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Friday 7 December 2012

1:1 Mobile Learning Evaluation Published

Hull University’s Technology Enhanced Learning Research group, led by Kevin Burden (Principal Investigator) based in the Faculty of Education, has recently completed the first national evaluation to investigate the use and impact of tablet technologies (in this case the iPad), across schools and homes in Scotland.

The study was based in eight schools and six local authorities across Scotland where iPad devices were being piloted to investigate a range of issues associated with the deployment of personal mobile devices as tools for teaching and learning. P7A and P6C classes at Sciennes Primary School in Edinburgh were part of this evaluation and we are indebted to the families involved in the pilot for their participation and engagement.

The headline findings from the study show that:

• The ownership of a personal mobile device, like the iPad, facilitates many of the pedagogical aspirations set out in Scotland’s Curriculum for Excellence framework.
• The adoption of mobile technologies on a personal basis significantly increases access to technology for students, both inside and beyond school, with many attendant benefits for learning which include greater motivation, engagement, parental involvement, and understanding of complex ideas.
• Personal ‘ownership’ of the device is seen as the single most important factor for successful use of this technology
• Teachers are equally engaged by the use of a device like the iPad which has a low learning curve enabling them to use it immediately as a teaching tool and a learning tool for themselves
• The use of the device is contributing to significant changes in the way teachers approach their professional role as educators and is changing the way they see themselves and their pedagogy:
• Parents also appear to become more engaged with the school and their child’s learning when the iPad travels home with the student

To read the evaluation in full please click on this link
https://xmascotland.wufoo.eu/forms/scottish-mobile-personal-device-evaluation-2012/

Thursday 6 December 2012

DigITal Twilights

Dave McKee, Senior ICT Development Officer and his DigITal Learning team held three twilight sessions in November for Primary schools. Anna Mitchell ICT Development Officer led the co-operative learning sessions to support schools in developing a strategy for mobile learning. They have developed a 1:1 Toolkit to assist schools and have provided sterling support to Sciennes.



Chris Kelly DHT from Broomhouse Primary shared information on their successful Android pilot, along with their cluster secondary Forrester High School. Gracemount High School have been piloting use of netbooks and Sciennes provided information on our iPad pilot. We are extremely grateful to City of Edinburgh Council to be included in the city's 1:1 pilots.


ADES 1.11.12



Sciennes was fortunate to be invited to make a presentation at Glasgow Science Centre on Thursday 1st November at the Association of Directors of Education (ADES) Technology Conference where we shared how 1:1 iPads are enabling greater personalisation and choice within learning and teaching.

National Literacy Network - eLiteracy at Sciennes 8.11.12


Sciennes was delighted to be invited to Stirling Management Centre on Thursday 8th November to share ideas and practice with colleagues from across the country. Published author and Sciennes' parent, Mary Turner Thomson, was able to share how her innovative and enterprising "Pencilling Creative Ideas" project has enabled three successive P7 year groups to become published authors themselves. Workshops on writing, editing, illustrating and marketing have provided a real life context to explore what is involved in publishing a book and our pupils' books are available in bookstores, on Amazon and Kindle.

"On the Line"
"On the Line" Kindle edition
"Mother Nature's Children"
"Mother Nature's Children" Kindle edition

Time Education Supplement Article


 
We also shared how we had created an ebook published in iTunes for our school's 120th Anniversary, using sponsorship from the Big Lottery Fund and Growing Confidence scheme. The first instalment is available as a download.



This book was produced using a Mac computer and iBooks Author software, with some of the content coming from a Google Doc, some from an existing printed Centenary Booklet which was digitised using OCR software and some content from pupils using iPads. This book could only be published using a Mac computer and the downloaded book can only be viewed on an iPad.

Sciennes is part of a national 1:1 pilot using iPads in one P6 and one P7 class.
Children in the P7 class with Ms French have created their own ebooks from scratch using an app called Book Creator.



 

Fiona Barker's innovative practice in using a Wikispace for 'Big Writing' and Reading Conferencing was also highlighted.

We have had tremendous support from Susan Varga susan.varga@edinburgh.gov.uk of City of Edinburgh Libraries and we shared how their Overdrive app gives access to hundreds of free ebooks and resources on our pupils' iPads.

TESS Article 27.10.12



Tablets are taken, but who will swallow the bill?

News | Published in TESS on 12 October, 2012 | By: Henry Hepburn
iPad trial sees ‘enormous’ increase in use of technology and understanding
Tablet computers may offer new ways of learning that fire up pupils and parents as well as enhancing the personalisation and choice to which Curriculum for Excellence aspires, a study shows.
Parents, however, are concerned that the benefits may be diluted by asking families to foot the bill.
The research, commissioned by Education Scotland, tracked classes in five primaries and three secondaries across six local authorities. In seven schools, each pupil involved had an iPad, and in six they were able to take the iPads home.
There were about 365 iPads issued in total, leading to an “enormous” increase in the use of technology on a daily basis in school: from 10 per cent of pupils beforehand to 81 per cent during the study.
Almost all pupils (94 per cent) said the iPads helped them understand difficult ideas, while 92 per cent said they learned more and just under 100 per cent thought lessons were more fun.
But 45 per cent still felt they were not allowed to use them as much as they would like.
The most common use at home was for completing homework (77 per cent) whereas only 64 per cent used them for leisure. Some 84 per cent of parents said their children were more likely to complete homework if using an iPad.
“Parents did not see the mobile device as a learning device at the start of the initiative but they changed their views by the end,” said research team leader Kevin Burden, of the University of Hull, who spoke at a “learning through technology” event in Glasgow this week.
The director of postgraduate professional development told TESS he had been “struck by the level of parental engagement - parents seem genuinely enthused”. He said 51 per cent of parents were now prepared to buy a personal device.
The use of personal devices such as iPads “maps very well” against Curriculum for Excellence, Mr Burden added, whereas in England “they are more hamstrung by the national curriculum”, which does not give the same prominence to skills and competencies.
Mr Burden stressed the independence of his research, although he acknowledged that Apple had helped train school staff involved in the project.
Projects took place over three to six months earlier this year. A P5 class of 32 at Sciennes Primary in Edinburgh was involved, with each pupil getting an iPad to use in and out of school.
Teacher Fiona Barker said that, at first, iPads were a means of doing standard lessons in different ways.
Then pupils started exploring apps: “Personalisation and choice are not easy with 30 children, but with the iPads it became very easy.”
The tablets drove creative projects - for example, by allowing children to explore old road-safety videos, then make their own for younger pupils in the school.
The only downside was that at home one or two children only used their iPads for games, although that was resolved by removing certain apps.
Sciennes Primary depute head Lucy Gallagher said the ideal scenario would be for all pupils to have their own device from P5.
Tina Woolnough, of the National Parent Forum, believes it likely that all pupils will use handheld devices in the near future, but is concerned that this will be “probably at parental expense if local authorities can get away with it”.
A report on the project will be published by Education Scotland in the coming weeks.
henry.hepburn@tess.co.uk

Dynamic Earth Technology Roadshow 3.10.12


In:tuition

In:tuition builds the esteem, confidence and decision-making skills of pupils aged 9 to 14 so they can make more informed decisions about a range of issues – including alcohol, sex and relationships, personal finance, health and civic responsibility. Each of the 10 primary and 11 secondary level lessons encourages the use of the latest online and digital tools in the classroom to bring learning to life and develop pupils’ digital skills. The resource is also available as a printed handbook with ‘non-digital’ alternatives.

http://www.intuitionkit.com/about.php

This is a great free resource, with lots of ICT inbuilt, which would work well for P7 Risks to Health.

