Egyptian Uprising - My Experience (part 1)

End of the day 290111 :
I am sitting here in our darkened living room at 21:33 on Saturday 29th January, wondering how I came to be in this situation and how things will turn out. Yesterday, the governement cut the mobile phones and early that day we realised that the internet was down. There was added uncertainty for us because the 29th was to be our moving date and we had originally told our ISP to transfer our line. So, just to clarify the situation I went into the school, a short walk away, to check. But, much to my disappointment, the internet was definately down. For several days before that, the network was running but people had been saying that, for example, Twitter was blocked. Despite that information, I was able to access Twitter via a third party application right up until yesterday. Yesterday, seems like a week ago but it's only been 24 hours.

When I got home, the first thing I said to my wife was to call or sms her mum because I we were systematically being locked out of our methods of communication and mobiles and sms would be the next to go out. Unfortunately, I was right. Shortly afterwards, the mobile network went down and stayed down until about 10:30 this morning when it crawled back into service without any sms capacity. One of the compounding problems we had was the lack of any other method of getting information. The TV in our flat was unable to get any channels because construction work to the bulding, I think, severed the cable. As a result we had gone 2+ months with no tv so the latest information came when I went in to school this morning. Our neighbours didn't speak English and they seemed to leave soon after things started going pear-shaped.

Anyway, back to yesterday. I had delivered the news to my wife and she had contacted her mum shortly before the phones went down. From then, it was as if we were in isolation. One or two people called us but that was it. They weren't able to tell us more than what we had already surmised. There was an uprising, it was out of control, don't take chances, wait for instructions from our school management. So, we continued our packing. It was surreal, it seemed like every other day. Aside from the rumors of looting at the local Carrefour, that was it. We heard no gun fire, saw no chaos, nothing.

One thing I did notice, was the absence of police as the day went on. We went in to the local market to get a few things and wandered off home.  Oblivious that then next day we would be lucky to get basics and that we would be battling against time.

I cannot believe it was only yesterday, because so much has changed since then.

Egypt Uprising - Introduction

On January 25th, there began protests in  Egypt demanding the resignation of Egypt's President Hosni Mubarak. Mubarak has led Egypt since the assassination of Anwar Sadat over 30 years ago. Over the next few weeks, I will retell, for my own reflection really, the events which occurred and how they affected the provision of education for the children in my class and how Web2.0 learning tools helped to deal with the situations which arose. To some extent, the story is still unfolding and may continue to do so for some time. While I hope that someone may find some kernels of information which they may find helpful, the main purpose is for my own reflection so I can more effectively deal with similar situations in the future.

Skype an Author

Recently, our Year 4 and Year 6 students had the opportunity to have a live discussion about being an author with Barbara Mahler, author of "Hole in the Sky". It was very successful but I thought it would be a good idea to provide some suggestions for teachers who might be interested in doing a Skype conference themselves.

There are several sources where a person can find an author, some of whom are willing to Skype with classes, such as the Skype an Author Network and authors abroad. Otherwise, you can try contatcting the author directly. Sadly, there do not seem to be many similar services or facilities for experts in other fields such as Mathematics, Science or History, etc. Perhaps you know of some good resource banks of contact details for experts in these fields. If you do, please provide them in the comments.

The first stage in having a Skype conference is preparation and planning. I cannot stress enough that the time taken to plan out what will happen and running tests will pay benefits when the event occurs. Even after your planning and preparations are complete though, always keep in mind that sometimes, circumstances may conspire against you and cause difficulties over which you have little or no control. It is for those occasions, a Plan B or even a Plan C are always a good idea. In our circumstances, on the "wrong" side of the Digital Divide, we have to take in to account various possibilities which may or may not affect other teachers, who are in similar circumstances, as they hold Skype conferences. Among the obstacles we needed to consider were intermittant power outages, connection failures, surges of shared bandwidth use by the senior school, time zone differences, traffic, etc.

Here are the stages I worked through to get prepared for the Skype conference along with any links which you may find helpful. You may need to consider taking more, or fewer steps depending on your specific circumstances circumstances:

• Finding the author. There are, as I mentioned a few resources to help you find authors willing to have a Skype conference. However, keep in mind that authors will have their own schedules to keep. Therefore, plan your Skype call well in advance and have a few backup days in the event the author is unavailable, falls ill or the connection or electricity get cut before or during the call.
• Decide on details with the author or their representative such as: decide on appropriate times and dates, costs and make sure the author knows the audience they will be talking to, determine how the author wants to be addressed by the children, how long the author wants to speak to the children before taking questions, specific topics or issues the author may need to know about that the children are particularly interested in, how long the session will be (20 to 30 minute sessions are typical in my experience), etc.
• Test call. I always make a test call at roughly the same time and day as the planned conference from the same location I will be using. Take note of connection fades and the habits of other parts of the school who may be using your connection at the same time. Confirm with your IT department that you plan to use Skype and when, so they can take appropriate action. Confirm the time in the remote location.
• Organise. Make sure the children are aware of your expectations. Have the teachers organise their children into 2 groups, those asking questions and those who are not. Have the questions prewritten by the children and rehearsed and, if necessary, have the children in an appropriate order. Children asking questions should be sitting near the microphone. In our experience, we have been lucky because the laptop microphone and camera have been sufficient for the job. Ask teachers to rehearse the questions with their children and remember that there will be a delay between when the children speak and when the author hears them, so they need to be patient and speak clearly. In our latest conference the children asking questions sat to one side of the main group, then sat in a chair, asked their question, had a brief discussion if they wanted, and rejoined the main group. 
• Setup your meeting space. I set up a chair on  top of a desk then blu-tacked the laptop to the seat after I had them each in the correct positions and also blu-tacked the chair to the table. Ideally, I try to get the camera positioned so that I can have both the child asking the question and the children in the audience in the same picture. The children then sit with the rest of the audience after they have asked their question(s).
• Test all the cables and other tools. Check that Skype is working and make sure it is started in advance of the meeting. Obviously, you will need to have the author's Skype name before this! Check that all the cables are connected, such as the projector cable, Smartboard USB cable, speaker jack, and any other equipment you may be using.

That is about it. The list really does look quite intimidating but in practice it isn't. As with all things, you get better with practice. I started by simply Skyping other classes and sharing work samples, etc. You might find that is a good starting point to get your feet wet.

Have you found some exciting experts which have had a conference with your class? Do you have a good resource for finding Skyping Mathematicians, Scientists, Historians and others? Have you tried Skyping for the first time recently? How did it go? Do you have any tips for other teachers which I have missed? Please leave your comments!

Photo Credit: "Red telephone box in Bamburgh" by David Gruar CC

Google search results based on reading level

Not too long ago, I noticed that Google had made it possible to organise search results according to reading level. In the screencast below, I show you how to do a search using the reading level options. However, I have not located anything indicating how the levels are determined exactly.

I hope you find the demo helpful.

Using Jing for screencasting

Last week, I introduced you to Jing for screen captures. A screen capture is essentially taking a snapshot of whatever is on your screen. In this post, I am going to explain how to use Jing for screencasting.

Screencasting is taking a brief video of whatever is on your screen and recording your voice if you choose, rather than a static picture. If you also have Camtasia installed, you can use that to edit the screencast with more features, or use it to create longer screencasts as well as other types of video.

In this post, I am going to assume you do not have Camtasia installed.

To begin with, we need to download Jing. To find out how to download and install Jing, look back at last week's post about using Jing for screen captures.

Once Jing is installed and we have the yellow sun on the edge of our screen, we can begin using it for the screencast. Before you do that, it is always a good idea to run through a basic checklist first:

• check your microphone and speakers (preferably, use a headset with a microphone)
• rehearse (this may include a script or it may not, but always know what you want to say before hand)
• preload any webpages or software before the recording
• anticipate background noise levels - move to a new location if necessary
• the pause button is your friend, but don't abuse it (using pause too often can make the audio and video seem choppy)
• Keep it simple with a good pace (you only have 5 minutes, make them count!)
• avoid the "ums" and "ahhs"!
• Make sure you have a free account at Screencast.com to house your videos for sharing.

Starting your screencast:

1. Hover over the sun icon and wait for the three options to appear.
2. Select the crosshairs.
3. Select the region of your screen to record by clicking, dragging and clicking again.
4. Select "Capture Video" from the resulting menu bar.
5. Jing will give you a 5 second grace period (which cannot be changed) and a confirmation message that the microphone is on before you begin.
6. During recording, you will see a small toolbar below the recording window with 5 buttons (stop, pause, mic on/off, restart recording, cancel) as well as a progress bar.
7. When finished your recording, click stop (orange square on black button).
8. Jing will ask you to provide a file name, and provide a new toolbar below the video window with 5 new buttons (share - send to screencast.com, save to computer, edit with Camtasia, cancel and customize). Enter the file name and decide how to deal with the video. I will assume you decide to share.
9. In the free account, screencasts are only in SWF format. Other formats are available in the pro version.
10. Click the share button.
11. As long as you have a screencast.com account already, the upload will begin. A progress window will show you how things are going.
12. Jing automatically places a link on your clipboard for pasting.
13. Congratulations!

Don't be put off by the number of steps. It takes less time than making the video itself in most cases.

I have used Jing for screencasting for quite a while for creating videos for every group of people in my school. It is great for demonstrating software, network navigation, lesson content, etc. It is an excellent tool for supporting learning. I highly recommend it. 
Good luck!

