"We need to teach using the tools our students use"
Archive for March, 2010
CPD ideas – a great one from from Teachers’ TV.
Mar 21st
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This is a letter I put out to all staff via the SLT to give them an option for CPD that they might not have thought about. I have taken the original article from Teachers’ TV and added/amended bits as well as created a video CPD log. A good idea and one that might go down well given the financial straitjackets we find ourselves in just now! Original idea and link at http://www.teachers.tv/help/viewinglog#what_is Letter is here for you to adapt as you wish. |
CPD – watching videos can count too
Colleagues:
An element of personal CPD that some might not have thought about is watching videos on such sites as Teachers’ TV (http://www.teachers.tv ) Once you register you can view or download onto your own computers for later viewing. Each video page has an option (halfway down right hand side – see below) to add the video to your viewing log.
The graphics keep crashing so they’re on the letter but not here – investigating….
The viewing log allows you to make videos you watch count towards your Continuing Professional Development. Watch videos, record your initial thoughts, return to update your notes when you’ve tried implementing ideas in the classroom, and download and print a record of how you have used videos as part of your CPD.
It’s a simple three step process:
1. Watch a video, make initial notes on how the good practice, resources, and tips featured can influence your own classroom practice, help you implement new education policies, or inspire you to address wider issues around your school.
2. Once you have tried using the information in your own work, you can return to your viewing log to enter reflective notes on your experiences.
3. Finally, download and print your initial and reflective notes to show how you have used Teachers TV videos as part of your Continuing Professional Development.
You can add notes about as many videos as you’d like, and edit your reports to show all videos or only a selection. Once you’ve downloaded your viewing log report, you can copy and paste sections, or the entire report, to use in other documents.
At the end of this letter is an example viewing log for videos from other sites such as TED, http://www.ted.com/ some of which are incredible to watch and really give an up to date experience of future thinking in education and elsewhere. You can download these videos as well.
Other videos to watch include:
‘Shift happens’ http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6ILQrUrEWe8
‘Students of Today’ http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dGCJ46vyR9o
‘I want my teacher to learn’ http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3CIh7FWv4UA
‘Pay attention – how do your students learn?’ http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aEFKfXiCbLw
There are also many videos by education gurus such as Alan November, Carole Dweck, Stephen Downes available on youtube or teacher tube. All of which can be viewed and reflected upon for CPD.
CPD – VIDEO REFLECTION LOG
| Date | Title of video | Subject matter | Notes on good practice, resources and tips shown. Any wider policy or other issues? | Reflection after use in classroom |
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Cultural changes in learning…they’re happening but is it here?
Mar 21st
Alan November says: We have to stop spoon feeding kids curriculum tests and homework. They need to be self directed. They need to be life long learners., which means they need to be empowered to manage more and more and more of their own learning. [...]
It is not about adding technology… because we add a lot of technology that improves teaching, but it does not improve learning.[...]
The biggest barrier is not technology, the tools or money. The biggest barrier is a culture of the shift of control from the teacher managing learning (creating dependent learners by the way) to a culture of students being inter-dependent while they are globally connected and contributing content, tutorials, to the whole classroom. We are witnessing the shift towards globally connected students at this school right in front of our eyes. IT IS a shift of culture. IT IS a shift of what a “classroom” means. IT IS about empowering students AND teachers by exposing them to all the possibilities that are within reach through available tools.
Via Langwitches blog
Are you seeing this cultural shift in YOUR school? I see some very minor signs, I see some people thinking about it and trying to start implementation of the shift in their lessons and classrooms. But as always, we have the HQ staff saying, ‘we’ll do this and we’ll do that’ yet never sharing what they see and hear on their many CPD trips outside our area. Nor do we see them investing in the infrastructure we need as well as training. After all we need GLOW yet 90% of the kids can’t get access in school because they can’t get on PCS. We also see many ‘initiatives’ and many fine words about 21st C learning coming from people who’ve never taught in their lives or were last in a classroom before PCs were installed!We need to STOP, get the hardware, software and CULTURAL changes sorted and then get cracking….or we’ll be left behind.
As Barack Obama recently said in a weekly address to his nation: “the country that out educates us will out perform us”
Cultural change in the way we learn as teachers and students IS coming or is already in place in many countries – time to catch up Scotland!
Here’s to the crazy ones
Mar 7th
Steve Wheeler had this on his blog:
Could almost be a chant for those teachers trying to get their students the facilities and the ability to become true 21st Century learners – learning for learning’s sake AND trying to change the world, one inch at a time (so says Al Pacino…) 
Here’s to the crazy ones. The misfits. The rebels. The troublemakers. The round pegs in the square holes. The ones who see things differently.
They’re not fond of rules. And they have no respect for the status quo.
You can quote them, disagree with them, glorify or vilify them. But the only thing you can’t do is ignore them. Because they change things. They push the human race forward.
And while some see them as the crazy ones, we see genius.
Because the people who are crazy enough to think they can change the world, are the ones who do.
(Picture – thanks to Scott Mcleod)
Fear is NOT an option….
Mar 7th
Ah Ewan, you’ve got to the point again….
Go read this post and watch the TED video of James (Titantic/Avatar) Cameron on learning and teaching – failure is an option fear is not. The new mantra for teachers trying to use IT and bring their kids into the 21st Century DESPITE the Luddites/Empire Builders who are full of fear…..
