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.

Free Interactive Maths Problems

I had a teacher in our office today looking at the eBeam system, he already has projectors and was looking for a portable easy to use IWB system and it seems the eBeam fits the bill perfectly.

We were playing with Geogebra, something he uses all the time in his class with his tablet computer - he then asked if I had seen nrich.maths.org -

nRich s a UK site with resources for both interactive whiteboards as well as printables that go along with them. its a bit hard to get to all the interactives so here is a quick link to the 350+ maths interactives.

I'm going to be busy looking for all the good ones to show people.

Awesome Oresome - free resources on well... resources.

I've been busy for a while so I haven't had a chance to update my blog - this came to an embarrassing head today as I directed people to my blog after doing a training session with them and realised it had been almost 2 months since I updated it or added something new.

A friend of mine sent me this one - useful to those here in WA who are dealing with one of the biggest mining booms in this state.

Oresome - a website of resources for the minerals and energy industries. With a range of interactives and printable resources this could be a great base for a unit on the mining and resources sector.

ECAWA, games and explicit ICT teaching

Well it has been a busy week even though it was (and still is for another week) school holidays.

I was at the ECAWA (Educational Computing Association of Western Australia) conference this week. I've been involved with ECAWA for, on and off, over 10years now - going to conferences as either a delegate, speaker or sponsor.

The Keynote speaker was fantastic - Sasha Barab from Indianna University has taken a Position at Edith Cowan University here in Perth and was a great advocate for the use of games for eduction. Sasha was instrumental in the Quest Atlantis project where he designed numerous curricular designs to support transformational play in which players take on the role of scientists, reporters, accountants and others, who use academic content to resolve problematic fictional story lines that unfold in virtual worlds.

It reminded me of the work done in by the FAS and their immune attack game - I looked them up when I had a Chance and a they have links to some of their other games and other organisations making games for education.


He really got me thinking about game design and it's implication on my own projects.

I was also asked to run a workshop (we I offered and they accepted) - it seemed to go well with some good feedback from the participants. The conference was also a great time to network and catch up with some friends I only really converse with on echalk.


As with all of the last conferences it was a small affair and only had less than 100 delegates at the event. This is in sharp contrast to the ones in the late 90's that had over 300 delgates and big sponsors such as HP, Cisco and Citrix.

Some of us "oldies" were lamenting the fact that computing had come to this - where we have so much hardware in school but no one is really interested in it as either a subject or an enabler of good pedagogy. Some of the discussion centred around the fact that most teachers do not have a grounding in some of the most basic uses of computers and therefore do not see some of the potential to use computers across the curriculum.

While I was teaching in the UK in 2002/2003, the school I worked in made it a requirement that all teachers had to do their ICDL qualification within 2 years. They put on free classes (which I ran) and paid for their ICDL fees. The use of computers an technology by students and teachers increased markedly and the quality of assigned work noticeably improved.

I'm not sure that making every teacher do the ICDL will work, but considering there is such a small component of ICT in the teacher training courses then I think we are perpetuating the problem by not helping teachers with decent ICT competence training so they feel confident using technology in the classroom.

Well to help that along here are a couple of links to some free training resources - I can't make it compulsory for all teachers but at least I can gather some free resources.

I came across this one recently - nice neat and simple
In pictures - Simple step by step visual tutorials for MSoffice, Open Office and some web coding.

Teacher Click - Tutorials for teachers in Flash, office

Baycon Tutorials - More Office tutorials going up the fairly advanced topics.

Lower Primary IWB Resources

I've just finished a three day country school tour, visiting clients and demonstrating technology to new schools.

I'm constantly asked for resources for lower primary - so here are a few new ones as well as some old favorites.

iBoard -a free website specifically for use with an IWB and specifically for lower primary. The iboard is perfect for warm-ups as well as a main teaching point resource. It's all in Adobe flash so can run on any board (including eBeam), and is grouped by subject area and grade level.

Starfall - A graded site for early reading, again free. lots of colour and good use of sound. Perfect as an interactive bigbook on your IWB.

Crickweb - Another graded site - this one has interactive for IWB's from lower primary right through to lower hight school. A bit of advertising on the main page but otherwise and excellent resources

topmarks - Yet another UK site. This one is very comprehensive and has a huge range of interactives with lesson ideas as well.

BGfL - yep another UK site. This one is set up by the Birmiham Grid for Learning. A great collected work of some of the best flash interactives around. All sorted by subject groups

Scootle - If you are in an Australian Government, Catholic or even at some idependant schools, you have access to scootle. Designed by the Learning Federation with funds from the federal government. Scootle/learning federation resources cover a huge range of subjects and levels. Government and Catholic schools usually access this site via their portal - in the case of WA its the DET portal - then look for the learning federation resources.


There is more - let me know if you have found any that you use on a constant basis.

Kindersite and the Enigma Machine

This is a great collection of interactive games, videos and resources for K-7 teachers.

http://www.kindersite.org/ - Again most of this can be used with a Wacom tablet/slate or your eBeam.

The resources are all sorted into learning areas so finding something for your class should be fairly easy. I do like the story section.

These are all links to other sites and then you can go on from there exploring for more interactive resources at each site.

For those of you who have an interest in computer history / code breaking the Bletchley Park site has a virtual enigma machine running in JAVA - link here.

http://www.bletchleypark.org.uk/content/enigmasim.rhtm

lets make some code.