Working with tutors to create immersive and effective elearning for SEND students
Now that the development phase is passing into review, first with an SEND tutor and then with SEND studens themselves I am learning:
- Value of Video Demo: signing in to a the resource centre, logging in to a computer.
- Importance of talking them through things we may take for granted.
- Pick out key things, in this case opening and closing times.
- Add a quiz to this to give it emphasis and to engage them.
- Tell them often. They love repetition and will return regularly to something for a reminder
- As Immersive Reader provides, best to have text on blue, yellow or green background and use Comic Sans as their favoured font as it is less ‘harsh’ than others.
- Not all have Smartphones, say 5 out of 14 have no phone.
- 360 headsets would be fun to use if we had them, but proper ones!
- 85% are auditory, or visual/auditory learners
- Though my learning from the OU is that these learning preference categories are a nonsence unfounded in any science. Rather in this instance it is a medical aid surely? Someone who cannot see, or cannot hear will have a preference away from seeing or hearing – naturally, with it having nothing to do with learning.
I am delighted to share this with the OU community and my followers. Thoughts and comments please!
I was delighted with the course tutor’s response, though I’m mostly awaiting for a response from a number of the SEND students themselves. It has to work for them, and be adjusted, even reinvented so as to appeal to and to work for them!
https://www.thinglink.com/mediacard/1244284378704510977
“Slick, professional … and a lot of clicking which they will love!”
Thinglink Tour of the Learning Resource Centre for SEND Students
Give it a go. Let me know what I might change to impove it!
Video Production Kit

Having to become a videographer in my own right or at college required me to kit up. All from 12 things a filmmaker must have
This is lot is recommended. Some I have.
- PC with video card, RAM and screens
- Full HD camera with Manual
- Memory – lots of cards
- Filters – for shallow depth of field
- Fluid head tripod e.g. Manproto 501
- Sound Recorder – Tascam or Zoom HR4N
- Headphones
- External microphone – shot mike AT83JB
- Mic stand boom pole
- Lighting & Disk Reflector
- Editing Software: hit film express
- External harddrive
1: Desktop Computer
I have always been a MAC person and run an iMac with two full on screens from home. I don’t have such luxury at work where I use a PC at whatever desk I land on, never a double screen and sometimes a challenge to upload and use the software.
2. Full HD Camera with Manual Setting
I got myself a Sony Alpha 7 four years ago and use this with a mixture of lenses supported by a lens adaptor for a zoom lens. I have a 50mm, a 40m prime lens, a short Sony zoom and longer 300m Minolta that must be 30 years old, ditto a fish eye.
3. Memory Cards
I need more to be safe!
4. Filter

I tend not to use anything more than a filter to protect the lens. How often is it so bright in the UK. But if it is advisory to have one then I’ll do so.
5. Fluid head tripod

Crucial, but who buys one, me or college? There’s also the opton of a steady-cam gimble.
6. Sound Recorder

This is vital. The sound quality we are producing at college is pants. It matters that we can hear the speaker and hear them clearly without background interuptions. Whether this means going the whole hog and having a second system and operator is another matter. I cannot direct, ask questions and hold and monitor the sound via a boom pole can I?
7. Headphones
And then concentrate. Despite already doing the job of three people.
8. External Mic

To go with 6 & 7.
9. And to support it.

10. A disk reflector is a fine idea, but now we need a third or fourth pair of hands surely?

11. Edit Software. I edit on whatever is simplest. I’ve never managed with anything fancy. iMovies has been my starter, so I’ll take a look at Hitfilm Express. There are pros and cons.

12: External Hard Drive
Despite all the above I had a former editor/videographer showing off what can be done in camera on an iPhone. Beautiful smooth wide shots, dropped into a time line, butt-joined and GVs added even cutting to a single audio track to produce a pro looking cut almost in real time.
Would it be simpler to invest in a better iPhone?
Together. The Rituals, Pleasures & Politics of Cooperation

