This has to be one of my favourite recent pieces of animation. Adam Winnik’s thesis project animates an excerpt from Carl Sagan‘s book “Pale Blue Dot” read by the author himself.

I’ve been enrolled in illustration at Sheridan College for the the last 4 years and this is my final thesis project. I have always thought of Carl Sagan’s writings as “scientific poetry” since they lack the cold touch that science is often cursed for having. I think Sagan’s words resonate more than ever, and will continue with each generation until the human species “wakes up”. The first time I heard this excerpt from his book “Pale Blue Dot” it literally changed my life, and I hope it does for you too. Enjoy.

I think Adam has struck a fantastic balance between the Hans Zimmer soundtrack, the tone of Sagan’s voice and his own playful animation of the words. What do you think?

I’m fascinated by the representation of data using infographics. I like their bold visual approach and how the style and composition signals the content it is communicating.

Chris Harmon a designer and animator from the Greater New York City area created this beautiful and thought provoking animation called Oil’d. It explores how dependent we are to oil and how much was lost into the ocean from the Deepwater Horizon oil disaster.

Oil’d from Chris Harmon on Vimeo.

Just from the presentation of information about the oil spill we could go in many different directions with our classes.

• Exploring he sources of information used
• Verifying the accuracy of the data included in the film

However if we unpick the animation layer by layer we get a much better idea of the great skill with which Chris used to complete it. Wouldn’t it be great to have Chris in front of a class of students explaining how he went about creating the animation, the stages of planning and execution.

For me there are many elements and skills that would on their own make excellent projects for children to explore and be engaged in:

Data
The maths involved in comparing and cross referencing the data, and what so many good infographic do the data-metaphor, juxtaposing information against something we find easy to refer to. For example the number of plastic bottles inside the Empire State Building, which we know is big!

Authentic information and research
Finding accurate information and data would be another important skill that would challenge a student to create something equally authentic and meaningful. We have the tools with which to find huge amounts of information and data but we need to know how to filter it. I don’t think teaching children how to search is enough, that is the first step, it is how we then process that information that needs time to be demonstrated and improved.

Persuasion
With my literacy hat on this animation pushes us to consider the impact of oil on our lives and has a strong persuasive message. The art of persuasive writing and in this case the careful scripting would be great to develop in this sort of medium, perhaps about a local issue.

Animation
The artwork and animation are obviously professional, but there is much to explore about the use of colour to convey meaning and an overall message. The colour schemes remind me of the Breathing Earth which also depicts an environmental message. It would be good for children to explore symbols and how we might convey a message in a visual way – a comparison type task would fit well here.

I think this animation is a great example of the sort of cross-curricular, multi-skill outcome that should be challenging our pupils in our schools. Making an animated infographic film about a local issue would cover so much. Furthermore if you had the opportunity to involve expertise, like Chris Harmon’s, it would provide that spark that would spur such a project onwards even further.

We used Voicethread today for some work about planets in our solar system as part of our Superheroes work. Generally we have used it to support speaking and listening prior to a fiction writing task, but it is equally effective in gathering and sharing research and factual information.

The children worked in pairs on a laptop – opened up the Voicethread we had created and used Planet 10 from the Planet Science website as the main source of information. Not only is this a great interactive model of the solar system but it has information about each planet presented in different ways.

Children also gathered information from other information websites tagged with “planets” on our Delicious account. They then added that information in written or voice form to the Voicethread. A simple way to create a pooled information resource which is presented and created in different forms. As I said in my Teachmeet Takeover talk at BETT last Friday, Voicethread allows children to work together in an open way. They can see everyone’s comments and contributions updating in real time – they can tap into the information others find as well as share their own.

Our next step will be to personify the different planets as Superheroes and link the physical features we learn about with some superhero powers or special abilities.

I like to use Google Earth when talking about the rotation of the Earth and the sunlight layer, shown in the image below helps to model this even further. “What happens in between the dark part and the light part?” a question from one of the children was a good discussion starter.

Another feature of Google Earth, that is often unexplored, is the different things you can view apart from the Earth. These are Sky, Mars and The Moon. Looking closely at The Moon there is an abundant set of information about the various lunar missions, landings and physical features.

We discussed the size and scale of the craters we could see (we found one that was 115km across!) and also tracked the route the Appollo 15 Rover took on the surface.

High resolution panoramic imagery is also available dotted around these landing sites and is a fascinating glimpse into the lunar landscape.

It made me think about combining some of the digital storytelling ideas that we have done using Google Earth and use Google Moon or Mars as a science fiction bachdrop. The incredible imagery would certainly be a great starting point for descriptive writing about a setting.

