hounddog32
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March 08, 2006
e-twinning, videoconferencing, podcasting and school!
I attended a PD meeting at the CLC in Sheldon Heath about etwinning and video-conferencing, although for me a couple of other things stood out.
Much of the languages focus was on opportunities for working with schools abroad and how to get funding for them. While this may have been very useful to some, it was slightly irrelevant to me, especially since it was aimed at Birmingham schools (rather than Solihull) The main opportunity to "meet" schools was described as an "online dating agency for schools", www.etwinning.net. It's a website where schools can give some details about themselves and a "wanting to meet" section, and leads to relationships as casual or close as you choose!
In terms of technology on show, we used a (several thousand pound) video conferencing suite to talk to another technologist in Devon about how he had supervised projects using videoconferencing within first the county, then the country and eventually with France too. He talked a little about infrastructure problems, even within "old Europe", of slow connections and schools far behind the ICT usage we're used to here.
We saw a demo of Skype being used (and it works through the SMBC firewall) with video and voice from Australia for free on any hardware. That could well be of use with a China trip coming up, and possibly in one-on-one or pair conversations to partner schools.
We also had a presentation on how to use blogging and podcasting. Now obviously I know a little bit about a lot of stuff, but I'd not really thought about how to use podcasting in school. I may (once coursework settles down, towards Easter) start a school podcast, with pupils recording the show, publishing to the world!
I also saw a program called Mediator, made by Matchware, which I want to use to make flash animations and games - I'll write more when I've got a copy from school.
Posted by hounddog32 at March 8, 2006 09:29 AM
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