Adventures in Teaching and Learning

My Year 11s have been producing revision cards for each topic in preparation for the exam. So, today, I plugged in my DigiMemo, managed to get the screen onto the IWB (eventually, with a bit of help from my friends, and a surprisingly and disappointedly lack of help from my Year 11s!) … and used it effectively to write out notes, sitting calmly facing my class, and managing to have discussions at the same time. A few pupils had to go to English coursework lessons, or arrived late, or were not there … I will upload my notes either here, on my school blog, or on the school topics file, and pupils will be able to download the notes that they have missed.

I would agree that it’s a bit “chalk’n'talk” still, as discussed yesterday, but it was going to be that anyway to an extent, and this was much more civilised, and the notes are saved (and were more readable).

In one of my year 10 lessons, a pupil has just arrived back who has been off for a while with a problem with her arm. If I get another pupil to take notes yesterday while leaning on the DigiMemo, then the pupil who can’t write will still get notes …

The admin side of the DigiMemo seems great at the moment! I do look forward to using it in more interactive ways too!

Will, the answer to the meaning of the question was no – I wasn’t able to attach my file. Hmmm. Any help appreciated …. However, it was really easy and fun to make a straightforward presentation – I’m not surprised people fall in love with it!

Must get some sleep now! It’s been a great two days – but very tiring!

Well, I once again arrived far too early. However, that meant I had the opportunity to log on to Skype and make my first phone call! Last night I wrote out a blog entry on DigiMemo – will upload later. Have to go and record Ruth now!

I’m now back home, so hopefully I’ll find it a bit easier to reflect on all of today’s activities.

First of all, I’ve enjoyed chatting to quite a few people today – it’s good to be able to put faces to the names of people whose blogs I’ve looked at or whose names I’ve seen on the list. We’re obviously quite a mix of people from a wide variety of subject backgrounds and with a range of experiences in teaching and in ICT, which is great. It’s been nice to be able to help some people out with things, and I’ve appreciated help from people with some of the things that have been bothering me, or that I couldn’t do.

I found it very frustrating not to simply be able to go on to my blog, or to Fronter, and quickly upload all the stuff I have on my computer that I’ve produced and would like to be able to share. It’s understandable when you have loads of people logging on to the wireless connection at once that things are going to be slow, but I was surprised at just how frustrating I was finding it! Probably didn’t help that I am still feeling guilty at not having managed to complete my reports yet. Must be emailed to a colleague tonight, so that’s what I’ll be doing after this!

Flickr. I wasn’t in the session that covered Flickr, but I hope that now more people know how to access it I’ll have more friends on there! If you haven’t become my Friend yet, please invite me … you can access my profile from one of my photos on my blog, then send an invite from that page. You will also have access to the profiles of my friends, whom I think at the moment consist of Judy, Tessa, Claire and John. At least, I think that’s how it works!

One of the things I am really interested in will (I hope) be on the agenda for tomorrow – using blogs with pupils. Which leads me onto another reflection – I hope that now there has been some more input on blogging, more of you on the programme will be posting more … I look forward to visiting other blogs and seeing what other people are getting up to, so I can be inspired by your great ideas! Personally, the communication aspect of this course, the whole idea of Web 2.0 and Personalised Learning using forums, blogs etc, is one of the parts of the course that interests me the most. You might have realised that I love talking, whether in “real life” or on the web … I love reading and gaining fresh insights from others too! Communication, communication, communication.

I have picked up a few new ideas from the audio and OpenMind sessions. Some of it was frustrating, because I’ve already experimented quite a bit, but there’s always something new to learn, for example, how to add pictures to a podcast episode (or whatever I should call them!), and how to add extra information to an OpenMind document.

However, OpenMind did raise one of the most frustrating features for me … the fact it’s so annoyingly difficult (not hard, inconvenient more than anything) to move from Mac to PC. All those lovely ComicLife documents, Keynote presentations, GarageBand podcasts, elusively hiding on Mac, when I want to upload them onto OpenMind! It’s such a faff to be restarting the computer, memory stick in hand, saving, restarting etc.