Bingo Baker

Hi everyone,
I thought I would share a resource I made up on the website Bingo Baker (which I discovered on the techchef4u blog.  It works on the i-Pad if you play online.  My first attempt is probably a bit over complicated and I would probably play with each child working in a mixed ability pair the first time with me as the caller (rather than in table groups with a child as the caller as indicated in the word document).  When you click the link to a card, as a player, you then have to click the tab under, 'Play online' on the right hand side to play an interactive version of the card.  The squares turn orange when you tap them.  This took quite a while to make because I had to keep making a clone of each card and editing it so that I had five different cards and then saving the links but I think it would be a really easy and quick resource to make up for say spelling words.
Here is the link to the website if anyone fancies a try.

Snap guide


From: Wendy French
Date: Sat, 19 May 2012 at 5:39pm
This free app has endless possibilities.

Tech Chef 4 U

From: Wendy French

Date: Sat, 19 May 2012 at 10:34am
Hi everyone,
I downloaded some of the podcasts of the above series which you can get on itunes and also found this very useful blog.  
What I like about this is that it is very practical and gives lots of ideas for using the i-Pad in a range of different ways, just like 'Cooking with apps'.
One of the contributors to the podcast was talking about how the schools he worked with in his district are increasingly using the more creative apps rather than the content apps to substitute what they would normally have done.  This resonated with me and I found his experiences and thoughts very interesting.  I am grateful for the posts from Cedars and I have read some of Fraser's posts on workflow and itunesU but need to get my PLP reports out of the way before I can take in more knowledge. There has been a lot of posts on this subject by lots of people that will need digesting. Finished 21, only 9 more to go!  I'm hoping to use some of the time Lucy and Alison have kindly given me and Fiona on Friday to explore a bit more (once the fun task of filing all the bits of the PLPs is out of the way!
Thanks to Gillian at Gavinburn for updating us on all the amazing things that they have been doing.  It would be lovely to have a sharing place for some examples for the pupils across the schools to look at to give them an audience and also a source of inspiration.  
That is maybe something we could try to get set up over the holidays for next term.

Cooking with Apps

For the pilot, Cooking With Apps has been published as an iTunes U course. To get it:
1. Install the iTunes U app on your iPad
2. Open iTunes U and make sure it’s working OK.
3. In Safari on your iPad, go to http://bit.ly/cookingwithapps and it will be automatically added to your iTunes U
Best,
Fraser

Rebecca's Dragon





I couldn't resist posting this green dragon made on Brushes by Rebecca who is prolific in everything she does.  It was one of a series!  Wendy

Tom and Ben News App


From: Wendy French
Date: Sat, 28 Apr 2012 at 11:36am
Hi everyone,
As part of their maths homework this week I asked my class to choose a way to present information on large numbers.  Eimear chose to do hers on World population and created a Tom and Ben news item on it.  The app Tom and Ben news is free and the children love it.  
This was part of a maths trainer revision sheet I made up on Pages.  The children renamed the document in their documents page on pages and put their name to it.  They did some examples on the document and were able to link to practice games on the web.
When they email it they need to email it as Word so that I can open it on my laptop too.  This does sometimes move the text about a bit.  
I now need to think about how they store their work as opening emails and storing work for them will be too time consuming.  I am looking for a free app that might help with this, if anyone has any ideas that would be great.  I might use Dropbox but it would be good if they could keep a file system on their ipad.

Free Maths Apps

The website below has links to lots of free maths games.  Not all of them are non-flash but in the subjects I looked at I found at least a few.
for example,
Also, we have used the website Kidsgraph:
There are two versions and I found the Classic one easier to use.
Just a word of caution about the free maths apps.  They are often very limited.  AB Maths, for example, allows children to only practise multiplying and then only the 2 and 5 times table. 
 There are lots of apps that allow you to practise a specific skill but not always at the right level and are only useful when you are looking at that skill.  To give you an example, I was teaching about fractions and hadn't yet got onto the link to decimals but in the only app I found that was not bad for fractions, the learners had to understand equivalency, the link to decimals and how to convert between decimal fractions, fractions and to work out equivalency of both at the same time.  This limits considerably when it will be useful.  
Some of the arithmetic apps are really good for tables and basic mental addition, subtraction and division but the progression in difficulty doesn't really push primary 6's. I do like Mathsboard, particularly because they can show their working and explain their methodology.
What is really needed is a more comprehensive app that allows for progression of skills.  What we probably need is something more like a mathletics or sumdog approach where there are lots of different maths and numeracy topics for the children to explore and that go beyond the basics or something like the BBC learning games,  I guess that would be expensive though.  
My partner's friend said that his daughter is really enjoying the app Playful Minds which I have had a quick look at and seems to have a much wider subject matter.  It is for 5-8 year olds and you create an avatar and can collect rewards, a bit like Club penguin or Webkinz.  It would be worth thinking about what kind of resources developers could produce that would be useful in schools for maths and numeracy.
Maybe other people have suggestions on really good maths apps that they have found?

Information handling on the ipads

From: Wendy French

Date: Mon, 23 Apr 2012 at 8:57pm
Hi everyone, if you are looking for a free way to do graphing work on the ipads, you could use this website:
We used this to make continuous line graphs about roller coasters and then write a report for Flamingo land about our data (not for real obviously).    
Once we have looked at comparative graphs and pie charts I am going to challenge them to gather some data to help give information to my friend Susan who introduced them to the elibrary resources that the City of Edinburgh offer.  She has lots of ebooks and audio books which they can borrow through Overdrive but is building the collection and keen to get their ideas.  They could give her data on things like favourite authors, the most popular books already in her collection etc.
Love to hear what other people are doing with maths.

Pic collage and Sticky Notes

From: Wendy French
Date: Fri, 20 Apr 2012 at 11:14pm
Two more free apps which I could see as being very useful. Pic collage is a free alternative e to Moodboard and sticky notes would be great for note taking.

Lucy Gallagher Sun, 22 Apr


Wendy French Sun, 22 Apr 

I’ll check it out to see if the Moodboard lite version is worth having. Some lite versions are not the best. Ab Maths lite has the 2 and 5 times table so is a bit off putting. It might be worth it though if it has some basic functionality.
Wendy
___________________________________

Fraser Speirs Sun, 22 Apr 

If I’m remembering correctly, the limitation on Moodboard Lite is that you can only create one mood board. You can, of course, clear it and start over but the paid version lets you create multiple.

