
iBaby

Wash up
The UK is in election mode and yesterday brought one of the many downsides of this, the rushing through of legislation in progress. The bargaining process brings casualties.
First there was the Children, Schools and Families Bill where the Primary Curriculum reform based on the Rose review was dropped, so much work and effort put into creating a 21st century curriculum gone. Where next?
About legislation, we won’t know until after the election. Will it be Labour try again with their current reforms or will it be the Conservative vision of 21st century education. And will either be mediated by The Liberal Parties vision?
About practice in schools, we can perhaps have a brighter view. Primary schools are looking seriously at learning and developing new creative curriculum, all within the letter of the law (The National Curriculum).
And then late at night came the ”catastrophic disaster” -Tom Watson MP of the Digital Economy Bill, a ‘nightmare of unintended consequences‘ -Mike Butcher.
There are/were minute by minute comments on the bill at #debill on Twitter including declarations by many that “I choose not to recognise the UK’s Digital Economy Bill” ( however there is no guarantee that the law will acknowledge this
)
Hansard records that 236 MPs actually voted on this bill (out of 646). My current MP Stephen Dorrell wasn’t one of them.
And here at IPrivacy4IT – Clarinette’s blog is someone who is really quite worried for everyone.
Story Museum
I am fascinated and pleased about this site, The Story Museum via my global PLN (personal learning network). Twitter and ictopus both mention it.
The story museum ..
“exists to celebrate children’s stories and to share 1001 enjoyable ways for young people to learn through stories as they grow.”
There’s a section, Stories at home, for the family suggesting ways of helping children enjoy stories from an early age, good for home school links and Stories at school with information (where to find a performance story teller) ideas (creating a whole school story plan) , suggestions (story tellers club) and examples (a story telling school) from schools, for schools.
But most of all there are the 1001 stories from world wide cultures, mainly audio for children to listen, but some videos of authors telling their story. Watch the video telling of Red Riding Hood especially the way in which it explains the name and the alternative endings or listen to The Three Billy Goats Gruff and follow the story map resource.
It’s a big busy site, but full of wonderful things, have a good look.
Video blog
Butterfly 42 has suffered a little since Christmas, doubly, from lots of stuff to do and from my personal challenge of creating a Vlog Flick-a-day . I’m aiming to have one ‘life and times’ clip per day for 365 days, here’s the rational . It is a challenge but making me think about techniques and content.
On the whole a video clip needs action and sometimes action needs to be created, the action in real every day life is often very mundane. On really bad days I console myself that I could be creating social history. How long will there be school buildings for lollipop ladies to stand outside, helping children cross very busy roads ????
Here are a couple of clips I took at BETT 2010 in January. It has become an education event where evidence of the practitioner voice is often low level but feature of this years show which I was pleased to be involved in, was Teachmeet Takeover where expertise and experience in using free online tools was shared and it seems appreciated by visitors. Others have recorded the event very clearly, take a look at what Tom, Danny and Kevin have to say.
The first day of the 2010 BETT show underway. Not as busy as usual as there was another snowfall over night, in some areas snow on ice so no transport running.
Still at BETT 2010. On the second day it was much busier, the weather has improved and transport easier. So here’s a selection of the worlds educators in full discussion in one of the refreshement areas at Olympia.
From the 2010 video diary
5th January 2010 from Tricia Neal on Vimeo.
In the morning there was news that most of the country had heavy snow or even blizzards and settling fast. Leicestershire and parts of Nottinghamshire had little and as the traffic moved in to the city the roads began to clear.
Late afternoon the snow began to fall, first barely noticeable but then came flakes that said ‘I’m staying’.
The homeward bound traffic leaving Leicester began to slowdown but the volume meant that snow didn’t settle on the carriage way.
Tracking Santa
Attribution: Photo Fat Dude Flying from the collection of Tony
For all children, everywhere, on Christmas Eve, ‘Track Santa’ with the aid of Norad ( bi-national US-Canadian military organisation responsible for the aerospace and maritime defence of the United Sates and Canada) is an exciting prelude to the long awaited Christmas Day. Norad have been doing it for over 50 years now, using the technology of the time to make fantasy real.
This year Santa can be followed using Google Earth, downloaded to computer or mobile phone, and strategically placed web cams give real time glimpses of his journey. Last year I was not the only one tracking Santa on my I-phone while listening to Christmas carols in the Town Hall Square!
The frequently asked questions section in ‘About Santa’ gets the adults off the hook by providing sensible answers to important questions and, useful for some, technical details about the sleigh (dimensions are given in ’sweety’ units.. great for early measurement activities) There are seven languages to choose from at the beginning.
noradsanta is now on Twitter, click follow for realtime updates, sparse at the moment but I’m sure will increase as we get closer to Christmas
The real action is of course from December 24th but the site with it’s simple games, video and information about Santa, countdown tool (in seconds) and the option of text in seven languages would be a valuable tool for creativity and fun in the days before. And children could follow via home school links during the holidays……..So have fun on Christmas Eve!
Advent calendars are not only for children

Attribution: Photo Fjarde Advent from the collection of Steffe
For communities celebrating Christmas the first of December is the time to start counting down to Christmas day, either to contain excitement or to raise it according to your perspective. Schools have always harnessed them for learning through making or using. They are a useful supporting activity for counting and ordering, for the passing of time and to reinforce aspects of a great festival.
Where once we constructed them with card and pictures cut from last years Christmas cards, now we have the Internet and the opportunity to use it’s power and a whole range of multimedia techniques to provide content for calendars than can be seen by the world.
And of course the calendars are not only for children, they have been harnessed by a variety of establishment to share the arts with adults.
