Great videos about innovation and creativity: Part 1

Here follows a selection of videos I found particularly interesting dealing with ideas, innovation, creativity and the learning process.

Google:

Creativity Loves Constraint

Google:
The Founding of Google

Google:
Google Culture: Encouraging Innovation


Google:
Give Ideas Credit, Not Credit for Ideas


Google:
Encouraging Creativity

Inspirational books that have changed the way I think...

My wife always gets annoyed with the amount of books I buy. When I started teaching about eight years ago my reading quickly diminished as guilt came upon me every time I picked up a good piece of fiction - 'I could be doing some work!'. Eventually I realised that reading non-fiction both stimulated my curiosity and creativity whilst easing the pang of guilt associated with 'wasting time'. However, this has led to me buying a lot of books...but hey, reading keeps you thinking!

I have read and re-read all of these books more than once (well not the last one as that's a blatant plug..)

• A Whole New Mind
• Presentation Zen
• Made to Stick
• Ten Faces of Innovation
• Innovate with ICT

Development of a new learning tool

I have been working for some time now on a new tool for the Interactive White Board and it is looking good and almost complete. It involves a set of 5 (possibly 6 haven't decided yet) parts which enables teachers to create interactive activities and save these as Adobe Flash files (Flash Player 10 required) to upload to websites, local networks, Learning Platforms, Blogs or just add to USB memory to use whenever or wherever you need.

I have always found the IWB limited in terms of interactability and therefore wanted to create a product which would aid teachers delivery of lessons and students learning.

The final update will be posted here when it's finally completed : ) !

Johannes

21 Good links from Twitter

Here follows 21 useful links I posted on Twitter :

1. 21st Century Skills website, very comprehensive with great links and discussions http://snipr.com/kg3p5
2. Love this T-shirt website,such an innovative idea to use things from within films rather than just the cover poster: http://short.to/gi5i
3. Looks like this could be an interesting book on teaching History: Constructing History 11-19, http://is.gd/16lQz
4. Create tension with exam groups using video clips http://short.to/gi54
5. Book: 100 Ideas for Essential Teaching Skills http://is.gd/16lu8
6. Book: Innovate with ICT http://short.to/gitf
7. Download resources for Assessment for Learning http://is.gd/16lzK
8. New Fronter tutorial: How to Embed Video or Learning Games, http://is.gd/16jnt
9. Handheld Learning conference 5-7th October London: http://snipr.com/kg2c7 . Ok, I'm there.
10. New Fronter tutorial: How to upload resources and link them to text http://snipr.com/kg1nl
11. Very comprehensive list of tools to boost your Twitter following indeed (via @TheAffiliateGuy) http://ow.ly/aaXj
12. Open Source Schools 2009 Unconference (BECTA supported). Looks very interesting. http://snipr.com/kg1ts
13. Futurelab conference, 8 October 2009, Seen and Heard: Young people creating digital media http://is.gd/16l0V . Penciled into calendar : ) .
14. The 16th International Conference of the Association for Learning Technology, Manchester September 2009: http://snipr.com/kg22d
15. Really looking forward to SHP 2009 #education #shp.We have uploaded our past workshops here http://short.to/ghpi
16. How to embed Flash in ActiveStudio 3: http://short.to/ghpg
17. Mobile learning technology #education . Create quizzes for for mobile phones: http://snipr.com/kfq98
18. MFL resource for french grammar: http://is.gd/16aVR
19. The evolution of WEB 1.0 and WEB 2.0. Very cool: http://is.gd/16aSd
20. Create a Welcome Page in Fronter: http://www.innovativeict.net/fronter-learning-platform
21. Interesting. 10 Ways to increase your Twitter followers http://tinyurl.com/cs6nkv

New Tutorials for the Fronter Learning Platform

Part 1: Create a Welcome Page

This tutorial will show you how simple it is to use Fronter. The first step is to create a Front Page which can link to other Front Pages and this tutorial will show you how images and internal links can achieve that.



Part 2 :Upload resources

This tutorial will show you the ease which resources such as movies, documents and presentations can be addded to your Learning Platform.




Part 3 :Embed videos and learning games into Fronter VLE

This tutorial will demonstrate how to embed videos from Youtube.com as well as learning games from other websites e.g. www.classgamesden.com. For more tutorials please visit www.innovativeICT.net

Digital ethnography: the Development of the World Wide Web

Came a cross this fantastic video on Twitter posted by moTik.

