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Online lesson planning
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Special school visit
As part of my teacher training we get to go to both a primary school and a special school. The aim of the experience is for us to learn from our colleagues a range of techniques which we can transfer into our own classroom.
I visited a local special school and although it felt out of my comfort area around some of the children the experience was over whelming positive.
I’ve got a job!
After seven applications and three job interviews I have secured a job for next year! I will be working in a school in Lincolnshire close to the coast.
While it sounds like a lot it is nothing compared to some of the horror stories I have read on the TES of having 35 applications and only two interviews.
The whole interview process has been interesting, especially given how different it is to normal job interviews.
Usually you turn up, get an interview and then get a phone call later telling you how you have done. Usually you do not interact with the other candidates much as you are kept fairly seperate.
With teaching interviews you turn up, get a tour, have an interview, do your interview lesson and then wait with all the other candidates together in the staffroom for the school to make a decision. It does create an odd sense of camaraderie among the candidates but it is not an unpleasant situation.
It is very true though that with interviews it works both ways and I have been into some schools where you know this is not the school for me. I had a great feeling about the school when I arrived and especially appreciated the relaxed atmosphere.
I am very fortunate that the school I will be working in feels like the perfect school for me.
Digital dirt sticks
I recently been asked to put together a lesson on e-safety for Key Stage 4 and instantly my mind thought of an excellent video by Orange called “Digital dirt sticks”.
The video is part of a series from Orange about online safety and is free to order from their website. It features a teenage girl applying for a job and being confronted with all the nasty things she has posted on Facebook.
A difficult job interview for anyone
I think the video is particularly powerful for Key Stage 4 because it is a situation where they can see themselves in the immediate future. Students often post silly and stupid things on social networks unaware of the availability of their contributions.
Employers are frequently now looking more at social networks before they hire, especially in the IT sector and it is essential that we make sure our students are aware of the risks.
New look, new style
If you are a regular reader to my blog you will have noticed that my blog has undergone some changes. No longer do we have default content hiding in the corners and a theme that looks horribly ghastly (what was I thinking when I choose the old one).
With the new look comes a new style too. In an effort to make this blog more useful, both for myself and for readers, I am going to make updates more frequent but less detailed. More a stream of conscious rather than a pile of essays. They will not be all about teaching though, I want to blog about other things as well.
Speaking of new things, I have also finally put some thought to a tagline for this blog although I am not entirely happy with it. If anyone can think of anything better (and preferably wittier) please let me know so I can steal use it.
Using software to blank screens? Don’t do it!
During my training I have had the pleasure of visiting many schools all of which utilised some form of classroom management software. Like everything in education that are thousand of different brands and most of them not very good. But that is not what this post is about, it is about how teachers can use this software inappropriately.
By blanking screens I am including any sort of locking, freezing or anything else that renders a computer temporarily unusable remotely.
I remember towards the beginning of our training we were given advice from a voice coach that any way we can get students attention non verbally is a good thing. She encouraged ICT teachers to use software to blank screens as soon as they want the students attention. Many schools do this as part of every day practise.
I think this is a bad idea.
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Using seating plans to support learning
I am a big fan of seating plans. I use them for all my classes for a number of reasons:
1) It helps establish your authority in the classroom.
I’ve found using a seating plan, especially when taking over a new class, to be very helpful in establishing your authority as the class teacher. By not letting children decide on their own where they are sitting it lets them know that it is your classroom. I find it is especially useful with classes that have previously been badly behaved.
One important thing to stress though is seating plans are not tools used by failing teachers. I’ve picked up a general perception that teachers only use them when a class is badly behaved, whereabouts I think they are always useful and use them with all my classes regardless of behaviour.
2) Forces students to mix and work with different people
A lot of my classroom teaching features group work or pair work, especially for starters and plenaries. It is more than likely that students are in the same class for other subjects. By letting students sit where they want they will always sit next to their friends and this may not be the best for learning.
By forcing students to mix and work with people they may not necessarily know it encourages them to build new relationships. When seated boy-girl I hope it will go some way to avoid the gender divide you see in some classrooms at KS4.
3) It is a great way to learn names
I find that I have a really hard time at learning students names, unless they are particularly badly behaved. Research has shown that children engage better with you as a teacher if you take the time to learn their names. While this is a gradual process for me, I can create the illusion of that I know their names by using the seating plan from lesson 1.
BETT Conference 2011
As part of our training we encouraged to go to the British Education and Training Technology (BETT) show where all the latest educational technology is on display.
One of the first things that strikes you is how huge the event is. It takes literally hours to get around the whole show, even more if you stop to chat. The majority of the big names are there alongside new start up companies as well. Everyone appeared to be selling an interactive whiteboard or some sort of tablet and I found it difficult to see the difference between them all.
I found the most interesting part of the show came from start up companies. From a science teacher demonstrating using webcams as data loggers, (similar technology to Microsoft Kinetic), to a company designing web based adventure games designed for children to think about the underlying reasons behind some of the major conflicts in the world today, such as Israel and Palastine.
Despite all this I didn’t feel that I was the target audience for the show. Although you would think that being an ICT teacher the majority of the show would be relevant, nothing could be further from the truth. The vast majority of the show felt it was aimed at senior management in schools or were technological solutions to solve problems we don’t have. For example digital signage is something I find very hard to get excited about, yet there were at least 5 companies peddling those products.
I went in with a mind to find some technology which would help me improve my teaching practise. What I found was a variety of fantastic and interesting products but very little detail on how this would actually help my students.
Using PowerPoint to interactive worksheets (2)
I am thrilled with how well the worksheets worked. Removing the technicalities allowed the students, as expected, to actually focus on the task of creating flowcharts.
The class that did this lesson first have in the past been difficult so to see them all engaged, completing all the activities and, with the exception of one student, progressing on to the extension task was brilliant.
This highlights to me perhaps one of the most important things I have learnt so far in teaching ICT. In an good ICT lesson the technology itself is next to invisible. Students use the computers as tools to understand a higher concept or complete a greater task. This is something I am keen to explore further in later entries.