The main quote:
What I see with increasing regularity is that education leaders are gripped by the notion that failure is not an option (à la Nasa) and that fear will prevent that happening. Meanwhile, on the ground we see teachers prepared to take measured risk, putting their previous fears to one side, and accept, as they ask their students to do in learning, that there will be some degree of failure before we get to where we want to be.
I’m quite clear on who I think needs to change their game.
Quite!
TESS Article on Local Authority website blocking/filtering
Mar 5th
The abridged for online version of the TESS article here Print version is ‘twice as long and not attacking GLOW as some thought’ (Douglas Blane the journalist).
Additional points I’m adding here are in green.
Main points:
“Given the importance of this issue, isn’t it time we had national guidelines?” asks Neil Winton, head of English at Perth Academy.
“I put the question to Fiona Hyslop (then education minister) at last year’s Scottish Learning Festival. She fobbed it off as an operational matter – the responsibility of local authorities. But it’s not. There should be a national policy … We have a mish-mash around the country. You can even get primary schools with access to YouTube, when the secondary school doesn’t.”
My points:
“Education authorities vary from highly restrictive to fairly flexible. “Our authority has one of the strictest web-filtering policies in Scotland,” says David Terron, who teaches English at Elgin Academy.
“They’ve even blocked their own Curriculum for Excellence resources site. Many teachers try to use ICT, as recommended by HMIE, but are continually frustrated and have to go through a long process to get sites unblocked. Even then they are often refused.”” (and they often give weak or downright ridiculous excuses that have no basis – ‘Twitter is banned because 1,000s of companies banned it and it spreads viruses’) Perhaps they should look at the bottom of the Scottish Government and Learning Teaching Scotland sites and see the wee blue bird in use by government agencies! The GTC(S) uses twitter as do many schools and educational authorities throughout the world.
and…
“The IT tail wagging the educational dog makes the student-centred Curriculum for Excellence harder, say the teachers. How can pupils become confident individuals and successful learners if their hands have to be held whenever they go near a computer? Where is the scope for spontaneity and creativity if the teacher has to say: “Go wherever your investigations take you – but only on these three websites that we’ve checked.”?
It’s not just pupil education that is being damaged, says David Terron. Continuing professional development is also adversely affected: “We can’t access sites such as the one written by Don Ledingham, director of education in East Lothian, who often posts provocative, interesting articles. In other authorities these have formed the basis of entire in service days.” We have no budget so ALL of our CPD is now online or via Personal Learning Networks and Teacher Learning Communities. No access equals no CPD – I refer you to my earlier post about 5 yearly inspections for teachers. They cannot be justified if you won’t let teachers have access to CPD. I expect legal challenges to be based on this simple fact.
Finally
“There is no sign of the culture clash between council IT departments and education being resolved in the latter’s favour any time soon, says Neil Winton. “It comes down to a lack of trust in the professional judgment of teachers.
“IT departments are not making decisions for pedagogical reasons; they are making them on the basis of what can’t get them into trouble. But teaching only what can’t get anyone into trouble is no basis for a 21st-century education system.”
I believe the aim of this article is to continue and push forward the debate. Let’s see if it does ! Our ‘leaders’ (government and local authorities etc) cannot keep banging on about ICT and kids getting taught how to use the web etc safely if (a) they don’t get any lnternet safety lessons in the first place and (b) they then access unsuitable sites at home because they want to know why it has been banned at school.
How are we meant to catch up with India and other Asian countries ? In China they allegedly tell their students to learn two things – English and Computing. They know the future lies with the countries that have these skills. So why do our local and national government claim that they’re pushing the IT skills agenda and then promptly either not provide enough funding for even minimal training or block access to sites the kids and their teachers can use to learn?
Mobile Phones…
Mar 3rd
Whilst I personally think that mobiles, especially the newer SmartPhones can be used effectively within the educational context, there are obvious problems. Some kids will simply not have the latest Web 2.0 capable phones whilst others will use them to text the girl sitting opposite rather than engage in that well known human activity, social interaction (or gossiping/chatting up). However so long as the Council rules are that mobiles are NOT to be used I will continue to persuade my students to keep them off and out of sight. I was wondering about a foolproof method of ensuring they can’t use phones. I often call up Bluetooth on the Airliner Slate/SmartBoard software and can show them the dozen phones and their codes. They cottoned on and changed the phones codes so the last time I had a projected display showing such interesting phone names as ‘Mr T FTW’, ‘Mr T rocks’ ‘Sexy Beast’ (which couldn’t possibly have been about me and ‘N**** E*** is a Sex God’. In the case of N.E. in my S* Class I would agree with this were I a drooling teenage girl….
Anyway the solution is at hand – I found this on Scott McLeod’s blog….
“Oh, For Crying-out-load. Just hang one of those shoe organisers next to the door and require each student to check in their phones on entering the classroom, then they can retrieve them after class. Just drop your phone in your slot and pick it up on the way out. Hey look, I solved the problem for less than $5.00″
I don’t know if this is a fantastic idea or not, but it sure made me laugh. Sometimes easy solutions to our problems are staring us in the face if only we have the courage to think creatively. As we head into the new school year, who thinks their local school has an effective solution for inappropriate student use of mobile phones?
