Adventures in Teaching and Learning

I have been using Twitter to try to find some new resources that could help my students revise. I’ll need to make a revision post on my school blog later, but let’s concentrate here first!

First of all, I could make – or ask my students to make – a video … perhaps a conversation between two people with different points of view discussing one of the evaluation statements that crop up all the time in their exam papers? But, videos so often seem to take so much time … Well, fear not, because my good friend Victoria on Geogtastic has pointed me in the direction of Xtranormal. Their tagline – if you can type, you can make movies. And it’s true. Check it out. (Although I have had some difficulties recently making movies. Not sure if it’s them or me. Hope it fixes itself soon. It is in Beta, so maybe I ought to drop them a line.)

On the other hand, some of our students really like revision cards, and some enjoy trading cards. So how about they make their own trading revision cards? BigHugeLabs have such a trading card maker. And results can then be shared on Flickr, or elsewhere, or printed out to be used as revision cards.

Finally, for now, a new YouTube type site, where you can make your own school based site. The privacy levels on Fliggo can, I think, be made stronger than those on YouTube – for example, you can moderate comments before they are posted. You can visit my new STM RE Fliggo site here. I presume I can upload any relevant video here, not only my own? Would be a good place to store all the useful and relevant videos I find in such places as TrueTube and GodTube. I think. If that’s allowed. Any advice?

And now, over to you. What one piece of advice would you give a GCSE student that would help them with their revision? Thank you!

I can hardly believe it has been over a month since I last blogged! It has certainly been a very busy time, both at work and at home.

However, over the past week I have come across two websites that I think will be useful for my students, so I thought I would share them here as well.

The first is a faith-based website, YFaith, aimed at young Catholic Christians aged 10-13, although open and useful to anyone. As an RE teacher in a Catholic school, this is a site that I will be directing my Key Stage 3 students to. This is a new site, based in the UK, and they have attempted to make the site interactive and safe. Therefore there are many opportunities for young people to vote on different issues, and they can upload their own questions and comments, which are moderated first before uploading. There is no need for students to use their email addresses or to reveal any information about themselves.

The second is the GCSEPod website. This site has a number of revision podcasts that can be downloaded and listened to on mp3 players. There is a small charge per unit, and the hope for the creators is that parents and grandparents might want to buy podcasts for their (grand)children to help them with their revision. So far there are podcasts for English Language, Geography, History and Religious Studies, with more to follow. GCSEPod are looking for more writers for this series, so perhaps you would like to be involved.

Finally, I have just seen a clip of David Cameron talking in Parliament, shouting about Haringey’s Children and Young People’s Services: “They have done nothing to help failing schools in Haringey.” I would first of all like to point out that the views expressed in my blog are 100% my own, and do not necessarily reflect the views of my employer (although I would hope that they are normally not that dissimilar!). I am proud to work in a school that has been recognised as being “Good” by Ofsted. And I am aware that is partly because of the support we, and other schools, have received from Sharon Shoesmith and her department. As Alex Atherton has been quoted as saying, there “are no schools in special measures in Haringey.” Whatever has happened with the social services side of the CYPS, I feel angry that David Cameron has chosen to make the statement I have quoted above. This seems to be a soundbite rather than evidence of any investigation he has done into our local school situation. The CPD for teachers in Haringey has been second to none.

Just have to “big up” another website that I’ve just found – Bling My Grade. This site has some excellent downloadable revision notes in the style of 50 Cent, Andre 3000 and other hip hop artists. Very funny! Wish I’d heard of it before the exams. Hope it will still be there next year! Mean, Mode and Median has never been so cool before … With thanks to Terry Freedman’s free Web 2.0 book, which I found because I follow Terry on Twitter. Isn’t the internet useful!

Get a Voki now!

The new TTP group meet on Tuesday; I have the privilege of hosting a session on Web 2.0, involving pedagogy and practical application. So today I have been trying to think of uses for a variety of Web 2.0 applications, hence the large number of posts! I think it’s about time to pull some of those ideas together.

Voki
I enjoy adding vokis onto my blogs to liven them up a bit and add sound. It’s a humorous way of engaging the students as well, and for students who find reading a bit more difficult, then Voki instructions may be a bit easier to follow. If students have access to computers, then I think Vokis work well especially in MFL, where students can record short paragraphs in the target language: this could then be used for peer and self assessment purposes. The main difficulty I have with Voki is that they are not downloadable, so they can only be shown when hosted on a browser somewhere and cannot be inserted into powerpoint presentations. (If they can, and I’m missing something, please let me know!) Of course, CrazyTalk can be used to similar effect, but with a little more effort.

If you have used Voki successfully as a teaching and learning tool, please drop me a line to let me know!

