Interactive floor projection... on the cheap

This week I'm at the Australian Special Education Conference here in Perth. Keepad Interactive is a gold sponsor at the event and we have been using TurningPoint ARS every day.

As a way of getting people to come and have a chat to me at my stand, I set up a "garage" interactive floor projection.

Interactive floor projection is not new, and is based on movement within a video stream. But for most system there is considerable expense and most of the companies in this area charge a fortune for software and systems as if it were "magic".

Last week I found a  cool piece of software call Po-Motion - it just uses a standard web camera and a projector to create stunning floor based interactives.


It is not by any means a replacement for an interactive whiteboard - it works on motion rather than objects in this mode - so you actually have to move to make it work - stay still and nothing happens even if you are standing in it.

This kind of sensory experience is fantastic for special needs kids for cause and effect simulations, motivating kids to move and if you include music it turns into a multi sensory experience.

Just watching adults muck around and play with it just shows how much kids would love it - I had several games of virtual soccor going on over the lunch break period.

You can use the same system on a wall.

Just one more thing you can do with your data projector.

If you are wondering why I'm not using the Epson Ultra Short Throw on the floor projection - that's an Epson  485Wi - it is already interactive so I'm showing how the two technologies are similar by projecting onto the table and using the interactive pens.

600 science questions with researched distractors

The American Association for the Advancement of Science has just completed a 10 year study with 150 000 students. They developed a range of 600 science questions that test the fundamental understanding of key science topics. Each question has been researched with each distractor designed to identify misconceptions, and also includes statistics collected through their study.

Put these questions into TurningPoint2008 you can quickly and effortlessly diagnose your class misconceptions and helping you to differentiate your instruction.

You will need to register but for the effort you get a great reward.

AAAS Science Assessment

Ten things to do with your (hopefully TurningPoint) Student Response System

So you are thinking about a student response system (or you already have one), and you are wondering if it is a good investment. You may have seen it in use at a conference and thought –
“This has possibilities in my school or classroom.”

But if you are looking for ideas; here we have my top ten out of the hundred or so uses for the Student Response System from TurningPoint.

1. Use the conditional branching tool to show a class based choose your own adventure story. This was one of the ways I got my year five boys into reading, “pick a path” and “choose your own adventure” stories. Using TurningPoint you can create these stories in a power point complete with multimedia, and the whole class chooses the direction of the story. The real power of this is when you get the student to write, collaborate and create their own. This lets them brainstorm and explore plots and characters rather than just complete a linear progression of draft, draft, final draft, good copy.

2. Collect data quickly for discussion of statistics, use the mean, mode, and variance tools to discuss what they mean. Statistics and measurements abound in our daily lives, so it is a good idea and is part of a maths program to discuss these measurements of statistics. Unfortunately sometimes gathering the data for this exercise takes up a large amount of time – I’ve seen a class go out and count cars in the car park and then count cars as they go past for a whole maths lesson. Using the SRS students can quickly produce data sets based on the answers from the peers in their class. This gets collected in seconds and the data analysis can be completed quickly and efficiently, giving more time to discuss what they mean and how they are calculated.

3. Facilitate peer teaching with paired questions that shows the difference between two answers. Jeffery Stanger is a great leader in the use of this technique, especially with student response systems like TurningPoint. By asking paired questions and using the peer instruction technique students can achieve a deeper understanding and therefore achieve better recall during assessment by being able to learn from and teach their peers.

4. Get the audience involved in a debate by using the moment to moment slide to do “the Worm”. As we will see during the year (in Australia) audience responses to public debates are very important to our politicians. Why not use that technology in a class or even interschool debate where your audience can feedback how effective the debaters are at persuading the audience to their point of view. The moderators and adjudicators can then use this information as part of their calculations of score for effectiveness. This can then be analysed through the report function so that the debaters can find areas to improve their delivery.

5. Use them at P+C meetings and parent/teacher nights to identify areas of concern and to celebrate positive programs in the school. Sometimes involving parents in the school community can be tough especially if you have a couple of dominant power players in the existing mix. By introducing TurningPoint to meetings and information nights the school gets honest and representative feedback from parents in a non threatening way that lets every parent have their say on an equal weight.

