I don’t intend making this a review of all the features. Techsmith has a good introductory video and there are many reviews online. I want to focus on using it.

I decided to create a short video about blogs as recently I’d been giving brief introductions to various Web 2.0 topics to probationers and I’d use some of the materials. Camtasia is very easy to use. Just decide which area of the screen you want to recorded and click a button. When you’ve finished, click to stop. So far so good, but when clicking between sites, there are an inevitable delays so these had to be edited out. Then there were the times when I’d clicked the wrong link or hesitated too long and these had to go. Finally, I wanted to reduce the finished movie to under 5 minutes because I hoped to put together a series of short movies under the banner ‘Give Me Five’. Editing in Camtasia is intuitive so this didn’t take long.

I decided to avoid doing anything fancy to the video but couldn’t resist the pan and zoom feature which lets you zoom to the part of the screen you want to focus on. This can be set to work automatically but I found it easier to create my own.

Now, I thought, the easy bit. All I have to do is to add some narration and it’s finished. Tachsmith has a number of features to make adding a narration easy such as the ability to freeze a frame if your narration is over-running. About 90 minutes later, the 5 minute narration was finished. Not perfect, not even good, but finished. At this point my admiration for AB’s relaxed clarity multiplied! I’d chosen to work without a script – big mistake. You can fluff your way through when giving a live presentation but not when it’s being recorded. When I’d arrived at the end of the 5 minutes with some remaining semblance of coherence, I exported the file to Audacity and cut out as many ‘ers’ and ‘ums’ as I could without reducing the length too much.

So- lessons learned:

• Plan the video and voice-over before you go near the computer.
• Don’t record your voice when you have a cold.

Is Camtasia Studio 5 worth getting? If you want to make short training videos, this is a great piece of software. It shares some features with Adobe Captivate but each has its own strengths. Both programs have 30 day trials so you can download and try before you buy.

Here is the result of my initial efforts. It can only get better!

 (I’ve just noticed that this video has extra minutes of nothing added on to the end. Sorry – it does  last less than 5 minutes – honest!)

MonkeyJam lets you create stop motion animation from any web cam, digital video camera or sets of scanned images and outputs good quality avi files. It is freeware so can be used on as many computers as you want for no cost.

If you don’t need the quality, you can import the avi file into Windows Movie Maker and save as a wmv file which is considerably smaller.

Here’s a simple 2 second example in wmvformat. The avi file takes too long to download if you want to use it on the web but the quality is great for showing on a whiteboard or as part of a PowerPoint presentation. The wmv file is acceptable quality with a very small file size.

wmv file 149 Kb

SCRATCH is a free program which lets kids create animations by using a simple programming language. It seems to be quite powerful and, apart from the fun the kids would have, it could be used to create quite adventurous programs. It’s not for casual use – you need to spend some time familiarising yourself with the program but the results can be excellent. Take a look a t the examples on the site to see what can be achieved.

The SCRATCH site has the program download, and lots of support materials and examples.

The company is working on a Windows version and has released a free beta version for testing. It seems to be fairly robust. The only problems I’ve had are printing to a network printer and deleting objects ocassionally but these can be worked around.
Go to http://plasq.com/forum/comiclifewin for a free download.

I’d become interested in blogging in the autumn of 2005 when I came across the Sandaig Otters site and reading some posts on the Masterclass forums.

Weblogs, or blogs as they’re more commonly known, are essentially just a list of entries in reverse chronological order, rather like a diary, which is available on the web. The strengths of a blog, compared to a website, are that entries (or posts as they are called) can be put up very quickly and that there is the opportunity for others to comment.

I thought that the ability to comment on pieces of writing could be valuable in the classroom. Blogging could offer an opportunity for children to put examples of their writing on the web and receive comments (hopefully constructive) which would encourage them to continue with, and improve, their writing.

I looked at a variety of different school blogs and one of the obvious problems was that it was quite difficult to find an audience for posts. There are so many sites out there that it is very difficult for bloggers to get regular comments. If, as I believed, comments were one of the most important features of blogging, this was a problem!

I tried out a few different blogging systems on our Authority webspace. All were free and generally easy to set up and use so I was happy that children and teachers would have no technical difficulties.

As I had no regular access to classes myself, I needed a project which would be attractive to teachers and would require no special skills of the participants. If different schools both posted work and commented, the burden of work would be shared. More importantly, this arrangement would provide an immediate audience who could respond to posts so we wouldn’t have to rely on ‘outside’ commentators.