Mapping made stylish and simple with MindMeister

I simply love this tool. I think it's even better than Bubbl.us...don't take me off your delicious bookmarks just yet (!)... MindMeister offers something a little different which Bubble.us, at least for the time being (see their blog for updates about the new version), does not.

These are the features I particularly love:

1. Work on your mind-maps off-line: with Google Gears off-line library, you can work on all your maps wherever you are. Although Bubbl.us maps can be added to even if off-line (as the main flash files have already loaded) you cannot save the work without going on-line again.
2. Add ideas to your maps on-the-fly: Insert ideas into your default mind map on MindMeister directly from your Mac Dashboard or Windows Sidebar.
3. Easy images into mind-map: Insert images from the default library, have MindMeister insert an image based on the key word of a node or just upload your own photos or illustrations - fantastic!

And many other tools...



Here is one mind-map that I made for a job interview a couple of days ago (got the job too!): Tom's Learning Journey. Just click the image on the left to see a larger version. There are many possibilities with this online tool; I have only used the basics!


The only catch, if you want to use the free version, is that you can only store 6 maps. Mind you, you can export your brilliant creations in various formats incl. .pdf or as an image so you could always get rid of a mind-map and keep creating new ones. It is rather cheap to upgrade though, take a look on the main site.

How to find and remove a Gumblar.cn injection attack

Gumblar.cn is a website that's been listed as suspicious and contains several exploit scripts and trojans that might harm and infect computers. You may have come across it or noticed that a site is 'connecting to gumblar.cn'in the left-hand corner of the Firefox browser? The scary thing is that 99% of browsers never spot it. If you regularly scan your server for vulnerabilities and have tight security then you should have noticed it by now, but it's always useful to check.

If your site has been 'injected' with the script there are several forums currently trying to solve the problem. As yet I haven't come across a solid solution as it appears that the script which is injected (which hijacks the site) changes from the original code to which pages it affects. Annoying if you have 6000+ pages of course : ) . As the virus obfuscates the script (some characters are replaced with their numeric codes) it's very hard to find it, let alone remove it!

How to find it:

As the script varies from machine to machine it's of course tricky to locate so I will only mention how I discovered the virus on a colleague's website. I first came across a file named image.php which was stored in the images folder (which now has been renamed to something else) which stored this code section:


base64_decode( mumbo-jumbo here)

This basically decodes whatever the main code is elsewhere in other files and sends the info to the Gumbar website to do, most likely, unpleasant things with your information.

So, I found the decoder, now all I had to do was to locate the main script. After reading a wide selection of posts about the topic (some listed below) I started searching for different script snippets using Windows Search (words and phrases in the file) and eventually I found the one that matched my files:

.replace(/#/g,'%');eval(unescape

...and there it was in the middle of the code: 75mbla#hidden!

I am not sure how it managed to get in, so to speak. Various posts suggest different things. The best thing to do it seems is to:

- Keep a tight ship: scan and check your server regularly and keep a secure password which cannot be guessed or hacked easily.

- Keep User Input Secure: Most sites have some form of user interaction so make sure that your script filters metacharacters from user input.
- Validate users' input to remove harmful code (thanx deKay for useful bit of information).

It doesn't seem that this virus is either keylogging your machine or collecting data, however info is still not 100% solid. Google reports the site:

"Site is listed as suspicious - visiting this website may harm your computer. [These] [a]ttack sites try to install programs that steal private information, use your computer to attack others, or damage your system.

Some attack sites intentionally distribute harmful software, but many are compromised without the knowledge or permission of their owners."

but also states that:

"Over the past 90 days, gumblar.cn did not appear to function as an intermediary for the infection of any sites."

Here are a few tools and websites that are useful to the problem:

Discussions about possible solutions:

Virus-Code Injected in PHP File of website

Great post: 12 Facts about the injected script

Good tools to get you started:
Top 10 Web Vulnerability Scanners

The Acunetix free edition has been used by a colleague of mine
Acunetix Security Scanner - Free Edition

Good luck!

E-Help online video ICT seminars

This is a great site: http://www.e-help.eu/seminars/index.htm particularly if you are interested in wider issues to do with ICT and History across the Key Stages and Levels. We hope you find them useful!

e-Help is a European Union funded project designed to promote the use of ICT in the history classroom. In addition, e-Help promotes ICT strategies for history being taught in a additional language context.

e-Help constitutes the work of 10 educational institutions: schools, universities, a professional association and an educational publisher, from six European countries.

