review – Page 9 – John McLear

Dry wipe erasable paint (IWB paint)

Posted on May 25, 2010September 2, 2012 by primaryt

I bought some of this paint from Homebase when it was on special offer. The paint basically allows you to use a dry wipe marker on your wall. I used it to make notes and the like (see right hand side)… So far, so good.
It seems to be working well. I’m tempted to do the rest of my walls.

One thing to note: Prepare your surfaces well, just a quick scotch down of most surfaces wont do. Also ensure you don’t have any hot lights beaming down on your surface as it may make the paint dry a bit funny..

Next step is to try it with one of these Epson projectors that don’t require an IWB.

Epson and E Ink Announce State-of-the-Art Color EPD Controller (physorg.com)

Free digital signage alternatives for schools – WordPress and Visible Tweets

Posted on May 19, 2010April 14, 2011 by primaryt

Ever been quoted a rediculous amount of your digital signage software and figured why can’t I just use this old laptop/pc and do it myself? Well now you can, and you don’t need any extra software. These 2 options work through your web browser and are completely free.

Visible tweets

To use visisble tweets you will need a school twitter account and you will probably want to “feed” your twitter account from your school blog or website. People can then follow your school twitter account and get the latest updates in real time and as you update your website/blog it will automatically update your schools digital signage. Visible tweets is super easy but is limited to tweets alone so pictures or video are out of the picture….

Live Example

Primary Blogger

Primary Blogger is a blogging platform that supports themes for digital signage. You can include videos, pictures, vokis, pretty much anything. Primary Blogger can update itself from an RSS feed so you can have your blog or website anywhere and just tell Primary Blogger to update from that. It is fair to say that without videos it is less visually stimulating than Visible tweets.

Video:

Live Example – Guide for how to do it

Show My Homework review

Posted on April 30, 2010September 2, 2012 by primaryt

UPDATE & Warning: Show My Homework will spam your email inbox with no option to unsubscribe.

Show My Homework is a web based service for teachers to creates a calendar for pupils that shows when homework has been issued and is due.

The process works like this:

Teacher posts a piece of homework, including information such as the recipient class and date/time.
Pupil checks on a certain URL to see what homework has been assigned to their class.

This website is primarily aimed at secondary schools and colleges where homework is set in advance and is essential to the ongoing education of the child. Comparing this service to something like Edmodo is difficult as Edmodo is much more of a communication platform where files are the focus.

I don’t see the Primary School uptake of a system like this being high. The concept is great and so is the delivery but I feel without a large change in the way primary schools assign homework and a change in the way the website handles individual/group assignments, learning platform integration that this service may be overlooked for some time to come.

The credit process encourages teachers to get other teachers involved with Show My Homework by providing free credits as a reward for inviting other teachers. There is no mention about how the process will work when all of a schools teachers have been invited onto the system. I expect this is when a small fee will come into place.

Show My Homework is focused more on classes than groups, some would argue this sacrifices individualized learning for a more formal work structure, this seems like a natural sacrifice as Show My Homework is a specific job for a specific task and that task is homework assignment.

I like Show My Homework for its simplicity and practicality and salute it for not trying to be something it isn’t. A perfect example of how it is beautifully simple are the email reminders, nudging you if you haven’t assigned any homework lately. I personally think Naimish and his team should think about providing an open standard for homework assignment that can integrate with a learning platform such as Moodle.

Watch the video and see what you think!

New TTS Classroom microphone for kids to use

Posted on April 1, 2010April 1, 2010 by primaryt

This new TTS microphone for classroom use has the usual handy USB port on the bottom and easy record/playback of last clip. I did find using it a bit fiddly and some of the buttons feel super tacky. Great choice for KS2! Not sure on availability/price. Want to see other options? Check out my top 5 microphones for classroom use.

EPSON 450Wi projector “don’t impress me much”..

Posted on March 29, 2010September 2, 2012 by primaryt

Of course I’m at the risk of sounding like Shania Twain but with so much hype and such high expectations for this device I was a bit dissapointed. I found the pen to be too heavy for all day use, it is about 4x the weight of a Promethean pen and at £150 for a replacement pen my eyes did water a little..

When using the board close up the reflected glare from a normal dry wipe board is so extreme that is hurt my head after only a few minutes. The device I used the Projector on was very slow to pick up the driver and in some instances it had to be started manually, I’m not sure if this is an installation error or an error with the software that is shipped with the device.

This projector could save the average classroom over £1000 plus the maintenance cost of the board so it could be a much more cost effective solution. I also found that the projector I was using was incredibly blury in the bottom left corner, the rest of the projected image was fine. See picture below:

*UPDATE: On the projector their is a manual focus just by the lens. This fixes the blurring – This is not well documented by Epson.

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Visible tweets

Primary Blogger