Honeycomb debut in Cornwall pilot project

I came across a great quote this morning from a Classroom 2.0 blog post by Bruce Nightingale. Although he is unable to attribute it specifically it is certainly worthy of a wider audience:

“The illiterate of the 21st century will not be those who cannot read and write, but those who cannot learn, unlearn, and relearn.”

My initial reaction was to wonder whether the author was referring primarily to children or adults, as clearly it is a principle that is valid for us all at any age and in any situation in life.

So I was delighted to participate with a group of primary and secondary teachers as well as advisors from Cornwall LA at Upton Cross Primary School on Friday. Everyone seemingly left their preconceptions at the door as they engaged with the world of online creativity and collaboration that is Honeycomb.

It was interesting, and perhaps not uncommon, that one of the first points of discussion in the staff room prior to starting was about the dangers of social networking sites like Bebo . Doug Dickinson’s analogy of e-safety being akin to road safety (you don’t stop using roads just because there are accidents) is still the best way I know of answering such concerns and there was a consensus of approval after this was discussed.

I’ll write in greater detail about the projects that the schools will be untertaking once their use of Honeycomb begins in earnest in April, but for now they include:

1. Exciting possibilities of pupils working with peers from their e-twinning partners in India, China and Poland.
2. Stretching the creativity and writing skills of gifted and able infants.
3. Promoting a much closer out-of-hours, collaborative working partnership between parents, schools and pupils.

So, plenty of exciting opportunities that I look forward to chronicalling in due course. For now, as promised, here are answers to three important questions that were raised during the discussion.

During my initial presentation delivered via the whiteboard using Upton Cross’s internet connection, my favourite YouTube videos were of course, completely blocked. So the first question everyone needs to know is howcan you download videos from YouTube and other online video sites so you can use them in the classroom?

Without doubt the easiest way of doing this is via the fantastic free web site Zamzar. Simon Mills takes you through a complete example using the wonderful Kiwi video animation (fantastic for the Y5 Unit on Narrative). Make sure you choose the flv video format for step 2. Once you have downloaded the flv file you can upload it into Honeycomb.

The second question is how can you convert existing avi, mpg,wmv or quicktime movie files to flv format? The best free tool for this I’ve found is Riva flv encoder which you can download here.

The final question was back on the topic of e-safety. Some of the teachers mentioned they and their students have Facebook accounts. The anti-virus and security firm Sophos recently conducted research from a random sample of 200 London Facebook group members and found:

1. 75% allowed their profile to be viewed by any other member, whether or not they were friends.
2. 54% showed their full date of birth.
3. 41% were prepared to divulge personal information to a complete stranger.

No-one is particularly criticizing Facebook, indeed Sophos notes that its security settings are one of the most powerful of all social networks. Its just that they are not on by default. Indeed, it could be argued that Facebook is doing the world a favour by exposing just how readily the (predominantly) younger generation will divulge excessive personal information.

So, if you have a Facebook account, and even if you don’t, why not demonstrate to your students how to be safe? Sophos has a series of pages explaining exactly what it recommends so I suggest that we all start there.

Fortunately, e-safety is a key feature of Honeycomb itself.

However, even in such a ’safe’ environment its still important that children learn about what is and what isn’t appropriate when interacting and collaborating with others, in line with your school’s e-safety policy.

Photo Credit - Sally Griffin, Cornwall CYPS