Adventures in Teaching and Learning

I just found this interesting article on the REEP website – it’s about the Origins of Music with an RE theme, which I thought looked interesting enough to share! I found it while adding websites to my Useful Websites page on my STM RE Hub blog. (If anyone knows of any great RE related websites suitable for my students to use, please add them to the comments box! Thanks!)

I’m delighted to share Janet’s new French department blog with you. She will also be using it as a place to upload homework and host competitions in her new French department at Portland Place School. I will be watching with interest to see how the pupils at her school interact with her new blog.

If I’m not on the internet, then I’m very often to be found curled up with a good book. Normally these are in the fiction genre, but since I’ve been writing my Literature Review over the past few months, they can sometimes be educational too. So I was very interested to see the Teachers’ TV vote on Great Books, which as far as I can see mainly come under the educational category, although not entirely – so far I’ve also noticed Fantastic Mr Fox and Hard Times. I need to now go back and read through the list in more detail. What are your favourite books, educational or entertaining?

Knowledge is knowing a tomato is a fruit. Wisdom is not putting it in a fruit salad.

You’ve probably heard it before; I heard it again on “Take on the Takeaway” this evening. But it made me smile, so I thought I’d share it! Also made me think – knowledge is knowing how to use ICT, wisdom is using it to improve learning and teaching …

I am still trying to plug the Scottish Learning Festival which ended today – I listened to a couple of their podcasts this evening, which were quite interesting. There are a lot of examples of Scottish educational terminology – I always think it’s nice to have an idea of what teachers are doing in other countries so we can share good practice. Also on the Learning and Teaching Scotland website are some videos of the speeches and interviews from the conference. I’ve linked to Mick Waters, who talks about sharing good practice between Scottish and English teachers. I’m all for it.

I think this is the new name for the course run by Haringey PDC. I was asked by Jane Blakely to share the results of my research on using visuals and oracy strategies to improve written work with EAL students, as an example of the sort of projects prospective participants could partake in (sorry, couldn’t resist that final p!). It was good to see so many teachers there, interested in taking advantage of the excellent CPD offered by the PDC (maybe I should do a post on acronyms in education …). Ian Terrell of Middlesex University and the Midwheb Partnership was also there, to explain how teachers following the course can easily get a certificate or work towards getting their Masters (which reminds me, my dissertation is due in about 5 weeks or so …). It’s always nice to see familiar faces!

I have also found this link to the Haringey SACRE, which I am also involved with.

And, just in case anyone from the Scottish Learning Festival 2007 is passing by – hope you are all having a great time and are being inspired! I look forward to finding some time to sit down and have a look at all the downloads and updates!

Oh, and finally … I used the Honda advert (the one with the small cog that knocks against a bigger cog that starts a whole chain reaction that ends up with the car moving off a plinth) as a starter for looking at the Causation Argument with my Year 11s today. It went down well, and is an example of how having an IWB and internet access can be really useful – the advert is just a couple of minutes long and there are lots of questions you can ask about it. This evening I saw the new Ford advert, “Wouldn’t it be a shame if birds never used their wings”, which will be an ideal Year 9 starter to review last lesson’s work on Vocation: Taking Flight and Taking a Risk. What other adverts have people used to effectively stimulate discussion on the topic for the day?

Very exciting news to share with you all – Teachers’ TV has been in touch and are wanting to record a programme featuring one of my classes and the Transformation Teachers’ Programme! I do now feel as if I have to start updating my blog again a bit more!

How is everyone else getting on? I think I better go visiting and leave a few messages!

That reminds me – Claire did an excellent piece of work on Holst’s Planet Suite using CrazyTalk and MovieMaker – hopefully she’ll put a review of how it went down with her class on her blog.

SCOTLAND V FRANCE EURO 08 JAMES MCFADDEN GOAL

I’ve found it! Quite like this slightly twee, sentimental and nostalgic compilation, so thought I’d share it with you all! (By the way, congrats to England too, who beat Russia the same day.)

(Strange – it didn’t work when I tried to post it from youtube …)

18/9 – Well, the inputs didn’t work … any suggestions? … but to see it, go to youtube and insert the title above!

Emm … I’ve just seen it on TV and wow, it was great! Yes, I’m obviously talking about that Scottish victory last night against France. I’ve been trying to find it on YouTube, but with no success so far – fortunately I turned to the TV at just the right moment to see the ball sail from McFadden’s foot to the back of the net over quite a distance. The Independent’s report is here.

While we’re talking about Scotland, I think that’s a good time to remind any readers about the Scottish Learning Festival 2007 which takes place from 19-20 September at the SECC in Glasgow. There will be lots of info – including blogs and podcasts – on their websites, and there will be updates on Facebook as well. Wish I could be there! I expect it will be really inspirational. And I am sure that, as always, Ewan McIntosh will add pithy comments on his enjoyable blog.

Now, let me get back to finding that goal …

Well, I’ve been on the internet for less than a week – and unfortunately I can only access it using Internet Explorer on the PC side – and I’ve just discovered that I have a virus: Mal/Psyme-A has been detected in 3 documents in my temporary internet files folder. So, I’ve run the Sophos Anti-Virus Scan, which says it has found one threat which has been quarantined. I tried to use the “clean up” function, but apparently I have “Insufficient rights. Please contact your administrator.” So, what should I do?! Any suggestions – Judy, Chris? Anyone else?

Other than that, we bought a new printer today and I have installed it on both sides, so can now print things out from my computer! Once I can access the internet using Safari or Mozilla, everything will be beautiful! Hope you all have a great week!

We’re back … I have shared my Year 7 blog with one of my Year 7 classes – I have put their first piece of homework on there. Some seemed quite pleased to know that they could find a reminder of their work on the internet. Let’s hope it all gets completed!

However, I have yet to figure out how to go about completing my TTP research. How is everyone else getting on?

Also, I now have wireless, but can only access it using Internet Explorer on my PC side. Any ideas how I can use Safari or Mozilla on the Mac side? Thanks!