I’ve moved my blogging activity to

 Jist Haiverin

PQDVD have developed software which appears to be like Crazy Talk but much cheaper. Seems to be worth a look.

I started with a 64Mb mpg file and loaded intoPinnacle Studio 9. From there I exported it as a wmv with a custom setting of ISDN 128Kbs which created a 3.6Mb file. I then used the site at http://cit.ucsf.edu/embedmedia/step1.php to generate the html code to embed the video.

The quality is acceptable and could be better if I chose to encode with a larger file size. As it is, 3.6Mb for over 5 minutes isn’t bad.
There are probably many simpler ways to do this (feel free to let me know) but this worked for me.

OK, so I’m not the most prolific blogger but it seems like ages since I posted anything here. I’m sure I could find excuses but when I think about it ‘excuses’ has the wrong implications. Who would I make my excuses to? What I have I done wrong? Who cares?

I started this blog as a means of passing on information to colleagues such as our local Masterclassers or Glow mentors. Sometimes there’s something to say, often there’s not. Sometimes the information appears in other places - aberNET, Aberdeen Grid for Learning, Glowblog, etc. Sometimes it’s read, sometimes it’s not. Does it matter?

I’ve been on holiday for two weeks but haven’t blogged here but I have used the computer every day. I’ve checked my emails every day. I’ve downloaded music. I’ve bought some things from Amazon and ebay. I’ve used a database and spreadsheet to start cataloguing my cd collection. I’ve used FrontPage to give Aberdeen Grid for Learning a makeover. I’ve edited video of my grand-daughter. I’ve set up a blog for the Reading Bus project (more soon). I’ve read a few blogs. And probably a few other things.

And I’ve had a life.

And that’s the way it’s likely to stay. When there’s something about ICT that I want to share with others, I’ll share it. If I’ve nothing much to say, I’ll keep quiet.

The danger with blogging and the blogging community is that it’s addictive. Once you start blogging, you feel you need to keep going. When you start following other people’s blogs, you feel you have to read everything.

I’m going for low fat blogging - keeping it to a reasonable level as part of a healthy lifestyle.

I’ve got myself in a blogging tangle. We’ve created a blog for our Glow mentors and I’m posting on there and on here. If you want to read some thoughts on SETT06, read here.

“There are two kinds of light - the glow that illuminates, and the glare that obscures.” - James Thurber.

Recently I’ve spent more time talking about blogging than actually blogging. We’ve had meetings with ICT co-ordinators and head teachers to update them on developments within the city and blogging was discussed there. I’ve talked to P7 pupils at Muirfield School about their blog. We’ve held meetings with the new Glow (glow? GLOW?) mentors and blogging was discussed there. In fact, we set up a new blog for the mentors to discuss issues surrounding the implementation of SSDN/Glow.

As I’ve been talking about Glow, I’ve been becoming more enthusiastic. The initial sell from LTS was that we’d have a lot of resources to use but I think it will take some time before the resources build up to a useful collection and, anyway, many teachers will reach retirement before they give control of a lesson over to a VLE.

I think the most immediate benefit will be GlowGroups and the various collaborative tools which will allow all sorts of sharing of ideas and expertise throughout Scotland.

It now looks like the various functions of Glow will be phased in rather than all appearing at once. In some ways this will lessen the impact but it should also mean that teachers can get used to one function before moving on to the next.

Let’s have illumination, not glare.

The WordPress setup for Muirfield blogs which is hosted on aberNET used to take a long time to start from the login screen - over 2 minutes at times.

I found a simple solution at http://wordpress.org/support/topic/59911 which involved editing one of the WordPress files.

This stops WordPress trying to load in 3 RSS feeds so now everything works as it should.

There has been a lot of discussion recently about internet censorship - see the BBC for an example. This made me think yet again about the censorship of the Internet which schools willingly participate in when they use filtering to block access to unsuitable sites.

I don’t suggest that we stop doing this. In our cultural and legal climate we have little choice and anyway few of us would want children to access some of the darker corners of the web.

However, because we filter we think that everything’s OK. It’s OK until the child goes home and then, in the majority of homes, Internet access is unfiltered and unsupervised and they have to deal with the ‘dark side’ alone.

We have to find a way of protecting children while still educating them in ways of avoiding the worst and dealing with it when it appears.

The new SQA Internet safety qualification  deals with many problematical aspects of internet use such as viruses, spyware, copyright, phishing, etc but does not (and could not) deal with what worries parents most - exposure to pornographic and violent imagery.

Apart from this obvious area, there is a great deal more that children require support with - divulging personal information online, combatting online bullying, separating the true from the fanciful and misleading, etc.

If schools can’t show children how to use the internet efficiently and safely, they will be putting children at risk because of this omission. We need to get to grips with this issue sooner rather than later.

It’s a good morning for connections. I’ve been going through my Bloglines feeds and came across a blog from David Muir which pointed me to a blog written in March by David Warlick. The blog was an introduction to a podcast which I haven’t listened to yet but was a discussion inspired by a short video. This is an 8 minute video set in the year 2014 which describes how web interactivity might affect news and our attitude to news. I enjoyed it and I think it could be used as a good discussion starter with older pupils.

I’m looking forward to listening to the podcast of the discussion but I’m off to battle through the long grass to get the mower from the garage.

I picked up an interesting article “What’s the 1% rule?”  when reading through John Connell’s blog. Essentially, the article states that in general 1% of a group will create content, 10% will interact with it by commenting, etc and the other 89% will just view it. In fact, my own experience with trying to get teachers to contribute resources for aberNET is that I’d be very glad if 1% of users contributed. In the last year the site has had almost 600,000 visits, most of which were made to download resources,  but only a handful of people have volunteered resources.

Despite teachers’ increasing familiarity with the web, faster internet connections and more interactive content being available, they do not seem willing or able to break through the barriers which prevent them from sharing ideas or resources with others. It may be that the mechanisms to make this easy aren’t there yet and that SSDN will help, but I think that the problem is more to do with the attitudes of teachers than the available technology.

Many teachers still feel that they are expected to know most things most of the time. As we can’t, it is easy to feel insecure about our own capabilities. While most teachers know more about most things than most of their pupils, they feel that other teachers will spot their weaknesses. As long as teachers try to be the only source of skills and knowledge in the classroom this attitude will persist.

The connections that SSDN will bring might encourage teachers to see that sharing ideas, thoughts, resources and experiences will benefit everyone.

I hope that we can reach the stage where 1% of teachers contributes and 10% interact.