iBand

Last week our lunchtime iBand activity started. 12 students from years 4 & 5 will be experimenting with handheld technology to see if they are able to produce a musical piece worthy of public performance.

They are using a number of different apps to produce their sounds, which are listed below with UK prices.

iPhone, iPod and Ipad Music/Sound Apps

iShred Live by Frontier Design Group - Free

Percussions+ by Crimson Technology – GBP3.99

Pocket Organ C3B3 by insideout ltd. – GBP1.79

SoundGrid by Vitaliy Pronkin – GBP1.79

iPhone and iPod Music/Sound Apps

Bassist by MooCow Ltd. – GBP2.39

Cowbell Plus by Frontier Design Group – GBP0.59

Guitarist by MooCow Ltd. – GBP2.39

Guitar Studio by Frontier Design Group – GBP2.99

iGOG Massive Drums by Wave Machine Labs Inc. – GBP1.79

iShred by Frontier Design Group – GBP2.99

Melody Bell by CONIT Co., Ltd. – GBP0.59

NLog Free Synth by Rolf Wohrmann - Free

Piano Studio by Frontier Design Group – GBP2.99

Real Bongos by Armin Heinrich – GBP1.19

Saxophone musicofx by mode of expression, LLC – GBP0.59

Theremin by Frontier Design Group – GBP0.59

iPad Music/Sound Apps

3D Drum Kit by Benjamin McDowell – GBP1.19

Well done to all those students involved. They've made a great start and who knows, they may well be up to the standard below at some point in the future.

Hong Kong 21st Century Learning Conference

Next week sees conference season kick off with the 3rd Hong Kong 21st Century Learning Conference taking place at West Island School. Nearly 30 teachers from across Kellett will be attending to participate in a number of sessions and forums.

Big hitters Stephen Heppell and David Warlick will be the keynotes and I'm delighted to say that Katrina Hall has been chosen to present a session on the use of iTouch Apps in the Primary Classroom. Katrina has previously presented at the 2nd Hong Kong 21st Century Learning Conference on Games in the Classroom as well as on the use of mobile devices at the Hong Kong Handheld & Mobile Learning Festival at the University of Hong Kong.

The trailer for the session can be seen below;

iPad - A Game Changer?

An interesting discussion on the iPad between Will Richardson and Warren Buckleitner, editor of Children's Software Review. I have to say I agree that the iPad has huge potential in the Early Years classroom.

iPad in School?

Thanks to miss Hall we got a chance to have a look at an iPad today. Below is a video of Ava using Dino Mixer - an application which has been used a lot in P1 as part of their study of dinosaurs.

The iPad looks like it could have a wide range of uses in school and we'll be looking at how we might use them and how many we might purchase in the near future.

Christmas iTouch?

I didn't get an iTouch for Christmas as I already had one (did finally get a Livescribe Pen though - hurrah!).

However, I am aware that a number of students received an iTouch from the big man in red. If you've been playing with it already you'll probably agree with me that it's a fantastic piece of kit.

Here's a note for parents though. If you are running filtered or controlled access to the internet via your PC or laptop, your filter software will not apply to the internet access via the iTouch. In other words, net access via the iTouch is unfiltered.

Now, in an ideal world that would not be a problem. There would be little inappropriate content on the web and all our students would be perfectly capable of using the iTouch in a responsible manner. Sometimes though, that's not always the case and it's perfectly understandable that parents feel the need to take precautions.

So, what can you do?

Well, the iTouch itself has settings which can disable various functions, such as the web browser Safari and the Youtube App as well as access to the App Store itself. Disabling these is an option, but if you want to go down this route then you probably should have purchased a standard iPod rather than the iTouch!

If you want to disable these functions , click Settings on the main screen, choose General, scroll down to Restrictions, Enable Restrictions. You then need to create a restriction PIN (which you should write down somewhere safe so you can always remember it!). You can then choose which services you wish to disable (all the fun ones!!).

If you need any further information on this, click here.

You might also consider a third party piece of software that allows you to monitor and control net usage on the iTouch from your own computer. There are a variety of paid solutions available, the most popular seemingly being;

Mobicip

iNet Safety Bubble

Safe Eyes

If you use any of these applications please let us know how you get on.

At Kellett we have begun to experiment with the use of iTouch in the classroom. We have a small pack of six so far. P1 children have been using them to work on their phonics and later this week Miss Chen will be looking at how to use an app called Finger Lite to teach Chinese Studies in the secondary school.

