Ask the Audience

How many times have you sat in a classroom and been too embarrassed to ask a question, or even answer one for that matter, for fear of getting it wrong? How do teachers know which learners understand and which don't? The latest classroom technology involves learners using voting units to capture feedback onto an interactive whiteboard in the form of graphs - a bit like "Who wants to be a millionaire" What the system also can do however is capture individual learner responses which are private for the teacher alone to review and store. I am currently involved in a pilot with some young learners using this technology and we are going to monitor the effectiveness of the solution. If anyone has any innovative ways of using this system that we can try I would be keen to hear them. Again, a case study will be compiled and disseminated later on this year. It's not just for the classroom either, it can be a powerful tool in meetings and seminars.
Web links: voting units
Interactive whiteboards

Video Diary Booths

I've just been asked to help a company engage young people using innovative technology. These learners are building apprentices and someone came up with the excellent idea of creating a "Big Brother" style diary room where learners could state their views and thoughts and these would be captured and used to engage others involved in similar courses. Coupled with using iPods to playback the videos this could be a very useful approach. I did a bit of research and there are some companies out there that have booths that you can hire from around £300 a day. This often includes the editing and upload to a website or production of resulting films on a DVD (apparently theres a big market for these at weddings) You can also purchase your own for a whopping 10K. However, being a small company who wanted a mobile solution that could be carried even to their learning sites abroad, we decided to think outside the box and came up with a tent structure which can be customised and set up in many different ways. You can even buy soundproofing material on a roll....so a true Blue Peter solution. But who said that you have to be high end to achieve the results you are after. I will be doing a detailed case study and charting the distance travelled so I will update you soon. Until then, check out these web links:
http://www.thevideobooth.co.uk/
http://www.video-booth.com/
http://i-vox.co.uk/?gclid=CL2Gr4vij4oCFQzBXgodZRZKhA
If you want to know more about our custom solution get in touch with me.