Branching out

I've been blogging at the East Lothian Council Exc-el site for a few months now, and decided it was time to set up a proper blog for myself. So here I am!

I expect to be blogging mainly about stuff.

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ActiVote Walkthrough Part 1

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At my visit to Musselburgh Grammar this morning, I spoke to some of the maths department about using Activote. They were enthusiastic about the potential of the technology, but said something like "it looks easy as you stand there and explain it, but we'll forget everything you've said by the time we next come to use it".

So.... to provide a bit of backup, here's a step by step guide to using Activote with your class.

The following assumes that the voting pads have been registered with your PC. If not, chase up IT!
Setting up the User Database
You'll want your pupil names to be stored in the system, so that their names appear at the top of the screen when you run a vote. Here's how....

In East Lothian, we have a problem - we don't have write-access to the place on the C drive where the user database is stored! To get around this, we need to copy the default user database to somewhere that is writeable, then tell ACTIVStudio that we've done so:

In ACTIVS…
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Someone is looking for the Catburgers!

I was most surprised today to discover that the top search phrase leading people to this blog over the last few weeks has been "the catburgers." This is the name of the indie band I was in back in the late '80s (I sang and played guitar).

I can't imagine who might be looking for my old band, unless it is some kids in North Berwick who heard about the band through my son.

Whoever it might be, I'll take advantage of this opportunity to post up some mp3s from the good old days, both recorded in 1987.  I just realised that's 20 years ago!  Time for a reunion tour of the states... anyway here are "Children's TV" and "First Day of Spring" for your entertainment:

[audio:childrens-tv.mp3]

[audio:first-day-of-spring.mp3]

After all, you have to keep your visitors happy don't you?
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Glow mentor meeting

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I missed the afternoon (visiting Ross High School), but thoroughly enjoyed the morning.

Karen Robertson began the morning with an overview of where we are and where we are going.

Alan Yeoman then spoke to us about the training programme for Glow mentors, and I was very impressed by what he had to say. Whilst the Glow launch at SETT was a disappointment, with the feeling that it was underprepared, Alan's presentation today showed that they have been doing some serious thinking about how to prepare us for our roles as mentors.

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