I’ve just spent the last two days at the Drumossie Hotel, Inverness where I had the pleasure of talking with a considerable number of Gaelic teachers from around Scotland. There were delegates from Highland, Western Isles, Argyll & Bute, Glasgow, and East Dumbarton………..and probably some more.

I’ve been involved with various Gaelic teachers and advisors over the past few years due to the usefullness, in languages, of much of the software that we use in additional support needs. i.e. good multi-sensory, multimedia packages such as Textease and Clicker 5 which lend themselves to bookmaking, sentence construction, annotation, etc – and in any language you want. It’s so easy to record your own voice messages to these applications and teachers can use existing resources and make their own tailored to their own pupils.

I delivered 5 sessions on Textease – its use as a great interactive ‘blackboard’, how it can be used as the foundation and repository for ‘virtual topic boxes’ and its ease of use as a desktop publisher and presentation tool. Most teachers tell me that they had no idea the software could do all these things. A reflection of the prevelent notion that I often hear – that it’s a wee word processor for the infants!!!!!

My recommendation is that you take another look at this especially if you now have a digital projector in your classroom – you’ll not find a more flexible and easy-to-use package to prepare and deliver punchy teaching presentations.

The ’stuff’ I mentioned during the presentations can be found here.

Noel Jenkins’ personal website, juicy geography, is packed full of goodies for geography teachers and much of what is exemplified is inclusive by its very nature. While this is specifically aimed at pupils in the upper secondary area of schools there’s much for younger pupils too.

Thanks to the prolific Ollie Bray for flagging this up.

Definitely worth a look.

This long-standing and award winning Mac application for animators of all ages is now available for PC. I’ve had many people ask me over the past few years what software to use to produce good animations and I always hesitated as this wasn’t available on the PC platform.

Get details here about the required computer specifications and about the great, easy-to-use facilities within this great software package.

Read Curtis Jobling on I Can Animate and why he thinks you should use it with kids.

Tristan Oliver demonstrates the secrets of Aardman’s animated success at a special BAFTA Families event.

[wpvideo hHRWZkLw]

My wife, who is expecting our second child, passed her due date yesterday without incident so we must now be getting very close to the event!!! As a result, last week was spent in anticipation and I could only manage local visits. This week looks to be shaping up in much the same way. Apologies to those of you waiting for a visit!!

I’ve been using the time productively though. We’ve registered our other ‘new baby’ -  WriteOnline from Crick software and are readying ourselves to deliver some training in its use as well as getting it out to some pupils. This on-line word processor with speech output, prediction, and topic word-grid support allows a pupil to work at any Internet enabled computer. So working between home and school should become easy. There’s no software to install and what the pupil has at school will be exactly the same as they will see it at home.

Actually there is much more to this application than we first realised. There’s online storage space for files, free resources on many common curricular topics, and facilities to enable both pupil and teacher to comment on work in progress.

Can’t help feeing that this would sit beautifully inside GLOW to provide an excellent all-round writing support tool that would enhance inclusion on a number of levels. Must speak to Learning & Teaching Scotland about this!!!

We’ve also been looking very closely at Clicker 5. Although this has been around for quite some time now it’s only recently that schools in Highland have been getting it on refreshed equipment in any numbers. We will be delivering training in the use of this software very soon – watch out for news in the CPD calendar. Clicker 5 has a vast array of ready-made materials that are free to download but is also supported with add-on packs that cover early language development, ESL, common topics, as well as many inclusion features for pupils with additional support needs. It’s a real step up from the already excellent Clicker 4.

As a Dundee lad, weaned on the Beano and Dandy, who later worked as a teacher in the school next door to the D C Thomson offices I’ve always had a fascination for stories told in pictures as well as words.

It was, therefore, with great interest (but no great surprise) that I read Emma Seith’s report in this week’s TESS on the potential use of comics and graphic novels to encourage reluctant readers.

Ever considered using Viz’s Fat Slags to spark a class debate about gender representation? What about using Jackie to teach history? Or juxtaposing Japanese manga and Shakespeare? No?

In all likelihood, neither had teachers gathered at the National Library of Scotland, in Edinburgh, until they attended a recent continuing professional development session on using comics in the classroom by Dr Mel Gibson – or Dr Mel Comics, “because there’s no point in doing a Google search for Mel Gibson”.

Nat Edwards, head of education at the library, introduces Dr Gibson as a leading scholar on comics and graphic novels. Her job, she says, is to “enthuse” the assembled teachers, but she also wants to dispel any idea that such literature is “mostly violent and full of awfulness”.

Comics are, she argues, a means of developing literacy. There is, for example, the Classical Comics range which includes Shakespeare’s Henry V and Macbeth; there’s Persepolis, an autobiographical novel by Marjane Satrapi depicting her childhood in Iran after the revolution; and The Tale of One Bad Rat by Bryan Talbot about a girl who has suffered sexual abuse. “It’s a book about the power of literature and art to make life worth living again,” Dr Gibson says.

She begins, however, by talking about manga, the Japanese graphic novel or comic. In schools it can be used as a means of exploring a different culture, Dr Gibson suggests, but it is also a “powerful vehicle for literacy and creativity”.