VoiceThread
This seems like a good way to encourage students to listen to one another and to respond to one another. A VoiceThread can be used to gather a variety of opinions and ideas, which can be shared or kept private (In this case, you would need to make accounts for all students, and add them all as your friends on the VoiceThread that you wanted them to watch/listen/comment on. They can also be moderated.) I have seen some good examples, eg “This picture makes me think …”, Students reading out poems that they have written in response to a visual stimulus, students using the doodle tool to demonstrate what they think will happen next in an experiment (actually, I haven’t seen that, but I think it could be a good idea … if you moderate the comments, then keep them all hidden until you have received everyone’s comments) … I’m sure there are many more.

What ideas do you have for how you could use VoiceThread in your subject? If you have already used it, could you add a link in the comments box so we can see it and be inspired?

Slideshare
An easy way to share presentations. I have made a very basic one with the most basic key points for my GCSE students to support their last minute revision, and another one with pictures to illustrate Pentecost, which I will use in my lessons next week. The other side, of course, is that there are many interesting presentations out there, that can either inform us as educators, or can be used by us in the classroom.

Have you a favourite presentation that you found on SlideShare? Or have you uploaded a presentation made by your students that could inspire us?

YouTube, TeacherTube, GodTube, TED, GoogleVideo, Teachers’ TV
I am sure there are other video sharing websites out there, these are just some of the most common, or ones that I have found recently. Videos can be a great starter for lessons, and there are some great educational clips out there, as well as lots of funny clips that can begin discussion. Just be careful though – I showed a clip of Mel Brookes as Moses, dropping one of the tablets on which were written the Fifteen – well, now Ten – Commandments in order to start thinking about the Decalogue with my class, and quite a few of them assumed that there really were originally fifteen … ! I have also used the Honda Cogs clip to illustrate the concept of causation. Of course, the next stage is then making your own videos to upload and share with others. For a trial, I made a video using OneTrueMedia, and uploaded that to YouTube. It’s not great, but at least it shows it can be done! I am also a member of the RE Group on YouTube.

How have you used YouTube or another video site during a lesson? Why do you think showing short video clips can be such a good learning tool?

Well, there are hundreds of other sites, and it’s getting late and I have other things to do, so that will have to do for now. I do hope that some of you who read this will leave a comment suggesting ways in which these, and other Web 2.0 applications, can be used effectively in the classroom to enhance teaching and learning.

Today I am sharing with you my podbean account. I have recorded a few episodes that my GCSE auditory learners can download and listen to, rather than reading the Revision Guide. I’ve linked the podbean site to my GCSE blog, so the episodes do not use up lots of room on my blog.

It will be interesting to see how many of my students decide to take advantage of these audible revision aids. I might include one as a voki on my site to encourage them to see what’s available as well … If anyone else is teaching Edexcel Catholic Christianity, feel free to use them too.

NOTE: I’ve since discovered Amy’s GeographyRocks podbean account, which has some great student interviews about migration! An excellent example of how podcasting can be used with students to share ideas.

Wow! I had my Mediator training last night, and to be honest, I didn’t sign up for it the first time, but I’m glad I did, because it’s great! I was up until after midnight last night trying to produce some nifty pictures that when you hover over them other images and text appear. Was looking forward to showing my class this morning as the starter and plenary.

Unfortunately, the disk I made last night did not automatically run when I put it in the DVD drive! What did I do wrong? Judy, any pointers? And should it also work on a Mac? Because it didn’t work on my husband’s last night …

Looking forward to getting these glitches ironed out, because I can see lots of potential for Mediator!

That’s annoying. I was almost finished this post when the computer crashed. Nevermind. Here are today’s “episodes”: an mp3 and a .m4a enhanced podcast about Virtue Ethics, for my AS class. Hope you can access the enhanced version okay … I spent ages doing some of the screenshots. Then realised they were too big so you can’t read them all.
virtue_ethics.m4a

virtue_ethics.mp3

For my GCSE classes. Keynotes presentation, exported to quicktime, using pictures drawn on DigiMemo and coloured using PhotShop Elements.Parable presentation (parable_sheep_goats.mov)

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

Last night, I was kept awake until an obscene time in the morning, playing around on OpenMind on the PC side of the MacBook. I’ve made mindmaps for almost every topic my AS group has to cover … and I’ve also started a mindmap to plan my Literature Review, a mindmap to help out cover teachers who have to take my classes when I’m away on training, a mindmap of my husband’s book … there is such a variety already there, and it’s so easy to start from scratch, and to make timelines of important people and events, and to plan essays etc … This is a program that I think my students would find really useful. In order to complete each mindmap, I was scurrying around in the books, looking for info to add, which was excellent revision (and, in some cases, preparation) for me, so I’m sure it would be for my students too. If you’ve not found it yet, go and have a look! Hours of fun! (And I’ve not even started adding pictures, videos and other files to it yet!) One of the things I did that I thought might be helpful, before I finally decided that I ought to go to bed, was adding a list of key words, with the definitions in a separate text box. You have to click on the word to see the definition, so that would be good for revision. Must find out if this program is available on the school computers … would it be very expensive for the school to install if not?