You are here: Home / Archives for teaching
post

SSAT National Conference 2010 #NC10 – Initial Thoughts

November 28, 2010 By 2 Comments

The SSAT National Conference took place last week at the ICC in Birmingham (a venue rightly compared to Escher’s Relativity!).  I was fortunate to be able to attend as a punter on the Wednesday and as a presenter on the Thursday as we launched the SSAT National Digital Leaders programme!

The theme of the conference was ‘Excellence for All’, and I have to say that the SSAT delivered , each aspect of the conference itself was excellent.

Wednesday started for me with Dylan Wiliam extolling the importance of assessment being the key to good teaching.  He was as inspiring a speaker as ever, as those of you who watched his recent TV program would know.  In particular I was impressed with Dylan’s ability to demonstrate his techniques within a ‘classroom’ of 400 educators, and also his incredible use of research evidence to support his teachings.

Wednesday Keynotes came from David Hemery, former 400m Hurdles Gold medal winning Olympian, he was telling his story and promoting www.21stcenturylegacy.com , part of London 2012′s legacy programme for schools.  He was followed by Sugata Mitra, telling his engaging tale of children teaching themselves using the Internet, from his hole-in-the-wall Mumbai slums experiment to his recent work in Gateshead.  This was an engaging tale that at first seemed to question the need for teachers at all!  As with all the speakers, more to follow in a future blog-post.  I would add that I was fortunate enough to chat to Sugata over coffee following his talk, a charming man. [Read more...]

Amplify
Filed Under: Digital Leaders, Leadership, News Tagged With: , , , , , , , , ,
post

Air Sketch – iPad to Projector – Wirelessly

November 7, 2010 By 4 Comments

I’ve been trying to use my iPad in the classroom as much as possible, as a device for use in schools it is close to being perfect.  One of the drawbacks has been working out how to get what’s on the iPad to be projected onto my classroom wall.  You can connect it with the iPad VGA connector to a computer and project that way, but only a handful of apps support this.  This can apparently be expanded somewhat by jail-breaking , but I don’t really want to go there.

Then last week Wes Frier alerted me to an App called Air Sketch.  Air Sketch is a fairly simple drawing application with a killer feature, it will broadcast whatever is on the screen across your network to a webpage.  If you open that webpage in a HTML 5 browser from any machine attached to the same network you will see the iPad screen.  Any updates made on the iPad appear almost instantly on your PC or Mac.  Air Sketch was £1.79 but there is also a free option to try.

[Read more...]

Amplify
Filed Under: Classroom, EdTech, ELearning, Everything Else, Maths, Tools, Top Posts Tagged With: , , , , , , ,
post

Facebook Groups in School?

October 8, 2010 By 8 Comments

Facebook recently updated their Groups feature.  Allowing finer control over groups which you set up, who can join, who can post, who can share etc..   Their are also improvements to how you are notified about group updates and a new feature called ‘docs’ that provides a Google Docs-esque shared notepad / document. Group chat is also built in allowing you to talk to everyone in that group at once. For a demonstration head over to Mashable or watch this video:

So, the million dollar question… Could this be used in education? Could it be part of a VLEesque home-school link? [Read more...]
Amplify
Filed Under: Classroom, ELearning, News, Tools Tagged With: , , , , , , ,
post

Google Love Stories

April 18, 2010 By Leave a Comment

Google released their Parisian Love Story advert for the Superbowl earlier in the year – watch it, it’s ever so clever:

You can now make you own stories with 7 simple search terms.  It couldn’t be easier, you just type in up to 7 search terms and then choose whether the video will show it as a normal search, image search, map search etc.  Try it here: http://www.youtube.com/user/SearchStories

I knocked one up very quickly – took about 5 minutes, you’ll have to excuse the cheese factor of it!

Could be a great tool for pupils telling stories new or old, explaining topics, making revision tips, any other suggestions?

Enjoy :)

Amplify
Filed Under: Tools Tagged With: , , , , , , , , ,
post

No More Year Zero

March 21, 2010 By Leave a Comment

I was surprised and honoured to receive an email on Friday inviting me to the House of Commons for the Progressive Education Network Spring Reception this Monday afternoon.

I’m bitterly disappointed that the short notice means I will not be able to attend. :(

I came across the PEN via a tweet last month.  Chaired by Mike Gibbons and supported by The Co-operative Group the PEN’s aims are:

Progressive Education Network aims to engage with and challenge policy makers of every political hue by bringing the voice of experience and the wisdom of leading education professionals and school leaders to the debate. How do we best build on what’s working now to develop the education system that maximises the opportunities for the success of every child? [Read more...]

Amplify
Filed Under: News Tagged With: , , , , , , , , , , , ,
post

Twitter in the classroom rocks!

January 20, 2010 By Leave a Comment

Following yesterday’s use of Twitter in the classroom, I was walking to Period 5 (same class as yesterday) after lunch, when inspiration struck.  I remembered this post from @tombarrett .

Go and read it.

Go on!

I threw my lesson plan out of the window and did exactly what Tom did, here are the replies: (click through for them all)

This caused great excitement and interest in the topic, and really helped us look in to the language and mathematics of describing chance.

This class have really been inspired with the idea of my network, I had to stop them spending the rest of the lesson bombarding you all with further questions!  Bringing global connections into the classroom is a real attention grabber, and like it or not we are entertainers!

Nothing more to say – thanks Tom –  a great idea, and thanks to everyone who contributed to the lesson.

Reblog this post [with Zemanta]
Amplify
Filed Under: Classroom, EdTech, ELearning, Maths, Tools Tagged With: , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , ,
« Older Posts