6. Teach time and project management by using the ranking wizard or the weighted response slides. Both of these tools can be used to help students manage projects and priorities both in their academic and personal lives

7. Use the system to have a “peoples vote” at events such as science fairs and exhibitions that the wider public are invited to. This engages the community around the school and gives them a feeling of inclusiveness in the school.

8. Put one keypad on each table at a fundraising quiz night and do all your questions through the system – with no marking and automatic leader boards it gives you more people to help in other aspects frees them completely to be part of the experience. I have helped with a range of these nights and both the audience and the committee members involved love the ease of use of the system. If you use the speed scoring you reduce the effect that the use of smart phones have on the outcome of the event.

9. NAPLAN (National numeracy and literacy tests for Australian students) test preparation and data gathering – pre test your students on last years NAPLAN test to find areas of concern and address them before the actual test. Using a student response system means you get the results instantly and can drill down to individual students or merge data sets to find whole cohort patterns. Using this technology can also reduce student (and teacher) test anxiety when the test comes around as the students are used to the format and the types of questions that they will encounter.

10. Prior knowledge probing – don’t just assume, ask. You may be surprised what your new batch of students know and don’t know. By using an SRS to gather data, you can work from their strengths and identify areas where concentrated instruction may be helpful. It’s also a great way for new students to get to know each other without singling students out. You can then use that data to form a profile of your class.

Like any tool in the classroom whether it be an IWB or a pencil, there are great ways to use a SRS such as TurningPoint, just as there are ways to use it badly that makes no real positive difference to the outcomes of the students. But I encourage you to use your creativity and your professional know how to get the most out of this technology that might just help you understand what is going on in their heads.

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Clicker questions for Phet and Philosophy

Powerpoint 2007" style="border: medium none ; display: block;" height="177" width="240">Image by Paul Watson via Flickr

I was having a look at all the new simulations on PhET. and came across some of the resources that teachers had made based around the resources and interactives provided by the site.

A couple of teachers have made PowerPoint presentations with clicker questions ready to go. These two are for the projectile motion lab.

I was also reading Dereck Bruff's blog and he has found some presentations for philosophy with clicker questions in them.

These are great resources and some publishers are now providing presentations ready to go with their text books.

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Audience Response Systems V's Twitter

There has been a lot of talk (twitter) about the value of twitter in conferences - particularly during presentations. In one case disparaging remarks about the speaker were shown on screen while he was speaking. This was also a hot topic on echalk over the last couple of weeks. I Sent the list the following to mull over.

I have seen twitter used well in conferences and very badly in a few others. The trouble is that although very powerful it's very unidirectional in it's scope (both where and what you broadcast), as well as very individual. It's like giving all the loudmouths in the room a bullhorn, and the result is that the majority of people just shut up (don't Tweet).

We need to make it more fun and try an change the behaviour of the crowd so that they want participate.



What is sometimes needed is a more directed and focused system that aggregates responses so that it is useful to both the presenter and the audience.

Another possibility is an Audience Response System from Keepad. Going from an individualised "keepad" (multiple choice) to an "App"(Responseware) on an iphone or laptop (text & multiple choice). It allows your keynote/presenter/workshop facilitator to direct questions or solicit feedback, but aggregate the responses instantly to get a more "majority view". This can help focus the audience on the issues or content rather than presentation style.

This can all be integrated into a PowerPoint/Keynote/PDF/OO/Prezi in both PC and Mac platforms.

By the way, I hope you like the new green theme - It's spring here so I thought it was appropriate.

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IWB Conference - Sydney

Just a short note to let you know that I will be at the Australian IWB conference over the next couple of days. So if you are in Sydney and particularly near Waverly college feel free to pop on down. I will be presenting on each of the three days as well as running around like a madman helping people with TurningPoint. Iwill also be twittering (@halljackson) with my new iPhone or laptop so you can follow that - Now that will make me use it.

Image via Wikipedia

New PowerPoint Resources

Powerpoint Palooza is a collection of over 220 educational powerpoints ready to download. They are all based on history so useful for S&E as well as ESL.

Because they are powerPoints you can turn them into interactive TurningPoint presentations in a snap by adding interactive question slides.

