Butterfly42

Anybody taking part in World Maths Day on 5th March?

“All children are artists. The problem is how to remain an artist once he grows up.” Pablo Picasso Quoted by Sir Ken Robinson in his well viewed TED presentation ‘Do Schools Kill Creativity ‘ A quote of the day for Daniel Pink from Iowa winner Mike Huckabee on the American Presidential trail : "Education is only a true education if we're developing both the left and right brain of the student . . . . Take a room of 5-year-olds and give them a piece of paper and crayon and every one of them draws a picture. When he's 15 that kid won't draw the picture or sing the song. Somehow the education system beat out of him or her the creativity that was innate in that student."

Take a look at this entry in the Learning is Messy blog from Brian Crosby, a fifth grade teacher at Agnes Risley School in Sparks, Nevada. The video tells it all, there's a link in the text or click on the first picture. Of course in this country, England, many local networks 'discourage' schools from using Skype. Skype social networking software for making free voice, text and video calls over the Internet to anyone else who also has Skype, free

I was reminded about two BBC resources last week. Working with a group of headteachers and senior management teams ‘CBBC Me and My Movies’ was mentioned in passing as of value for their children . Following this, while catching up on my community I saw that Ewan McIntosh had it as one of his links “CBBC me and my movie is a unique film-making initiative inspiring and enabling children to make movies and tell their own stories. The website provides fun, interactive film-making tutorials and a safe space where children can upload, share and rate each other” Gareth at Primary Resources also comments on it and mentions the inevitable Teachers Pack due soon. While it could be a really good starting point for a school I would imagine with all it’s support, access to sound clips and the Mash Up feature (make your own movie from our clips) it will be well used in children’s own time. It is for children aged 14 and under and certainly videos cannot be uploaded by those who ...

So while I'm busy and triumphantly mastering the use of my mobile to make text entries to Butterfly42 Nokia have a text-to-speech reading software for the visually impaired. Photograph the object in front of you and hear what it is..... coffee or sugar or soap powder. Slightly more expensive that Talking Tins.!

"Well this is my 1st attempt at putting an entry into my blog via the mobile phone using SpinVox. If it works it means I can blog from anywhere using my mobile phone. Thanks to Doug Dickinson for pointing the way to this and for helping out with those little bits that weren't immediately obvious." I've edited this slightly as there were one or two words missed out but so far so good. spoken through SpinVox

.. but having found it I'd like to share it. Make your own Jackson Pollock It a simple little activity providing an opportunity for a group of children to try out ideas around a large shared screen, an IWB, tablet passed from one to another or a plasma touch screen in the context of looking at different styles. Press space bar to clear the screen and Alt 'F' followed by 'V' to go straight to print preview without adding any more paint