It is amazing how one thing leads to another, and all of a sudden you have a crazy idea for a unit of work on your hands. I have recently been watching some video of old Hong Kong, and chatting about the footage with friends and family. My dad and I were wondering where one particular spot was, and threw a couple ideas around. This planted a seed in my mind, and I set out to see if I could use technology to find the answer. It seems that I have actually located the spot, and although it will be at least a few days before I can get out and see for myself, I am 99% certain that it is correct. I am looking forward to shooting some new footage to compare with the original.

Below I will share the steps I took to come to my conclusion, which can be replicated by secondary students relatively easily. The idea for the unit, then, is to give students some old footage and stills from an area they are familiar with (say a city, county, district, etc), and ask them to find as many of the spots as possible. All the confirmed spots can be placed into a Google Map, with the original image, and a link back to where it is found. Students thus build up their own map, putting historical footage in its place, and tying time and space together neatly. They can visit the spots for themselves, and see how they have changed. One of the tricky parts of the process (especially true in Hong Kong) is not only the rapid change of  human geography (e.g. new buildings, roads, etc), but also the fact that areas of sea have been reclaimed, and so even large geographical features can change in a relatively short space of time.

I started my investigation by taking 2 screen captures from one particular video, and crudely stitching these together using some graphic editing software (Acorn in my case, as they give it free to schools, but Gimp or Photoshop or a dozen other titles would do). My interest in this spot was first sparked because of the unusual amount of flat land on the right hand side. Click on any of the images to see a full screen version:

I then searched on Google Maps, looking around Hong Kong to find locations which might be a match. Hong Kong’s numerous small islands and rugged coastline make this quite easy, as there are plenty of features to match. Turns out that my initial guess of near Plover Cove was wrong, and my dad’s of Sai Kung was correct. After making my initial location, I saved a screenshot of the relevant Google Map:

The next step was to search for landmarks along two intersecting lines, in the original image. The trick here was to cross-reference the map and the original image numerous times so as to pick spots which are distinct in both sources. This gave the following annotated version of the original:

These 4 locations could then be marked on the map, and joined by two lines. The point of intersection of the two lines must be where the original image was shot from (I believe this is not triangulation but is similar, although not being a surveyor don’t take my word for it):

Over this I then laid a semi-transparent version of the same map, with labels, so that we can easily identify the surrounding areas.

Turns out that the photo was taken not that far from my house. Closer inspection of the map shows it to be Wong Chuk Yeung, what appears to be an unchanged, traditional Hong Kong village, with some flat grassy land just to the north west. Surely, this must be “the spot”:

Even though I do not teach humanities, I am incredibly excited by this process: it very quickly makes old media viscereal, alive, important. I could literally jump in a car, drive right to this spot and look at the same view that these people enjoyed 50 years ago. What else could we find out using modern technology? Could we discover who these people were, where they lived and why they visited Wong Chuk Yeung on that day. Could we find them? Meet them? Hear their stories? Now, that would be a real history lesson. I wonder if this could be pushed back further in time, with studies performed on paintings left behind by Hong Kong’s first colonial settlers?

My plan is to run this unit with some humanities teachers in my school next year. I would love to see other schools run it, and hear how it went. If only this kind of thing happened more often. It really is the best way to plan a new unit of work.

Update 1 – The Visit

It turns out that my feeling of 99% confidence was 100% wrong: had  I consulted an ordinance survey map, or studied the Google Map more closely, I would have seen that Wong Chuk Yeung is in fact on the wrong side of the hill for a view of Sai Kung. That said, the drive up their was more than worth it, as the village is not only huge, but seemingly entirely abandoned. As if stepping back in time, or into a movie set, the area is full of collapsing rice paddies, houses with no roofs, mailboxes stuffed full of mail, and tress growing out of houses:

The potential for student learning is huge, as are the potential number of questions one could ask of such a place. One of the most amazing aspects of the whole place is finding a large village nestled in a hollow, half way up a mountain: what a defensible, peaceful place, but also, how remote?

Credits: images captured from the original video are copyright Michael Rogge, and used under fair use for educational purposes. Google Maps images are used under fair use for educational purposes.

The idea for this unit, which I think is my most adventurous yet, came to me first thing one morning whilst I was lying in bed desperately trying not to think about work. In the unit, students work in teams to combine hardware and software in the production of a system which allows them to remotely guide a blindfolded peer. Beyond the ICT aims, it provides students with an understanding of the world as experienced by the visually impaired, as well as the ways in which ICT can be used to augment and improve the lives of people with disabilities.

