Friday, November 23rd, 2007...7:17 pm
Humbie Primary School- Trialling the Visualiser!
Today I spent the afternoon at Humbie Primary School. Humbie is a small School situated about 15 miles outside Haddington in East Lothian. Following a meeting on Tuesday with a Representative from Genee, the staff at the school will be trialling a relatively new form of hardware called a ‘Visualiser’.
Visualisers are basically very high powered digital/video cameras that allow the teacher to analyise 2D and 3D objects in great detail, whilst connected to an LCD projector (and much much more!).
There are many brands of visualiser on the market. The Genee 6100 is the one that we are trialling. The purpose of my visit today was to explore and demonstrate some of the components of this Visualiser. Here are a few:
- High powered magnification using the zoom.
- Split screen magnification.
- Lamp settings (background like an Over Head Projector, normal light, additional light etc.)
- Negative effects (looking at photo negatives).
- Titling (creating a title at the top of the screen)
- Auto-focus
- Long distance focussing
- Scrolling
The potential impact of Visualiser use to enhance teaching and learning is immense.
Though the images were projected onto an Interactive White Board (IWB), we were unable to explore the integration of the two. This was due to the software installation requirement. The quality of image that this Visualiser produces is just superb. It is fantastic for analysing small objects (or creatures in today’s case!) in great detail. However, the real benefits for the primary sector will come with the integration of the white board. For example, if you look at the image below…
A Reading Book on the screen…
What the Primary teachers would ultimately like is to be able to invite children to come up and highlight text/image (etc.) on the IWB. The same would apply to pupil work. I am not entirely sure, but after the software has been installed we believe this should be possible (rolling Formative Assessment and Active Learning into one I say!).
You can view more of my quick snap-shots of the Visualiser in action here.
You can view some Movie Clips taken by others here
This particular Visualiser has been short listed for an award at the BETT Conference (Olympia) in January 2008.
I would like to thank the staff at Humbie Primary School for their time today; I am very much looking forward to your feedback.
I would be very keen to hear from any teachers, or professionals, who have been using such software.
Finally….
(Being a Biologist, I just had to get this jpeg in!)
8 Comments
November 24th, 2007 at 6:17 am
Visualisers have been around for ages, but I think have only taken on relevance recently thanks to our move back towards the screen through the web and powerpoint presentations. I now use a visualiser when explaining games consoles like the DS to larger audiences. However, there is a danger, again, that we see more talk and chalk as we add to the whole-class teaching toolset. What kind of training do you think would help teachers use these effectively. Are they only going to reinforce whole-class teaching again, or are they going to add something different? [devil's advocate mode ;-)]
November 24th, 2007 at 10:26 am
Hey Ewan.
In my opinion it is the diversity of methodology that enhances the learner’s experience
As a Science teacher, a typical lesson requires variety. For example (in an ideal world):
5 Minutes with a powerpoint- Learning outcomes of the lesson.
5 Minutes practical demonstration (under a visualiser)
10 Minutes pupil practical.
10 Minutes theory work relating to a practical
10 Minutes discussion using IWB (pupil’s invited to interact)
10 Minutes textbook work
5 Minutes recapping Learning Outcomes of the lesson (powerpoint)
In my experience spending too much time on any one area or with any one teaching aid results in disengagement. Spending to little time results in misunderstanding.
I think that visualisers will make everday classroom life easier for teachers and pupils. If your work is easier, you get more done!
Not ever thing taught in schools requires a visualiser and indeed over use of it as a teaching aid would result in disengagement.
As far as training goes, I would say that visualisers are far easier to use than say an IWB. They are very intuitive hence very little training would be required.
Anyway, I am starting to waffle now; not really sure I have answered your question?
Have a good weekend,
Tess
November 24th, 2007 at 10:37 am
Tess,
I managed to acquire one of these brilliant machines a few months back and find it fantastically useful for:
- managing multiple devices (PC, laptop, camera) with the projector
- review of written tests, exemplification of how to write the solutions
- demonstration of fiddly activities: so much safer than “gather round”
- easy management of whole class note-taking using a single copy of a book or paper
- recovery of 35mm colour slides or negatives
all of which can be done without taking your eye off the “customers”. It’s a brilliant enabler. We haven’t managed to get the software usefully installed anywhere yet so don’t use the cleverer features but the visualiser is in such demand used as-is, ad hoc, that we feel that we’re getting full value for money.
November 24th, 2007 at 12:10 pm
In a lot of cases there is no alternative to whole class chat, in a practical workshop the more ways to demonstrate safe practice the better, and it is often these sort of activities that are fiddly and difficult to demonstrate.
So often in practical classes you spend time demonstrating things that you do with your hands, but your hands obscure sight of the activity - how can you realistically expect 20 pairs of eyes all to be able to see what to do? By capturing it and projecting the image/video onto a big screen you instantly make the task more accessible for all, and coupled with the ability to record the footage and loop it things become much easier to demonstrate and explain.
It will also make sharing good work much easier, you can quickly grab a copy of a pupil’s excellent sketch and show it to the whole class, then develop it as a group.
Or, you could put one pupil in the ‘hot seat’ for a period of board drawing in Graphic Communication, their work would be on show, the rest of the class contribute in how to complete the drawing - gaining confidence, communicating, contributing…
November 25th, 2007 at 4:48 pm
@Nick- Great to hear that you have found it so useful. Have you used it with a white board? Also what was the make and model? I am keen to try and get hold of a Promethean Visualiser for a trial period. It would be good to compare.
@Stuart- I think that this tool will be very useful for may aspects of your subject. I look forward to hearing your feedback.
December 7th, 2007 at 6:40 pm
[...] For the last two weeks, Humbie Primary School have been trialling a Genee Visualiser. This afternoon, I went out to Ross High School in Tranent. The visualiser was scheduled to be trialled by the Science and CDT Departments at the School. You can find out more about it on my recent post here. [...]
March 12th, 2008 at 3:07 pm
Hi,
There is some good examples of different schools using visualisers along with Interactive White Boards here…
http://www.ictvisualiser.co.uk/education_resources/casestudies.html
March 12th, 2008 at 3:12 pm
Hi,
There are some good examples of visualisers being used with Interactive White Boards here:
http://www.ictvisualiser.co.uk/education_resources/casestudies.html
Also I think it was the AVerVision SPC300 nominated for a BETT award in 2008 not the Genee.
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