Nov 30 2008
It’s the beginning of Advent, so I have just spent the past couple of hours researching Advent wreaths, calendars and Jesse Trees to share with my classes at school. I am not going to type them all out again, instead, here are the links to the relevant posts on my RE hub blog:
Please do let me know if you find any of these links useful, and if you know of any other good sites that I can add, that would be brilliant!
Have a very happy Advent!
Sep 19 2007
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?
May 04 2007
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!
Apr 04 2007
I had a revision session today, so I decided to try a few things out back at school. Unfortunately Flickr is still not allowed, neither are other blog sites, including my school blog, although edublogs are allowed. My classroom computer is presently not attached to the internet, for some annoying reason.
I took some photos and videos of me teaching, pupils working, and them giving me evaluative feedback. It’s all confidential, for my Masters research, so no one will be able to see it, but I am planning on transcribing some of the comments so it’s been really useful having the video on the camera.
When my AS students arrived, they were suitably impressed by my iMovie, and all wanted a copy. So I learnt how to bluetooth from my computer, with help from my students! Unfortunately they couldn’t watch it straight away, because “it’s saved for iTunes”, but they were non-plussed by that and said they’d bluetooth it to their computers and upload it (or something!) onto iTunes in order to watch it. I hope it works! We also then had an interesting Utilitarianism-based discussion on the usefulness of bringing mobile phones into schools … which option would bring the greatest amount of pleasure to the greatest number of people? Allowing mobiles or not allowing them? My pupils felt that there might be an abuse, with more pupils using their phones in class, but I still feel that if pupils were “trained” in how to use their mobiles sensibly and politely, then it shouldn’t cause too many more difficulties than they do now.
The mature students that my AS class are, felt that perhaps CrazyTalk would be too “fun” for my Year 7s … I don’t think they were too convinced that fun could be educational, too! However, they were interested in the idea of the DigiMemos, although they wanted to know if everyone would get one.
One final point … when I attached my MacBook to the IWB, the image (screen size? resolution?) changed … when I tried changing it to make it look more “normal”, the image disappeared from the IWB. Can anyone tell me what resolution/screen size I should choose on the Display option? Thanks.