Schools were contacted and Primary 7 classes were invited to take part. I asked for 3 schools to be involved over a 4 week period with the aim of finding whether pupils found the blogging software easy to use and motivating and whether teachers found the idea worthwhile.

In the end, 8 schools asked to participate. I visited them, discussed the idea with teachers and children and left clear written instructions on how to blog. The teacher controlled access and all posts and comments were moderated by me. This ensured that half completed work was no accidentally posted and that no mischievous comments appeared. As it turned out, hardly any moderation was required.

At the end of the 4 week period

• 44 pieces of writing were posted
• 169 comments were made by 92 different people
• the blogs were viewed 2211 times

The blogs can be found here.

I was very happy with the result. The comments were encouraging and the children found them motivating. Teachers were very positive about the experience and some children had begun their own personal blogs.

Here’s an example of a post:

Amy age 11

Haiku

Fuji erupting
Dribbling red spicy liquid
Flickering death sparks.

In normal circumstances, the largest audience for Amy’s work would probably have been her classmates, but, because of the blog, the audience was worldwide. Here is one of the comments she received:

Amy,

This is a lovely haiku. I especially like the last line, “Flickering death sparks.”
I immediately envisioned what a volcanic eruption would look like at night.

Keep up the good work!

M.Deare
Memphis, Tennessee

It was clear that blogging was easy and motivating, but did it improve writing? Much of the work that was posted had been written before the project began so wasn’t influenced by the project. One aspect that did concern me was the lack of proofreading as several posts contained glaring errors. I decided to change the focus of the project and ask classes to concentrate on quality of writing.

Before the second phase began, I attended a Masterclass New Technologies course which gave me lots of new ideas about blogging and how it might be used in the classroom. The contacts made there have proved invaluable.

The software used for the blogs was changed to WordPress, one of the most popular blogging tools and revised advice was sent to schools. Unfortunately, only a couple of schools were able to continue with the project at this time of the term so posts and comments slowed down. Another school joined in after an outline of the project was presented at a seminar at SETT in Aberdeen 2006.

Unfortunately, this class found that there was no longer much of an audience as only a couple of schools remained in the project and they started complaining that they were posting but no-one was commenting. I posted a plea for comments on this blog and this was picked up and echoed on Ewan McIntosh’s popular blog . The comments then flooded in from all over the world. The class were delighted with the response and mapped where all their comments were coming from.

This class decided that blogging was good fun and would be good for their school. As they were about to leave for secondary school, they trained Primary 6 pupils and set up a blog of their own .

By the end of the second phase

• 144 pieces of writing were posted
• 554 comments were made by 209 different people

Despite all the positive outcomes, the aim to improve writing wasn’t achieved. In order to that, there would have to be a much more organised approach to encourage proofreading and give more guidance on how to structure constructive comments. I hope to pursue this, perhaps with secondary pupils.

So what was learned from this project?

• Blogging software is easy to set up and use.
• Children really enjoy receiving comments on their work from strangers.
• Time for blogging can easily be incorporated into the primary classroom.
• Posts and comments can be easily moderated.
• Blogging has the potential to motivate and encourage children’s writing.

A project with no costs, no special resources, which was enjoyed by all the participants and which developed new skills – what more could you want?

More information on the project can be found at

http://www.abernet.org.uk/wp/

http://andywatson.edublogs.org/

Information on blogging and links to school blogs are in a MOODLE course at

http://www.abernet.org.uk/courses/

A list of Scottish education blogs can be found at

http://scotedublogs.wikispaces.com/

They had spent the morning reading the comments and charting where the comments came from – France, USA, Australia, New Zealand, Mexico, etc – and were clearly very excitied by what had happened. They were delighted with the response and amazed that adults from all over the world would spend time commenting on what they’d written. It made them feel important.

We chatted about blogging in general and one point that they brought up delighted me. They were suddenly very conscious that often they just wrote something quickly and posted it without checking for errors but they felt slightly embarrassed that these errors were being read all over the world. One of my hopes for this kind of project was that the sense of audience would encourage just this kind of reaction. We discussed strategies for checking work and moved on to where they wanted to go next with blogging. These children only have another 4 weeks together as they will move on to different secondary schools after the summer break.

I had some ideas in mind for things they might want to blog about but didn’t get much of an opportunity to put these ideas forward because the kids knew what they wanted. They wanted a blog for their school. They’d seen the Sandaig blog and thought that they could do something similar. They thought that in four weeks they could get a blog started and train some primary 6 pupils to carry on the blog next session.

