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“Has the phone gone yet?” We are expecting our regulatory short inspection at any moment. Shiny new signs are up everywhere. All staff are boning up on the contents of the staff handbook. All paperwork is checked and policies have been revisited,reviewed and rewritten. The impending event has distorted the focus of the senior management and (to a somewhat lesser extent) the staff all year. The staff room resembles the year 11 common room before an exam. Some nervous, some feigning nonchalance…..others even testing each other.
Our thoughts and feelings about being assessed echo those of our pupils and we should learn from this.
For us… its a team effort, none of us wants to be the weak link…to let everyone else down.
For them….its individual, but they dont want to dissapoint teachers or waste the (huge) financial investment that their parents have made in their education… to let everyone else down.
For them…the exams are important, measuring them against their peers, shaping the future and determining continued success.
For us…a very small school in competition with many others….the inspection is important for the same reasons.
We will all have (arguably meaningless) hoops to jump through this summer. Both staff and pupils are more afraid of the consequenses of failure than excited by the opportunities of success. Neither test measures the true worth of its subject.
We overvalue assessment and undervalue education…
lets try to not let the testing get in the way of the learning.
I had a visitor yesterday. A mature (still younger than me) would-be primary PGCE student, decided on her new career but anxious about teaching tech and IWBs in particular. I had been asked to spend a lesson showing her how it could be used.
She was very keen, obviously Ict literate and imaginative. She quickly began to understand the whole idea and I was enjoying seeing the light bulbs popping on over her head (hope I never lose that feeling).
We discussed the basic tools, the idea of “digital ink” and some of the software on the system.
After the lady left (hopefully destined for a bright and rewarding future, shaping the formative minds of the next generation) I reflected whilst preparing for yr11 physics.
There has been an obvious revolution in the use of technology in the last ten years. I love my Smartboard, but most of what it does for me is in automating my existing teaching style. It makes MY life easier. The learners get a huge benefit by experiencing slicker, better prepared and presented lessons. But this is a teaching tool. Not a learning tool. Even getting pupils up to present/host content is still one person standing at the front of the class style teaching. Hardly innovative.
Do I use my IWB a lot? …..yes
Do I use it enough?…….no
Am I being imaginative enough to find new ways to use it?…..probably not!
Any ideas, anyone?
“Another weekend, another lake”. I seem to Tweet that phrase a lot but this weekend we were at the seaside. Pwllheli to be more precise. A place I am quite familiar with, having spent many a childhood summer holiday on that stretch of the north Wales coast. This time I saw it in a different light as we arrived to find a frozen dinghy park and snow lying on the beach.
There is something surreal about snow at the seaside. Not the arctic pack ice with polar bears type of snow, that’s normal (as long you’re far enough north) but actual British snow smothering the sand and bladderwrack of a Welsh beach is just plain weird.
When my son was invited to join the Optimist Development squad and the winter training dates were published, it was this weekend, the cold, wet, windy, third weekend in Pwllheli one that I wasn’t looking forward to. Its a long drive, Its the proper middle of winter, Its Pwllheli. The usual “rigged, and not changed for 9:30″ meant a very early start and I was having seriously second thoughts when the blizzard slowed us to a crawl over the mountains at dawn. It would only have taken the slightest sign of reticence from my son to give me an excuse to turn back.
I am so glad that we didn’t, because the weekend turned out to be very rewarding for both of us. He will never forget pushing his boat out from a snow covered beach into the surf. I got another timely reminder of the benefits of his sailing experiences when the squad arrived back at the beach laughing and shouting after a four and a half hour session offshore, working on tactics and strategy.
For the last 9 months or so I have been using a NING private social network to support my GCSE physics teaching.
I created Dodderhill Physicslab as an experiment and have posted a few notes previously here and here.
Now that the initial excitement of using “facebook for physics” as one pupil calls it, has died down. I have taken the time to try to gather some thoughts on the experience. Here goes:
How I use it
I have the website up on the board at the start of most lessons. It serves as a focus for the subject and quickly highlights any new content added by pupils or myself. The RSS feed from New Scientist can often seed useful class discussions and also keeps me informed of latest headlines. I’m not sure that I’d get around to it otherwise so this is an easy way to keep current.
I am extremely disorganised and having one place to put all my resources helps me to appear less so. Notes and content are gradually migrating there as I get round to teaching each topic. Videos and online resources are easy to embed and then find in class. (and anywhere else you might want them).