Our current curriculum theme is Health and Fitness, which has naturally been led by Science and PE. This week you would have delighted in the image of me attempting the double cross skip!

It comes with a pretty high difficulty rating! We were all outside doing a big year group skipping session which has proven a lot of fun over the last few years.

I did manage it though and along with some of the children I think I am getting better each week. It is all part of our efforts to get the children enjoying exercise and keeping active.

We have been learning about food groups today and also different fruit for healthy smoothies we are designing. Our specialist art teacher is covering the design of packaging and we are looking at the smoothie ingredients.

To assist with this we have been doing fruit tasting and exploring the various nutritional value of fruit. Smoothie Operator is a lovely little smoothie simulation tool that we have had fun using. From the Science Year website (which is well worth exploring), it allows you to create a smoothie from all sorts of different ingredients from the different food groups.

We challenged our children to make the most UNHEALTHY smoothie they could. Once blended (and we have done the little blending dance, play the game you’ll see!) you can then find out about the various levels of SALT, SUGAR, FATS etc. Useful for the children to see the colour coding as it is the same on most food packaging in the UK. We then tried to make a super HEALTHY smoothie as well.

Today we looked at the food pyramid and the children made their own using SMART Notebook. We reinforced this with a couple of little games that they really enjoyed. The first was Monster Nutrition from the Nutrition Explorations site run by the US Dairy Council. It is a bright and fun site, and the Monster Nutrition game has more depth than most.

You have to grab different food from the conveyor belt in the foreground and fire it at Mungo the nutrition monster! When he gobbles it up it gives you information about the food group and then some further multiple choice questions. The kids enjoyed this one and had to choose something from each part of the food pyramid  to progress.

Another US site we have used is MyPyramid.gov and the Blast Off game which asks the children to plan a whole day of meals and exercise in order to fuel a rocket to Planet Power. There is great depth and detail in the information provided in the game. It is engaging and reinforces: food groups; nutritional values; balanced diets and the need for the right sorts of food throughout the whole day.

I like the fact the children need to consider the different amounts from each food group and strike a balance with them all. They can also choose from a range of exercises to go along with their meals. As the children add their food items the game alerts them to alternatives to butter for example, or congratulates them for choosing whole grain. All good messages provided in a very good little game.

I just thought I should share these with you as they are new on my radar for this year. Don’t worry, more skipping updates soon!

As we continue our Sealife topic we have been exploring the conservation of sea turtles and subsequently climate change. We learned how rising sea levels have a direct impact on sea turtle nesting sites. I just wanted to outline some of the great resources we used in our classes this afternoon.

The main part of the afternoon was working on an science experiment that replicated the effect of acidic oceans on the coral reefs. This has been ideal for the work we have been doing recently. Whilst I was exploring the resources on the Under the Sea IMAX film I found some nicely produced resources for classrooms. Amongst it is the experiment we did.

We placed shells and chalk  in cups filled with varying levels of water and vinegar – each representing “Clean”, “Polluted” and “Very Polluted” seawater. We used some digital scales to weigh the shells and chalk before putting them in. The children enjoyed seeing the immediate reaction in the more “polluted” test and jotted down some observations. We were going to retrieve the solids today and check them, but I asked the class if they would like to leave it a full 24 hours – they agreed, so we will have to wait until tomorrow to see the full effect.

After setting up the experiment and completing some initial observations we invited the children to explore the Zerofootprint website. It provides a very child friendly survey (well written and very accessible to different reading abilities) about different aspects of life:

• Transportation
• What you eat
• Home and School
• What you throw away
• What you use

The results are then collated and the children are able to compare their own data with averages from countries around the world. We spent some time discussing some of the averages and talking through as a class the differences we found. It is a good way to compare personal and average national data.

To draw the afternoon to a close and provide another discussion point, I showed the children Breathing Earth which is a CO2 emissions, birth rate and death rate simulation. It is a strangely engaging animation and simulation of real data on a world map. We looked closely at the indication of CO2 emissions and identified the major culprits around the world. (As I explained what was shown I had some dramatic music on in the background which added to the impact of the simulation.)

I spent time drawing it back to the experiment we were doing – higher CO2 emissions means more polluted oceans, means more acidic effects on coral and sealife.

As a class we discussed how these levels might be linked with population and other factors. Breathing Earth provides a rich and engaging starting point for discussion that I would highly recommend. As you roll over a country on the world map more detailed data is shown for that nation. I think that Breathing Earth could prove a useful data resource in it’s own right – children retrieving information by finding the country and then rolling over. Better then looking at a list or on a basic webpage.

After the children had some time to work in pairs at their laptops exploring the Breathing Earth simulation we closed out the day with a film from WWF called “Knock-On Effects“.

