Airborne calamities and using NearPod for engaging lessons

Another month, another good month of flying (sort of) and learning technology.

Let's kick off with the flying stuff

Airborne calamities

One of the fundamental rules of being (or learning to be) a pilot is to take full responsibility for your aircraft and the safety of those who fly in it (including yourself). Throughout your PPL you are drilled in the practice of doing a the walk-around to ensure everything is where it should be and functioning correctly. Only after that, do you start your internal checks.

So.... on a fateful Saturday afternoon, I am scheduled to fly solo to Cambridge from Southend. Flight planning done, booked out and ready to go. My instructor ran through the pre-flight and confirmed that the plane had been checked over. I naively hopped in and started my internal checks and set off. Taxi and take-off clearances given, I began my climb on to heading only to notice after 5 minutes a banging sound coming from outside the cockpit. Engine temps and pressures seemed ok and running smooth and flying controls seemed responsive. There were no visual signs of where the sound was coming from.

Nevertheless, disturbed by the sound, I put in a request to turn back to the airfield. On my approach I noticed two fire engines waiting for me at the hold! At this point I was starting to think something was wrong with my landing gear or perhaps there was a fire that I couldn't see. I continued the approach and landed safely. On arrival back to the club house the fire crew checked to see if I was OK and my instructor rushed out only to embarrassingly find that he had left the seat belt (harness) shut in the passenger door from his previous flight. I would have noticed it had I done a walk-around. So moral of this story is always take full responsibility for your own flight safety - don't learn the hard and rather embarrassing way.

To cap it off, I caught it all on a GoPro camera:

https://www.facebook.com/photo.php?v=10204442498281207&l=6464589029076382888 

Following the ordeal (yes I am laying it on a bit thick), I got back in the cockpit a week later....and made it to Cambridge. I was also very fortunate to taxi out behind the Battle of Britain Memorial Flight!

Dakota @ EGMC

Cambridge airport (International apparently) on the nose

Lance

Nearpod for engaging lessons

Recently, I have delivered a lot of training in assistive tools i.e. providing access to learning for students with both diagnosed and undiagnosed learning difficulties through digital technology. One root cause of learner struggles is the didactic method of teaching that we are all to familiar with. So how do you pass control to the learner? How do you engage those who do not have the confidence to ask or contribute in class?

A few months back I came across a great tool called Nearpod. This is an online lesson authoring kit where you can embed PowePoints and sandwich slides with interactivity e.g. polls, open questions, drawing/annotation and lots more. 

When you have created your lesson you can then use it synchronously with your students in the classroom or remotely. They access the lesson either through an app on their device or via the website. To join the live session, you provide them with a simple passcode.

Once they are in, you can control the pace of the lesson or give control to them to manage it at their own. In addition, you can also share the lesson via email, social media or just put the link on your VLE for students to access for reflection and revision.

The thing I love about this is that it is seamless across all devices and gives your learners the choice of how they want to access learning. If they do not have a smartphone or tablet they can still join in from a normal PC or laptop through the Nearpod website.

I would strongly recommend this tool for anyone who wants to become more innovative in their delivery. For the purposes of the FELTAG report recommendations, this might be a quick and easy way of creating online course content and bringing those PowerPoints to life....and it's FREE!!!!

Don't just read my drivel....watch the vid:

http://player.vimeo.com/video/95197111?autoplay=1&api=1

Balancing attitude and power for the best approach

On my last flight, I experienced my first short field landing at Earls Colne. I was very apprehensive due to the fact that the joining pattern and radio telephony sequence was very different to usual. There are no air traffic control clearances - just a guy in a shed on the ground with a radio transmitter who tells you what runway to use and whether it is windy or not. The rest is at your discretion. At the back of my mind was the landing - a short grass strip. Would I put her down safely or put it in a hedge at the end???

Thankfully, as a result of the great instruction I have received throughout the duration of my PPL, I remembered the simple rule - "Attitude for speed, power for rate of descent".

What this means to non-aviators is that when on a landing approach, you control the speed of the plane with the pitch angle of the pane e.g. nose up/down and you control the steepness of your approach with power i.e. not enough power will mean you fall short of runway, too much means you will probably overshoot.

Applying this principle, I managed to control the plane into a stabilised slow approach into Earls Colne. After wiping the sweat from my brow, my instructor and I popped into to see the said man in the shed to pay our landing fees and then relaxed for a short break before flying back.

Over the River Crouch

On way back to Southend (Thames on the nose)

Earls Colne Airfield

Next trip: Solo navigation to Cambridge.

Lesson planning with popplet

It has been a very long time since my last post on here. I have decided to return to blogging for two reasons. Firstly I have rekindled my flight training this year and I am also in a new job where I can explore my second passion - learning technology. Both of which I want to share my experiences of with those who show an interest.

There are several great online tools that can be repurposed for learning and teaching. My current affection lies with Popplet.

Popplet on first look seems to be a simple mind-mapping tool. As you start to delve into its features it is an incredibly intuitive tool that can serve lots of uses either in or beyond the classroom.

So what is Popplet?

In my view you make it be what you want it to be. The developers' definition is as follows:

In the classroom and at home, students use Popplet for learning. Used as a mind-map, Popplet helps students think and learn visually. Students can capture facts, thoughts, and images and learn to create relationships between them.

I delivered a training session to a colleague on the use of interactive whiteboards. In preparation for the session, I was really having to dig deep to think of new innovative ways to extend the use of the IWB beyond creating drag and drop activities or presenting powerpoints. Then I came across Popplet.

You start by creating a 'popple'.This is box which could contain a statement, question, a picture or a video. You can then start to capture your ideas around that particular subject in other popples that link together. One of the great user features is drawing tool. If you are working from a PC or laptop you can use your mouse cursor to draw a picture or write something.

If you are using an interactive whiteboard you can use one of the pens supplied with the board to draw or write in the popple too. So, altogether you have a nice blend of media and tools that you can bring into your popple board to help students develop their understanding around the topic you are teaching. What's more is they can reflect upon in following the lesson if provided with the direct link to your popplet.

If students have access to an internet enabled device in class, they can also contribute their thoughts to the popplet by providing them with a direct link (there is an app too).

Below is an example of a Popplet I have been playing with. As you can see I have incorporated a drawing that highlights the effect of cross wind on landing, a video example and a picture of a graph which enables pilots to determine crosswind factors - a small lesson rolled into one!

Ideas for teaching 

1. You could spend the first part of your session delivering the foundations of that particular topic and then encourage students to expand or challenge your ideas through doing some of their own research online and constructing their thoughts within your popplet.

2. I think Popplet is a really simple way of putting a lesson plan together. You start with the topic you plan to teach as your central popple - sometimes it might be a controversial video that will spark debate. Then around this you can start to create other popples that contain questions that you might want to challenge your pupils with or classroom research/group work activities, from which the outcomes are shared in the popplet.

3. I'm not one for splurging buzz terms too lightly around but.... hey, what about the flipped classroom. Why not get your students to independently (or in groups) research a topic or question that you plan to cover in your next lesson and put their ideas together in a Popplet. This will provide you some insight of what they understand and what you might have to build on with them in your lesson.

These are just my thoughts - I'll leave it up to you guys who are at the coal-face everyday to come up with some creative uses for this nice little tool. I have created a Popplet here for you to contribute your ideas on how you might use or already use Popplet in your teaching. If you would like to contribute please send me your Popplet ID or email address and I'll add you.