Ditching Museum of Craft & Design is a gem. Its aesthetics, book choices and cake are amazing. It was worth joining simply to get the discount on all the books I bought.
As a budding local politician negotiating the slippery-slide of collaboration with other parties this is proving insightful. How do we get on as humans when our ideas might differ? How might we get on when our ideas overlap totally and we wish to avoid point-scoring and one up manship?
‘Cooperation is embedded in our genes, but cannot remain stuck in routine behaviour; it needs to be developed and deepened’ writes Richard Sennet in the Preface.
‘Cooperation is a craft.’ He continues, ‘It requires of people the skill and understanding and responding to another in order to act together, but this is a thorny process, full of difficulty and ambiguity and often leading to destructive consequences.’
He defines cooperation as ‘an exchange in which the participants benefit from the encounter’. He goes on to describe three types: cooperation in organise competition; cooperation in rituals spiritual and secular and cooperation that is both informal or formal.
Collusion is not cooperation.
The most important fact about cooperation is that is requires skill. Aristotle defined skill as techne, the technique of making something happen, doing it well.
Modern society, Sennett writes, is ‘de-skilling’ people in practising cooperation.
Sennett considers how the infant develops and learns to cooperate and to read its surroundings. These are life-lessons.
He uses music practice, rehearsal and performance as a metaphor. A talented musician he both played and conducted. He argues that homogeneity is dull.
Cooperation is built from the ground up.
Musicians with good rehearsal skills work forensically , investigating concrete problems.
The good listener detects common ground more in what another person assumes than says.
In everyday conversation, which is less easy to achieve online, ‘bouncing ideas off other people’; is where ‘these verbal balls land may surprise everyone’.
Curiosity figures strongly in empathy.
Life Drawing

A delight to be back with Silvia MacRae Brown at Charleston – only 2 months short of three years since I last attended. And possibly as long since I did any life drawing, though I may have had a few sessions at Sussex Arts Club.
I got through 15 ‘cheap’ sheets and a few more expensive sheets. I enjoy the rapid fire drawings and the exercises, such as drawing with you eyes closed once you have the shape in your head. I had already been taking my glasses off to see and mark shadows before adding detail.
My Mum would be proud. I always hear her tips gently spoken over my shoulder. How to observe. How to make your marks. The importance of keeping everything you do.





