2011 has been a great year for me. I entered Year 8 with confidence built up from Year 7. I have helped so many different people with so many different problems, most relating to technology. I encountered projects, which were just like a group of problems put together except I created and solved the problems.
In Year 7 the only people I knew in my grade were the people in my class and the few that came from primary school. This year I know nearly everyone from Year 8 and they know me. I know quite a lot of people from Year 9 as well. That for me is a personal achievement I wasn’t expecting.
During 2011 I have been involved in some pretty big projects. Here’s a small recount of some of my experiences.
The QR Code Server
During term 2 Mr Jones had an idea of creating a notice board with QR codes attached to it. The QR codes would link to news articles which were on the student intranet. They could also link to other things like the daily notices. My job was to make it all work. Attaching mobile phones and other non-school devices to the network was not something I wanted to do for a project like this. I found an old laptop that was going to be written off and Mr Jones brought in his old wireless router. One day our class was invited to go with Year 9 to watch a play about something historical. Instead of going I decided to stay back and work on the QR Server.
I setup the router to assign a certain IP address to the laptops MAC address. That way if things were rebooted another device wouldn’t steal the laptops address. I uninstalled a lot of the garbage on the laptop and disabled nearly every start up process. Next I installed XAMMP, set up the database and then installed WordPress. WordPress worked ok on mobile devices but I wanted to make it better so I found a mobile theme for it. The mobile theme was good because it only activated when the user agent was from a mobile device. When laptops viewed the articles they would be full screen and when mobile devices viewed them they would be optimized for the mobile screen. I was going to setup FTP but I realized a Samba share would be much faster and easier to setup. Time was limited so I needed to work quickly.
The project was a great success. Mr Jones found other ways to use it. He took a screenshot of Google Maps and started creating a treasure hunt using QR codes. I found other uses for the QR network. Using iPod Touches, iPhones and my iPad some students and I would have LAN games of Battlefield: Bad Company 2. Some of the PE teachers even joined in our game. It was all good fun.. Unfortunately I wasn’t able to maintain the QR Server and it slowly died. I tried to relaunch it at a later date but didn’t succeed. I’ll probably try again in 2012.
Mr Jones did a post on the QR Server earlier this year.
http://jonesytheteacher.wordpress.com/2011/06/17/qr-geo-treasure-hunt/
Z DER
At our school in Year 7 and 8 we have electives that we can do for some fun, they also give us an idea of what we can do in Year 9 and 10. During our 2 week cycle we have 4 periods for electives. I’m not sure who thought up the idea but it was great because it encourages students to use more technology. The students could then be an influence to their teachers. During those 4 periods for electives, 2 Year 8 classes would go and do activities relating to the laptops they would receive in Year 9. The topics covered were Digital Citizenship, Safety, Web 2.0 Tools, Bluetooth, Moodle, QR codes and a couple of others that I can’t remember. How do I come into this? My class was the trial for all this. During term 1 our class was the only one that did the elective. After term 1 one a lot changed.
One day during early Term 2 I was using my elective period to try and work out the Galaxy Tab connecting to the “nswdet” issue. I was in the same room as one of these Z DER classes. After a couple of minutes someone asked me for some help. I helped them out and then another asked me for help and I helped them too. After that I continued to visit the Z DER class. Mr Jones was the teacher and I was working alongside him. One day I got to get up and talk about QR codes. Term 2 had been a great success and we moved into Term 3 with great success until…
Mr Jones left our school. The teacher that was taking his place wasn’t as techy minded as he was but he was open to learn which is always good. It was up to me to take his class and I did. Of course I had a teacher there for classroom management. I wasn’t doing as well as Mr Jones so I tried new things. I tried to think like one of these students in the class. I figured they didn’t want to listen to long explanations so I kept it very short and let them explore the task more by them self. I’m not sure if that was the best idea because I did get more questions. One day I tried using the Student Response Network to create a trivia like game. Due to network issues it failed and didn’t work out. I didn’t let that put me down and I ran one very successful project with 2 classes.
