Teaching with Technology

This week I tried to use wordle as an assessment tool in literacy. Children were shown a stimulus image of a man looking over the edge of a well and were then asked to write 100 words of character description. We then took everyone’s writing and put it into wordle.

The results were great! What became very clear was that the children were using phrases like “he looked like…” and hadn’t really used powerful descriptive words.

The great thing was that we could actually see the frequency of the words used by the size of the words in wordle.

Next week we’ll do some guided writing and repeat the process which should hopefully show a real difference.

I really liked this as an assessment method and would recommend that people tried this in their own classes.

Please have a look at my students blog www.charlestown.edublogs.org

If your students would like to comment please feel free, it would be great to set up a connection globally!

Exciting addition to the work I’ve been doing with Synchroneyes today! I got the children to use the chat feature to post research that they had found on the Internet about David Livingstone the Victorian explorer.

This worked incredibly well and led to a really interesting discussion with the children about chatting in general.

After the inital “Hi wassssaaaaapppp!” comments the children quickly started posting only relevant information. In fact they came and told me that they were getting annoyed with people who were still posting like that because it got in the way if the flow of information that they wanted to work on.

It struck me what a massive jump in real learning this was for these children, which completely quashed any fears that this was going to be a free for all chat a la msn.

All of this within five minutes!

I then got children working in smaller groups of six or seven to complete the task. They loved it and you could hear a pin drop in the classroom.

I asked the children what they liked about it and was amazed with the responses. Essentially they liked the fact that the chat was actually about something that they were learning about and that writing on the chat stopped “stupid conversations” starting and distracting them!

This from a class that loves to natter!

It was a great session that had some briliant learning outcomes for the children and me. Can’t wait to get back in on Monday and experiment further!

Over the last few weeks I’ve been using Smart’s Synchroneyes classroom management software to monitor children as they are working on the individual umpcs on the classroom.

I have to say that I think this could be some software that helps teachers hugely. Basically when children log on they have to connect to the teachers laptop wirelessly. The teacher then has control of what happens on that laptop. No great level of ict skill is required as at it’s simplest level the teacher can see thumbnails of each of the children’s screens and a small icon showing the program that is being used.

This gets around one of the biggest barriers that I have encountered whilst trying to spread good practice – namely teachers ate worried that they can’t see what the children are looking at on the screen. Now they can!

The other rather fantastic piece of practical functionality for the classroom is the lock feature. It does just what it says on the tin, at a click of a button all the laptops display the message “Eyes to the front please.”

This is hilarious when you see the children reactions the first time that you do it! Interestingly this has actually led to some interesting negotiation in my class as they don’t like being locked out and I have found that I’d really has improves the attention from the children when I ask them to stop.

Also you can pull up any examples of good work and send it to all the other screens, again a really practical tool in the classroom.

There are lots of other elements to the program that I haven’t fully explored as yet, such as setting up working groups, letting other children control each others monitors and ‘teach’.

There are some drawbacks. You need to have a pretty full on wireless network and processor for it not to become sticky. Also it doesn’t seem to enJoy the graphic intensive software such as google sketchup. Although that’s not really that suprising!

Overall though I would say it is definately worth looking at as I think it has the power to layer all the good aspects of traditional classroom practice over 21st century technology which is really exciting.

Getting this iPhone has got me thinking about how we could use it as a tool for letting parents know what has happened in the classroom that day. Since I downloaded the wordpress application this now has become a real possibility!

So I set up a class blog to see if this could really work. I’ve only done it for one day but I’m totally convinced that it’s the way forward!

There are several reasons why.
•It’s easy children can borrow my phone to type quick articles.
•It’s instant. The children can see their work online straight away.
•It’s visual. You can take pictures of the activities on the iPhone and publish them straight away brilliant!
•It gives the children the feeling that they are able to reach a global audience.

It also made me realize just how much you get through inn any one day – it’s exhausting.

Please have a look at the blog and leave them an encouraging comment www.charlestown.edublogs.org

Over the last few weeks I’ve been involved in a series of conversations about what a future learning space needs to look like. The discussions have been, truth be told, rather disheartening.

My school is part of an amalgamation that is taking place and was something I was really looking forward to. However as often seems to be the case the secondary experience seems to be the dominant factor that influences the way of thinking.

The feeling that comes across is that there needs to be big open spaces that the children can fill with collaborative learning groups huddling around laptops etc whilst the ‘learning manager’ not teacher provides a facilitatory role. This for me cannot work in my children’s context. I really believe passionately in providing real cutting edge 21st century learning, but in a primary school we also have to provide the basic skills that are needed to have the children access to the new learning.

I asked the children what they thought andgot them to write about it.   The whole discussion was really interesting.  The feeling from the children was that they wanted spaces to talk and collaborate, but also they wanted quiet formal spaces to ‘get on.’   I put their writing into Wordle to illustrate their thoughts.
 

Put bluntly you still have to be able to read and write. As such within any new school you have to have separate quiet teaching areas where whole classes can learn.

The ideal  of learning in a more creative way is one I agree with and is an agenda that I am firmly pushing forward as I hope this blog demonstrates, but you can’t throw out the baby with the bath water. Teachers aren’t being difficult when they argue that traditional classrooms work, they are just asking for the creative spaces to be provided in addition not instead of!