Sustainable Transport Lewes
(Response by Jonathan Vernon. Green Party Town Council Candidate, Castle Ward)
Lewes Cycle Planning
Bikes at the Prison Crossroads on the entry to Lewes. 5 Nov.
Leading up to 5 November parked motor vehicles disappear from the streets of Lewes and in the day during the afternoon all motor traffic clears. Imagine a Lewes like that all the year round. Imagine only pedestrians and cycle ways. Perhaps for a planned hour before the marching a parade of cyclists in fancy dress could take place to celebrate the freedom to move around the streets. Perhaps this could lead the way to changes to limit or restrict motor traffic in favour of pedestrians and cyclists.
Here we mean provision for cyclists age 8 to 80, upright on workaday bikes for shopping, going to school and commuting rather than helmeted, brightly clad racing cyclists.
To be successful a ‘Cycle City’, as they have come to be called in the Netherlands, requires a complete and comprehensive network that is both attractive and comfortable. Partial fixes, barriers and signage can just add to the clutter and confusion. Change needs to be more subtle with wider paths, cycle priority and trees as calming measures.
And some societal and cultural shift too is needed, from cafe culture to cycle culture, with shops reclaiming the streets where parking bays have been removed to allow them to create a terrace environment. The town should be one of 5 minute cycle rides, 20 minute walks and regular trains to other towns. It also needs to be a town centre that is attractive to people free of outsized motor vehicles, their noise, pollution and threat.
a) Hard measures (infrastructure: shared space, improved crossings, dedicated cycle paths removal of restrictions on cycling, traffic calming, new shared pedestrian/cycle routes, safe crossing points)
‘Every location is different, and it’s never as simple as copying and pasting their methods’, write Chris & Melissa Bruntlett in ‘Building the Cycling City’.
Lewes has many narrow, twisting streets and lanes, often with significant pinch points. Achieving the desired separation between motor vehicles and cyclists, and between cyclists and pedestrians will only be possible – some of the time, in some places by taking out parking or even reducing two-way traffic to one-way. This is the challenge for Lewes. Cyclists need a comfortable, safe journey the entire way from home to destination, not just here and there.
FThere are measures though:
Enforcement of 20 mph with roundels on the road and signage.
A significant volume of large vehicles in the 20 mph zone is a deterrent to cyclists. Lorries need to do their deliveries before 7:30am, not parking up on the kerb on the High Street throughout the morning from 8:30am. Buses are a problem and a solution. Cyclists and buses should be kept apart.
Traffic can be tamed with traffic calming to make sure it travels at under 20 mph.
If there’s any major difference in speed (anything over 20 mph), then full separation is required with concrete barriers, a grass median, planter boxes, or bollards.
As we know, the 20 mph speed limit is often broke. Living in the Winterbourne too often vehicles using the rat run between Brighton Road and Bell Lane think they can finally pick up speed along Winterbourne Lane which is already home to closely parked parked vehicles.
This ‘rat run’ down Montacute Road, along Barons Down Rd, Delaware Rd and Winterbourne Lane is circumvented in part by cyclists using the path between Delaware Rd and Valley Rd, just as they will use the pedestrian path through Bell Lane to St Pancras Gardens – with good reason. It isn’t only more direct, it also avoids the dangers of the mini roundabout at The Swan Inn and at the weekend the vehicles parked up on the kerb along Southover High Street.
Here, like so often in Lewes, a narrow road, with a narrow footpath, with parking bays and cars parking up over night and through the day on the single yellow lines at weekends and bank holidays, becomes quickly clogged at various points, made far worse when there are multiple double-decker replacement buses from the station trying to get along here too.
There will be similar stories right across Lewes.
Too many vehicles, large and small, pedestrians and cyclists, mixed with residential street parking and deliveries creating an environment that can be unpleasant for pedestrians, let alone cyclists trying to use the road.
Another ‘rat run’ to avoid the frequently jammed High Street is off Nevill Rd, down Prince Edward’s Rd, then dogleg down Park Rd and The Avenue onto the A2029 into the centre of town. Where else is the quality of the environment and safety for cyclists and pedestrians in residential areas being compromised because of the atrocious state of traffic on the High Street?
All opportunities to improve pedestrian as well as cycle access to the centre of town need to be explored, including a foot and cycle bridge from South Street.
Motor vehicles can be banned from overtaking cycles though signage has to be clear and can be difficult to enforce legally.
After this:
Restrictions to casual parking on single yellow line kerbs especially at weekends.
Potentially reduce some street parking to make cycling safer in the already narrow roads.
If feasible limiting access by lorries to hours where cyclists are less prevalent.
The physical size, speed and frequent stopping makes it a problem for cyclists to share the road with buses.
Shared space is a last resort, ideally pedestrians, cyclists and motor vehicles should each have their own routes.
In France there is often a two way cycle lane on one way streets so that cyclists do not have to go the long way round.
Parts of Lewes appear suitable for mixed use where road-markings are removed and pedestrians and slow moving vehicles mixed. However it is often here that faster cyclists need a dedicated lane.
