Mark Tinney's notes from the Study Day; 23 March

As a quick write up of Saturday’s presentation, let me start by apologising that my demonstration of Google Drive failed miserably, in an effort to make amends, here is a  link to a little video I have done and posted on YouTube to show you how it works: http://youtu.be/p50GiJnW9HE.

Here is a list of the websites we looked at, each with a little description:

Ted.com – I have talked about TED several times at these events, in part because it is that good.  The site is full of great talks from experts in several fields and even better they also post some of the best and most inspiring videos from across the web.  As if the site needed to get even better, it has.  Ted has added ed.TED: this is a portion of the site that allows you to create learning materials from any TED talk or YouTube video.  Students can create a free account and you can track their results.

PollEverywhere.com – This is another website I have mentioned in several sessions, it is awesome and allows you to create quiz or poll questions that learners can respond to via text, or a unique web address you can create through the site, they can even respond via twitter.

QRStuff.com – This is the website I use to create QR codes, you know those funny –looking codes that you can scan with your phone and then pull up a website or a body of text of virtually any bit of information you want learners to have.

We also took a look at Morfo Booth, this is an Apple app that allows you to take any picture of someone, that is face front and animate it, adding sound and even making your own video.  This is great for learner projects, mini biographies or just a fun way to present information.  My learners love it.

Sporcle.com - This is a quiz website as well, completely free and full of loads of brilliant prebuilt content and you can build your own.  This is great for just a bit of fun as well as some serious learning.

WeFeelfine.org – This is just a bit of fun that can be used in some very creative ways in the classroom, it is a display of the way the world feels at any given time, and you can explore discuss or even write about those feelings.

Showbie.com – we didn’t get to look at this one, but it is certainly worth a look.  This is a website with an apple app that allows teachers to set up classes and set assignments.  The learners can submit their assignments online and the lecturer can download them, mark them digitally and post them back up for the learner to see, but the way feedback can be done is what really makes it.  Teachers can even leave audio feedback for learners.  Assessment, in my mind is only as useful as the feedback that comes out of it and this makes it easy for teachers to give really powerful feedback easily.

We began the session by playing a game called hungry bat, which is available at this address
http://scratch.mit.edu/projects/Lightnin/1659457

Thank you for your time and warm welcome on Saturday, I hope you found the session useful.  The key is to try something new, and see if it works.  Not everything will work with every group, but I think if we allow learners to complete assessment tasks that allow them to be creative and have some fun along the way, the impact will be significant.