She continues: “Graphic novels are good at drawing in new and developing readers, but they also engage passionate readers, who will keep coming back wanting the next volume.”

The Secondary English Network based in West Lothian have been detailing their use of such materials on their exciting blog. These folks are fortunate to have events and exhibitions such as Local Heroes: The Art of the Graphic Novel on their doorsteps with the associated lecture opportunities that go with them and I’m very jealous!! However, thanks to them for sharing their work so generously – it’s really great to follow what they’re doing.

Remember ComicLife software is available for our schools.

The new digital voice, that those of us working with text-to-speech have been waiting for, is soon to be available.

I reported a few weeks ago about Heather - the fantastic new synthetic speech engine from Cereproc – was to be provided to all Scottish schools through funding from the Scottish Government and she’s on her way!!!This will make a difference to the reading and writing experiences of many of our children.

Listen to Heather here: [audio http://atss.files.wordpress.com/2008/01/cprc_front.mp3]

Again, we have our friends at the CALL Centre to thank for pushing this initiative through the Scottish Government, making them understand the importance of such provision and bringing it to the computers in our schools soon.

The ATS Service has arranged a training day to help schools prepare for the inevitable increase in the number of pupils with Additional Support Needs who will opt to sit their exams using ICT.

Our friends at the CALL Centre, Edinburgh University have been developing this work with the SQA over a number of years now and have delivered training to large numbers of staff from schools around the country.

The Highland day is set for Tuesday 10th June and we hope to offer all our secondary schools a couple of places at this important event. The details of the course can be seen on the CPD Calendar but we’re targeting this at PTs of Support for Learning and SQA Co-ordinators.

Some of the schools who have been using digital question papers have begun to create interactive digital versions of other resources such as Prelims, NABs and worksheets and so we will look at tools and techniques for creating such resources.

The course presenters will be:

Paul Nisbet, Senior Research Fellow, Communication Aids for Language and Learning (CALL) Centre

Patricia McDonald, SQA Project Manager, National Qualifications Product Development

Margaret Dearman, Support for Learning, Buckie High School

Related links:

CALL Centre: http://callcentrescotland.org.uk

SQA Digital Exam Papers: http://www.AdaptedDigitalExams.org.uk

Books for All: http://www.booksforall.org.uk

Books for All blog: http://pauln.edublogs.org/

Doug Dickinson is to speak with 40 Highland Heads and Deputes this Friday – he’s on a bit of a tour and we’re glad he’s able to come north to see us. He’s actually delivering in Strathpeffer Community Centre but the trip was organised via the Dingwall Office so I’ll allow him the alliteration in his latest post.

Dumfries (and Galloway), Dundee, Dunbarton (well nearly) and Dingwall … a Scottish tour !

Monday with over 100 teachers in Dumfries. Their first day back after the Easter holidays but what enthusiasm. We explored the changing definitions of text in educational contexts and looked at the wider picture illustrated by Article 13 of the UN Charter for children. This led us to look at the way Textease Studio CT handles multimodality, in particular the power of adding sound to text in a variety of ways.

Keeping reading records as ‘live’ sound recordings was the innovation here as many teachers had not imagined that they had the technology to do this simply and quickly. Tuesday in Dundee with 60 or so enthusiasts in a fantastically impressive hall with a huge presentation screen. Again we looked at the way Curriculum for Excellence had a clear focus towards the future and how the definitions of text opened up opportunities to look at multimodality, blogging and social networking.

More from Doug on his blog at dougmuses.

I’m looking forward to Friday!!

Received my long-awaited invitation for access to this beta site this morning. Searched for Scotedublogs and this is what I got!!!!

This is a real beta site – these guys are very up front about still being at the beginning of the build – but I found what I wanted straight away!!!!

This was worth the wait.

The ATS Service had the pleasure this week of spending two days with staff from one of our special schools. We met with nine staff over the two days and made use of the excellent facilities and surroundings of The Storehouse of Foulis.

The time had been set aside to help raise ICT awareness and build confidence in deploying the various technologies in the context of teaching and learning for the wide range of pupils who attend the school. Writing about the days like this doesn’t reflect the buzz that existed as the teachers immediately saw the possibilities such tools could have for themselves and their pupils. I certainly left with new ideas as a result of the discussions and feedback we received.

All the teachers made voice recordings using Audacity software, took and downloaded photographs before making use of these in other software applications such as Jigworks, ChooseIt Maker2, and Softease Presenter. We painted using 2Paint a Picture and published using 2Publish+ from 2Simple software, looked at the benefits of click and drag software, Comic Life for picture story telling, and so on……..

The idea behind building confidence in these areas was to look beyond the keyboard and ‘through’ the technology to the opportunities for the pupils to express themselves and to give teachers a variety of tools to help build alternative resources – to change the way we teach and the way we allow the children to learn.

One teacher’s comments on the morning session.

[audio http://atss.files.wordpress.com/2008/03/review-of-storehouse.mp3]

There’s some discussion now to be had back at school then we aim to follow up, in more detail, any of the strands the teachers want to further develop.