Thank you to Amanda, Dave, Lia, Cynthia, Athy, Judith, Charles, Jane, Nigel, John, Zoe, Helen, Liz and all the other colleagues who joined us for a buzzing, thrilling, well-organised three days full of new experiences and ideas, problem tackling and professional cooperation. Everyone was willing to go way beyond the call of duty, developing new materials, searching for resources, setting up blogs and all for the benefit of the many children, who also steamed creatively through the challenging activities.

Thank you Maria and Martin for technical support and helping in our aim in making the techie elements painfree and invisible.

One of the things we discussed today was keyboard shortcuts. Here is a little HANDY HINT:

When you try to copy a group of files from one folder to another, Windows will bring up a handy little window if it notices files in the target directory with the same name as files from the source directory. You can manually choose which files to overwrite or leave be one by one. Or you can click “Yes to All” to effectively overwrite every file with a duplicate name in the target directory.

But what if you want to click “No to All?” There’s no button for you, but that doesn’t mean Windows won’t let you skip all the duplicate files. All you have to do is hold down the Shift key and click No. Now Windows will skip all files with duplicate names and copy the rest of your files to the new directory, thus saving you a lot of time, heartache, and repetitive finger motions, and giving you the opportunity to go and make a nice cup of tea instead.

I have written about this before, but it has been a regular enquiry recently: how to print really big images. In my presentations, I show some films of pupils reading their masterpieces to camera. They are excellent and always get an incredibly positive response.

One of the things people ask about is whether we use blue screen  to give the impression that the children are actually sat IN a Myst landscape.

No. We use the blueTACK method! We enlarge a picture, stick it to the wall and they sit in front of it!!

I use an old copy of PrintArtist (version 4!) to print on many sheets of paper.

A nifty on-line resource is BlockPosters

Select a picture from your computer that you would like to use as your poster.

Choose how many pages wide you would like your poster to be? Your poster can be up to approximately 7 feet wide and 4.7 feet high!

Your poster has been created - then just one more click to download a PDF file containing your images.

Check out this little YouTube video, by Andrew Brackin, doing a review of the program. This young lad has really caught the feeling of podcasts and Techie review films.

We hope to add further photos to this post A.S.A.P. meanwhile, be brave, and have a go at commenting.

Working alongside the secondary staff and pupils from Year 7, we have been investigating the worlds of words and the power of blogging.

First off, we entered one of the Myst landscapes and immersed ourselves in the incredible realistic and inspiring environment.

We used this to develop some beautiful, descriptive narrative containing some remarkable similes and metaphors.  One pupil was not too happy with his work, he went home and spent a lot of time getting it just right, returning the next day with a beaming smile and a fanbloomingtastic piece of writing.

Over the rest of the sessions we explored the region we were in, but also everything from hotseating, group problem solving, active listening, to developing open questioning.

(Thanks to Alan Peat for a couple of links above).

The teachers immersed in thought

In our second day, we transfered some of these skills into the REAL, analogue world around the school. We took photographs of some local scenery from a viewpoint that most pupils would not have visited.  We then asked the pupils to use some of their new linguistic skills to describe what they could see.  Some of the more lively pupils from day 1, really settled down to this task and produced some beautiful writing. 

 Blogging

The resident webmaster, RB from Year 10, helped set up the blogging facility on the school website and also solved various technical issues over the 3 days.  The pupils proofread their descriptions which were then uploaded to the website overnight.

Evaluating

On day three, we looked at ways of applying, in future lessons, the many ideas generated.

With great thanks to Rob Murphy, Jude Crowley, Mick Leverett, Chris Niven, Rob McCarthy and Martin Ainsworth for their warm welcome and enthusiasm through all three hard working days.

Being down here at the other end of the Mediterranean Sea, yet updating the blog and communicating with so many people makes you realise just how small this world really is. Take a look at Breathing Earth to see it living and changing.

 (Can’t swim because of the fibreglass cast on my broken hand but doesn’t stop me stopping sometimes eh?! )

Joyous! Really enjoyed our day at Woolston Community Primary School, Warrington. Very responsive children, some of whom surprised themselves and their teachers. There was smiles, laughter and creative thinking galore. Well done all.

Thank you to Hannah Moore and Siobhan Regan for looking after us like royalty.

For a West Country lad, Hannah has a significant name, it being the same as the famed Hannah More who is buried in the church at Wrington Village where I now live. She was an educator, writer and social reformer, and instrumental in setting up twelve schools in the 18th century.