5 ways to use LiveView in the classroom

Live View is Sony’s “external interface for your android device”.   Due late 2010.

Here are 5 possible ways it could be used in the classroom.

1. Physical presence – Easily see what lesson the pupil is due to go to and which room they should be in.  Once the pupil has arrived in the room and connected to a specified wireless point then register via an app.

2. Notifications – Receive instant important notifications from the school such as violence/gun threats such as experienced on Tuesday in the USA.

3. Storage – Easily record sound bytes from the class, the device could potentially act as an external microphone

4. Amplification –  Supported learning for hard of hearing, specific audio content could be amplified instead of the current “everything is amplified” solution.

5. Bully deterrent – One button push could send an audio stream up to a central server which would mean any negative experience could be recorded.

More details here

Minecraft in Education / Classroom / Learning

UPDATE: It’s not just me who thinks Minecraft is great, so does Leon!

Minecraft is an online game, the free version isn’t multi-player.  Minecraft can be played in your web browser (when it’s up).  Minecraft requires Java (not the usual flash software).

Minewhat?

Minecraft is a first person survival game.  You must manipulate elements/resources to survive and construct your own world.  During the day everything is fine and peaceful, you spend this time constructing and crafting a safe environment because at night is when the dangerous beings come out to attack you.  Admittedly this may be a bit scary but as its 8bit and its not exactly grand theft auto graphics I’m sure it can be classed as “U” rated or at most “PG”.

So, where is the education value?

Well, mostly in the crafting section of the game.  Trying to persuade you that control and/or the day/night thing is educational would be a bit far fetched and I try to treat my readers with respect.  The crafting part of the game basically asks you to merge certain elements to create new materials.  For example, you turn wood into planks, planks into sticks then craft 2 sticks and one piece of coal together to create a match.

This game is a baby puncher.

Don’t expect for this game to be easy, in fact it’s tough!  Watch below for a video on how to survive your first night!

Minecraft has been buggy so they released a free single player download version, how nice of them is that?  This is the current download link.  I haven’t played the multi player yet, I’m not sure on the child protection issues surrounding this.  I guess like any other MMORPG (of sorts) it will have the ability to chat etc.  Private educational collaborative servers could be an option though?  In the mean time I’m getting in touch with the developer to see if we can get some free educational access so we can try it out in a few schools.

What do you think?  Is this more a primary or secondary tool and other than geography what subjects does it complement?


A week in the life..

I haven’t been very vocal lately, because I have been busy…

Satpin

I have been working on Ian Addisons new project now called Satpin (something to do with phonics according to Miss Pitkethly).  My Javascript skills have improved massively doing this project which I have enjoyed thoroughly.  Javascript is awesome.  I need a decent tutor though, I am cobbling my way through stuff using “John” logic which isn’t good enough.  Once the project is complete/stable I will be releasing it open source (it will require a LAMP stack).  I am spending masses of attention to detail on this project, more than I have ever done.  I’m focusing 99% of my efforts on UI.  I decided to make it writeable by anyone which will upset some people but oh well..

Wind power

I have been finishing the electrics on my wind turbine, which is now up and running (hopefully okay).  It’s been a while since I did any component level work and Sparky helped me which was good.

Apache load balancing

We spent a few hours working on how to improve load balancing on our main apache cluster.  We are considering casandra if we grow any quicker than our current projections.

Shib constipation

Mid week I struggled and I’m still struggling massively with a Shib SP deployment.  I’m running the same config as another deployment but I am getting errors.  Think this is a job for team john and tom to get sorted properly.  We are doing it so we can work with the Swedish equivalent of JISC for their Etherpad deployment.

Classdroid

We got classdroid working properly, well, sort of.  Turns out Android isn’t as cool as I first thought.  Well, android is..  Turns out motorola/lg etc. are idiots and install custom software including custom camera intents that breaks a lot of the phones functionality.  Thankfully google will fix this with any v2+ updates.  The LG Optimus is due V2.1 this month so I am willing to wait a few weeks instead of trying to squash a documented/fixed bug.

PHP

I helped Challenge CLC with a touch of PHP this week, super easy stuff.  It is always good to collaborate with people, especially when I am so comfortable helping out in PHP.

Etherpad

I did a few more edu installs of Etherpad, nothing exciting here.  Wrote a new way to integrate with the scribblar API.  Stefan has the code if anyone wants it.   Important thing to note, why the Hell are so many Americans and now Africans getting me in to do Etherpad deployments yet there are so few EU deployments going on?  Is their something about Europeans and our lack of encouraging collaboration in the work/edu place?

Finally.  Happy Pirates day!  Now gimme your loot.

Simple Link site creator

You may recall a few days ago I posted some concept pictures of a very simple link interface for use in early years/ks1.  Anyway here is an updated look at the admin interface:

There is a live demo site here (it is currently massively broken but at least you can see it)

My todo list: http://john.primarypad.com/ianlink

This service isn’t ready and it may never actually get released but I figured you might like to have a look to see what I’m playing with 🙂