Great IT-project

It was quite a complicated job, but I've just rounded it up: the ordering of computers for the school IT-project. All hardware companies and stores that I contacted did what they could. Prices were very sharp. But the decision is made. Every teacher in our secondary school will be provided with a Dell Latitude D820 by mid 2008. A Port Replicator will connect these computers in each class with a Dell Projector 2400MP with 3000 ANSI lumen light intensity.
Classes in primary school will use Dell Optiplex 745 computers.
So this will be my job for the rest of the school year: installing computers, beamers, printers, study and test the wireless and wired networks of the school, training the colleagues in the use of the learning environment Blackboard.
Schools can't go back. ICT has become a part of our modern culture, and education, being a part of that culture, has the task of showing young people how to use this modern technology in a positive way. We have to show our kids how to find information, how to evaluate it and how to use it to get to the heart of the matter and to be creative. The pre-computer generation can help here since content is still more important than the means, just as drill is important for memory training and concentration is important for success. If teachers feel surpassed by the technological (r)evolution, I want to be there to help, because I know that their knowledge and experience can help in keeping the balance. Their input must make students realise that there is more than chat and mail and games and second, third and fourth worlds... How about developing this one? ;-)

Marianne Wartoft's freeware

I have tried out some freeware for English, developed by Marianne Wartoft. I think the software for phonetics, Sephonics, can be a good help for all students and teachers of English, but particularly for those who are learning English in some remote parts of the world where they have a very limited contact with native speakers. I have experienced in Vietnam that some teachers of English, though full of energy and good-will, had difficulties expressing themselves. I suppose that the Vietnamese language lacks a number of sounds that are used in the English language. If they're not regularly in contact with native speakers, the production of these sounds becomes problematic. Maybe this program can help a little...
Intonation is very important in the Vietnamese language: one evening we were invited in Saigon by Mr Tach for dinner, and the subject of Vietnamese language popped up. They were pronouncing three words, identical to me, but quite different to them because of the intonation, an aspect that I failed to perceive... very interesting!!
Marianne Wartoft has also Selingua to exercise vocabulary and verbs, but the exercises and games are presented mostly in another language (Swedish, German, French, Spanish, but - unfortunately - not Dutch (nor Vietnamese...).
For our Geography colleagues Seterra seems to have been a success for years....
Great to see that some people share their works without the need of financial profit! Thanks to Marianne for that!

Vietnam project: more last day impressions and group pictures

Here me together with Trung (Cheung), the IT-man of the project. Thanks to his technical support ànd the frequent translations ànd his bright schemes on the blackboard (the real one...) the workshop went very smoothly!!



I found my thrilllllll.... on Blueberry Hiiiiillllll

Little physical effort! Don't mind the earthquakes!

They don't seem to mind...

Great oriental feedback!!! I love this target group!!!

Hello Dolly.... + some Christmas songs together!

Then there were group pictures...

Close encounters of the oriental kind... ;-)

Here is THE team!! Jan, Jef and me...

T-10

T minus 10! In about ten days I leave for Vietnam. Preparation is taking 100% of my free time now... All practical things have been arranged. I have the tickets, passport and visa. Hotels have been booked. Transport arranged. All I need to do is prepare the final content of the workshops. It won't be easy. I had a short conversation with Hans Defour on Monday. He was there and encountered mainly linguistic problems. Since I will be having an audience of ESL teachers, I probably won't have the problem, except if they weren't fed any Beatles songs during their studies. Then they might have a slight problem understanding my Liverpool-ish accent... ;-)

Tonight I downloaded the mindmapping freeware program FreeMind (I loved the name!) and made the scheme (which is hardly readable, but I'll present it in another way further on...).
I'll try to work as much off line as possible since many schools over there don't have the facilities of broadband internet connections for complete computer classes. So I intend to work on Simulation games ic SimCity, which has a rich treasure of vocabulary on different themes like economy, traffic, landscapes, social networks, functions, housing, urban infrastructure,... Combining the gaming experience of SimCity with mindmaps or webquests, wordlists and interactive crosswords might do the trick! Further on some tools will be presented like Zarb and reviewing in Word (just ordered the English version of Zarb www.zarb.de). About 5 years ago the former VVKSO-team for ICT in the English lesson, led by my dear friend Karel Van Rompaey studied a large amount of CDROMs for English Language Learning, and of all these programs, MacMillan's Reward series was the best. I'll be testing three levels with the HCMC colleagues!
To give creativity a boost, I will present the Poëzome site, which I will adjust a little, adding a few translations of the interactive poems.
Finally I'll introduce them to the Underworld of Zork, an pre-windows program from ancient times... 1981. Even the most basic dos-computer can handle that, and in those days this adventure game was a real success. Students even started a Zork-club to play the game at noon, and they drew hundreds of maps of the mazes in the underworld... Even the humour is great: if you get frustrated after hours of fruitless treasure hunting and in your final despair you type sh** or f**k, the program answers with a cool phrase: "Such language in a high-class establishment like this!"... Students love it, and so do teachers (to put it in a confirming addition to a positive remark!)
Anyway, I'll give you the html-version of the mindmap:

Workshop HCMC

• Techniques
  
  • Mindmapping
  • Groupwork / pairwork
  • Webquest
  • Discussing
  • Gaming
  • Simulating


• Content
  
• Presentation
• Cyber-poetry (creativity)
• International communication program (example)
• Hands-on
• Tools
• WordClassifier
• CrosswordCompiler
• Wordweb
• Review-function (Word)
• Zarb (Exercise-generator in Word)
• Adventure game
• Zork (The underworld of ...
• Simulation
  SimCity 4
• Services
• Internet searching
• CDROM / DVD
• ELO (Electronic Learning Environment)
• Online software
• Weblog


• Activities
  
  • Exploring the net for classroom material
  • Cooperating with colleagues
  • Preparing lesson plans, based on the webquest model
  • Exploring an ELO and publishing material on it
  • Try out and evaluate games to use in class
  • Use WordClassifier as a text or wordlist analyser
  • Use Zarb to create exercises in Word
  • Explore and evaluate a closed CD-ROM program for remediation

ICT-day in Brussels

Today I'm attending two sessions at the ICT-day in Brussels. It's great to see so many people again whom I'd been seeing for years during workshops, Enis and other ICT-projects.
Car drive was not so good today... 15 km traffic jam.
First session is on WEB 2.0: the information-pushing technology (as I am using on my weblog here...). Interesting service sites presented were:
http://www.netvibes.com/ : for collecting the information you like on your browser starting page.
http://docs.google.com/ : for making, publishing, sharing text documents and spreadsheets
http://www.garagetv.be/ : the Telenet version of YouTube to broadcast your personal videos.
http://del.icio.us/ : Practical site where you can save and share your favourites.
http://esnips.com/ : all kinds of stuff you can upload and share...
Then more info on RSS, Atom, XML,... and online exercises...
Although I had some knowledge of these relatively new techniques, the session was interesting... In the IT-world you can always learn MORE!!!
Thanks to Frank Vandewyer.
In the afternoon I attended a presentation by Bart De Smet on the new Office 2007 version. In his own style (glass of water in hand - God preserve him from drowning...) he presented the matter very fluently and full of humour. He kept repeating "interesting features" until he became aware of his oratorial mistake, replacing it with "remarkable aspects", after which he started uttering "interesting features" again...
I'm not going into the details, but the day was not a waste of time, and I met Robert Conings (Provinciale Technische School, Maasmechelen) again, my colleague from the former ENIS-project who gave me a tip on a German ISP http://www.servage.net/ who offers all services, including 250GB on webspace...
I mailed them to ask if they also host Sharepoint services, which we use at school as a "Workweb" (WerkWeb). I'm awaiting an answer...
By the way: at noon, I helped Henk Bakker, presenting his software "Nedercom" which we have been using for three years at Xaveriuscollege. Also an interesting - sorry - awsome experience to see how education people react on commercial products... ;-)

Current ICT-situation at school (hardware and services)

Hardware situation. Currently we have installed a fifth-generation computer class at our school (R02). We have two computer classes - one of 30+1 and one of 25+1 computers. The big class (OLC - Open Learning Center) was installed with Pentium 4 desktops and CTR-monitors. The newest (R02) contains Dell Dimension Pentium D desktops with NEOVO 17" flatscreens.
Both classes and about twenty computers in many other locations are connected to a Windows 2003 server. Another server is used for the administration network. In all we have 100 computers, 15 printers and 12 data-projectors in 2 networks.
The services we use on Internet are:

• web hosting of the schoolsite (http://www.xaveriuscollege.be/)
  
• MS sharepoint for filesharing and office-extension (http://werkweb.xaveriuscollege.be/)
  
• mail service (http://webmail.xaveriuscollege.be/)
  
• Online evaluationsystem (http://www.schoolonline.be/)
  
• Broekx administration system (http://www.broekx.be/)
  
• EloV Blackboard Learning Platform (http://elov.vvkso.be/) (formerly http://www.elov.be/)
  

Software licenses were acquired via group-licensing of Sumika and MS KISS licensing for Microsoft products via ZEB-computers.
For Dutch remedial and drill exercises we use the Nedercom software from Henk Bakker.
There are more programs that we use, and which I will mention later on.