Education Leadership Summit

So, day one of Apple's Education Leadership Summit. Firstly, what a pleasure to see so many influential, creative people come to HK to talk to the education community. Heppell was the same as ever, completely engrossing, and what a bonus to see Greg Whitby, hadn't expected him to be there. A good excuse to embed one of my fav vids (below).

Over 200 schoools from 21 countries represented, a truely global event.

First up, Dave McMaster of Canadian welcoming all and talking about their tech journey. Then Tom Kelley from IDEo with a hugely entertaining session on innovation. Some really interesting definitions of the types of innovators and a real bonus, a FREE copy of his book. I was too cool to get in the line to get him to sign it though, maybe I'll sneak it to him tomorrow when nobody's looking.

Vivienne Stewart from the Asia Society was next to speak concerning education and globalisation. Her words struck a real chord and have massive significance for a school like ours. Our "Islands of the World" project with among others, Martha's Vineyard and the Orkneys is a start, but we clearly have much to do in fostering the sort of collaboration and understanding she talked about. As usual, it's all about giving teachers explicit support and the time to explore the possibilities available to them. Hopefully our upcoming International Day can be a springboard for more of this work.

Lunch was an extended one, purposely I assume to give people the chance to connect. I was lucky enough to meet Noah Katz from Renaissance College's Digital Technology Team. One of the features of events like these is that just when you think you might be beginning to master the skills, concepts and knowledge you need to move forward, you meet somebody like Noah who makes you realise the journey has only just begun. He was naieve enough to give me his contact details... big mistake, Noah!

A discussion panel on 21st Century Leadership followed by a breakout session gave us greater opportunity to explore global collaboration and some good ideas from Greg Israel.

The day ended with John Couch, VP from Apple Aducation talking about Apple's Vision for Modern Education. All you need to know about John's session is that it was due to finish at 5.30 and at 5.50 on a Saturday evening, everybody was still sat listening.

With events like this there's little chance for deeper reflection until the event is over, so the above is a brief, rushed summary of Day One. I'm off to Day Two now!

Apple Conference Countdown - Bring It On!

It's fair to say that I'm pretty excited about this weekend's Education Leadership Summit at Canadian International School. I've spoken to quite a few teachers who are attending in the last few days and it seems I'm not the only one! Clearly Hong Kong is ready for this type of event now and it's to Apple's credit that they have assembled such an impressive list of speakers and persuaded delegates to attend from all over Asia. It's important that the ed-tech community here in HK builds upon this weekend and moves forward, not only at our own conference in September, but also in the future.

Hopefully, more exciting collaborative projects like the one documented below will be born this weekend.

On another note this will be the first major conference I have been to since the "Birth of Twitter" and I suspect that it will be a major feature of the conference, providing an interactive back-channel to the proceedings and enriching the conference experience for delegates. Twitter is a great tool for teachers. It helps them to learn. Yes, it has been trivialised in the media to an extent, but it's helping teachers to connect and converse with each other. Without Twitter, we would not be involved in the Islands of the World project, which came about through a Twitter contact.

Thanks to Tom Barrett (again!) for pointing out US Principal Bill Carozza's blog post with regard to teacher's use of Twitter - well worth a read. He makes the telling point about the tool;

"Twitter and its ability to form a PLN has been one of the most useful professional development instruments in my 25 years in the biz"

So, I'll be sure to have my laptop charged ready to tweet the weekend away...

During my teaching career I've heard the word's "Thank goodness it's Friday" mentioned a few times. That's how I feel... I can't wait to get to work... on Saturday morning.

An Apple a Day

This weekend sees Apple's Education Leadership Summit taking place at Canadian International School. The gathered array of keynotes and workshop leaders are as impressive a group as I've seen in one place and the whole event promises to be extremely interesting.

A number of staff from Kellett will be attending throughout the weekend and I hope it proves to be a rewarding experience. I'm really looking forward to hearing Stephen Heppell speak having attended Schools for the Future conference he was leading many years ago.

The conference is perhaps an indication of Apple's determination to conquer the education market in Hong Kong. They appear to have made a conscious decision to target this area and it's good to see a company clearly committed to working in our sector who understand the issues and who can work with teachers to develop pedagogies.

Their strategy appears to be working. A recent unscientific poll I carried out in some of our classes shows that Apple are now the dominant home computer in many year groups.

For the first time ever in my teaching career I heard one of our Apple pupils utter these immortal words; "Man, I really hate Windows" !!