I said I’d be happy to set up a blog just for them iso they will be discussing with their classmates what name to have for their blog, what they’ll put on it when it starts up and how they’ll train the younger children.

For these children, the few weeks of involvement in blogging has proved an empowering experience which has increased their self-confidence.

This is exactly what I had hoped that blogging might do for kids in school.

Then on of the teachers came across del.icio.us and realised that it was much easier to use than maintaining a website and could be kept up to date quickly and easily. The result is http://del.icio.us/loirston which currently contains over 300 links which have been tried and tested by teachers and organised in terms of 5-14.

This is a great example of a teacher seeing the potential of a new way of working and using it in a very practical way.

Earlier this year I played about with different blogging software to see how easy it was to use and to get an idea about how it might be used by children. I’d seen John Johnson’s work at Sandaig and was impressed. However, I’m an ICT Development Officer, not a class teacher, so I wouldn’t be able to do what John had done with a class. I wanted something that would have genuine educational benefit and wouldn’t just be using new technology for its ‘wow factor’ alone. I was sure that kids would enjoy blogging and that some teachers might enjoy exposing their pupils to something new and motivating, but I wanted something more than just a motivational activity. I’m not denying the importance of motivating pupils but the motivation must be to do something worthwhile. As I think one of the key things that education can do for kids is to improve self-esteeem, I wanted some sort of blogging activity that would make the kids feel good about themselves and, hopefully, encourage them to improve. I wasn’t sure at this stage what I wanted them to improve.

There are two aspect of blogging that I think are useful in schools – being able to publish content quickly and easily to a worldwide audience and the ease of the worldwide audience commenting on the content. Thinking about this led me to the current project – to improve children’s writing skills through blogging.

I contacted local primary schools to ask if their primary 7 classes would like to take part. Eight schools, with varied catchments, joined the project. I had a brief meeting with each of the P7 classes and explained that the blog would let them publish their writing for all the world to see. The main difference was that (unlike work displayed on a web site) others would comment on the work. However, as we were just a few local schools, it was unlikely that anyone outside would find our writing for a while so we were going to comment on each other’s work. So anyone in the class could submit a piece of work and/or comment on other people’s work. I emphasised to the class teachers that commenting was as important as publishing. After this brief introduction, I spent about 20 minutes with a small group of pupils who learned how to blog and comment and would pass on these skills.

The project would run for four weeks to see how well it worked. The teachers and pupils were left with instructions on how to use the blog. All the materials can be downloaded here. (You’ll see from the instructions that I used different blogging software at the time. After attending a Masterclass course on new technology, I could see the WordPress was a more flexible system than the one I was using so I moved all the blogs onto that system.)

The four week period was bedevilled with problems. Most schools were closed for 2 or 3 days because of heavy snow, schools were closed because of a strike by local authority workers and our aberNET site which hosted the blogs was running very slowly because of server problems. Despite all that, we had 44 posts, 168 comments from nearly 100 different contributors and over 2000 views of the posts. I felt this showed that this kind of project could work. I was particularly pleased with the number of comments. It was important that everyone who posted received a comment so if there were any without comments after a couple of days of publication, I added a comment myself.

So that’s as far as we’ve gone at the time of writing but what next? I’ll do a brief eveluation (based on the MIICE materials) to see how the teachers and pupils found the project. Then I’ll move on to the next stage which is to see if the sense of audience which blogging provides can actually lead to an improvement in writing.

So far, almost all the posts have been examples of work which already existed and weren’t created especially for the blog. I want now to go back to the schools and try to encourage them to improve on what they’ve already done, taking into account comments which have been made. While few children are likely to do this as noone like going back to a piece of work and revising it, i hope that the children will realise that it is worth spending some time proof reading and perhaps using peer evaluation to ensure that what they post is a refelction of the best that they can do. Now that the project is up and running. other schools may be encouraged to join in or at least start commenting. I also hope to encourage kids to look at the different types of comment which have been made and to develop comments beyond the ‘I liked your story’ level.

Exactly how I’ll do this I’m not sure but I’ll keep you posted.

If you visit, leave at least one comment.

http://www.abernet.org.uk/weblogs/index.php?blogId=4

This has only been going for about 10 days. Only teachers have the password to allow blogs to be posted and I moderate all comments. I don’t correct any comments and have only rejected one.

I’m happy to discuss the thinking behind this project with anyone who is interested. Essentially I want to capitalise on the sense of audience to improve writing skills.

Andy