A lovely animation that helps to remind us about the difference we can make if we all act. I love the domino metaphor and how if we all act and put up our dominoes we can gain great momentum and change some of the damage already done. We finished the day talking about what the class could do at home tonight to make a difference and what they thought of the animation.

I think that some of these resources have really helped us to show the children the connections. And to see, for example, that switching off that light at home could effect a sea turtle finding a nest. In a positive way. One domino at a time.

There has never been a better time for finding online resources to support learning. I subscribe to the RSS feed from my delicious network and my Google Reader is regularly bulging with useful links to sites that can support the work going on in the classroom. Here are three highlights that use video as the central media to help support curriculum work.

Spelltube

Spelltube brings the weekly spelling list into the technological age.

Spelling videos have been created for each of the 3000+ words in the National Spelling Bank, from which teachers can generate and assign a word list to their Key Stage 2 pupils. Memorable characters help to reinforce spelling concepts in an enjoyable way that will appeal to various learning styles.

The site allows a teacher to sign up for a free class account, which then provides children with individual login details. Spelling lists can be assigned and scores tracked within the site. It is tailored towards the UK national curriculum and supports the spelling objectives within it. I think it provides a great alternative toSpelling City.

Simple Science

The idea of SIMPLE SCIENCE is to have informative music video presentations for use in the primary school classroom.

They are designed to be used as part of a lesson to reinforce learning objectives and scientific concepts and also as a useful revision tool for the SAT exams. They work particularly well on a large whiteboard but can also be viewed on the computer screen and TV.

Once again the resources support the Key Stage 2 QCA Science units in the UK and each of the sections provides a video of the science behind the topic and a song to help the children too. The films can even be bought as a DVD or the songs on CD. There is no sign up or login needed to watch the films.

The site uses Vimeo embedded films and you can see Simple Science on Vimeo here. The fact they have not used YouTube makes it much more accessible in schools. Apparently they have a whole stack of early years songs and films planned for next year which should be worth looking out for.

Learning Clip

Learning Clip is an online resource to support teachers, teaching assistants and parents implementing the renewed primary mathematics framework.

The resources are structured to follow precisely the learning objectives of the renewed framework. For ease of navigation the resources are also listed by topic.

They all have the same easy to use format. Each clip comprises of, a short introductory video, an interactive activity, a worksheet and a set of notes.

After an initial registration a user needs to login to access the resources. It is worth noting that on the home page it states that the resources are being made available to teachers for free “during the development phase”. I assume from this that there may be a time when the resources require a fee to use them.

During the initial development phase of the project all the clips have been freely available to anyone interested in teaching and learning mathematics. From the 16th January 2010 some of the resources will only be available by subscription. The rest will continue to be free to registered users.

I hope you find the three resources useful and find a place in your classroom for using them. Please let me know of any other video based resource sites that you know of or have found useful in the classroom.

At this time of year I like to look at this great resource in Google Earth I think it will be a useful teaching aid for Science.

It shows the leaf colour of major forests in and around the UK, the information is gathered from the Forestry Commission sites and layered into Google Earth. The colours will change as the Autumn season progresses.
Open this Placemark

Take a look at my wikispace for classroom uses of Google Earth for further resources. 

A short while back I was buoyed by the use of Google Spreadsheets in our science lessons. The children enjoyed the fact that we were sharing data and it added an edge to their motivation. They questioned the data that popped up as the sheet updated, they enquired about it’s ownership and accuracy. However this week sharing a Google presentation did not run so well!

I assumed we would have a similar experience and the sharing feature would work just as well. Groups were created in each class they were assigned a planet (we are looking at the solar system) and after a short intro, asked to explore our del.icio.us links and create one slide (or more if needed) in a ready made presentation. 3 children were working on a wireless laptop. It just never really got off the ground and I found my self firefighting access, update, deletion and wireless problems. Admittedly the technology got in the way of the learning  and it proved a disappointing afternoon. You really do win some, lose some. There were of course some groups that worked without any issues. So what went wrong – I think that it is important to try and reflect on the successes and failures on this blog so that I learn from it and others do as well.

1. We put a lot of pressure on the wireless network in the session as 16 machines were active and Google docs regularly refreshes so the web connection was very busy.
2. Some kids worked on the class PC and they seemed to work a lot smoother.
3. The children accessed del.icio.us links and these included a NASA image gallery so that could well have chewed up the bandwidth a bit.
4. Google presentations deals with different data than the spreadsheets, whole slides need to be updated sometimes with images etc – not just a number in a spreadsheet.
5. The children had to start from scratch and make new slides for their planet – some mix ups went on here.
6. All of the children were using one Google domain login – not sure if this hindered.