Wendy French Sun, 22 Apr 

Paid is out of our budget now so we are looking for good free apps. I guess one Moodboard at a time might be alright if they screen shot what they do and save it in their photos. Thanks for the tip.


Fraser Speirs Sun, 22 Apr

Yes, you can still export to Photos with the Lite version.

Drawcast

Free drawing app

From: Wendy French Date: Fri, 20 Apr 2012 at 9:17pm
I have found a free drawing app called drawcast. Although it is not as fancy it seems to have the main functions needed e.g. Blending, changing the brush size, changing colours, layering and importing pictures. Let me know what you think if you try it.

Setting up a direct link to an email for sending homework

From: Wendy French
Date: Fri, 20 Apr 2012 at 3:49pm
Hi Jenni and Fiona,
Could you put some instructions about the fantastic way you showed me last night to set up an icon which directly links to an email so that the pupils just have to tap it to email homework?  
I think you also said there was an easy way to send things from your email to Dropbox.
Wendy

Jenni Robertson Tue, 24 Apr

Hi Wendy,
App for making the icons is 'Touch Icon'.
To email to dropbox see: http://sendtodropbox.com/
Enjoy!
Jen 


Wendy French Fri, 27 Apr 

Thanks for all this information Jenni.
Wendy

Fantastic Resource Hot Apps 4 HOTS

Higher Order Thinking Skills App (HOTS)

From: Wendy French
Date: Sat, 14 Apr 2012 at 9:46am
Hi folks, I found a fantastic resource which is a really useful supplement to Cooking with apps.  It may well have been blogged about before but just incase there is a link below. The link for the actual ibook (which is free), Hot apps 4 hots is quite far down on the linked to page.  The book gives lots of great ideas for using free apps and links the activities to Blooms.  They use the context of cooking but all the ideas are easily adaptable to any context.  Let me know what you think!
They also have a podcast which I will probably have a listen to.
Wendy

Parent Exit Survey


A recently published article in Holyrood Magazine reports favourably on how well Ms French and Mrs Barker have integrated use of iPads to enhance learning and teaching. They and their pupils were also commended at the Edinburgh Learning Festival on Friday 8th June and have been invited to present to Edinburgh Head Teachers in September. We are very pleased with how much has been achieved in school in a few short months but are still keen to hear – and learn from – your experiences thus far in using iPads at home.
We would be most grateful if you could complete the parent survey for Hull University, to conclude the initial reporting block for the project at this early stage of implementation. Staff at Hull University are preparing an interim report to present to all the pilot schools by the end of June, with a full report to be submitted to the Scottish Government in September. Therefore we would appreciate your completion of this Parent Survey by Friday 22nd June:

We also welcome your attendance at an informal session on Thursday 21st June 3.30-4.30pm or 5.30-6.30pm. Use this Doodle poll link if you are available to come along:
The pilot project will continue in the new session and we still seek to engage you in an ongoing dialogue, with opportunities to come to school next term. Following consultation with staff and, in response to feedback and suggestions already received from parents, we have taken the decision to keep the iPads in school during the summer holiday. This will enable us to maintain the devices, store them safely and make adjustments to configurations, ready for the new session in August. All iPads and chargers should be returned to school by Thursday 21st June please. If your child is leaving Sciennes, please return the iPad in its box with all cables.

Thank you very much for your time and support. Please feel welcome to contact me directly with any questions or comments or use our own online form
Lucy Gallagher
lucy.gallagher@sciennes.edin.sch.uk

Recall Day 26.6.12

The pilot schools reconvened in Bellshill to reflect on the project and share experiences and impact.

Edinburgh Learning Festival 8.6.12

Wendy and Fiona and their pupils give a presentation at the Edinburgh Learning Festival.

Fantastic!

From: Lucy Gallagher
Date: Fri, 8 Jun 2012 at 2:26pm
Outstanding presentations from Wendy, Fiona and six of their children at the Edinburgh Learning Festival, showcasing how they have deployed the iPads so successfully to enhance learning and teaching. They have been invited to present to Edinburgh Head Teachers. A massive amount achieved in about seven weeks! Great job and thoroughly well deserved recognition!

Interface App Design

Kate and her team come to work with our pilot classes in app design

http://www.interface3.com/

Cabinet Secretary Michael Russell 16.5.12

It was a pleasure to welcome Mr Michael Russell (Minister for Education and Lifelong Learning) and Jim Eadie (Edinburgh Southern MSP) to Sciennes on Wednesday 16th May to announce a national project examining best practice in using tablet computers and mobile devices for learning and how they can be introduced in schools on a wider scale. Mr Russell was warm and relaxed in his manner and gracious with his time. We were all impressed by the attention he gave to our P6 and P5 pupils. Thank you to Bruce Crawford, Chair of the Sciennes School Council, David McKee Senior ICT Development Officer, Karen Prophet Education Manager (with remit for Technologies), Derek Robertson National Adviser Emerging Technologies Education Scotland and Mary Turner Thomson, Sciennes' parent and author, for attending.











In a classroom crowded with P6 and some P5 pupils, school administrators, Scottish Government officials and journalists, Michael Russell, Minister for Education and Lifelong Learning, saw students Amir and Mixie deliver a presentation on the history of games consoles, using iPad apps and including a video produced on the device.

“There are a number of pilots already underway around the country, including the use of iPads here at Sciennes. I have asked Education Scotland for recommendations on how we can realise the benefits of mobile technology for all learners in Scotland, including ensuring how we get the best possible value for our schools, and whether national guidance is needed for the sector,” said Russell.

In two of the Sciennes' pilot classes, Ms French's and Mrs Barker's students get to keep the iPads throughout the day, taking them home to complete assignments. In other classes, particularly Miss Gaffney's and Mrs Watson's,  pupils are using the devices only in school.

Students at Sciennes showed visiting adults not only their astounding ease with technology that most of their elders have yet to get to grips with, but also the ways the technology is being used to enrich the learning experience. Classes have set up their own ‘wiki’ pages to share information and research; can be set work by their teacher in a blog format, and return it for correction; and can use a variety of free educational applications. Over the school’s wifi network, the students also have free access to the digital collection of the City of Edinburgh Libraries, introduced to Sciennes by Susan Varga.

The pilot raises a variety of interesting questions – not least whether the technology can  improve education outcomes. As well as the recommendations Education Scotland will compile, research is being conducted by Apple and by Hull University to try and establish the impact of such pilots. The pilot also raises issues of cost – both of the hardware and software involved – as well as safety questions relating to unsupervised access to the internet. However, the enthusiasm of the pupils and staff at Sciennes for the devices was self-evident.

What is also clear is that an iPad in every Scottish state school pupil’s book bag is not on the immediate horizon. The Scottish Government is conscious of the cost that would entail, and Russell confirmed that there is currently no budget to purchase iPads for students across Scotland.

However, the Cabinet Secretary declared himself to be “excited” by what he saw at Sciennes and said the Scottish pilots offer a unique learning experience around how technology can be better put to use in the classroom.

