Education Podcast Reflections

In Education Podcast Reflections #37, David Noble, a chartered teacher from Hillside School, in Fife raves about our recent videoconferencing session on blogging and podcasting which involved about twenty MFL teachers from the UK, Ireland and Malta. Although he felt the discussion went very well, he does express concern that perhaps the terminology that some more experienced bloggers and podcasters were using would perhaps put off some 'newbies'.

This is a fair point which made me think it would be a good idea to set up wiki where we could carry on sharing our ideas and explain terms such as RSS and syndication. What does everyone think?

In the podcast, David also talks about how the work of Tim Rylands inspired him to use PowerPoint to create an interactive presentation made up of still images, autoshapes and hyperlinks of a virtual classroom which his pupils could explore by answering onscreen questions. Unsurprisingly, they found the reinforcement exercise very motivating and David plans to make another presentation as revision for a German exam later this month which will also include sound files.

I was thinking the same idea would lend itself very well to practising directions in a personalised virtual tour of your town, house or school with questions in the target language. David explains how to put together such a presentation in the podcast and reassures listeners it should take them no longer than a couple of hours to complete.

Adam Sutcliffe who also took part in the Flashmeeting, blogs about it here as well as his Saturday session at Communicate.07. Adam has been very busy recently as he has also been involved in videoing his pupils who have been taking part in Les Rencontres Théâtrales 2007. Great stuff.

According to Leanne Simmonds who also attended the Flashmeeting, she has fallen in love with the technology and cannot wait to try it out with other schools!

By the way, in case you missed it, I thought I should highlight the fact that the Flashmeeting is not only available online, but can also be downloaded as a zip file (video, audio and text chat) or mp3 (audio only).

I've received a number of positive and encouraging emails about the session and look forward to setting up another one soon, so the conversation can continue.

Comments

[Anita Pincas]

I take it Flashmeeting is free.

How many users can be online in it at any one time? Is this dependent on memory on the server or something?

many thanks
Anita

[Joe Dale]

Hi Anita,

Flashmeeting is free to use. You need to set up an account by contacting either Jeff Howson or John Warwick

jeffrhowson@gmail.com

john.warwick@stlukes.herts.sch.uk

A maximum of 25 users can take part in any one Flashmeeting. All they need is the latest version of Macromedia Flash installed and a microphone or webcam. The account holder then books a meeting for a specific time and date and sends potential participants the URL they will need to join the meeting. It is as simple as that.

Hope that helps

See these posts for more information about Flashmeeting:
http://joedale.typepad.com/integrating_ict_into_the_/2007/03/make_the_world_.html

http://joedale.typepad.com/integrating_ict_into_the_/2007/02/tes_ict_blog_et.html

http://joedale.typepad.com/integrating_ict_into_the_/2006/12/flashmeeting_th.html

[Leanne Simmonds]

Yes, I AM in love with FM! So easily done, nicht?! I have set up a couple of trial FMs with staff at school and, according to our new BTs, the MFL department (in particular!) was running around very excitedly and with wild abandon! See what technology can do? I have also used FM with a group of totally non-techy, non-teaching peeps and they LOVE it! I have just started a blogaffair with a Spanish teacher in the States with a view (eventually!) to having our pupils 'flash' each other - in the best sense of the word! MisS :)

[Isabelle]

Well, it is high time that we use this technology in our children's education. Although the effort is there, some schools are not utilizing this because of lack of proper knowledge of this fairly new technology. Educating our educators first would be the best approach by starting with the definition of video conferencing, the tools, how to use it, etc.

[Joe Dale]

Have a look at this link to more information about Flashmeeting:
http://www.kented.org.uk/ngfl/flashmeeting/index.htm

This should help.

Thanks for your comment.

Joe