The pedestrian bridge at the Pells to be wide enough for cyclists and a second pedestrian and cycle bridge from South street across the Ouse.
Better, bolder end to end cycle parking where it is most needed. Close to amenities.
The Dutch model is for cycle tracks that are paved with an easily identified inch-thick top coat of dyed red asphalt. It’s everywhere throughout the Netherlands — you know when you’re on a cycle track. But does Lewes have the space for this? Not without restricting parking and two-way flow of traffic.
On busier roads the cycle ways need to be completely separated – anywhere the speed of motor-vehicles is over 20 mph.
The Dutch have taken the concept of the protected bike lane and carried it through the intersection. More often than not, there is physical protection on the corners where there’s cars turning right or left. There’s are often mid-block protection provided as well, so that you don’t feel exposed. The raised cycle track is also carried through the intersection. Through design, they’ve made the cycle track a priority — visually and physically. (John Parking, Designing for Cycle Traffic).
To achieve this at junctions in Lewes significant investment, even compulsory purchase orders would be required to remove walls, even buildings. This is unrealistic, therefore restricting speeds, and restricting access by certain kinds of larger vehicles is required.
Creation of clearer routes to Priory School so students can feel they can cycle from the key residential areas.
Give way junctions, roundabouts, signals and crossings all need thought.
b) Soft measures (promotion of cycling and education, driver education)
Parental support for children learning to cycle with group based support.
Have spaces where children can learn to cycle safely.
Promoting cycling in schools.
The concept of cycling starts getting introduced to a lot of kids in preschool. They’ll run around on these push bikes. But the biggest education — while it’s not mandatory throughout the country, it’s done by most schools — is students around grade four or five, in the 10 and 11 age range, start taking cycling skills courses.
Between the ages of 11 and 12 they have to take a written exam to show that they understand the rules of the road. They also do a practical exam. So, every year, dozens or hundreds of Dutch students go out onto the street and travel on their routes to get to school, on a designated pathway. The Fietsersbond, which is their national cycling advocacy group, puts the kids right in real life situations, navigating their streets, knowing when to turn, how to signal, where to stop. (John Parkin, Designing for Cycle Traffic).
Known for closing the centre of town temporarily for marches could this be done to celebrate cycling and have a cycle route circuit.
PR and Social Media Campaign, and online education.
Initiatives such as ‘Car Free Sunday’, even ‘Car Free Sunday Mornings’ would be a start.
Also ideas promoted such as ‘Bike to Shop Day’, ‘Bike to School Day’ and ‘Bike to Work Day’.
c) Current reality – speeding traffic (above 20mph), increase in vehicles using Lewes as a through route and increases in traffic from new developments in town, inappropriate and dangerous parking and close passing often result in dangers to cyclists (and pedestrians)
This reality needs to be tackled firmly. Only at 20mph or less does it feel safe for cyclists to share the road. Though this doesn’t feel any safer where there are a lot of larger vans, lorries and buses. The real need is for a Rapid Transit System linking up Lewes and Ringmer to Brighton. ‘Cars parked here will be removed’ is a sign I have come across that needs to be used around Lewes.
All roads that are one way for motor vehicle traffic should be two way for cyclists.
d) Perceptions that roads are unsafe is one of the main barriers to cycling
The perceptions are real. Unfortunately Lewes suffers from too much traffic, including large vehicles and narrow streets made worse for dual used because of parking provision. Do away with all street parking and a cycle lane could go in – but that would surely prove unpopular and impossible to enact. The incessant replacement bus services has double decker buses forever on Southover High Street and Bell Lane. Vehicles of this size, like the vast freight lorries that sometimes end up in the wrong place, are unsuitable for Lewes Roads.
Convenient, easy and attractive cycleways from somewhere to somewhere – not tokenism. They must be relevant to real travel needs. From homes to schools, to stations, bus stops, shops, the Leisure Centre, Pells Pool and cinema.
With secure parking and signage.
e) Would you campaign for greater investment in cycling to ensure that 10% of the transport budget was spent on cycling?
It has required ‘courageous political leadership’ elsewhere to overturn urban planning of the 60s and 70s and since that has favoured the motorcar. Lewes was saved from having its centre carved out to make way for a wider through road down the High Street. Even the bypass is a comprise too close to town that blights us with noise pollution. Something has to be done to reduce single occupant vehicle use clogging the streets, not least the vehicles coming in to the ESCC buildings as well as measures to dissuade so many parents from driving their children to our local schools that are a short cycle or walk away.
Include pedestrians as well as cycling as two valuable alternatives to the motor vehicle which both ideally requiring separate paths and cycle ways.
f) How would you support the building and maintenance of dedicated cycle infrastructure, reallocate space, redesign of existing road and paths suitable for cyclists of all ages and abilities.