“I want Scottish school pupils to be both connected and collaborative and I want to see digital technology being used purposefully both in and out of school,” said Russell. “The range of mobile devices that are now available and the promise of what they can bring to teaching and learning is very exciting and something that must be embraced. I want to drive forward a culture change in Scottish education and ensure new technologies can be embedded into learning. This is an exciting time to be at school, and we must ensure that the potential for technology to aid learning in Scottish schools is maximised.”
by Paris Gourtsoyannis
Photographs with acknowledgement to Stewart Attwood The Herald, David Bremner The Scotsman and The Evening News. Thank you to Seonag MacKinnon, Education Correspondent for BBC Scotland.




This morning I visited Sciennes Primary in Edinburgh to see the Primary 5 & 6 iPad Pilot Class.

It was a fantastic visit to a school with real enthusiasm and strong educational leadership visible at every level. The children themselves were immersed in deep and connected learning and their teachers are dedicated and committed to getting the best every day.


I think Education Scotland and the country is going to learn a lot from these pilots in various places, using various technologies. And much joyful learning is already taking place."

13th May 2012 Wendy's Teacher Log

From: Wendy French

Date: Sun, 13 May 2012 at 6:25pm
I am going to do my log on basecamp as I find it easier and then I won't feel restricted to the questions.  
This was a shorter week because of the Monday holiday.
Some of the things we have used the ipads for this week are:
Spelling - using the Flashcardlet app, spelling and the dictionary app
Language - writing a newspaper report about Usain Bolt's world breaking 100 metre run at the Beijing Olympics in Pages.  This built on work we had done last week where we looked at different techniques for a headline, the features of a newspaper article, using a variety of punctuation and where we watched video and took notes about the race.  
Maths - used some online games for adding and subtracting decimals and used a pages document with problem solving questions relating to 200 metre world records.
Health and wellbeing - finishing our puppet pals animations on Usain Bolt, his diet, training schedule and tips on techniques.  
- finding out about the modern Olympics, key ideas from a text and how to organise notes, in the app inspiration
Reading - working on our reading novel group tasks by creating pages in a book they are making in book creator.  This week we focussed on identifying vocabulary from clues in the text and finding the meanings of words.
One task that I would like to explain in more detail is the task about the Modern Olympics.  
We are working towards hosting an event for Primary 4, who are also studying the Olympics, where we will hold a mini Olympics for them to take part in.  A key aim will be for us to help them enjoy exercise and sport during a team event, understand some of the benefits of a team event and of exercise, to understand some of the values of the Olympics and for us to promote some ideas for how they could increase their own personal exercise.
This task is part of a sequence where they will present to the Primary 4's about the Olympics and it's values.
Our success criteria was to be able to identify key ideas from a text and to organise notes under subheadings.
I introduced the children to what we would be using the notes for (creating a presentation to tell primary 4 about the origins and values of the modern Olympics.    
The children read a text about the modern Olympics and a referenced article about the Olympics on Wikipedia (we discussed reliability of text on Wikipedia and ways to ascertain reliability).
They then had to work in pairs to identify key ideas and possible subheadings to organise our notes under.  We then used the app, Inspiration Lite (I'm all about the free these days).  One of the things that we did was stop a couple of times so that people could show features of the app that they had discovered.  The children enjoy the role of being experts.  
This made note-taking quite flexible as they were able to add in other sub topics if they thought of them and to paste in images.  At one point one of the children queried a fact in an article they had found in Wikipedia and after discussion we decided not to use it as we didn't think it was referenced, it also sounded unlikely.
Something that we couldn't have done before was the animation about Usain Bolt, his diet and his training regime.  The app made the animation easy and was motivating and fun.  It did make me think we need to spend some time assessing quality and next steps for our simple animations.  It was a bit of a chock a block week so we couldn't do it last week but I will get back to peer assessing, next steps and an opportunity to improve.  
 
A reflection that I have is that the possibilities are endless but time is limited.

Reflections

Reflections

From: Wendy French
Date: Sun, 13 May 2012 at 12:19pm
I just thought I would share a few thoughts that I have had this week.
One of the things that I realised this week was just how much easier and less stressful having one to one devices that the children have personal ownership of is, than having a set that stay in school.  Some of the things that used to cause us problems such as charging (which used to be difficult to manage), storing personal work (the i-pads were often borrowed and it was really difficult to manage getting back the same one to finish off work on), expectations of people who wanted to borrow could sometimes become quite disruptive (yet I wanted other teachers and classes to use them to see the benefits) and having to finish things in class time - have gone.  
Learners experimenting at home has fantastic benefits in the classroom.  We now know more about what particular apps can and can't do because the children have time to play with them at home.  Learning then becomes even more of a partnership because they are teaching each other and me.  I still provide the focus in their set tasks, with negotiation, at times, on topic and method of presentation but they are also experimenting freely with what interests them.  Lots of them are really interested in i-Movie trailers, which they are working on collaboratively and which help to develop a number of skills including, planning, negotiating, thinking about genre, storyboarding, considering what their audience will enjoy, editing.  A bit of a downside of this is that they are desperate to share what they have done and we all really enjoy sharing times but they are difficult to squeeze into a busy timetable (a few times this week we ran over the bell and into our lunch break).  One solution may be to focus a series of lessons on what they are doing to develop their skills further.  I thought we could perhaps do this with the ghost story movie they are making for the Sciennes 120th Anniversary i-Book.  However, I would like a film-maker's input into this as I think this will develop both the children's and my own understanding.
One thing that has been stressful though is the workflow issue.  In some ways I wish that some of these issues had been explored prior to the project (perhaps they have and we just need reminded of where this information is).  It is a lot of work to start looking at your learning and teaching and think about how the devices can be used to enhance things that you already do, and completely change others.  It is a lot of fun and I am really grateful for the opportunity but this is enough on it's own without having to fiddle about with issues around storing work from pupils.  I don't think there is, or should be, one perfect solution but I think that we do need support with this.  I think Fiona's point about the U.S. is really important.  They must already have come up with workflow solutions and we could do with these presented to us so that some of the leg work is done.  I am sure that Cedar school have also come up with some solutions that would be good to share.  It seems fairly pointless and demotivating to spend hours searching for solutions when some must already be out there. I think it is fair to say that both Fiona and I got a bit burned out trying to search for and set up solutions this week.   I do accept that my thinking has to change about the need to file everything and that things can be filed within apps but I still need to have checked work that the pupils have done and given feedback.  Obviously, the children sometimes do this for each other when they self assess and peer assess but even then I still like an overview.  My class each have a personal email and have been emailing me work which I open, look at send them feedback on and file in Readdledocs, however, I am already behind on this and am feeling the weight of this with the knowledge that we are approaching the deadline for handing in part 3 of 30 personal learning plans/reports.   Also, it is annoying that Pages documents can't be sent to Dropbox and that formatting goes all over the place if they send it in particular formats.
 Luckily, we have a very supportive management who have recognized this extra work and are going to give us time out to help with this.  Thank you also to Fiona and Jenny from our council who are looking into issues such as secure sharing of video over Vimeo with us.  
Another completely unintended consequence of the project that has come at me from the blind side is the effect on my daughter who is the same age/stage as my class.  She has increasingly become annoyed and obsessed with the fact that my class are getting to work on the ipads and her school and class aren't.  She has decided she wants to write to her local council to ask them when they intend to get ipads for her class and has talked about how she will list the benefits as she sees them.  