Using Jing for Screen Captures and Screencasting

Recently I was asked how I create screen shots with arrows and short captions for assisting my learners either in learning how to use new websites or identifying steps to be taken during an engagement.

Over the past several years I have used a wide variety of tools to help visually explain or identify key areas of a message I was trying to get across. I’ve basically settled on two tools, both by the same company but used, in my circumstances, for two different purposes.

In this post, I’ll be introducing you to a downloadable tool called “Jing” which is from Techsmith in the US. I don’t usually recommend downloadable tools because of the growing number of online options available for most jobs. However, Jing and its big brother Camtasia are, for my purposes, the best possible solutions to my screen capture and screencasting needs.

Briefly, Jing is a screen capture (takes a snapshot of whatever is on your screen) and a screencasting (creates a 5min maximum video of whatever is on your screen) tool from Techsmith. It is free (but you can buy the pro version for about $15.00/yr), and it allows you to store your video and images at Techsmith’s online storage facility called Screencast.com(free account or pro available).

I absolutely love this tool (it's one of the first 5 things I recommend downloading for every new system) because it's easy to download and install, a breeze to access (as you’ll see) and allows direct uploading of captures/screencasts to your online Screencast.com account. It also provides options for including captions, arrows and creating screencasts.

This is where you can find it: Jing from Techsmith

Here is an example of a screenshot I took a while back using Jing:

As you can see, screenshots with captions can really help explain a procedure or series of steps much better than simple text.


Here is the procedure to install and start using Jing:
1.    Go to the Techsmith Jing website.

2.    Click download:




 3.    On the next page, decide between the download for Windows or the download for Mac.

4.    Afterwards, this window will open:

 

5.    Find and click on the "jing_setup.exe" file you have just downloaded and follow the installation instructions.

6.    Once Jing is installed. You will see a little yellow sun appear somewhere on the border of your screen, which will look similar to this:

7.    To use Jing for a screen capture, hover over the sun for a second and then select the crosshairs (see the image above). Then select your region to capture by dragging your mouse to enlarge the rectangular capture area.

8.    As soon as you let your finger off the mouse, the area you have selected is captured and comes up in an editing window, like this:

9.    You can then use the tools along the left of the window to annotate your pictures with arrows, text, boxes, etc.

10.    Now, all that remains to be done is to decide what to do with the capture. You can,
share it through Screencast.com, save it to your computer, edit it with Snagit or Camtasia if you have either one installed or delete the capture.


11.    If you decide to share it, the link is instantly available on your clipboard to paste wherever you need it.

I have been using Jing for screen captures and screencasts for sometime and I really like it. It’s a straight forward, no nonsense capture tool that gets the job done quickly and efficiently. I have used Jing’s screen capture facility to give instructions on using new or unfamiliar websites to learners and highlight important locations on Google Earth or important words, phrases, sentences or other text features before, during or after F2F sessions with my learners. My kids and I appreciate how easy it is to use, and my kids appreciate the added clarity it brings to instructions and engagements.

In my next post, I’ll demonstrate using Jing as a screencasting tool for brief 5 minute video masterpieces :)

Good Luck!

Yahoo! to focus on core business (Updated)

"Broken Pencil"  photo © Michael Jastremski
for openphoto.net CC:Attribution-ShareAlike

It looks as though Yahoo! has decided to shutter Delicious, the social bookmarking site. The date of closure has not been mentioned so far but this is connected to the cutting of 600 jobs recently.
UPDATE:
According to the website Edudemic.com, which has posted comments from the Yahoo! website, Yahoo! has now clarified the situation, pointing out that they intend to sell Delicious rather than close it. You can read the full statement here.   


Obviously, I am not alone when I say I am very disappointed  relieved by this news. I have been with Delicious since March 2006 and have thousands of bookmarks for my network, other colleagues, personal interest and so on. Over the last year I have done workshops, and other PD meetings on using social bookmarking sites and Delicious in particular.

Nevertheless, this does bring up the sensitive issue of exactly how much we can trust online services which are free? (Despite the clarification by Yahoo! This point is still an issue, as it is with any other free service on the web.)

In an effort to help those of us who are looking for alternative sites  a secondary site to move to  use here is an incomplete list of possible options to help you get started in absolutely no order of preference.

• Digg
• Diigo
• Reddit
• StumbleUpon

Good luck, and remember to add me to your new network!

As mentioned, I have been with Delicious for years. But I've learned my lesson from the rumour mill! That is, have a backup! I'm going to stick with Delicious for the time being and add a backup service and to see how events unfold. Let's face it, moving the resources is not difficult, but I'm glad I don't need to do it!

Good luck!