Uploading photos

Lizzie wrote in the previous post, about her difficulties with uploading photos to this blog and sometimes, to Flickr. I have had similar problems in the past and can share one or two thoughts which might be of help.

Firstly, sometimes the photo doesn't upload because of a problem with Blogger - or Flickr - in some remote place, not on your computer. We tend to think that any problem we encounter must be down to something we are doing ourselves and that's not always the case. Web-based services such as these often have problems of their own. You can check if this is the case on their central website - I think there's a link from the Blogger sign in page - where sometimes, they report service interruptions.

Another possible reason is that the file you are trying to upload is too large. If the photos are only to be viewed on screen, then there's no need for them to be anything larger than about 100kb. Next question, how to reduce the file size...(cue Jane Carter-Dunn!)

Another thing could simply be that your own internet connection is busy. Might be worth trying again at a different time of day. Early evening and late afternoon is often the worst time, when all the schoolchildren are home and checking their email and playing games online. Try sometime mid afternoon, perhaps, or early morning.

Of course, you may still have problems....in which case I'm probably no help at all! But of course, I'll always encourage you to keep trying and exercise max patience (something which I find extremely difficult!!)

Evidence-Based Teaching

Last week a learner left the session saying "I hope I'll be able to remember!". She'd learnt to crochet. I saw her in town and discussed it and offered to show her again, we could film the demonstration and then I'd be able to put it on to CD for her to watch at home. I've thought of doing this several times, have never got round to it, here was a great opportunity, and since I'd said I'd do it for her, I'd have to!

Yesterday evening I looked at clips on youtube to remind myself of crochet techniques - since I was being filmed I'd have to get it right and I taught myself to crochet that way two years ago. I found an excellent link, very clear instructions indeed, I wrote down the link to give to my learners.

As I unpacked materials this morning I discovered my camera was very low on battery - mmm. I'd promised to do this! My learner arrived with a huge smile on her face and pulled out of her bag what she'd done at home - evidence that she'd learnt very well and more! No need to demonstrate again - phew!

Has anyone else ever had problems uploading photos onto this Blog? I never had until now, I'd wanted to upload a photo of some fabulous crochet samples done by my learner but that's not going to happen - I think my computer is very slow because it can't cope with all the photos and video clips it's storing! I'm having the same difficulty with Flickr - can't upload photos onto Flickr either at the moment.

I reflected on what I'd intended to do - why re-invent the wheel? I'd found some excellent clips on Youtube - mine were never going to be as good - why make extra work for myself?!

Laptops, Projectors and other Gizmos

My technophobe days are over at last! I am now among the anoraks (aka 'techies') of the teaching world, armed with my sturdy laptop case with projector bag slung over my shoulder as I stride confidently into the classroom to treat my learners to picture shows of gasp-making awesomeness..
Well, that was the dream..
The reality was somewhat different!
I decided to try it out at home and put some worksheets up on the lounge wall (not good timing, since Champions League was on the TV at the time and groans were to be heard from the depths of the sofa where partner was recumbent with lager and crisps ready for a footy evening.. undaunted, I ran a parallel viewing opportunity for the rest of the household in the form of Parts of Speech followed by Word Tag quiz).. so far, so good
My next tutor session was scheduled for the following day, so I included an 'Introduction to Online Tests' in my session plan, sketching in approximately 15minutes as the time slot... The first five minutes were spent looking for an extension lead, since desk and plug socket were yards apart.. the next five minutes looking for a thick book (mysteriously in a learning establishment there were none to be found! Only wafer-thin Readers Digests) in order to aim the projector somewhere vaguely in the direction of the whiteboard and not at my knees. The next five minutes I had to unscramble my desktop icons on the laptop to remember where I had stored my televisual feast of learning.. the class by now were doodling in their notebooks or looking out of the window. Then, tra-la! Up came the selected first page of links in glorious technicolour on the whiteboard, not a camera-shake in sight... success! Ah, but what was that mysterious glow on the laptop keyboard, followed by an intermittent bleep...? O joy, the power was fading and, well, dear Reader, you can guess the rest... Intrepid Tutor had left the transformer at home and the battery was dying...
Lessons learned, but not by the intended learners that day!
The projector and laptop have lived quietly ever since in my office cabinet, languishing beside discarded Sony Walkman and long-dead Betamax videos. However, life springs anew and the trusty equipment is due for another outing this coming session when I want to do some Practice Tests 'live' in class. To this end, I am wielding yet another sparkly new gizmo- a mobile webstick! Do I feel confident? Watch this space...