Pete's Power Point Station

Teachers are always looking for pre-made resources for their subject area. Sometimes you are just looking for ideas, and sometimes you have to give youself some PD.

All of these needs are met at PPPS - a massive repository of high quality powerpoints and links to other ppt sites. Ranging across subject areas there are powerpoint to use in class or for PD in the staff room, or just to learn something new. Backup documents are also available - worksheets, fact sheets and quizzes.

A huge resource that can easily be turned into a TurningPoint resource with a few well placed interactive slides.

http://www.pppst.com/index.html

Powerpoint Games

TurningPoint ARS/SRS/CRT (new one I discovered - Classroom Response Technology), uses PowerPoint 2003/2007 to display questions, answers and responses as well as run the session. If you want to add a bit more competition in to the mix there are the team and individual leader boards and the new wager slide.

What you can also do is replicate game show styles - Jeopardy, Who Wants to be a Millionaire, and even the Price is Right - and adapt them to your learning area. Again it is a way of engaging your students and making learning more about participation rather than just listening.

For a range of game templates here is a great source

Power Point Games

Adapt these for use with TurningPoint and the subject you are teaching and add a little fun factor to your formative assessment.

Live webpage within PowerPoint

Ever wanted to showcase a website during a PowerPoint Presentation?

How did you do it? - Alt-tab? Screen shot?

Here is a nice easy FREE solution to the problem -
http://skp.mvps.org/liveweb.htm

This embeds your live website directly into the presentation without alt-tabbing back and forth.

This is great for embedding flash, FLV, Java and other interactive directly into your presentations - it doesn't have to be on the server - you could have it locally.

Use this for a huge range of stuff. Ask TurningPoint questions based on a web site.

Curtin University Lecturer

Ahh the fun I have.

On Wednesday I had the pleasure... nay the privilege to give a talk and demonstration with my boss (Paul Broadbridge) to a range of university lecturers about interactive lectures.

We pulled out all the toys for this one... eBeam, TurningPoint, Graphire Bluetooth Tablets and our latest toy - the Wacom Interactive Pen Display.

Paul and I work in a very different way to most technology sales people. Because we were both teachers (Paul has had a lot more years at the coal face than me), we focus on sound pedagogy and using technology as an enabler.

We had a lot of fun and we have a lot of visitors coming down to our office in the next couple of weeks to talk about how they can use technology to augment their lectures.

Speaking in front of the Australian Computer Society

Sometimes I do things in my job that I never thought I would do. Yesterday I had the privilege to talk at a meeting of the Australian Computer Society. This group was set up and long time before computers became ubiquitous, and has members from university professors to IT managers from some of the top multinationals.

In front of these esteemed people I go and do a very quick demonstration of eBeam, while my colleague does the same thing for TurningPoint ARS.

It is always satisfying to get the jaw drop from people who haven't seen eBeam or TurningPoint, it was even better when you had the calibre of the people in that room.

Both of us got a lot of questions after our demonstrations, and we realised that these guys were so into the management side of things that they hardly got to see all the new technology used effectively.

Makes me glad I have the opportunity to play with new technology on a daily basis.

Aboriginal Students and ARS

I got a great email recently from two of my clients Terry and Christine Hinchcliffe. Both of them have "retired" from teaching and are traveling up through the north west of Western Australia. As they pass through some of the remote communities, they offer their services as relief (supply/substitute) teachers and as professional development consultants. This gives them the opportunity to keep their hand in and to give support to those teaching in isolated areas that don't usually get to have a day of PD in their own school.

They took with them an eBeam and a Turningpoint IR kit. Here is what he wrote to me recently regarding his use of TurningPoint Audience Response System.

We have had considerable success with Turning Point at La Grange, Derby and
Wananami. As I suspected, the aboriginal kids love it. We have developed a
series of interactive stories where the kids "pick their own pathway" by voting
for a choice of decisions then hyperlinking off to other slides.

As educators who have specialised in Aboriginal education for most of their teaching careers, this is high praise. They have used the technology to engage students, and give them control of the lesson, something that most kids would love.

It's always great hearing success stories from clients, so if you have a success story you would like to share, please feel free to leave a post or drop me a line.