The system is entirely student-assembled and centers around a head-mounted web cam and freely available software. Being a new school, we do not teach Home Economics or Design Technology, so this unit provided our students to work in a hands-on fashion that they do not often experience. In total, the cost of running the unit should be less than HKD$200 (USD$25) per group, assumming you do not need to purchase any laptops. The materials below should guide you through the process of running this unit.

• Unit Outline
• Mark Sheet
• Standard Field Tests Scorecard
• Join The Dots

Thanks to Coco, a very artistic student from my school who was kind enough to create a lovely logo for this unit!

I just put the finishing touches on a new ICT unit looking into the past, present and future of ICT, and how technology made us the species we are today. My aim is to get students away from the idea that high-tech is the only tech. Technology is everywhere in our lives, and we only live the way we do because of it. In short, without technology we would most likely be just another species of primate.

All the files need to run the unit are listed below. Feel free to get in touch if you have any questions or just want to have a chat.

• ICT Unit – Y8 – High Tech Stuff
• ICT Unit – Y8 – High Tech Stuff – Rubric
• ICT Unit – Y8 – High Tech Stuff – Punched Cards
• Example Visualisation (this is not a “perfect answer”, but something to get students thinking.)

Student Work

The way I run this unit allows students to use any number of tools to present their final answer to the four guiding questions. Whilst many students opt for a simple word processor or presentation application, others are more adventurous. In the past students have used tools as diverse as Tiki-Toki, EdCanvas, Storify and Prezi. The work below is a very strong piece of work submitted by one of my students, Adrien. What makes this work stand out is the excellent understanding Adrien shows for the big picture concepts covered in class, and his feeling for the effect of technology upon us. My feedback for improvements was for Adrien to include his sources and a Creative Commons license, and also to proof-read for minor errors.

Creidts: Thanks to marfis75 on Flickr for the thumbnail.

I designed this unit with the aim of introducing young students to the fundamentals of programming, in the hope of helping them to view programming as a discipline built on logic and sequential processing. Theory is kept to a minimum,  with students asked to learn 7 key, interrelated key words. Most of the learning takes place within the Scratch visual programming language environment, and students can be encouraged to work independently, solve their own problems and think creatively. The unit provides three levels of assessment, and I allowed students to decide for themselves which they would tackle, allowing students to differentiate the task for themselves.

• ICT Unit – Y7 – 201011 – Programming 101 – Unit Overview
• ICT Unit – Y7 – 201011 – Programming 101 – Task – 1 Standard
• ICT Unit – Y7 – 201011 – Programming 101 – Task – 2 Challenging
• ICT Unit – Y7 – 201011 – Programming 101 – Task – 3 Ridiculous
• ICT Unit – Y7 – 201011 – Programming 101 – Mark Sheet

On the whole my students seemed to enjoy the challenge, although at times they were very frustrated. I used the following diagram to try to help them understand their feelings, and how they change during the problem solving process:

This unit is my first attempt to introduce students to computer systems in a thorough, formal and organised manner, and it has proved both educational and enjoyable for both myself and (I believe) my students. It uses a very simple layered model (which I call the Four Layer Model) to help students understand how hardware, software, networks and people each function as parts of complex computer systems. For my Year 9 students this was their first opportunity to really work with computer hardware (they had to reassembly old PCs) and software (they had to install Ubuntu Linux). It also gave them new insights into how the Internet works, and finally a glimpse of the complexities involved in human use of technology at the individual and group levels. Hopefully this unit has managed to demystify those little plastic and metal boxes they spend so much time staring at!

If you are planning on running this unit, be prepared to answer lots of interesting questions, and fix lots of problems. Let me know if you need any help. The files below should provide you with all of the information you need:

• Unit Outline
• Presentation 00
• Presentation 01
• Presentation 02
• Presentation 03
• Presentation 04
• Mark Sheet
• Four Layer Model
• Four Layer Model with Annotation
• Rapid Presentation Example
• Example Internet: Role Play – This video was one of the outcomes of the unit. You can read more about it in this blog post.