Established in 2004, e-Help hosted seven conference meetings until September 2008, the end of the Comenius funding period. The videos and interactive seminars from those meetings are hosted here. e-Help also inspired a number of websites or 'microsites', pedagogic materials designed to case study good practice in history teaching and ICT.

In 2010 there will also be an e-Help book written by some of the members of the project and e-Help 'associates' many of whom have an international reputation in the field of history and ICT.

But the primary goal of e-Help is to produce a residential course for European educators. This will provide intensive hands-on training on the skills and applications modelled by this e-Help website.

The Loan Execution

The general killed the Viet Cong; I killed the general with my camera. Still photographs are the most powerful weapon in the world. People believe them, but photographs do lie, even without manipulation. They are only half-truths...What the photograph didn't say was, 'What would you do if you were the general at that time and place on that hot day, and you caught the so-called bad guy after he blew away one, two or three American soldiers?

Taken from Time Magazine



The story of Lem and Loan is not a simple one.

5 Great Presentation Tools

How often do you use PowerPoint in your lessons? How do you make presentations useful without information overload... Here follows a brief list of tools that I use regularly to make my messages stick (a little bit longer...).

ZohoShow: create the presentation on-line or upload a PowerPoint file from your local computer. The site gives you a range of tools to make the presentation sleek and professional. A Great tool indeed.

ToonDoo.com: Create graphics and cartoon strips to highlight a key issue or significant point see French Revolution for an example

PicLens plug-in for PowerPoint 2007: This is a real gem and transforms your PowerPoint 2007 slide shows to powerful and animated presentations.

Rich Chart Live: Although this is more complex and a bit technical, you will get used to this tool quickly after a few attempts. I like this flash-generated chart tool as it makes somewhat dull looking statistics look great!


Glogster: Glogster is in many respects a simple 'poster' tool, but you can create effective, purposeful displays with students or to use within your own presentations as they can be stored online and include music, videos and hyperlinks. Glogster is ridiculously easy to use and will benefit your presentations well particularly when it comes to emphasizing key issues or give concrete examples of a concept or idea. See what you think.

How to Download Youtube Videos: ZamZar.com

This 60 second tutorial will show you how to download Youtube.com videos straight to your computer.

Download Youtube.com videos

Great tools to get resources from Youtube.com:

Download Youtube.com videos quickly to your PC

Download Youtube.com videos into MP3 files

How to embed Flash properly in HTML

Came across this link recently when I was pulling my hair out as all my flash movies kept appearing on top of everything else including menus and image:

How to embed Flash properly

New on SlideShare: How to use Adobe Flash in Teaching

How to use Adobe Flash in Teaching

View more presentations from ahrenfelt.

New on SlideShare

How Comprehensive Was The Nazi Police State

View more presentations from ahrenfelt.

Create videos using Movie Maker: great hooks, no complications

This is a quick hook that could be used for studying life in Britain during the Second World War and raises many issues about evacuees. I made this a few years ago to show teachers how easily you can create impact using images and music.

Great books on flash game developing

Recent books added to 'Great Books' section of www.InnovativeICT.net:

Gary Rosenzweig

If you have basic knowledge of Adobe Flash but do not have time to master the more complex elements of the software and still want to learn how to create great games then this book really does the job well. Gary Rosenzweig's book is straight forward and explains everything clearly and in an interesting way. The book is very pedagogical and goes through the essentials step-by-step and covers a range of different games and activities that can be mdofied and used in the classroom for example:

• Jigsaws


• Paddle and Racing games


• Memory activities


• Platform games


• Drag & Drop


• and many many other

Gary Rosenweig has recently come out with a new book ActionScript 3.0 Game Programming Universitywhich is a superb addition to the keen Flash enthusiast. His website is also a brilliant resource to take your Flash skills further.

There are other great books on creating Flash Games which are equally useful. Some of these are more complex for the beginner but they do provide the reader with outstanding files which easily can be tweaked to suit your own classes. For example:

Macromedia Flash Professional 8 Game Development with CD-ROM by Glen Rhodes: although you would benefit from reading Rosenzweig's book before tackling this one, G. Rhodes' book on developing games in Flash does go through the basics of ActionScripting and the files you get are excellent!

Nintendo Wii Flash Game Creator's Guide: Design, Develop, and Share Your Games Online: this is a cheap, fun book which shows you how to create games which you can play on the Nintendo Wii - excellent idea!

There are so many books on flash gaming out there but these really move you in the right direction if you wish to develop games for your own students.