On reflection the idea is still a good one. Children all contributing to one presentation that has a common theme. They all have a piece of the jigsaw. But I think that we just asked too much of the wireless network, it certainly was far more than we have ever done. I am uncertain if the same login made an issue, I may try out some individual account logins with a similar activity.

I think that the most important thing to learn from this is that sharing Google Presentations works smoother when on hard wired PCs because it deals with a larger data set than spreadsheets.

Taking risks is a good thing. If I had never planned such an activity I would not have learned about how differently the application performs in the classroom. Were I to do it again in the future I would feel better prepared. Lesson learned.

Today was Day 1 in terms of our laptop use in the classroom and we hit the ground running, so to speak – just how I like it. I am sure you have had days like today, when it is a bit of a whirlwind from 8am right through to 4pm – where does the time go? Today the sands just seemed to slip through my fingers! Not to say it was one of the best days for a long time.

We now have 8 Toshiba laptops running happily in both of our Year 5 classes and today we kicked off with a simple word level activity in literacy. One group worked on Race to Ramses! a game about combining prefixes and suffixes to create new words. I have taught with laptops in the past but the new technology (laptops and WAPs) is just so much more reliable. And it is great seeing children completely engaged with one to one technology supporting their learning, I am so pleased to see it in the hands of the pupils – which is the whole point. You might think “web game, one group…not really setting the world alight” – but I suppose it is a culmination of a lot of work and to finally get things in front of children, reliable and solid feels like a big achievement.

Needless to say in the afternoon we swam into deeper waters and I’d like to think we pushed the envelope a bit…

The morning was successful and the children enjoyed working on their own machine and many children asked for the web address for the game – so we will have to get our del.icio.us account sorted or get them into their Google accounts soon!

In the afternoon we were looking at some science work we have begun regarding healthy living and exercise. Today we explored pulse rates and we used an online spreadsheet to share our results, hence the title of the post. (This work is similar to some online spreadsheet action we had last year with my Year 6 class) I decided to use a Google spreadsheet as I have been using the Docs application for a while (in fact I have a few grumbles about that – more soon) but you could have easily used EditGrid as an alternative – I set the sheet up so that all of the children’s names from both classes were present in the first column. Then 10 other columns were labelled, “Resting Pulse1, Resting Pulse 2…” It was in these cells that the kids added their resting pulse after counting for 30 seconds and doubling.

I then accessed the same spreadsheet through my Google login on all 8 laptops per class that I put around the room – so in effect I logged in 16 times (plus my PC and SMARTBoard, so 17) to the same document from different locations. We talked a little about how to find our pulse and then asked the children to record 10 instances of their resting rate into the spreadsheet. It was great! With the live update feature we were able to see individual results popping up all over the place and even from next door in Rick’s class who were doing the same. Google Spreadsheets has an Auto Save option which makes life much easier and gives you the opportunity to see the live data. Not only did the hardware hold out fine, but accessing the spreadsheet was excellent – even with 17 simultaneous users on a single login. The children really enjoyed seeing each other’s work and it gave them a great overview of not only the class year group working together, but also to the sorts of data people were adding. Children from the other class were nipping across the corridor and questioning the validity of results from kids in my class.

The children had a tendency to sit with the laptop in front of them, in small groups rather than freely moving around the classroom and accessing any machine. But I suppose that is due to the nature of task.

Within the space of about 40 minutes, perhaps less, we collected approximately 600 individual results all in one place. No doubt they will be quicker next time. This method of data collection also allows us the ability to then manipulate the results afterwards, working out averages of the whole year group etc. I would highly recommend doing this if you have the reliable kit in your classroom, we have already said that it will be an excellent data entry method for our maths lessons on data handling.

It is now 12 hours since I started the day at school and I am just about coming up for air, no don’t worry I am not at school still! – but it is great to reflect here on these sorts of days. One to remember and I hope you might take some of these ideas and use it yourself.

We got round to looking once more at our Science Online resource over at Editgrid. I had some trouble yesterday with it so I thought I could try dumping the cache in Firefox and that worked really well.

So in the morning I pasted in the data which I added to Excel yesterday and sorted out an average and simple bar graph which you can see I have linked to below, also here.

Then the other year 6 class added their own data – we watched as it updated live, the children loved it and we talked about how the graph and average were also changing.

It would be great to be able to do this with schools in other countries – after all exercise is universal! SO GET INVOLVED – all the instructions are there for you to do the short exercises and then you can add you data into the pool.

Real data we can all share; to help better demonstrate how reliability is imperative in scientific results.