Adventures in Teaching and Learning

It’s great, having a variety of pieces of equipment nearby. My last lesson of the week was with a Year 8 class that I only see once a week. Unfortunately, the ICT rooms are all full that period, and I don’t want them to miss out. Fortunately, they seem to be quite a nice group. So, I made sure I was teaching them in a room with an IWB, prepared a short ppt presentation with lots of big images of well known “modern prophets” (at least I thought they were well known … MLK is recognised immediately, Nelson Mandela is vaguely recognised but his name does not come to the lips quickly, they had no idea who Bono and Bob Geldof were, nor had they heard of Live Aid, although a couple knew the song “Feed the World” and most had heard, vaguely, of the “Make Poverty History” campaign … Mother Theresa was “that woman who helps people” (one knew she lived in India), someone thought they recognised Oscar Romero, no one knew Gustavo Guterriez (which is not surprising, since I only heard of him for the first time last week, and he’s a really important theologian!) and no one recognised Rev Les Isaacs, whom I had located on the internet last night with a search on “gun culture London”, but one girl could describe what Street Pastors do.

Having identified some “prophets”, and worked out some of their “messages”, we set about planning what the message might be for the world today. One group decided to work on “cutting down trees” and another on “stop the shooting”. We then took some photos, and a bit of video, which the pupils can work on next week. I’d quite like to give one group the opportunity to edit their video, and perhaps the other group could use ComicLife or CrazyTalk … but I’ve only one computer and one pair of eyes! This is where having an editing suite might come in useful … Wonder if I could develop it some more? A very nice lesson, anyway – my favourite and best of the week!

Two of my lessons today featured ComicLife worksheets. It’s a different way of using sentence starters and writing frames, and it ensures that you include pictures! (Which obviously support all pupils, especially EAL and SEN pupils.) The files will go on the internet as soon as I can!

I also based my AS lesson on an OpenMind mindmap that I had printed off in colour.

I had practiced setting up the computer last night, so that I could show my Year 7s the Disciples iMovie … but this time, when my barely settled class were there, and I attached the computer to the projector (I had been teaching the previous lesson and hadn’t wanted my computer out) the projector flickered really badly then went off! I had to phone for the technician to help me out, and eventually we got it working again, but it was one of those nightmare experiences that puts people off using computers!

On the more positive side, I’ve given a copy of my ComicLife parables worksheet to the other members of my department, and I think it should be quite useful. Will upload it when I can access the internet from my own MacBook (Friday, maybe?)

At the end of the day, I sat down with my technician for a bit to work out how I can best use my MacBook at school. I think I’ll just live with the display changing a bit … I was still able to view my Keynote presentations and my iMovie, which is the most important thing! I could get sound and vision. The next thing I’ll need to work out is to see if the screen can be interactive again … I don’t know if that comes naturally, or if I need to switch my IWB back “on”.

Tried to show my disciples video, but unfortunately the internet was down at that point during the lesson. I was able to show it at the end of the day, so I’ll try again tomorrow in class.

I’ve planned a ComicLife piece of cover work for when I’m at the DigiMemos training. My husband thinks it looks good, and straightforward, so hopefully the Year 9s will think the same.

I have three new classes, one period a week … I’m going to try and find out if I can book a computer room on a regular basis to carry out an ICT project. A few issues, though, and it could be hard to book one … Watch this space!

I’ve spent the day in the British Library, researching Assessment for Learning as part of my Masters dissertation. It was great having my Mac with me. Not only was it really easy typing up my notes then and there using Pages, but every so often I could use a different part of my brain. I produced a ComicLife work on Holy Week, and then used Pages to produce a Revision Guide for my GCSE class. Well, I began it, anyway. In fact, that revision guide was inspired by something I read in my research, about using a traffic-lights system to colour code how well the pupils know their topics. Then pupils will look through old exam questions, and pick out questions that will test them on the areas that they have coloured red or amber. In small groups, they will then use their GCSE books to research and answer those questions. Finally, they can peer- and/or self-assess using the mark scheme (which they already have stuck in their books). It’s a shame I’m not on my MacBook at the moment, or I could easily copy and paste the reference. Must remember to do that later.

Anyway, a couple of issues came up. At one point, my Pages literature review grid suddenly closed unexpectedly. A notice came up: “Your Pages document has closed unexpectedly.” Yes, I realised that. “Click here to reopen”. Fortunately it all opened up okay, nothing was lots (I had been saving regularly just in case), but it was still a bit of a shock.

Then, later, I was working on a Keynotes presentation to help the AS class revise. I pressed Play to see how the presentation looked … but instead of the smooth presentation I am now getting used to, the screen went black except for the top left hand corner of the presentation, which went through the presentation, only showing part of it, before I clicked on escape and it went back to the main screen. Haven’t tried it since I came home … but a bit strange and worrying.

Finally, on a more positive note, I clicked on the Smart Board tools to see what happened – and I am pleased with what I saw! I especially like the “torch” option, to reveal bits of a picture, so pupils can try and guess what they are seeing! I could have fun with that!

re comic

Originally uploaded by skambalu.

This is my first attempt at using Comic Life to create something – in this case a ‘Welcome to RE” type poster. I’ve also used Adobe Photoshop Elements to change the image of my sixth formers … I hope this is okay as far as privacy is concerned. It seems obvious to me who the pupils are, but hopefully it wouldn’t be to many others! I used Grab to take a photo of this document, which saved it as a .tiff file.

Comic Life

Originally uploaded by T Ware.

This is Tessa’s first attempt at using Comic Life. I think it’s excellent, so have decided to post it here to remind me of how this can be used, and to share it with everyone else on the Transformation Teachers project, so we can all begin sharing photos.

I’ve particularly enjoyed using Comic Life and Photo Booth this evening … but am concerned that I can’t get any sound on crazy talk. All my plans for a talking Jeremy Bentham are going astray!

It’s been fun getting the Mac and getting to fiddle around with a variety of applications. I suppose soon I’ll need to sit down and work out exactly what I want to do as my research. I have three groups in particular that I’m thinking of. For my AS class, I think I will try to create some iMovies for revision purposes. Could be embarrassing though! Ethics is not my strongest area of subject knowledge. Secondly, my Year 7 class has major issues with behaviour … anything that might help to grab their attention away from each other and onto the subject would be great. Finally, my Year 10s … I want to support their exam technique, perhaps using the Digiboards. (Is that what they’re called?)

My other issue is that I can’t connnect to the internet at the moment! I hope I can fix that sooner rather than later … very frustrating to have to swap between two computers all the time eg when using Flickr. Hope I’m not frustrated for too long.

I’m at the CLC learning how to do lots of amazing things on my new MacBook … Very excited and I’m looking forward to trying everything out at home. I’m a bit frustrated, though, at the fact that I can’t access the internet – I hope it works okay at home! Claire has let me use her internet today, though.

We’re just being told about the task for next time. We’ve to try to use as many different software packages as possible and produce something small. Or big. Something.

So … today we’ve learnt about CrazyTalk, ComicLife, Pages, Keynote, GarageBand, Fronter, iMovies, iPhoto … I have recorded some of the talks, and need to work out how to make them into podcasts.

I will blog later to describe some of the things we’ve done.