One final thought – how many open plan schools built in the 1970’s are still open plan? I would bet not many.

Shouldn’t that tell us something?

This is the first attempt to use my blog as a tool for recording my professional development. I’m at a course by Chris Pickup in Rochdale all day, I have asked his permission to blog the event an he has kindly agreed.. I think the only way that this will work is to try and just leave brief notes in a list and then try to link the materials at the end of the post. We’ll see how it works out, although I suspect that I’ll look like a bit of a geek sitting tapping away on my iPhone.

How different from the handheld learning conference where I would have been looked on as being cool.

I have attended a couple of Chris’s courses and I can highly recommend them, especially the one on ‘Developing a Fun Curriculum’.   As always I walked away from the training buzzing with ideas and practical advice!

The notes below are just that – notes.   I just thought that if I was going to write them down then I should share them too!

Community Cohesion presentation

- each school needs to have a community cohesion policy
- policy will be on www.chrispickup.co.uk sign up for news letter which shows where changes to the sef are.

Need to change sef accordingly. See p 12 notes

- www.intergrationandcohesion.org.uk

Booklet of resources from icoco and from qca listing resources

School needs to have done audit for community cohesion  – working doc for audit provided.

Ofsted are required to conduct inspections on cohesion – policy then audit shared future and resources would probably be a good start for thinking about cohesion. Would be a good idea to have a twilight session for staff to introduce community cohesion.

• What does community cohesion actually mean?

’sticking together for the mutual provision of beneficial services’. It’s about bringing people together and them keeping them together.

There is a legal duty to promote community cohesion in England.

•Backgroumd to duty

Agenda rose from riots in 2001 on NW and belief that those that are immigrating into uk are living parallel lives and not integrating and mixing between groups. Needed to be directly addressed.

• Comission for Comminuty Cohesion has shared vision for 2020.

‘open communities – everyone matters old young settled or new. Shared open spaces where all have responsibilities that transcend differences. People not fearful of meeting neighbours’. Political commitment to cohesive society.

Four key principles

1. Emphasis things that people hold on common – eg prayer mats and kneelers commonality emphasis. On similarity whilst accepting difference.

2. New model of rights and responsibilities. Evidence of citizenship at local and national level.

3. Mutual respect fundamental within community

4. Visible social justice, transparency and fairness

• Cohesive society

Everyone has something to contribute. Strong sense of rights and responsibilities. Institutions acting fairly and giving opportunities to all, not just to new communities. Common contribution not based on how long have lived in a place once part of a comminuty have the same rights.

Must remember that it is not driven by race issues but rather all parts of community eg elderly disabled etc

Schools central to the agenda as they are often the only institutions that are actually immigrating the communities. Linking schools together. Primary schools at the frontline.

• Ajegbo report 2007

Helping children to see diversity as a positive is crucial. Is of importance to all heads regardless of community that they serve. Important to spread wings.

Teachers lack confidence that they can tackle issues without causing offence etc building in extended schools agenda brings community into the school.

Schools might need to look at what it means to be British. Understanding nation and history. Cohesion can be addressed through expanding curriculum. More minority teachers needed. Schools that recognized diversity seemed to raise standards.

• Recommended
- pupils should talk about issues and listen
- leadership needs to promote. Education for diversity
- audit curriculum and look for opportunities to develop
- build links between and across communities
- look at qca syllabus
- ast teachers could be used for encouraging diversity
• Community Cohesion Guidance 2007

to promote community cohesion ring dcsf 0845 60 22260. Thirty copies for each school.

School needs to respond by teaching children responsibilities to the community. But, clearly outlines barriers to this happening. Mori poll 2006 18% concerned at scale of immigration. 56% felt some groups hot preferential treatment. 14% did not feel proud of local areas 43% lack of community spirit.

Need to look in the curriculum for opportunities to celebrate commonality across the curriculum.

Pupils understand and appreciate others from different backgrounds
Need a shared understanding of values – have a look at school rules should reflect this
To fulfill potential – use raise online to look at diversity
Feel part of the community- look directly at layers of school community

 •School
•Neighbourhood
•Town
•Regional
•Country … high sheriff will come into school
•Nation
•Eu
•Europe
•Commonwealth
•The global community

Look at these layers and relate to the new curriculum development.

Three areas that schools need to look at in terms of community cohesion

- Teaching and learning schools need to identify what they are already doing.
- Equity and excellence make sure that there are ways for elderly etc to come into school etc
- Engagement and ethos provide opportunities to engage with others from different backgrounds and wider groups.

School to school partnerships to share good practice and opportunities. Shared use of facilities and children working together on shared projects. Engagement with parents coffee mornings parent and child learning. Cross school competitions etc.

Global gateway service to link schools internationally managed by the British council.

Not statutory to have an action plan for community cohesion.

•Self evaluation form

In the afternoon audit conducted also available on website.

I’m sitting in my front room marveling at how wicked the iPhone is. This post has been written directly from the phone which really opens things up for instant blogging. After a very hard day at work that’s a real bright spark – ironic considering it’s firework night!