Great links to make your site stand above the rest

Folio on broken links
How does Google 'look' at my pages? How do they link? - TouchGraph

Post to your blog using Firefox

Good SEO tips for beginners

How to maintain rankings for 'old' pages

Personalised Search according to TED

Speed up your broadband connection NOW!

"Microfilters are used to eradicate crackling on your ADSL enabled phone line by preventing the ADSL signal reaching your telephone handsets. You will need one Microfilter for each piece of telephone equipment connected to your ADSL enabled telephone line, including your Sky box."

iPlate greatly enhances your broadband connection - fantastic reviews. I just bought one after reading it on a Twitter post by D. Belshaw (Thanks!).

I'll post my own review when I get it installed (see post below).

How to install iPlate: speed up your broadband connection

Cool online tools to use with your students

I have compiled a brief list of websites that Ive been using over the past few weeks which are superb to use with all Key Stages:

Great Online Tools

I will keep updating this page. There are many fab tools to go up there still of course, like classics such as Bubbl.us, Twitter etc.

Powerful Twitter-ing tools

This is a great list of tools for those that use Twitter to stay up-to-date with whatever you want to stay up-to-date with like ICT, teaching etc.

Twitter Tools

Y8 Comic book: What should they do with Louis XVI?

Here's and example of what I will do with my Y8 class later on today:

French Revolution: What should they do with Louis XVI? by innovativeict | www.toondoo.com

It will be their job to finish it.

French Revolution activity using online comics

This is one of my earlier attempts at using ToonDoo.com - a bit crazy about this website at the moment..hence 100s of posts : ) .

French Revolution: What shoudl they do with Louis XVI? by innovativeict | www.toondoo.com

Use ToonDoo.com with A-level students

Here follows a few examples of what some of my A-Level students did with ToonDoo.com:

Year 12

Tom and Dan

The 1953 berlin uprising_your doing it wrong by tshadow | www.toondoo.com

Sarah and Becky

Becky + sarah Uprising 1953 by sarahturner | www.toondoo.com

Josie and Harriet

1953 Uprising by Josie and harriet by JosieandHarriet | www.toondoo.com

Alex and Heather

The BerliNUprising by ahrenfeltsangel | www.toondoo.com

Andy

Ryan

Tom

Dan

Year 13

Ria

Assess who made the greatest contribution to russian economy? by riabush | www.toondoo.com

Wordle.net ideas?

Some of my students have been playing around with Wordle.net and it's looking rather good. We discussed 'war' and 'conflict' and the class came up with a series of different words they felt summed up these two concepts. Here are a few examples of what they have come up with:

Example 1

Example 2

Online comic books

Online tools such as Pixton.com can provide teachers with an opportunity to really engage students, challenge whilst at the same time ensure that they progress. These type of websites also allows exam groups to think about:

- audience
- purpose
- context
- argument

There are similar websites available like ToonDoo.com. This particular website allows the user to quickly register and then produce high-quality and varied comics in only a few minutes. Although there are very few differences between Pixton.com and ToonDoo.com, the latter offers more in terms of usability, graphics and sleekness. I have used both sites with both GCSE and A-Level groups with great results .

ToonDoo example for A-Level History

Thank you Meera for this website:

Who made the greatest contribution to the Russian economy: Witte v Stolypin by innovativeict | Create your own Cartoon at www.toondoo.com

Another comic: A-level Russia

I'm trying to see if students can modify and re-publish my earlier version, which would speed up the process a bit. They probably want to do their own version though : ).

Using comix strips in teaching

Thanks Tom Stafford for this cool idea. using Pixton.com with exam classes. Here's my first contribution:



A bit cheesy but hey - hopefully it'll work with my AS group tomorrow morning...

Great Educational Websites to use with your students

Fantastic websites to use with students from starters to main activities, check it out:

KartOO I really like this site as it give students a visual of how search term link together and which sites link to a particular word or phrase. Here's an example.





Visuwords: This website allows you to look up words to find their meanings and associations with other words and concepts. You can then produce a diagram of those associations as well as, if you're geeky, install the software on your own site! This is an example of the word 'freedom'.




Wordl.netThis interesting website was passed onto me from Tom T (thanx!), and it's essentially a 'collage' tool; excellent for presenting ideas and visualising concepts : ) .

Second Life in the History Classroom

Read interesting post by middleclassgirl hereabout using Second Life in the classroom. Look forward to seeing where she'll take it. I will certainly be checking back often.