This is a very tall order for Lewes. We are not designing on a flat greenfield site. The challenges in Lewes are considerable because of its history and infrastructure and too much planning in the 1960s and since that put the motor vehicle first.
Getting the volume of traffic down is key, and getting fewer large vehicles too when cyclists want to be out. Seeing the ESCC move to Polegate might reduce incoming traffic to an in town car park … or site this on the edge of town and have a park and walk/cycle scheme at both ends of town.
g) What local action would you support?
The issues with motor vehicles are multifarious : speeds, pollution, volume, size, parking …
Dutch experience: We make a differentiation between the hunched-and-helmeted cyclist and the upright, bare-headed cyclist. Upright, everyday cycling, a form of walking-with-wheels, is far more broad, inclusive, accessible, and appealing to people of all ages and fitness levels. It isn’t just about getting from A to B as quickly as possible, it’s about enjoying the ride.
h) How should the Councils use the experience of cyclists when designing cycle facilities?
The behaviours of cyclists even where they are ignoring restrictions, like pedestrians taking shortcuts indicate a potential solution to a problem rather than something to police and punish.
There are lessons to be learnt from around the UK, but also in Denmark and the Netherlands. New housing and work spaces need to be designed with pedestrians and cycle use prioritized over the motor vehicle.
As well as cyclists, we need to talk to pedestrians as those on foot, on bikes or in motor vehicles need to be given separate provision and as often as possible kept apart.
Further Reading
Presenting Planet EStream to Trainee Teachers
I recently took a class of 12 PGCE Level Two Teacher Trainees on a tour of Planet eStream.
It was a class on elearning tools, so they got some mind mapping with SimpleMinds, the 360 tour creator ThingLink and WordPress blogging too. They were jsut as insterested in these so more sessions are needed.
Becoming a champion for this TV, Video, multi-media educational platform I found I could introduce, demonstrate, elaborate, answer problems and queries and even get them signed in. The hope is to achieve the same with current tutors and educators so that the amount of elearning were provide increases greatly.
A number of things have got me here:
- Having the time to push the boundaries of the different parts of the Planet eStream platform with close to authentic learning challenges, rather than some random ‘giving it a go’.
- Having colleagues and friendly teachers to practice on in small groups until I was ready for something bigger.
- Taking ownership of the class. Therefore having my own ‘session plan’ and the means to follow this.
There is a lot to get through simply to promote the variety of things the platform can do to support teaching, in particular to create a ‘flipped classroom’.
I began with a story. How I got out of corporate training and information films and started at a web agency trying and failing to get broadcast TV content online for Ragdoll.
Finding out what subjects the trainee teachers would be teaching I also wondered where they saw themselves on this spectrum and explained a little about ‘Diffusion of Innovation Theory’ in relation to constant change and attitudes to new technology, software, applications and upgrades and how this manifests itself in the classroom as people who embrace the new and others who reject it all.
I like these simple, bold images, charts or mindmaps to cue an item I want to talk about. In the shorter lesson I skipped much of my introduction and this and got straight into Planet eStream. I think it works better with the context.
The demos I have created included taking an episode of Sheldon, lifting out the long commercial break in the middle and ‘topping and tailing’ either end. I then ‘cut’ it into 7 ‘chapters’ that isolated Sheldon’s story from the other characters. Each ‘sketch’ runs for less than a minute. I find these micro-experiences are ideal tasters rather than dissecting a 48 minute Horizon documentary.
I also used a less than 2 minute long clip from a 1981 edition of Tomorrow’s World where the Carry On comedian Kenneth Williams presented. Once again, the demonstration is short and memorable. I ought to find others for a younger audience. Does Oli Murs do a demonstration? What about a clip from Blue Peter 2019?
Other examples of how Planet eStream works included ‘grabbing’ the radio series ‘The Secret History of a School’ in ten parts. each under 15 minutes. Here I created an added a suitable ‘Thumbnail’ for each episode to distinguish each visually.
What I could not do in either session. This we need a morning, afternoon or evening workshop, was to do something in real time, not just find a programme or upload from YouTube, but then edit this piece, create a playlist or make an interactive quiz. These are all straightforward to learn skills.
I’m writing this is part of my habitual reflection. Just as I kept a diary here almost every day of my MAODE plus the two further modules that I did, I have now kept a diary for most working days of the 12 months I have been here are GB MET.
Taking these classes I finally feel a ‘change career’ I began in 2000 is going in the right direction. Back then it was from corporate training and information films to online. Then with my MAODE 2010 to 2013 it temporarily went into tertiary education with the OU but in a communications rather than a learning role. Since then there has been more corporate e-learning, even a further history degree and a digital editor’s role, but it is this., however modest, like a private in the army, like a private in the Labour Corps even, I am working with students and teachers.
Sitting in a class assessing where technology has a role is interesting too. More on this in my next post.