David McKee Mon, 14 May 

Useful stuff Wendy, both key observations:
1. 1:1 with personal ownership does make a huge difference. It's that passing of responsibility, for the practicalities of the devices (charging etc) but also for the potential benefits to extending learning, in a seamless way, that changes everything. I think for many of our more reluctant teachers, it's this passing of responsibility that they feel most uncomfortable with. I've had a several folk say to me "well, they'll forget to bring it to school, they'll forget to charge it, they'll do bad things on it etc etc". It's a very negative perspective of course, and ignores the potentially huge benefits, but glad to hear your pupils are rising to the challenge. This will be useful evidence to convince the naysayers!
2. Workflow on the iPad specifically does worry me. It has always struck me that you need a robust and well structured online system sitting behind 1:1 - eg when we ran our 1:1 project in my school in London, our use of the Fronter MLE mushroomed. It became a/the core tool across the school. Really the success of 1:1 and a (good!) VLE/MLE are mutually dependent, IMHO anyway. 
And of course Glow doesn't meet that need right now. 
It has become fashionable of late to say there's no need for a VLE/MLE/Learning Platform and that we can do all the workflow stuff we need with existing tools like Dropbox etc, but I don't buy it, especially for say a large secondary school where teachers see hundreds of pupils a week. There needs to be a structured way to for teachers to collect, assess, feedback, store and collate work on an ongoing basis, and I just don't think email is in any way the answer to that. And Dropbox and the like are just too flat. 
The new Glow will provide us with tools that may take us more in the right direction but I worry about 2 things:
1. It won't be structured enough (out the box anyway) to meet the need of large scale digital workflow, particularly in secondary schools.
2. The iPad's particular method of file handling will be difficult to integrate with it. 
As you say, many schools must be managing somehow (Jenni is off to ESSA Academy tomorrow so we'll see what they do), but personally I still think we're waiting for the killer app for iPad workflow in schools. 
Dave. 

Fraser Speirs Mon, 14 May

Hi David, Wendy,
Totally agree that storing documents in email doesn’t scale. Email is a good and reliable transport for small to medium files but the end presentation is poor. One approach that has helped some of our teachers is to set up email filtering into specific mailboxes for each child or class. That’s not intended to solve the storage solution as much as to avoid the inbox being bombed every time a submission comes around.
One of the early changes that we came to appreciate was that pupils will generate a ton of data on their devices (one girl in Andrew’s class is currently toting around 5.5GB of Brushes documents!) and that it’s important to be selective in the things that you personally file.
Secondly, you can trust the device. Data doesn’t often go missing on an iPad (and you have a backup when you sync) so it’s often OK to just check the work on the device and leave it there, knowing that you can get it back if you need it later.
Perhaps this is one of the early results of the pilot: that any modern VLE for use with 1:1 iOS setups has to support document upload via email?
It’s really important to me to gather all the feedback I can on this issue so, if others feel similarly, please add your insights here. I can feed this back into Apple at a very high level and get some attention on it – unfortunately I’m not sufficiently embedded to promise fixes but if we can identify the issues it will be a very valuable outcome.
Best,
Fraser

Lucy Gallagher Tue, 15 May

We have been full pelt since the inspiring Coatbridge kick off and the staff have achieved amazing things in a short space of time. All still motivated, but a dip is to be expected from time to time. Workflow has caused a bit of a dip for us and I think we’re all feeling the workload at the moment. Still enthused but am concerned about the extra pressure on staff especially when they are completing personal learning planning reports for their pupils, on top of everything else already. I encouraged Wendy and Fiona to abandon their weekly logs last week – although I note that both completed them over the weekend. We are arranging some time out for them - though typically both declined an offer for Monday because they want to be in class to work with the children on particular lessons they have both planned. Fiona has designed a fantastic WikiSpace for Reading Conferencing and VCOP Big Writing but has been frustrated by the limitations of uploading Pages docs to it. Wendy has explored myriad solutions and is currently using Readdledocs. I’m extremely impressed with all that they’ve achieved.
 
Fiona Hunter and Jenni Robertson ICT D.O.s called in on Thursday and it was great to see them. They have given us very useful advice about workflow and continue to do so. Peter Lennon and Richard Burgess are also looking into webdav for us. Jim and Jamie, Edinburgh DOs, Connected Flow and Kevin have been wonderful and I am thrilled that now Basecamp is open we have begun to have access to help and advice from our partner colleagues too. John Johnston has been posting really helpful information. We have managed to get up and running extremely quickly and we recognise that part of the pilot is trial and error in exploring different solutions for workflow, but not yet having this finalised is impacting on time management and efficiency, so I hope we can move forward with all the advice on this and that I can help shoulder some of the weight.
I agree that a sturdy, flexible VLE is a crucial element for sustainable workflow. 
Thanks, all
Lucy

David McKee Tue, 15 May 

"that any modern VLE for use with 1:1 iOS setups has to support document upload via email?" 
Yeah, maybe, but I'm not sure if that is only thinking within the paradigm that the iPad (currently) forces you into. ie utilising email. Consider this routine scenario:
History teacher sets tasks for his S3 class, say 1 a week. For each task, each pupil must submit something - might be written, graphical, video, audio etc etc. 
Teacher needs to be able to collect this work, comment on it, mark/grade it. Teacher wants to hold onto this work, and pupil needs to be able to easily access teacher's comments and grades. Teacher wants an automatic comment/gradebook to build up over the term that links to each item of work. The teacher needs to see the whole class's work/comments/grades, but the pupil should only be able to see their work/comments/grades. 
The teacher would also have multiple, discrete containers where he could do this for each of his classes. Even better, once the number of tasks set becomes large, the teacher could collect multiple tasks together into a folder hierarchy.  
It should be a simple process for the teacher to set a piece of work for their class. When it was set, pupils would automatically be notified of this work, including (if desired) a deadline for submission. It would also be a simple process for pupils to submit work directly into the appropriate area for the teacher to be able to comment on it and mark it etc. 
What I am describing here really is standard VLE functionality, using a (non-iPad) client, and it has been available via decent VLEs (eg Fronter which I used previously) for years. Not perfect, but in my experience, it worked pretty well. You might say it is a relatively traditional approach, but it allowed me to easily work completely digitally with all my classes, in terms of setting, collecting, recording, assessing and accessing their work. 
Don't get me wrong - I love my iPad, but we are jumping through some pretty convoluted (ingenious, but convoluted) hoops to try to carry out anything like this kind of workflow, as I said before, for 2 reasons: 
1. We don't have a decent VLE in place at a national (or, in our case anyway, local) level. Not the problem of this pilot, but a national one that the new Glow will probably not address.
2. Even if/when we do, the iPad's file management system makes interacting with any kind of cloud-based system like this pretty difficult.
What we need is a robust, modern VLE (maybe call it something else since many folk think of Glow Learn when they hear VLE!). Alongside that, we need a properly integrated client app that allows full interaction with this VLE. Maybe this can be done with Moodle, or maybe Studywiz, or Edmodo? (Or what happened to Powerschool?) I know these systems have iOS client apps, but can they do what I describe above for both the teacher and the pupil?  Maybe, but I've not seen it. 
It just seems ironic to me that we're struggling to find a seamless way to do what was possible on good VLEs with a Windows/Mac/Linux client years ago.  
So yes, if there's something that Apple need to hear then it's this - where is this education-focused killer app?! 
Or at a more basic level, just give us an iPad-based File Manager (a local 'eLocker', to pinch a Studywiz term) that is accessible from the browser. Every app gets a 'Share to eLocker' option, Safari gets access to the eLocker. Simple. :-)   
Who knows, but we're not there yet with a robust method for addressing school's digital workflow needs.  
Dave. 

