Category: Googlemaps

My second presentation at ILILC3 was called Let out for good behaviour.

The blurb said

Let out for good behaviour? refers to leaving the classroom being (often) seen as a treat. There are many ways to ‘break free’ of the walls of your classroom, both physical and virtual, and this session will involve both. Participation is required as we explore activities and games, that will enhance teaching and learning whilst bringing a breath of free air to a stuffy classroom. Technology will be involved but you don’t need anything but your imagination and sense of adventure to enjoy the activities.

Although my presentation was somewhat spoilt by the weather meaning we couldn’t get outside and make a mess with chalk, there was much giggling as we played Punto de contacto, went on a QR quest to solve animal riddles, went Placespotting and tried to win chocolate by solving dominoes. And much more of course! It’s great to know that some of the ideas I shared have already been used in classrooms!

Below are my slides from the session.

[slideshare id=16644981&style=border: 1px solid #CCC; border-width: 1px 1px 0; margin-bottom: 5px;&sc=no]

On Friday, I hit BETT in London.  I didn’t really see much on Friday apart from some wonderful presentations as part of TeachMeetTakeover which I was helping coordinate for the day.

TeachMeetTakeover is a sort of ‘organised flashmob’ idea where companies offer their stands for half hour / hour slots to be used by someone talking about free ideas that they’ve used in their classroom.  There were presentations throughout Thursday, Friday and Saturday – the variety of ideas can be seen from the wikispace, which also shows how many offered but didn’t get to take part.

Having snaffled a helium balloon from a stand, I taped the logo to it and flew it by presentations – it seemed to make people stop for that all important three seconds it took for them to be drawn into the presentations!

My presentation was on the Babcock4S stand – and I have to say a huge thank you to Dan and the team for their welcome – and the beer!

Below are the slides from my talk entitled ‘Free stuff doesn’t have to be pants!

A lady from IRIS Connect was videoing it – if it gets published, I’ll upload the link! UPDATE – blog post with link

And look!  Just found this photo on Flickr that was taken during my presentation – you can see my legs just under the banner!

From Foto’s Frans Peeters on Flickr

I recently discovered Ben Curtis‘ Notes from Spain blog (via a Tweet from Mark Pentleton I think). The sub heading, Travel -Life -Culture, gives a flavour of what can be found on the site, but doesn’t adequately describe the breadth of information and insight offered. There’s are 3 podcasts, and the excellent Notes in Spanish section quite apart from great and varied blog posts – recent favourites of mine include photos from Spanish fiestas and ferias , a video of the madness of walking El Camino del Rey and a post about the Patios Interiores that brought flooding back the memory of descending two floors to knock on the door of a neighbour I had yet to meet in order to retrieve my smalls that had fallen off the washing line. What an icebreaker that was ;o)

Today when I checked my Google Reader there were two articles , one about news reports from Spain and the other about a new feature of Google Maps which excited me!

Entitled – Kill ten minutes in Spain with Google Maps, it points out the addition of geotagged photos and Wikipedia entries to Google maps. Really interesting and useful too as now it’s possible to look at the physical geography, satellite images, street maps and photos of places (and I’ve just discovered, you can check on traffic in the USA!). And it’s not just Spain – there are images and information from all over the world (the W is for a Wikipedia entry) Year 6 will be my first guinea pigs as we investigate the area around Wasquehal, France in Geography- they’re already very impressed by GoogleMaps and had a great time finding sites in Wasquehal on PlaceSpotting (anyone else doing this unit, there are about 8 or 9 puzzles if you use the search facility and input ‘Wasquehal’)

So I’m now off to do some virtual sightseeing before I really go to Spain next week. (click on the map to make it bigger or go to here.

[googlemaps https://maps.google.com/maps?f=q&hl=en&geocode=&q=spain&ie=UTF8&lci=lmc:panoramio,lmc:wikipedia_en&ll=39.909736,-4.350586&spn=14.482836,29.53125&t=h&z=5&output=embed&s=AARTsJq093neKo-thtF9_LkAgDNU_Gr0Pw&w=425&h=350]

Thanks Ben for the inspiration on this – and for your site which makes me feel so much closer to Spain :o)