"We need to teach using the tools our students use"
Archive for 21 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!