A plea!

It's interesting that Gill's last post, below this one, was titled "What's in a name?". I am currently setting up a course on Moodle for those taking the CTLLS course as we are piloting a new approach and are asking teachers to use e-learning as part of their course. Of course there is so much good practice on the blog that I want to showcase and the best way to do this is to link directly into the post I am discussing. In order to do this I have to be able to click on the Title at the top of the post. So no title - no easy linking. What's in a Name? - the opportunity to share your good practice with your colleagues, through Moodle as well as the blog.

This blog is itself an example of good practice and I know that others in adult education, outside of Gloucestershire, refer their colleagues to our blog - two examples are Sally Betts from NIACE who presented at our recent RARPA event and Tracey Morris from the RSC. So thank you for all your contributions and we look forward to some new contributors from our colleagues on the Initial Teaching Training programme.

what's in a name?

Tragedy

Norwegian Sky

Mermaid's Gown

This website has the most amazing collection of colours, each with its own story. It's great fun to simply click through to each and decide whether or not the name represents your own idea of the colour of the pencil.

Imagine what fun you could have with learners making up names for colours. Could be a useful starting point!

I have no idea what an Amaranth is (will have to google!) but it's a glorious colour.

TLP film competition

Rob Randall has brought this competition to my attention. Do any of you have learners who might like to create a film? We could loan you one of our Flips to record it. The closing date is the end of November so no time to be wasted.

Using Video in Spanish class

Using the Cybershot camera and the gorilla pod, I made a short video of myself having a conversation with a Spanish friend, perched on my kitchen table! I showed it in class using the laptop and projector.
The great advantage of making our own materials is that it can be tailored exactly to the learners - I have found it a very effective method of checking and consolidating what they've learnt.
It suits most of my learners that the classes are held in small, friendly and familiar settings - one of the disadvantages is that we don't have whiteboards suitable to project video clips and photos onto. The canteen blind worked fine! I chose this rather than a white sheet which I'd tried before. I wondered if AdEd could look into providing small, portable screens which we could use?

Go, see, now!

Just reading Sara's post below about her work prompts me to remind readers to visit the AdEd Interest Flickr Group which has got more than 600 photographs of the most amazing work done by learners over the last couple of years.

The work seems to get more inspiring by the day and is such a valuable record of what is happening in Gloucestershire.

If you visit, do leave a comment, won't you?

I am working with learners in Littledean to create a Community Textile for the village. As far as we know this has not been done before in the village. Learners felt it would be good to record the village landmarks as they are in 2010. The textile will be completed by the end of the year and will feature the local school, church, chapel, pub, our millennium field, the local meat and veg shop (including the owner Pete the Meat) and even the local bus! We have walked around the village and taken lots of photographs. The village is surrounded by glorious countryside and so this will feature prominently as well. The project has caused a lot of interest and most weeks we have visits by local folk to see how we are getting on. Sometimes visitors are from further afield as you can see by this photo. It also dispels the myth that men don't sew - this gang of four had a great time and the Arch Bishop stayed much longer than he intended. No - none of this was in the session plan, but learners loved sharing what they had achieved and explaining the plans for the textiles. There are photos of our progress on the AdEd 'flickr' site and on my own 'flickr' site.