Specialist Seminar: Digital Technologies

27 September 2006, Glasgow Science Centre

Funded by NESTA and convened by The Association for Science and Discovery Centres, this seminar helped spread and share information and expertise as part of efforts to ensure science centres and museums stay at the cutting edge of digital technology – so children can get the most from their learning. The seminar took place as part of the 2006 Education and Programme Managers Meeting.

We would like to take this opportunity to thank Glasgow Science Centre for hosting this specialist meeting.

Presentations

IT in the science classroom: today and tomorrow

Tom Dickson is a Science Development Officer working within Fife Council. He has been involved in Teaching for 30 years, first as a Physics teacher then Principal Teacher of Physics and subsequently as a CPD provider in Learning and Teaching. He is involved in increasing the provision of ICT based science learning support through projects like TEST – Technology Enhanced Science Teaching and the development of the ‘Supporting School Science’ website.

Tom introduced the participants of the seminar to the ‘Supporting Science’ website, which aims to provide advice and resources to assist Science teachers in the classroom. It offers teachers and students many opportunities to make the learning process flexible enough to suit different learning styles and teacher delivery techniques. This contains extensive resources for teaching primary and secondary science.

He demonstrated how Fife Council have also identified existing ICT based science learning resources and filtered these into a much more accessible and usable form for teachers.

www.fife-education.org.uk/scienceweb/index.htm

Films for Learning

Mark Richardson, Design & Technology Teacher at The Thomas Hardye School, Dorset and a NESTA Awardee, spoke about the ‘Films for Learning’ project. This project inspires schools to create their own video resources and share them with others online.

Films for Learning started in the summer of 2005 with a series of workshops at Thomas Hardye School in Dorchester. Six student groups collaborated with teachers to make films the teachers could use in their teaching. Independently, the students and staff also made their own Top Tip films.

Since then Films for Learning has run workshops for staff from other schools to help them to make their own films and to run their own workshops. They have also been working with their middle school partners in Dorchester as part of a Leading Edge National Collaborative project into the impact of digital video on learners.

Films for Learning aims to become a national online film-making project that inspires and helps teachers and students to make their own teaching videos. (www.filmsforlearning.org/index.html)

Presentation about Films for Learning (PDF, 3.5MB)

PDA project: Learning on the Move

Rachel Willis, Head of Learning, At-Bristol, and Olympia Brown, Science for Schools Coordinator at The Royal Institution (The RI) introduced participants to the NESTA funded ‘Learning on the Move’ project.

NESTA's support enabled hand-held computers to be trialled by At-Bristol, Leicester's National Space Centre (NSC) and The Fitzwilliam Museum (the University of Cambridge’s art museum) and The RI. The pilot aimed to inform the way learning attractions nationwide use interactive mobile technologies to engage with visitors.

Hypertags were placed around different areas of the venues. Visitors were then provided with PDA handheld devices, which they could point and click at the tags, in order to pick up video clips, quizzes, images etc. aimed at enhancing their visit to that particular area of the exhibition/venue. These devices were use with KS2, KS3, family groups etc.

Presentations about this project:

Rachel Willis - Learning on the move Hypertag project presentation slides (PDF file 600K)

Olympia Brown - to follow

Video conferencing in museums and science centres

Phil Phillips, New Media Development Manager at the National Museums Liverpool (NML), talked about the use of video conferencing as a tool for using between organisations and as a learning tool both onsite and as part of outreach activities. It has been used by NML in a number of different ways. This has included meetings between different sites for staff members, but also as a powerful learning tool.

Sessions have been established at NML to help ‘import’ experiences from elsewhere for their visitors. This means you can link up with events that are happening in different parts of the world. An example of this is ‘Shark Encounter!’ which offered NML visitors an opportunity to get ‘up close and personal with Florida sharks’, allowing them to visit a tank full of sharks at the Mote Marine Laboratory in Sarasota, Florida, via video link. These sorts of experiences can be complemented by onsite exhibitions and collections.

www.seatrek.org

NML have also made use of video conferencing techniques to offer outreach activities. As a large multi-disciplinary organisation covering art, history, and science, they are able to take bookings for virtual demonstrations and collection sessions. This has allowed schools from the UK and beyond access to over 20,000 specimens, and powerful video-microscopes in that reveal the smallest details on a wide diversity of insects, fossil, mineral and plant material. Students are asked by their teacher to prepare some starter questions for the NML session leader prior to the video link. This has helped make the session into dialogue activities between museum staff and the students.

Breakout groups

Participants worked in smaller breakout groups to develop profiles of existing projects and identity possible new applications of digital technologies covering: (1) PDA use, (2) video conferencing, (3) digital film making, the groups' discussions are summarised here:

(1) PDA use (including mobiles, handhelds and audio)

Some of the uses/projects that are already being used by science centres and museums:

Data logging activities

Mudlarking in Deptford (www.futurelab.org.uk/showcase/mudlarking)

Planning process to site a gold mine/quarry in a neighbourhood

Eye Level Lewisham

Smart Learners (NMSI & FutureLab)

Suggestions for activities/projects

Development of activities that use game play between different groups using PDAs. Different groups can provide different components/elements required to make the game happen (all the components fitting together to form a complete ‘Jigsaw’) eg ‘Men will have babies – future Science Museum project

Meeting expectations of users - considerations when using PDA technology:

(2) Video conferencing

Some of the uses/projects that are already being used by science centres and museums:

Other related activities:

Suggestions for activities/projects:

Developing the existing use of video conferencing to:

Meeting expectations of users - considerations when using video conferencing technology:

(3) Digital film making

Some of the uses/projects that are already being used by science centres and museums:

Other related activities:

Suggestions for activities/projects:

Possible project outline:

Meeting expectations of users - considerations when using digital film making technology:

Suggestions for other new activities/projects: tapping into existing digital technologies

Other useful links/software

audacity.sourceforge.net– free music/sound editing software
www.createascape.org.uk– free location based GPS/PDA experience/authoring tool
www.dream-ireland.com– digital media
www.mediaedwales.org.uk– great CD on film making
www.becta.org.uk - Becta is a UK agency which supports all four UK education departments in their strategic ICT developments.


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