It is easy and rewarding to showcase content produced by pupils. I set homework where pupils are required to find a relevant resource for a specific topic and present it to the class. The website makes it easy to preview and filter the information. It is then available for revision and for the next year’s class.
How the pupils use it
After an initial flurry of activity, pimping their own pages etc. there was a remarkable variation in individual pupils’ use of the site. Most were happy to use it for the homework and posted opinions and work as directed. Many used it for revision and to find missing notes etc. For some it is a definite prop. Those who, like me, find it a more comfortable way of organising themselves than paper and a ring binder.
A few pupils have used it to exchange ideas and explain things to each other but this kind of activity has been minimal. They are more comfortable using their existing social networking tools to interact in this way.
Some pupils have shown great delight in using the site. They have ownership of their content and promote it in class. The most popular aspect of the site is as a repository for their own podcasts and videos.
Conclusions
- The site is very useful as a teaching platform for me.
- It is a quick and relatively easy way to get a VLE style project going to collect together online resources such as videos.
- The pupils instantly understand the idea, I have had a few problems explaining it to colleagues.
- Pupils do not abuse the site with chat or posting trivia. They have Facebook and MSN for that.
- It can be a very useful tool for supporting those pupils who need a more individualistic approach to learning.
- It promotes a culture of ownership and encourages pupils to be in control of their learning.
- The site presents an opportunity to extend the gifted members of the class.
Focus for the future
- Continue to populate the site with content.
- Develop the site to provide for individuals who need specific help.
- Develop ways to extend the more talented scientists by allowing a measure of site management/ content curation etc.
 There was a radio interview this morning that followed up a report about “latest research” claiming a link between having a bedtime story read to you as a child and going on to lead a successful, academic, happy life.
“Well….duuh!” I thought amidst my yawning ablutions. “hardly news” but our bubbling interviewer then went on to quiz the media inept scientist and between them, they started to hypothesis about the mechanism of this link.
“Aah” said my 14 year old son “the amount of bedtime reading is the independent variable and the quality of life is the dependent variable” he then went on to outline a simple experiment that would verify the relationship….I managed to loudly splutter some toothpaste in his direction to verify our relationship and hoped that his retreating chuckle meant that he was joking.
It seems perfectly obvious that bedtime reading is a normal part of a good upbringing. (At the very least it means that the child has a bedtime.) A child who is read to is also likely to have caring parents, a nurturing environment and a safe home. Not surprising then, that such children are more likely to enjoy life later on.
I remember a similar story a while ago where some young, spotty Phd wannabe had found a statistical connection between using dummys as a baby (pacifiers if you’re in the new world) and low intelligence as an adult. Was there a chemical in the plastic that made you thick?..Was it delaying formative speech patterns?….was it a plot to keep the masses in the factories?…Was it simply the attraction of a headline that reads “dummys make you dumb!”…….or……. was it just an effect of different socio-economic group usage of dummys. I remember screaming this at the radio (to the obvious amusement of the other people in the traffic jam) but the scientist continued to present this as a direct causal link between two isolated variables.
Research is continually presented by the media in a simplistic way.
Who is at fault here? and, as a science educationalist, what can I do to stop it?
How do we help our colleagues to embrace technology in their teaching? Following on from my blog post ICT…What has it ever done for me? we need to focus on the person rather than the IT.
Tech nervous teachers have been in denial for years. They know, somewhere deep down that they “have” to use computers somehow and become threatened and defensive when discussing it. In this situation, typical approaches include panic-purchasing subject specific software or trying to shoe-horn in a “research-on-the-Internet/PowerPoint thing” or similar.
Invariably this ends up as a “bolt on” exercise that is only loosely linked to learning objectives resulting in a poor experience for both teacher and learner. This will then reinforce their negative ideas about ICT. Watch as your colleague retreats into his/her shell muttering about going back to “ways that work”.
What they need is something that innovates rather than automates. Something that revolutionises rather than interferes. It is a great temptation to introduce technology into lessons and topics that are already successful…….Don’t……….. Leave the good stuff alone, its already working. Instead, get them to pick their worst lesson. The one that they dislike teaching or are bored with (we all have at least one….mine is circuits in yr 11….dull, dull, dull…been teaching it the same way for years…needs to change). If they don’t enjoy it, you can be pretty sure that the kids don’t.