Make it stick

Make it 'sticky'

Sticky = understandable, memorable and effective in changing thought or behaviour.


* Teacher talking to a class (5%)
* Student reading a book (10%)
* Student watching an audio visual presentation (20%)
* Student watching a teacher demonstration (30%)
* Students taking part in a discussion group (50%)
* Students involved in an activity that is related to what the teacher wants them to learn (75%)
* Students teaching others (90%).


Speaking or lecturing without dialogue continues to be the most common form of teaching mode in both secondary and higher education, in the face of overwhelming evidence that it produces the lowest degree of retention for most learners.

Some lessons seem to ‘stick’ in students memories more than others, why? If we think about it, some information, facts, ‘knowledge’ is inherently interesting, whilst some will be inherently uninteresting. The million-dollar question is of course how we can ensure that all (or at least most – let’s be realistic!) lessons stick. For example, how do we get students to care about being healthy; relate to life in the Warsaw ghetto in 1943; get them to really understand the notion of a mathematical function?

The brothers Chip and Dan Heath have explored the idea why some things stick and why some disappear[1]. In a nutshell, they argue that the main reason why people, such as teachers, fail to create effective, memorable - 'sticky' - messages or lessons is because what they call 'The Curse of Knowledge'. This refers to the notion that educators and presenters of information sometimes fail to see that abstractions, the wealth of knowledge which they have and which makes sense to them, may not make sense to the students. In order to ensure that their their lesson become memorable and therefore 'sticky', according to the authors, we need to consider six simple principles which the Heath brothers call SUCCESs:
§ Simplicity
§ Unexpectedness
§ Concreteness
§ Credibility
§ Emotions
§ Stories

Some of these may seem fairly obvious to some (maybe you?). Let us take a look at a few examples.

Simple:

If you think about the topic ‘Titanic’ issues such as inequalities, poverty and social dispair might spring to mind. However, if you start the first in a series of lessons investigating these issues you will most certainly see the enthusiastic spark disappear in many of the students faces. What is the core that students will understand and how can you ensure they understand that? The core is of course social inequalities. How will you reach the students? Titanic sank two hours and forty minutes after setting sail and 1,517 people died most of them from the working class.


Another powerful point to consider are the simple questions What's the point of the lesson? and Why does it matter - will it matter to the students? It may seem obvious to many but it can be easy to forget when you have taught the same topic for several years. Why should they care about the skills of evaluation or synthesis? That is a fair question. If we cannot provide a good enought explanation then what is the point?
By considering these ideas, coupled with lashings of our own creativity, we can produce powerful, purposeful lessons which contains enriching tasks that will ensure skills and learning progression for all classes.

How to create an interactive diagram in Adobe Flash

We just uploaded a new tutorial on how to use Adobe Flash to create your own Interactive Diagrams. Please visit the site to find out how to make your own diagrams which you can use with students.

How to create a website in Adobe Flash

Just uploaded a series of tutorials on how to create your own website using Adobe Flash, see InnovativeICT.net

Active Learning resources now available

Just updated Staffroomproject with a bunch of the resources mentioned in the book. Feel free to download them and use them with your classes - drop us a line to say what you think of them and the website : )

New resources available

As we're getting closer to the end of our book on teaching exam groups, we have started to add resources mentioned in the book over at Staffroomproject.com, download what you wish but leave a comment please : ) . Our resources are scattered all around he site so do browse for those 'hidden ones'!

Thank you for all your support throughout the writing process.

Book almost written...

Staffroomproject is coming to an end and we have almost finished writing the book. We have gained tremendously from the writing process and hope to start sharing our ideas earlier than the first time around. All theory has been omitted, so have images, graphs, illustrations etc but these will be in the final publication. Some of the more lengthy examples have also not been uploaded.

We'll keep you informed!

How to use Flip Camera part 1

Flip Video Camera is quite possibly the most convenient mini camcorder available today. I have just bought one and the quality is good, sounds great and ridiculously easy to use!

Blurb:

* Simple to use, pocket-sized camcorder with one-touch recording and digital zoom
* Holds 60 minutes of full VGA-quality video on 2GB of built-in memory; no tapes or additional memory cards required
* Convenient USB arm plugs directly into your computer for easy viewing and sharing
* Built-in software lets you easily e-mail videos, upload to YouTube and MySpace, and capture still photos from video
* Watch videos instantly on TV with included cable



I will create a mini tutorial and post it soon.