So below is a selection of calendars I found last year, some available for this year.
Woodland’s Junior School in Kent has a global audience for their annual calendar which provides Christmas activities, information, web search and teaching ideas making it a focus for the month.
Their KS1 offering is bold and bright with repeatable colouring and games that children can use at home as well as at school.
Porchester Junior School are all set to start their Advent Calendar on December 1st with it’s links to a new Christmas web site every day.
Nrich have a mathematical calendar every year, this year 2009 has a picture puzzler every day. Previous calendars can be found here
The Kidszone Finland advent calendar is a “delightfully illustrated, 24 part story about sharing the gift of happiness with others.”
The Kidzone Finland site, designed to for children to find out about Finland, tells us that “Over 24 days the free calendar follows the hilarious exploits of the little elf Zac, taking readers on a journey through one of the funniest Christmas stories from the home of Santa Claus.”
HelpKidzLearn advent calendar is a mixture of simple, bold, online and printable activities for younger children.
Boowa & Kwala an Early Years site have an advent calendar made up of 24 stockings on a line …not to be opened before December 1st.
How could I have missed the CBeebies Advent Calendar or the CBBC Countdown to Christmas?
Children from Coteford Junior School, Middlesex chose their favourite works for the Tate Kids Advent Calendar ’so for 24 days you can see their choice and what it meant to them’
For the older audience
Showcasing young people’s creative use of media for 10 years now is the Electric December advent calender. This year there are links to all of the presentations, interesting to watch.
Music soothes the savage breast, so if it’s the end of a day with a lively bunch of children go to the BBC Bach Christmas Calendar
For further rest and relaxation after a busy day take a look at la previous calendar from The Tate, already completely open, strong people will be able to restrict themselves to one picture per day.
From the museums Liverpool has a calendar for this year, but it’s not yet open so can’t tell more.
Saltaire Villagers, a world heritage site, have used their homes to create an advent calendar here 2006 and 2007 can be seen. Their decorated windows are lit up every evening until Christmas Eve.
For added awe and wonder try the Hubble Space Telescope Advent Calendar 2009
And finally for itouch and iphone users there are quite a selection of downloadable Apps called ‘Advent Calendars’ offering pictures, sayings, music and recipes. Prices vary from free to 5.00+. However the Porchester Junior website is optimised for viewing on mobiles so perhaps I’ll use that.
If you know of any other examples or have one of your own please add it to this as a comment.
It’s not all about computers
Early last week I was invited to work with some early years practitioners, and it transpired, a scattering of ICT leaders, heads, deputies, to look at using ICT in the early years (3-7) . We were considering how digital technologies, other than the computer could be used to support and enhance learning and teaching.
While some may argue that the i-Phone, i-Pod touch and Nintendo DS are computers. I include these to help move thinking towards acessability and away from the computer in the corner or even the computer room for early years children.
It’s something I’ve done many times before with a range of early years practitioner groups and where possible I like to take a selection of the actual technology rather than images or description, to hook the discussion onto. This means I’m that presenter/ lecturer going backwards and forwards to the car with plastic boxes rather than arriving in the room and connecting the laptop to the presentation system…
As I was packing my boxes the day before, checking that batteries worked and everything charged I decided to photograph my ‘presentation’ as a starter for the sessions and a reminder after. The pictures are below. This is by no means an exhaustive ‘list’ of digital tools, role-play, street and home technology are not there but that’s for another day.
It was a super day, with thinking people so that as ever, although leading I learned much from them too.
More about the Talktime postcards
Early Years Technology on PhotoPeach
Bubbleshare - the demise
Attribution: Photo Bubbles from the collection of Jeff Kubina
I’ve finally found a moment to go to BubbleShare and reclaim my photo albums before they disappear altogether. BubbleShare, a photo storage and sharing site is closing down, along with my early photo albums. Especially those with funky borders and speech bubbles putting witty words in the mouths of my unsuspecting family! Although they soon found out when they looked at the family blog where I had embedded the jovial albums! There will be some gaps there now in November when it closes down.
To be fair users were given a few month notice to rescue their photos, and reminders sent in between times, but I’ve left it until the last minute ( along with many others) and it’s taking time for them to package up the photos into a download package.
It’s a while since I used BubbleShare for my early attempts at online albums and embedding. I’ve moved on to applications that offer clever and innovative ways of presenting, Animoto, PhotoPeach, Photosynth are just a few.
I noticed this week that Geocities has also closed down. It was a longstanding free web hosting service, allowing many early websites to be trialled and used by others. But we’ve all grown up since then and Yahoo are now offering a ‘paid for’, more sophisticated, service that many will go for.
Both a reminder, if we needed one, that nothing in the world of digital technology stands still and that we must be prepared to move along with it, having the adaptability of econfidence, finding, using and adapting applications that we need. And also to have a pause for thought about the value of free applications over ones we pay a lot of money for.
Storybird
I’m having a’ Sneak Peek’ at Storybird version 0.1 an open beta. It’s billed as
“Collaborative Story telling for families and friends”
but I could quite see it as collaborative story telling for the ‘home school’ link.
“we’re building Storybird in the open, collaberating with the artist and enthusiasts to produce fun, simple tools to make short visual stories.”
Storybird provides a very simple format for making a book using the individual, fun bright and quirky art work on the site for inspiration. Then there’s space for adding text on every page.
The completed text can be published for everyone and anyone to see and embed in their own sites or published and kept private so that only those sent the address will be able to read.
A great way for familes to create and share via school or independently. The the parents page is good to read
Take a look, create a book, share it here or there, wherever. Let me know what you think about it.
Here’s my first solo book, I’m working on a shared one too.