Lucy Gallagher Tue, 15 May 

Hi Dave
I was a great fan and supporter of Studywiz (and its eLocker) but jumped ship to Glow because it seemed a bit of a no-brainer at the time not to opt for a national and 'free' VLE. Not so sure now... but seems a good time to capture teacher and pupil needs to inform future provision. What a good idea to come up with a new name! I have a feeling that the webDav in Glow I'm trying to get my head around - with lots of help from John Johnston - might be a plausible eLocker solution, but yes it does appear circuitous.
Lucy

Fraser Speirs Tue, 15 May 

Had another think about this today. David, you’re right that there are two sides to this:
1. iOS currently sucks at uploading arbitrary files to arbitrary web sites over HTTP.
2. Even if iOS was currently good at that, we don’t have any clarity about where or what we’ll be uploading them to come September.
Perhaps if I explain how I and some colleagues do it today, that might be useful.
For distributing work to pupils, we currently use email but will be switching to iTunes U in August. iTunes U allows you to upload lessons, files and other content and have pupils subscribe. When new content appears, their devices get a push notification and assignments and deadlines are shown in a collated view (some explanatory screenshots are here).
What iTunes U doesn’t address is the submission part. Currently I use email and filters for this: pupils’ work will come from their email address into our Google Apps. I have created filters to apply a label to each pupil or class when I receive an email from them that contains an attachment. That makes their emails appear in individual folders on the iPad.
Unless I need the native file format for some reason, I usually ask them to send a PDF or JPEG version of the file depending on the app. When I open their file attachment in Mail, I save it to PDF Expert on my own iPad and use the annotation tools there to mark up the document.
At this point, I have a permanent copy of the pupil’s work on my iPad. PDF Expert can also connect to several types of cloud storage for off-board sharing or storage. It’s also possible to build up a folder hierarchy inside PDF Expert. I will then either print and return the document for feedback or email it back with the annotations embedded in the document.
The major limitation of this system is if the pupil needs to submit a file that’s greater than the 25MB attachment size permitted by Google Apps. In this case, I’ll use PDF Expert’s device-to-device WiFi transfer to move the file – which means I have to do it in school but so be it, for now.
Hope that helps, at least a bit.

Lucy Gallagher Wed, 16 May 

Hi Fraser
Lots of interesting, useful ideas here. While we're interested in longterm solutions what we really need now is a simple, easy to manage system to see us through until the end of term. Come September we'll all have to look anew but an interim workable workflow solution is most pressing for us. I'm away for the holiday weekend and the teachers are also time poor, particularly because they're working on PLPs, but will try and get something in place that takes up a lot less of their time.
We really appreciate this community and highly value the opportunity it presents not only to share ideas but also workload.
Lucy

David McKee Wed, 16 May

Hi Fraser,
That's sounds interesting, particularly the iTunesU bit, although as you say that a 1 way rather than 2 way process. Obviously there are lots of great tools out there, and innovative teachers will always find ways to do what they need to do, in the short term with these pilots anyway.  (I'd be interested to hear about how large secondaries are managing workflow too though as I think scale presents a whole new set of challenges. What does a teacher who sees 200 pupils in a week do? What are the Bellshill guys doing? )
I'm interested really though in thinking about the longer term, in terms of an approach that is easily understandable and useable by your average teacher, beyond pilots and early adopters like we all are. I think if we're going to really embed 1:1 in the day to day activities of 'normal'  teachers, we'll need something more structured. 
VLEs seem to be thought of as a bit passé these days, but actually (IMHO anyway) their mass adoption failed because they came too soon. Really 1:1 is the lever for real success with a VLE, and vice versa. But what we need is a VLE that works seamlessly with iOS.  Are any 1:1 schools (Mac-based as well as iPad based) in the US using VLEs successfully? I suspect we're only really having this debate because iPad integration with existing VLEs is troublesome. 
Anyway, enjoying this discussion, and there's no quick and easy answer I don't think, but if anyone is putting pressure on anyone that has any sway anywhere(!), I think this is the missing link with iPad in schools. Folk are having success with iPad despite this missing link, but with a fit for purpose education-focused solution, we'll find it much easier to move 1:1 into the mainstream for everyone. 
Dave. 

Fraser Speirs Wed, 16 May 

Relevant to this discussion, I received this link from a friend who is an Apple Consulting Engineer in the US. Here’s a detailed writeup of various approaches taken, abandoned and settled on in the Chicago Public Schools iPad deployments:
http://ipadsincps.blogspot.co.uk/2012/04/ipad-file-management-solution.html
David, I totally agree with you in your comments on VLEs. I would also say that the was probably too much initial focus on replicating things like email and calendaring, and other services done cheaper and better elsewhere.
I note that Fronter now have a basic iOS app available too.


David McKee Fri, 18 May

That looks really really nice. I like that it's an education focused solution and has integration with AD.
One thing though - I've only looked at it for 10 mins but it looks like you can only submit work in the form of photos or videos from the iPad. If you watch the video you'll see the bit where they submit work, they do it from a Mac. What if it's text, or indeed any iWork document?  That's quite an important thing obviously. 
Definitely worth looking at it further though I'd say. Is this  Studywiz with a different badge?
Dave.

Lucy Gallagher Fri, 25 May 

School eLockers looks like it does have the hand of lovely Geoff from Studywiz upon it
Studywiz is a great tool and was silk compared to Glow cotton. I still feel guilty about changing my allegiance from Studywiz to Glow but at the time I did, like others, believe Edinburgh would be out of sync with the rest of Scotland and incur an unnecessary additional cost. The way things have panned out I'm not so sure now. It would be great to see a demo - if Geoff is still talking to us!

