One thing of which I have been reminded this weekend is how effective it is to let the kids do the evangelising for you when it comes to the use of new technologies.

It started at Teachmeet when we were brainstorming ideas for encouraging the reluctant teacher / colleague to get involved in exploring and using new tools. As I have grown in confidence with my use of technology and used it in the classroom, pupils have told their class teachers about things we have done and asked if they can use it in other areas of the curriculum. And I’ve been asked to tell the staff about podcasting and recording audio at a staffmeeting next month which is real progress.

That was Friday. Then on Saturday, my eldest asked me to help him make a Photostory for his Victorians topic. He found the pictures, worked on the transitions and cropping them to size, then worked on the script before recording the narration and composing some music as background. Isaac had got the idea from watching me learning how to make Photostory last year and has used them in a previous topics too – water and Egyptians. He’s also become adept at searching for relevant Youtube video clips. And his use of technology has sparked an epidemic in his class. Once he’d shared his presentations, others in the class went home and emulated him.

On Sunday, I spent the afternoon making an animation with my other son Jude. He’d previously found plasticine left over from model making with Year 2 (we made monsters to describe in Spanish) and decided to make some models. Jude’s a fan of ‘show and tell’ at school, and had taken a couple of the models in with him. When he got home he announced that he’d put his name down for show and tell next week to show ‘the animation I’m going to make’. This was a week or so ago and he announced on Sunday that his slot was on Thursday so could we get on with it please!

Having got over probems with webcams in the house either missing driver CDs or being incompatible with my Mac, we used the iSight camera, ICan Animate and iMovie to produce the below. And Jude is very pleased with himself, having saved it onto a memory stick to take into school. And he’s particularly pleased to have posted it onto Youtube. No doubt Jude too will start a spate of ‘copying’ but that’s a good thing.

I’m really proud of my boys – and I’ll continue to hope that their hard work inspires their peers.
And their teachers too! Isaac’s teacher has been inspired to use Nintendo DS for Numeracy having watched his niece playing Brain Training so let’s see what happens next.