great context for developing creativity. Variety of ways of showing this creativity - saying what they see, creating videos, using Zoo Burst to create a 3D pop-up book, Comic Life, 2Create...

Creating and generating - what apps exist to allow children to create. Demonstrated Brushes to show how pictures can be used as a basis for children's own work (and produce time lapse of the creation process). Colour Splash - isolate one aspect of a picture to highlight. Phyzios Sculptor - make boxes and models. Let's Create Pottery - virtual potters wheel. Voxel - A 3D Sculpting app. Geared - combining and creating.

Dropbox makes it easy to share items. Bump - fun way to share info.

Puppet Pals - stick puppets without the sticks. Granimator. iDough - make 3D virtual clay models. Greenscreen in iMovie. Voicethread - children record their stories inspired by the picture.

Sometimes it is worth pretending to pupils that we don't know how to do something so that the pupils will teach us - some great learning can take place in those situations.

Twitter Tales

This week, I was exploring the use of social networking tools to stimulate or support creative writing with a class. I based one exercise on the Fortunately/Unfortunately wiki.

Twitter
Originally uploaded by respres

I started the story with this tweet: "Unfortunately, while walking to school I fell down a hole!" and the idea was that the students would take turns at continuing the story alternating between "Fortunately" and "Unfortunately". I'll give you the link to the story so far in a moment but a couple of explanations are required to help you make sense of some of the extra messages in the archive.

First, I just posted my tweet with out explanation. As a result, two people expressed concern that I had fallen down a hole! One of the messages in the archive is therefore me thanking them for their concern and explaining what I was doing. The other problem is, not all of the messages showed up in the archive. As a result, I had to re-tweet them. Unfortunately, we ended up with three "Fortunately"s in a row before I re-tweeted. Despite these teething problems, I think the story is beginning to shape up:

Hashtag archive - #BEd42010 A Fortunately, unfortunately story created by BEd students

What do you think of the story so far?

Torbay RTC: New World Literacy

Live blog from #torbayrtc

Michael Munn is asking "Why are we here?" Can ICT make a difference? Michael believes that ICT can make a difference - can improve education for learners and teachers. Covering similar ground to Torbay RTC: iTunes U but emphasising the importance of content creation. If it is true that learners are moving from information consumers to information producers (on facebook, Blogger, YouTube, etc.) then content creation tools are important literacy tools.

Does adopting technology mean you have to drop something else? Or does using ICT tools enhance and develop rather than replace "traditional" elements (such as literacy and numeracy).

Talking again about iTunes U. Apparently the Open University has had over ten million downloads since they started putting stiff on iTunes. This is a sea change - universities (and others) are giving away their content instead of locking it away until someone signs up for a course. {Interesting - means that school pupils can access university level subject resources. I wonder how many do and what the implications are for school subject teaching? - DDM Also, during the presentation, somebody tweeted a link to The Argument for Free Classes via iTunes.}

Michael is arguing that there is a drive to producing interactive content. Apparently Arnold Schwarzenegger says he is not spending any more money on books for the State's schools. This implies the need for everyone to have a portable device - for example a mobile phone (see The iPhone and the Scientist and Mobile phones - A Weapon of Mass Instruction). Surveys suggest 95% of high school children have a mobile phone but most schools still ban them.

Now talking about learning communities: the ease and efficiency of creating and sharing digital content. "In times of change, learners inherit the earth while the learned find themselves beautifully equipped to deal with a world that no longer exists." Eric Hoffer.

Torbay RTC: Tackling Literacy with iLife

Live blog from #torbayrtc

Key goals:

• Get visitors to learn something (teachers and pupils)
• Make visitors want to learn
• Give as many different learning styles a chance to learn as possible
• create exciting learning environment
• Develop partnerships
• Sustainability

Describing a project involving 30 "excitable" Year 5 pupils and their teacher. Project wrote a rap about literacy. The original idea was to get the pupils into a studio and record the rap. Extended by getting students to create a backing track in Garageband. The class produced fifteen backing tracks and had an X Factor vote to choose the best. The next step was to storyboard and produce videos. The project took place over five weeks. The students edited the video:



The Rose Report says that their should be more emphasis on performing and visual arts. The presenter said, "They are speaking our language".

On a classroom wall...

Just the other day, I visited a school to see a student - my first student visit this session. A couple of things on the wall caught my attention.

Andy McSwan - The Cool Wall
Originally uploaded by troutcolor

The first was an A4 sized poster that said:

RAM disk is not an installation procedure.

This amused me! ...Especially since we were looking at Literacy Across Learning today where we were discussing the need to explain what we meant to pupils when using specialist vocabulary in our subjects.

The second was a cool wall, like Andy McSwan's. What I liked about it was that as the class arrived and got themselves organised, I heard two of the girls chatting about it. They were expressing surprise that Bebo was so low as they thought it should be higher. They were clearly engaged with and responding to the cool wall.

I'm guessing it wasn't their class that created the wall but they were happily discussing technology and voicing opinions that they backed up with evidence. Well, not exactly hard evidence but one said that all the Bebo pages she visited were very cool. Initially, the other agreed but then added, "Except my aunt's page. It's rubbish!"

A wall display that gets pupils animated and discussing your subject - what more could you ask for?

{I'm working on a post about iPhone apps but it's taking longer to come together than expected. This was upposed to be a quick, stop-gap post... but it got a bit bigger than I intended!}