Workflow Exercises Us

A number of vehicles have been explored and one of our favoured ones currently is eBackpack. Fiona has made innovative use of Wikispaces too.

 https://www.ebackpack.com/

Workflow - advice welcome

From: Lucy Gallagher
Date: Mon, 7 May 2012 at 7:54am
Hi Fiona
So sorry you're having to spend so much time on this. Another lovely Fiona - Fiona Hunter - has been in touch and has offered to look into webDav for us. I really like your idea of using WikiSpaces and I see you have already done a great deal to populate it. I love the Reading Conferencing notes particularly -  a great reference for the pupils, and also for parents. Great way to set homework tasks too. Well done innovative thinker!
You have cleverly set it up to be closed to your community only, with restricted access to different members in place, depending on task and materials. I hope you won't mind me posting this is Basecamp, but I think workflow is a crucial element in the project and one that would be good to seek advice upon to get right since there are so many ways to go about it. I've had a wee look and tried out some things on your iPad Discussion page. Once you click Edit you can copy and paste text from Pages to the wiki but it loses the formatting.  To add a file, image or video you upload and then click on the one you want before clicking embed. It will show up on the page after you save. Looks like it will do what you want it to do but I'm not sure if there is a limit on file size when uploading. I had no idea you could add video and audio to a wiki - how fab!
It may be that purchasing iFiles is a way to go too because workflow has to be manageable and not take up inordinate amounts of your time. Thank you for all your hard work on this and it would be good to sit down together this week and have a proper chat about it.
Lucy
Hi Lucy,
Sorry to keep going on about this but...
I have spent HOURS on this now and still have no working solution.
I have created a private class wiki (free for educators!) and (partially) set it up for a couple of things, one of which is reading conferencing. I have a project for each reading group and wanted the kids to do their work in pages or some other app then either upload their pages file or upload a screenshot from whatever app they've chosen to use. No need for emails - each child gets a username and password. Will add you to it for info.
Sounds good so far?
BUT it doesn't work.
Firstly I can't find a way to upload a file from Pages. Can get around this with kids entering their work direct onto the wiki page; this can be a bit fiddly from the iPad, but is a way round for plain text.
Secondly I can't upload a photo. Tried to get around that with <copy photo> then <paste> while editing a page on the wiki. The photo appears at first but is then replaced by a question mark when you save or preview the page. Can't find a way round this. I'd hoped the iPads would allow the children to select different ways of completing tasks/demonstrating what they know, but it's no good if they can't share their work.
I've had a look for an App to help, c.f. Blogger/Facebook/etc, but I can't find anything.
From trawling the web it would appear that there are several American schools using iPads, so there must be a way to make this whole sharing work business work. Perhaps we just have to go with email/apple ids?
Re using GLOW emails- some of my class could not get into Glow when we tried to use it in the first term. We might need to look into that again?
Is there a decent storage allocation on their email accounts?
Would we be better to have the parents create them an email then they have the password and can check their child's account any time? That's how we handled email with our own kids.
Re video content- looks like we'll have to get them to upload to Vimeo? Perhaps we could set up a private-to-the-class Vimeo site/group/whatever it's called.
Am well fed up with this.  :(
Fiona

Yes Google Drive needs email accounts. I think we should issue their Glow email accounts which would work an we would have a copy. We could also request council individual email accounts or you could use their council class email account for generic things. We have free WikiSpace account for educators already and it's free.
Learning>At Home>1:1 for our Wikispace.
Lucy

Won't google drive require the kids to have email accounts?
I looked into setting up a class wiki. It can be done without them having emails BUT looks like it would cost (not sure exactly how much) if we wanted it to be completely private. I think it ought to be private when there is a possibility of kids uploading personal information accidentally, eg putting their own address in a letter they're writing,... Perhaps I worry too much?
Simon told me that Standard Life host their wiki in their intranet. Don't suppose the council have anything similar that you know of?
Fiona

Just had email about Google Drive for online storage - 5GB
Lucy

Do I have permissions/ access to create the new Class account? (see below)
If so.. How do I do that? It's not obvious (one of my main feeling about glow).
Thanks,
Fiona

This is from the 'aye learning' blog:
Here is a solution using Glow. However it will work equally well with any other WebDAV server. (Other posts will look at how this may be set up.)
First we need to set up the server in Glow
Create a generic class account (pupil) in glow.
Turn off everything. (email, etc)
Enable web hosting.
Log in to Glow with this account and request a website (see Glow help)
Get the site approved and at the same time ask for a reasonable amount of space. The default 50 Mb is a bit small
Now we need to create a folder for each pupil on the Glow server.
Using an FTP programme, (FileZilla or coreftp lite) log in to the web space and create a folder for each pupil using their first name. (No capital letters or spaces)
Also create folders for the teacher. Eg. Homework. Etc..
The FTP address will be ftp1.glowscotland.org.uk
Now set up the teachers iPad

Hi Fiona
Not that easy to find but was comment  in response to 'note of caution with workflow'
Lucy

Hi Lucy,
I've had a look through BaseCamp and I can't find the stuff about GLOW that you were talking about.
Can you help me find it please?
Thanks,
Fiona

Lucy Gallagher Mon, 7 May

Hi Fiona
Had a wee look on my Dad's iPad and I can see how you're getting frustrated! I have a MobileMe account - though it ends in July - so can save to an iDisk and I can also share files via iWork but that ends soon too. I think Dropbox is good option to have in toolkit. You can have more than one - you just 'unlink this computer' and you can sign in and out of them. I've got three - one of my own and then one that Kevin set up for project and one for 120th iBook. You could use your own email or class email account? Your Sciennes email address, like mine, only lets you have access to Kevin's Dropbox until you sign out and unlink.
I notice there is also an option to save to webDav in Pages. I think this looks the most promising.  I'm not sure how to do it but have asked Richard Burgess and Fiona Hunter. I reckon we'll have to set up a phantom account using Seemis. We used to have P1D, P2D etc classes and could have used them. Angela, would you be able to create a phantom class account for P5C and P6A specifically for transfer of files - calling it P5 Workflow and P6 Workflow?

Lucy Gallagher Mon, 7 May 

I'm not sure how iCloud fits with this - Wendy had that operational on the first set of iPads but we reckoned the automatic syncing was slowing up the network.

Filing pupils work

From: Wendy French
Date: Mon, 7 May 2012 at 10:59am
Hi everyone,
I thought it might be useful to share how I am filing pupil work.  I have decided after playing about with both apps that I prefer Readdledocs to iFiles.  Readdledocs can be temperamental in that it freezes sometimes but that is easily sorted by shutting the app.  I can't quite remember why I pulled away from ifiles.  I think it was because I preferred being able to open emails in the Readdle app and that it seemed to be easier to open more things in Readdle.  Apologies if I am being unfair to iFiles and just haven't persevered with it long enough.  
In Readdledocs I have opened up the email that the children send their work to and have also created a file for each child.  Just to make it easy to find things I have created sub files in each of their files e.g. Olympics, Maths, Language, Art.  I then created a spreadsheet so that I could see whose work I had and what was missing.  There are about 6 or 7 people in my class who only got their email set up last week so I will catch up with them and sort them out tomorrow while they have Spanish.
I now have two things to sort out:
 How they will file their work on their devices?
What to do with video which takes up a lot of space. 
 I am thinking that I might use one of the free hp printer apps for them to use as a filing system to avoid the excessive cost of buying an app 30 times, or having to pay for a bigger memory allowance on Dropbox.  Cost issues certainly help a teacher to look for creative solutions (which are good to share as they can take a bit of time to find), I think we will put our videos on Vimeo and any that they are not willing to share in Dropbox.  
Any thoughts or suggestions always gratefully received.
Wendy

Fraser Speirs Thu, 10 May

Hi Wendy,
When it comes to “filing work on devices” there’s a bit of a philosophical answer to that question. The model for document storage on iOS is that the document lives ‘inside’ the application that created it. To get your Pages documents, you open Pages; to get to your presentations, you open Keynote, etc.
It’s been my experience that this model for document storage is, in general, far superior to the idea that you have a filing system outside of the applications and I’d encourage you to try and see if this model can work for you. I hope I didn’t misunderstand the problem you’re trying to solve here.
As for getting files off the device, if the app supports printing and you have a Mac somewhere, you might want to look into Printopia – it creates a ‘virtual printer’ which, instead of producing a piece of paper, can produce a PDF and send it straight into Dropbox.

