:Creative ICT in Education

As a Garageband devotee and fan of accessible music technology software, I am always interested in any new software claiming to be Garageband for the PC. I am a realist and recognise that while Garageband is perfect for music creation from primary right the way through to Key Stage 4 and beyond, not all schools and teachers are lucky enough to have access to a suite of macs for music technology lessons. While there are some very good products out there, M-Audio make a good piece of software called Session which has an interface similar to Garageband. The limitation of this software is it only works with a specific audio interface, not a practical option for many schools. I recently came across Mixcraft by Acoustica (http://www.acoustica.com/mixcraft). This is an excellent product that is similar to Garageband in many ways, is easy to learn how to use and also comes bundled with hundreds of loops and some effects and virtual instruments. All this for just $64.95 and discounts are available for bulk purchases. I have included a short video overview of Mixcraft below;

Anyway this leads me to a new piece of software that I came across via twitter earlier this week. Songsmith from Microsoft Research. The article on the macenstein website was entitled “Move over Garageband, Songsmith is here!”. The advertorial for Songsmith had me crying with laughter (see below) and left me convinced it must be an elaborate hoax. A quick trip to the microsoft website confirmed it is for sale for $29.95.

Quite aside from the production qualities of the advert, the script etc, etc ( and the fact for any Apple geeks that the main laptop featured is a Macbook Pro – does this mean even Microsoft accept that the best computer for running windows is a Mac??), it got me thinking about where Microsoft are hoping this will lead. Anyone that has ever used Garageband that will know that while dragging and dropping a few loops has a kind of instant gratification and makes you feel quite creative, you know that you are not really creating music more arranging someone else’s. Students generally enjoy this for a while but then want to develop skills to enable them to craft their own sounds and create their own sequences. I suspect Microsoft would probably argue that Songsmith allows anyone to create their own music without any musical knowledge but the more I think about this the more I think this may not be a good thing. Surely the whole point of technology is that it is a tool to help with the creative process, not take all but one aspect of that away from you. I am sure there are probably a few sliders and dials that allow you to vary the generated music but I am not sure this is the point. If you are going to make the process of making music that easy, why not just generate the vocal too, so that all the user has to do is click a few buttons on their laptop and the music is made.

I feel there is also a danger that we further devalue music too. In these times when we are surrounded by technology we need to instill in children the value of creativity, and as educators we should be facilitating them to be able to express themselves. I have downloaded Songsmith from the Microsoft website and will post some of my songs when I have had a chance to explore it in more detail. One thing though I am certain of is that advert will always cheer me up when I have a had a bad day!

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Welcome to my edublogs blog. As part of a training session that we are running at the city learning centre for MFL advisor, Bernadette Clinton, I have embedded some examples of the ICT tools that we have been discussing for people to have a look at. Hopefully they will give the inspiration for you to go and create your own with students!

Blogs A blog or a weblog is usually maintained by an individual with regular entries of commentary, descriptions of events, or other material such as graphics or video. This is an ideal way to create a running commentary of the learning journey that you and your pupils undertake throughout the year. Some teachers are using them with their classes to keep parents, governors etc of what is going on in their classroom, while some older students use them as a way of reflecting on their personal learning journey. However you use them with your students, they give a purpose for writing, and provide students with an audience. Students can be encouraged to post comments about posts made by other students. There are a huge variety of places that you can set up a blog for free. Blogger, wordpress and typepad are some of the biggeest providers of free blogs. All of these blogs are freely viewable by anyone with an internet connection, so an awareness of this is important in an educational context. Edublogs (www.edublogs.org) provide free blogging accounts for teachers and educators. The advantage of edublogs is that a teacher can create accounts for students whilst retaining a kind of administrator role, moderating comments etc before they go live.

Some examples of blogs;

http://lisibo.blogspot.com/

http://www.asisehace.net

A really good use of a school using blogs with each class

http://www.wroxham.herts.sch.uk

Vokis (www.voki.com) Vokis are talking avatars!  You choose your avatar – could be an animal, anime, alien etc and background, then either record or upload sound (or you can type and the site turns it into speech!) Press Ok and you have a talking avatar that can be downloaded or just kept on the site. In MFL could be used for recording and assessing speaking in a fun way – and as it’s saved online,  it can be reviewed later, allowing teacher to work with some whilst others record.  Voki avoid the issue of videoing children and saving.

An example of a voki

There are some good vokis at the following sites;

http://roydslanguagesdepartment.typepad.com/my_weblog/ks3_french_listening_and_speaking/

http://www.asisehace.net/blog/?tag=voki

Voicethread (www.voicethread.com) A collaborative online tool that enable you to make slideshows (can be kept private or made public) and then invite comments in text, sound or video from collaborators.  Examples of use – eTwinning projects, practicing vocabulary, creative writing.

A great example of how voicethread can be used in MFL especially at key stage 2.

Stop Motion Animation Stop Motion Animation is a great way of developing literacy and writing skills. To make good quality animation, it is important to build the project around a unit of work. Storyboarding and planning the story is the first stage, and is extremely important to help younger students especially to break a story down into the key points. Also at this stage, especially in MFL, vocab and stucture of sentences can also be worked on. Digital Blue cameras are ideal for use with primary school students, although older Key Stage 2 students may wish to explore more professional DV cameras and software such as icananimate (MAC) or stopmotionpro (PC) (www.kudlian.net). There are some excellent tutorials for using the digital blue cameras and I have included a very thorough one from Teacher Tube by Jason Dilling.

Excellent Digital Blue guides for both video and plasticene animation.

Simply click the link below and download the two pdf files.

Digital Blue Video and Animation Guides

Oscar Stringer, Apple ADE and Director of Animation for Education has also created a fantastic slideshow to help teachers to explain to students how to create models for plasticene animation. It can be found here;

Link to slideshow of how to create plasticene models for animation

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