Assessment for learning with mobile phone video

 Student work, video  1 Response »
Mar 132006
 

Last week I spontaneously decided that it would be a good idea to film some students talking about their homework. I recorded the video on my mobile phone and converted the file into .avi format using Xilisoft 3GP video converter.
Subsequently, I’ve felt that this is a really good way of assessing work. Because the students themselves aren’t in the frame (an important point), they focus on describing their homework. Their understanding is evident, and a collection of short videos like these may be a useful tool when demonstating their progess to a sceptical Ofsted inspector.

I got some Year 10 students to talk about the Year 7′s work today and filmed them in the same way. There were two reasons. Firstly I thought it would be an interesting form of assessment for learning, because the Year 7 students would be able to see how other pupils interpreted their work, and consequently how to improve it. Year 10s got the opportunity to revise some of their work on settlement.

I’ve briefly edited the videos in Windows Movie Maker and the results are available to download below:

video link Year 7 talk about their work (9.4mb wmv)

video link Year 10 talk about Year 7 work (4.1mb wmv)

The files play in Windows Media Player, and because of the limitations of the recording device, you may need to turn up the sound on your speakers.

3D Tracking

 Google Earth, Google Maps, GPS  1 Response »
Feb 112006
 

Having acquired my new phone (Nokia 6630) and a cheap Bluetooth GPS from EBay. I’ve finally been able to test 3dtracking.net
It all works just as advertised on the web site. Simply install a small application on your mobile, turn on a Bluetooth GPS and walk around. Your location is transmitted by the mobile to the 3dtracking server which draws your track live on a Google Map or in Google Earth.

3dtrackingclick to enlarge

A practical fieldwork application still eludes me, but I’m working on it!

Yellow Arrow

 Google Maps  Comments Off
Jan 292006
 

Since moving away from London, I’d forgottten about the Yellow Arrow project. Although the concept was born in 2004, it is still very much part of the zeitgeist, and a recent investigation into Semipedia see post, together with my impending smart phone purchase (this week!) prompted a quick post.
Yellow Arrow describes itself as a “Massively Authored Artistic Production” or MAAP, according to the website. It’s a spatial anotation project, the aim being to tag features of interest with a yellow arrow sticker bearing a unique code. When someone finds the arrow, they text the code and receive back a message, about that location. In some cities, the yellow arrows form an unconventional tour through parts of the landscape that would be hidden from non-locals – creating a geographical adventure by text.

yellow arrowphoto by Stillben
Potentially, Yellow Arrow would make a unique local study. Where would students place the arrows? What would the messages be?

A subversive, graffitti-based local place study, linking the virtual and human environment? It really sounds like my next fieldwork project! No seriously…

Semapedia

 Google Earth, GPS, Photographs  1 Response »
Jan 242006
 

I’m rapidly talking myself into getting a smartphone. Not just for the live GPS tracking (see previous post), but because of concepts like Semapedia. In essence, Semapedia is about tagging real world locations with internet-based information, via a mobile phone. This could be a great (and highly subversive) fieldwork activity. Ogle Earth has posted an interesting article about Semapedia, together with a link to a Google Earth file for viewing some of the recently tagged locations.

I’ve printed out my first Semapedia tags – can you guess where they are going?

update 29/1/06 – I’ve just addded my first Semipedia tagged image to Flickr. The image is also tagged with the Flickr Fly script – see this page for more details

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