Jenni Robertson Fri, 11 May

Hi Wendy, you could also use 'send to dropbox'. You set up an email address for the Dropbox account you want the work to go to (when collecting it in for example) using the site http://sendtodropbox.com/ You then create a contact for the email address it generates, call it 'Teacher' for example, share the contact with the class, then when they want to hand in or you need a piece of work they can email 'Teacher' and it shows up in your Dropbox in a folder called 'Attachments'. I use this for my own stuff and it's lovely. Jen x

Jenni Robertson Fri, 11 May

Hi Wendy, forgot to say, sendtodropbox (i.e.emailing) allows you to share audio and (shortish) videos... Jen

Gillian Rae Fri, 11 May 

I also use dropbox for filing pupils work. It gives me access to it on my
desktop computer and from there I can put in into folders and print the
things I need. I hadn’t heard of sendtodropbox which sounds good. Just
tried it but can’t access it from a school computer. Never mind.
My own school email is also good for the children to send things to. I
can then organise pupils work in folders on my online space.
Gillian Rae

Andrew Jewell Fri, 11 May

Relative to filing children's work via your email I've found setting up smart mailboxes, a trivial process in mail, really useful to keep the various emails from my class organised and accessible.

John Johnston Fri, 11 May

While we are talking about dropbox another useful service is http://otixo.com/
This lets you use dropbox (and other cloud services) as a webdav server. 
Once set up, you can export/import  pages and keynote files to and from your dropbox using https://dav.otixo.com as the server address as the webdav server and your otixo account username & password. The free set up allows 250mb of transfers a month.
We have also noticed http://wappwolf.com that looks like it might be a useful dropbox addon.
cheers
john

Lucy Gallagher Fri, 11 May 

John
I first saw you speak at ITSU eLive when I was a D.O. there - 2005? - and you were so influential about blogging and webby things you were doing at Sandaig. We're intrigued but a bit clueless about how to set up webdav! It seems like a tantalising solution for us but we're not sure how to go about it in Glow. Could you advise on using it in Glow or otherwise? I like your otixo recommendation and will have a wee play.
Thanks
Lucy

Lucy Gallagher Fri, 11 May 

Wappwolf very nifty! Not sure if there are any security issues but certainly for our purposes it's non sensitive data in terms of pupil workflow. Dave McKee spoke to ICT Co-ordinators in Embra recently about the potential benefits of being able to classify different types of data used in schools.
I'm likely being incredibly obtuse, John, but I still can't seem to figure out webdav. Could you spell out the instructions above for the hard of thinking?
Thanks
Lucy

John Johnston Fri, 11 May 

Hi Lucy,
Pages & keynote let you save to and import documents to a webdav server. 
otixo lets your dropbox act as a webdav  server.
So you can access files in keynote & pages from your dropbox.
So for example you click the + in keynote to make or open a presentation. I've attached a iphone screenshot.
If you have set up otixo you choose  webdav put in your otixo username & password and you can open keynote (or powerpoints) from your dropbox.
I'll try to write a more detailed /screencast over the weekend.
cheers
john

Wendy French Sun, 13 May 

Hi Fraser,
I have a mac in school but it is quite an old one.  I can print from emails if I email work to my work account on the Mac.  Would there be an advantage to having printopia?  Does it automatically send attachments?  

John Johnston Mon, 14 May

Hi Lucy,
A wee bit late but:
is a screencast of setting up otixo on the ipad and movie files to and from a dropbox to keynote. 
Not very polished, first try at grabbing the video from an ipad onto a mac via Reflection.
cheers
John

Fraser Speirs Mon, 14 May 

Wendy,
Printopia essentially takes your existing non-AirPrint printer and makes it available to iOS devices. When you ‘print’ to printopia from your iPad you can have it send that straight to the printer but you can also have it, instead, send a PDF to the Dropbox account that’s set up on the Mac.
It’s not the same thing as having a WebDAV server set up – you can’t save a Pages document to Dropbox this way. You’re basically rendering your document through the iOS printing system and saving it as a PDF in Dropbox.
The big upside to Printopia is that it’s incredibly easy to set up (for the teacher) and use (for the kids – just print it).
If I can help in any way with getting something set up, drop me an email and we’ll set up a call/VC.
Best,
Fraser

Lucy Gallagher Mon, 14 May 

John, you're a star! Seeing is understanding - thank you very much for taking the time to set up the screencast (impressive in itself). Otixo certainly helps solve one problem in how to access iLife docs via Dropbox.
Still interested if anyone knows how to spell out suggestion of how to use Glow for webDav.
Fraser, you have also usefully added to the solutions possibilities and thank you to you, too.
Lucy

John Johnston Tue, 15 May 

Cheers, Lucy,
As to using Glow for Webdav this is what I know, I've tested most of it.
  1. You need to set up webhosting in your my glow. Add the Web Hosting webpart.
  2. The LA, approve this request.
  3. The website can be public or private.
  4. You connect to it via webdav and can upload and download files.
Limitations:
Each site can only be accessed by one user via FTP or Webdav. The site can be accessed by anyone, for public sites, or a set of glow users via the browser.
Limited to a max of 200mb
A while back I requested that glow changed to allow group ftp or webdav access to a site but this was turned down as no one else was interested;-)
Could be used as a way to distribute files from an ipad:
User sets up glow site, added files from pages or keynote.
Others access via web.
Problem is there is no directory listing for sites so you would not get a list of files uploaded the others would need to know the full URL to files.
You can also mount the webdav on your desktop (at least my mac can) but again this is limited by glow username & password.
I guess a special shared glow username & password could be created by your ASM but this sems a lot of bother for 200mb diskspace.
cheers
John

John Johnston Tue, 15 May 

Did another quick test:
is a glow website. I created a pages doc and saved as a pdf to this server.
Made an index file with textastic. This, is not really practical for pupils, so would have to pass on full url to pdf, eg:
cheers
john


Lucy Gallagher Tue, 15 May 

Great, John. Thank you so much for looking into this so carefully. Bit manic at school just now but will try out your suggestions asap.
Much obliged
Lucy