Still loads of possibilities, though, and I’m really looking forward to the pedagogical side of the learning tomorrow.

I still want to write about the dinner … but I’ve just spent two hours being frustrated because the internet connection has been dead slow and stop. Aargh. Anyway, here I am now – but not on my laptop, so I still can’t upload files at the moment! Maybe tomorrow …

 Right. Dinner. It was delicious. I started with the Thai Duck with Chilli noodles, which I found to be full of flavour. Quite spicy, but not too much, and I really liked the ‘gravy’ that came off the duck. Then I had the Seabass (yum!) with boiled potatoes and cracked salt (or something – quite nice anyway!) and salad (rocket?). Delicious. Finally, a tasty dessert of chocolate mousse with ammmmmmmmmmoretti biscuits and a creamy vanilla topping thing. Very rich, very divine. Clean plates all round … didn’t quite lick my plate although it was tempting!

 The talks were also very interesting, and I enjoyed talking to the lady from the GTC, Pam Raven, who is involved in research. We had a good chat about AfL on the way home.

 All in all, it’s great to be able to chat with other teachers and educators about learning. And here we are today … right, I’m up to date. Does anyone have any photos of last night’s dinner on Flickr that I could blog?!

I haven’t managed to write about the dinner yesterday so I’ve had a few comments about that! At the moment I’m learning about OpenMind, so it’s a bit cheeky to be blogging, so I’m going to stop now and listen more carefully to Judy! More about the dinner later!

IMG_0448

Originally uploaded by skambalu.

What a beautiful day for the marathon. Although I wouldn’t have like to have been running in it! Were any of you running in it?

I’m going to add some files below (hopefully!) – these are my four most recent podcasts. During a recent assessment, I told off a pupil for listening to his iPod … “You could have the answers on there, you know!” As he left at the end of the lesson, he made a joking comment to his friend about me saying he might have the answers on his iPod, which was obviously ridiculous … and I suddenly thought – GCSE podcasts! I asked a couple if they would listen to them, and since they said they might do, I’ve started by recording the key words, so pupils can listen to them on repeat until they’ve learnt them all!
C1 Key Words
C2 Key Words
C3 Key Words
C4 Key Words

Samson, my husband, loves my new DigiMemo … he thinks it’s the best piece of equipment I’ve been given on this programme. First of all I showed him the clipboard and pen … he was trying to work out what was special about it. So I plugged it in … the first results were great, I had written out three pages of planning notes for my Year 8 lesson, and they showed up really clearly. Mostly transferred correctly too (although I’m still working on the best way of doing that … text only, or text and graphics? Not sure yet, I think it depends on the circumstances). But the real thrill was when I started writing on the paper while the DigiMemo was plugged in, and the writing goes straight to the screen. I then started drawing a picture … and he was hooked! We sketched for a bit, saving the results (some of which I’ll try and upload at some point) – and then I changed the background to a picture of a philosopher. I took a blank piece of paper, and, watching the screen, began to draw round the outline. Samson pointed out the darker wrinkles, saying things like “Make sure you add those” – I was more aware of light and dark. Then, when I looked at my paper … I had a not bad sketch of AJ Ayers! I then took away the background … and had a sketch on the computer of Ayers! I can see great uses in Art for this. So can Samson … I think I’ll need to keep it under lock and key!

I’ve now been trained in the use of – and have – a Digimemo! How exciting … to be able to write on the pad and see the writing come up on the screen straightaway, to be able to download immediately what you’ve written, and even to turn it into a Word document, to be able to draw pictures or diagrams and have those saved as jpgs, to even take the lightweight DigiMemo away with you (Mike is planning on using them on field trips) instead of a laptop and upload all your notes later … what potential! I am heartily looking forward to trying this out … Those pupils I have mentioned the DigiMemo to have also all sounded really interested in it. Watch this space!