QR Code Riddle Hunt
During the last 2 weeks of the Z DER class I wanted to do something fun that they would remember. It also had to be educational to some extent. I wanted to run a QR treasure hunt. I began planning weeks in advance. Mr Rennex provided advice on issues I didn’t even see. There would be 15 QR codes hidden in the area between the ovals and first block. Each QR code would have a number, a word and a code. The objective was to find all the QR codes and put the message (which was a riddle) together. The QR codes had random strings of text in them to prevent cheating. After they put the riddle together and recorded all the random strings of text, they had to work out the riddle.
Before we could have the QR code hunt we needed to do a couple of things first. Everyone would have to know what a QR codes is and what they do. Devices that students carry would need to have QR readers installed on them. This was probably one of the most challenging parts but I got it sorted. I spoke to the other Z DER teacher and he wanted to join in with his class. For 1 period I visited the other Z DER class and installed QR readers on their phones. I have another post about how I managed to install QR readers on phones with limited network access and other obstacles.
It was finally go time. Mr Rennex helped me put up the QR codes at the end of break 1. Hiding them was a bit of a problem so we had about half hidden and the other half out in the open. Kids without devices teamed up with other kids who had devices. We had around 45 of the 60 kids hunting for QR codes. The other 15 didn’t really seem interested even though some of them had the devices for it. We had placed a QR code flat on the ground. A group of girls decided that they would sit around it so no one could see it. It actually worked really well when people said they couldn’t find the last one. I couldn’t even work out where it had gone and then I realized. They made the game more challenging and more fun for some of us. Finally someone cracked the riddle and the game was over. I got a massive amount of thank yous from both classes. I was amazed, the game was an amazing success to me and the teachers that were part of it. Hopefully we can run another one next year and include different kinds of puzzles.
Massively Minecraft
During the Term 3 holidays I joined a group of gamers playing Minecraft. I was a little nervous at first because I knew no one involved in the group. After joining I was greeted by an awesome group of community members. After a couple of weeks playing I remembered an idea I had of putting a QR code into Minecraft. I told Jo and Dean about it and they made it happen. It was a mark that I would leave in the Massively Minecraft universe.
A new video game was launched 3 days before the event that was going to take place at Macquarie University. I was really tempted to stay home and play but I ended up going and didn’t regret it. It was one of the best experiences I have ever had. I got to meet so many of the people I play the game with in real life. I even got to see one of my old friends from primary school who I haven’t seen since he left. I had such a great time and would love to see something like that happen again.
Other Notable Things
The iPhone 4S was launched late this year. I picked up one and so did half of the PE faculty. I showed them how they could connect their phones to the projectors and use their apps on the bigger screen. The teachers could see it working and some of them even purchased the adapter. iPhone apps weren’t actually used this year but I’m hoping next year we can see them in the classroom.
We held our annual Variety Night again this year and it was an awesome success. The Sound and Lighting crew think I’m officially part of their group but in reality I’m not. My jobs during Variety Night were to create the PowerPoint and record the entire event. I ran RCA cables from the mixing desk to one of the cameras so that the audio was in sync with the video. Next year we should really use something different because RCA audio is garbage.I also got to experiment with using my Samsung Galaxy Tab as a wireless camera. It worked perfectly and I could even show the live feed on the projector.The drama group needed some of their audio cut up and mixed around. They also needed to record someone giggling. They used their iPhone to record it and then sent it to me using email where I then could add it to their existing audio.
In 2010 after the sports presentation I said I would create the PowerPoint and photo slideshow next year. That’s exactly what I did. I changed a whole lot in the PowerPoint and made everything look so much neater. In 2010 the photo presentation was extremely broken. It was a PowerPoint run through Windows Movie Maker with a 320×480 resolution and what looked like some sort of attempted transitions. The video file was corrupt and stopped half way through. This year I used iPhoto to create an awesome presentation. After the presentation some of the parents asked me what I used and I showed them how easy it was to do with iPhoto.