This unit starts with assumption that students are better at ICT than teachers, and that the teachers at your school need help. Students work individually but collaboratively to learn about various aspects of the Mac (both hardware and software). This information is then used to populate a pre-structured wiki, essentially creating an online manual for others to use. At the end of the unit, students need to work with a partner to line up a two-on-one session where they help a teacher to improve their ICT skills by using the wiki. I recently ran this unit simultaneously with 60 11-12 year old Y7 students, and they adapted to the collaborative nature of the wiki fantastically. At the end of the unit, when they had all taught their teachers, I received excellent feedback on their performance from my colleagues. It also got them really thinking and talking about the computers they use every day, and what they can do with them.

The material below should be all that you need to deliver this unit at your school:

• Unit Outline
• Class Completion Record
• Lesson 01 Presentation
• Teaching Session Feedback
• Student Mark Sheet

The aim of this unit is to equip students in Years 7, 8 and 9 with the skills needed to manage their own learning in an online world, including research, presentation, reflection and communication. The unit centers around student blogs, and the integration of other technologies.Whilst it is an ICT unit, it can easily be adapted to suite a wide range of subjects.

On completion of the project students should each have their own blog, in which they have collected and organised their work as well as a range of resources from around the Web. Ideally, students will have begun to understand what they can do online, and how this is constrained by copyright and educational fair use. Some of the following materials may be useful in the teaching of this unit:

• Learning Online – general overview of the unit.
• Assessment Rubric – a simple rubric to aid teachers and students in assessment.
• Anatomy of a Blog – a visual guide to some key elements of a blog. Based on my demo blog.
• Class Completion Record – a spreadsheet for tracking the progress of a number of classes.
• Student Completion Record – a spreadsheet for use in one-on-one progress checks with students, which ideally will be carried out towards the end of the unit.
• Unit Summary for Students – a summary document providing a recap of everything covered in the unit for students to use in their own time, to supplement their in-class learning.

I have just completed running this with 6 classes across Years 7, 8 and 9, and it has been generally successful. All students now have a blog with some content, and the majority have met most of the criteria. Unfortunately, due to time constraints, I ran the unit over 6 weeks, and so some aspects receive less emphasis than they ideally would have. The students generally entered into the spirit of blogging, although some mistakenly linked the online nature of the work to informal writing. This lead to an emphasis being placed on writing in a style appropriate to the intended audience. There were only one or two instances of students writing inappropriately on their blogs, or those of their classmates. These actions generally seemed to be borne of naivety rather than malice. In order to moderate the blogs, I collected all the post and comment RSS feeds into a reader, and I periodically check to see what students have been writing.

Listed below are an exemplary piece of work from each of the year groups who participated in this project:

• Natalie’s School Blog - Year 7
• Lawanya’s Learning Blog - Year 8
• Kevin’s School Blog - Year 9

Please feel free to get in touch if you are interested in teaching this unit: I am more than happy to help where I can. If you have taught this unit, I would love to hear how you got on.

One Day to eCommerce is a project designed to enable a group of Year 9 IPT students at North Sydney Boy’s High School (NSBHS) to develop eCommerce sites in a single day. It is ambitious and challenging, and aims to leverage the great flexibility of Drupal. The project was delivered in mid-May 2010, and despite lots of problems (and chances to learn how to solve them), all 9 groups managed to create an online shop. Two of the groups even managed to configure a credit card payment system. The materials on this page are identical to the ones used in the project, and are available for any teachers who might wish to run this program at their own school. Be warned though, you need to be technically proficient with Drupal and LAMP stacks, or have the assistance of someone who is.

This one-day project is based on the Drupal IPT Project I ran at NSBHS during my first practicum last year.

Materials

• Presentation (Apple Keynote)
• Presentation (Microsoft PowerPoint)
• Student Materials – this is a large file (31.8MB), and so may take some time to download. Due to its size it is hosted offiste with Dropbox, so don’t worry about the external link. Depending on your OS, you might also need an extra application to unzip it. Please note that these materials are not covered by the site’s CC License, as it contains copyrighted images. These are used under assumed fair use for education.
• Required Modules – this image file can be used to help students work out which modules to enable.
  

Feedback

If you have participated in the One Day To eCommerce incursion at NSBHS, we would love to have your feedback. Please use this feedback form to tell me what you think.

Support

If you are a student who wants help with this material, or a teacher looking to implement this project yourself, please feel free to contact me. The following may be helpful if you decided to run this project yourself:

• Setting up Apache, MySQL and PHP on Ubuntu Linux

This single lesson aims to introduce students to assembly programming in the context of the high level programming that students will be more familiar with.

Download the lesson plan.

This single lesson engages the class in data collection, with the aim of organising and presenting it using Microsoft Excel.

Download the lesson plan.