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Re: Teaching from the beach
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09/21/05 12:21 AM |
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Absolutely Bronwen – and I’m sure many students will be with you on that!
I think LAMS has lots of potential for freeing up our thinking about what a classroom is! We may need to buy a special cover for our laptops though – to keep the sand out if we are at the beach! I know you have to do this if you live in Alice Springs. (What about LAMS classes at the bottom of Uluru (Ayers Rock) in the middle of the desert – now there’s a thought!)
Posted by Robyn Philip
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Re: Teaching from the beach
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09/22/05 03:42 AM |
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I agree that wireless is going to be a significant driver though I very much doubt that our local beach is wifi-enabled at present even if our labs, social areas and laptop stock are.
As I'm not a field biologist I can't comment on the value of teaching from more "interesting" locations. However, given the weather in the UK, sand would not be the only issue!
Posted by Peter Miller
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Re: Teaching from the beach
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09/22/05 05:03 PM |
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Hmmm - the sand and glare issue isn't appealing to me any more. But I do know of a lovely cafe on Manly beach in Sydney that is wireless. So how about a lovely coffee, a beach view and running the LAMS session 
It will take a bit of planning to run a whole LAMS class while on excursion. Maybe we should leave this for the really enthusiastic - like the Glenorie Primary school teachers (who have been known to run LAMS sessions for kindergarten/year 1)!
Posted by Bronwen Dalziel
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12:
Re: Re: Teaching from the beach
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10/19/05 05:10 AM |
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There's no beaches at Glenorie but we could always simulate one. We have a sandpit! We have been known to dress up in Tropical Island gear, take a few banana chairs from the sick bay and sit in the sun/shade drinking non-alcoholic cocktails that the Yr 6 have concocted for us (last yr's Yr 6 Fair) We had little umbrella thingys in our glasses...all we needed to complete the picture was a wireless laptop in Monitor mode...we could mark all our online Homework while the students do more enterprising things like run through a LAMS survey/forum/chat sequence about "do we spend too much time on our computers and not enough time on leisurely pursuits'?
Posted by Debbie Evans
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Re: Teaching from the beach
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09/23/05 06:54 AM |
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A fantastic idea Bronwen that once again highlights the flexible delivery of services for LAMS. Not quite a 'from the beach' story but one that highlights the use of LAMS as an effective way to deliver staff training and development:
This week Debbie and I developed LAMS sequences for our staff training and development to survey staff on effective use of technology within our school as well as a tool to collect and collate all the survey information we need for our Annual School Report. Although most staff were present a few who were unable to attend completed the sequences from the comfort of their home and one staff memeber who needed to leave early to pick up her children was also able to complete the sequences while enjoying a glass of red once the kids were in bed! By close of business next day Debbie and I had all the data collected, graphed and ready to put into our Annual School Report - how cool is that. DET currently use pen and paper surveys to collect ASR data and then some poor person has to spend hours on data entry. No guesses as to who the poor persons might be. Debbie and I are now able to enjoy our holidays and have parent and student ASR surveys ready to run day one next term. We keep on finding more and more ways to use LAMS and the whole Manly Cafe things sounds right up my alley.
Posted by Karen May
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Re: Teaching from the beach
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09/24/05 04:59 PM |
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We have a wireless network covering the whole city. It was setup by all the secondary schools in the city: students could buy a transmitter for this system, teachers from the public schools got one for free. (The public schools use Moodle, the Christians use TeLeTOP as VLE on this network.)
Tomorrow we close this wireless network: not enough students buy a license, they prefer (the more expensive) cable and ADSL at their parents home..
Ger Tielemans
City of Enschede
The Netherlands
Posted by Ger Tielemans
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Re: Re: Teaching from the beach
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09/26/05 02:24 PM |
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This seems unfortunate but I wonder whether it is unusual. On a much smaller scale, our university has just wifi-enabled our labs, lecture theatres and student cafe. It would be interesting to know how widely it will be used -- I had plans but these will not come to fruition this year. I suspect student ownership of wifi laptops raises issues of cost and security -- I was planning to deploy some of our small stock based on students sharing. I think LAMS has a major role to play in developing lessons in this area, both in labs and lecture theatres.
Do you know what the major negative factors were in Enschede? Cost of the licence? Cost of hardware? Performance? Security? Lack of lesson content?
Posted by Peter Miller
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11:
Re: Re: Re: Teaching from the beach
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10/05/05 04:45 PM |
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Well,
1. the parents got easier facilities at home: cable, ADSL.
2. the schools (Christian and Public together) did not setup special (promoting) activities after the initial start.
3. the killer one: bad connections in some area's: it was running in the free band where also radio-amateurs blow...
Posted by Ger Tielemans
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Re: Teaching from the beach
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09/24/05 06:23 PM |
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Flexibility in time and place has lots of potential benefits. For online university courses, you might not have any students on campus - everyone might be at a distance. As a teacher in this course, you could also travel (say to an overseas conference) and keep up your involvement as usual (as long as you haven't scheduled a chat in the middle of the night!).
Another related LAMS benefit is that someone else can teach your LAMS class for you if you get called away. In one recent school trial, a teacher was called away at the last moment - but the substitute teacher was still able to run the class as planned using the prepare d LAMS sequence. Even better, when the original teacher was back for the next class, they could review all the student activities from the class they missed, and pick up directly from where they were up to at the end of the class.
I also like the idea of a student who is sick and unable to attend school (say contagious but otherwise ok), but could still participate in discussion, debate and other activities via LAMS. I guess not all students would think this was great - but I think we'd be surprised by how many would like it.
Posted by James Dalziel
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Re: Re: Teaching from the beach
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10/19/05 05:19 AM |
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At the moment I have a student who is contributing to LAMS sequences whilst buzzing across the globe with her mum for the last 6 weeks. She logs in, does her Homework, participates in forums and other sequences and sends us updates of the latest fabulous city/tourist attraction she has visited! We're all learning! And I didn't have to prepare any special work for her to take away!
Posted by Debbie Evans
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Re: Teaching from the beach
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11/20/05 06:29 PM |
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I think an extension of what Debbie has described is when the teacher has to go away for some reason. They can provide the temporary teacher with all of the weeks LAMS sequences and log on to check how the students are going... only for the very dedicated teacher!?
Or maybe, they could just quickly review the work when they get back and see what the students have done and need to do next. Maybe the students won't muck up quite as much (as they love to do to temps) if they know their normal teacher is keeping an eye on things.
Bronwen
Posted by Bronwen Dalziel
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