Once identified you need to go and get all of the resources for that lesson and shred them…worksheets, notes etc…… all of them. Then write down the learning objectives, sit down with your colleague and two cups of tea/coffee/gin and rebuild a lesson, using ICT, from the objectives up. They are the subject/teaching experts and will know what needs to be learned. You are the tech nerd and will know a variety of tools and approaches that will work. The resulting plan will be relevant, more interesting and better than the old lesson and your colleague will hopefully have ownership of it.
You will have identified any specific training that they need before it is delivered and may have agreed to be there or even team-teach it.
At the end of the exercise, he/she needs to have a definite example of an ICT based lesson that has improved their teaching.
Ok….I’m off to write a song about circuits………
I threw away the planning today and had a great time experimenting with word clouds.
Friday afternoon…half term break tomorrow…Neither I nor Year 8 had any appetite for the spreadsheet tasks that I’d scheduled so we closed the door and played with Wordle and Worditout.
Our school has an Eisteddfod looming, so we wordled the set poems and created a display for the (until then empty) Eisteddfod display board.
I got lots of reaction amongst year 8. Happy to be “off piste” they started bouncing ideas around……
One of the set poems is Tyger Tyger by Blake. Once Wordled, the prominent words are Tyger, Hand, Thy, and Dread. This prompted a discussion as to why “hand” was so big, leading to a group reading of the poem and a reappraisal of its meaning…all quite independent of me I might add. I was only there to validate their conclusions.
The second group discussion occurred when they started to drop song lyrics into the program. I was biting my lip when one girl proclaimed that her beloved Sugar Babes lyrics seemed “a bit shallow” compared with the poetry.
Some moved on to clouds describing themselves whilst others produced lists of random words that they found amusing but a really good idea was born when a passing catering teacher wandered in (under the pretence of booking the room for later in the term but obviously just bored with goings on in the catering department). We realised that we could use the program to visually represent the proportions of ingredients in a recipe without all those tedious quantities and units. Far easier to follow and no weighing out. So here follows the recipe for sun dried tomato bread!
 Enjoy
Worditout is a way of making word clouds from an existing piece of text.
The results look very good and I can see it being useful as a way to begin to analyse or summerize short chunks of writing. More frequent and important words are shown in a larger font.
I dropped my previous blog post into their website and the result is below….quite pretty I think!
Made with WordItOut
Tillerman…at the helm of the popular sailing blog Proper course has invited people to contribute to a joint writing project…..This month’s subject..The worst sailing innovation ever. So here’s my tuppence worth!
Worst sailing innovation ever?…The Cabin.
As soon as you put a lid on a boat it stops being a boat. It becomes: a shed, a mobile home or an excuse not to go sailing.
There is nothing about a cabin that improves the boat, it merely compromises the crafts ability to sail and gives you more room to weigh yourself down with stuff you think you might need but probably never will. It changes the primary purpose of the boat from fun recreation to lifestyle accomodation.
Ok Ok…I hear you…”what about transatlantic voyages?”…”what about cruising into a quiet anchorage at sunset knowing you can spend the night in seclusion…away from it all….” blah blah blah ….Most of us never do that….Most of us have a boat that is at least 50% bigger than we actualy need or want..
A trailer-able open boat can be kept in the drive ready to be whisked away for a days sailing pleasure on a whim. After a few years of such fun the inevitable thought crosses your mind “if i got a slightly longer boat with a cabin, I could stay over and sail more…….”
RESIST….the result will be either:
- A boat that is slightly too heavy to trail and rig without increasing amounts of forethought and planning and slightly too cumbersome to handle on land without help. Help that would rather be doing something else (like shopping)
- A floating fibreglass apartment in a marina that is just slightly too far away. You make special efforts go as much as you can but spend most of your time onboard tidying up or doing those “small” maintenance jobs. (like putting in more lockers to hold the shopping)
In both cases you will:
- Spend more money.
- Sail less.
- Feel guilty about both of the above.
Cabins stop you sailing and are the worst innovation ever.
The Author in his cabinless boat off the coast of Mid Wales (Aberystwyth)
I was much happier than I look!
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Daedalus is Paul Cross. Loquacious, idle, pun hunting teacher of Physics. Frustrated by his own ability to do most things adequately whilst excelling at nothing. Desperately trying to spin this into a strength… a triumph of generalism over specialism..”Breadth is the new depth”.
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