Test post

Hydrophobic spray

This footage of a spray that makes liquid fly off surfaces gives us a vision of a future where trainers stay box fresh forever (and other lesser advantages that a chemistry teacher may be able to help out with might accrue).

Concentric art

This advert for pens goes beyond astonishing into a whole new realm of artistic skill. We defy you to watch it and not be astonished at the level of skill involved.

Bubbl.us looks promising for keeping Mindmaps safe

In the absence of an interactive whiteboard I am always slightly upset to produce an all encompassing spider-diagram/mind map and then have to rub it off the board at the end of a lesson. Online alternatives have always seemed a bit cumbersome to use with a class but in the downtime of exam class relief I have taken a good look round at what is out there and come to the conclusion that bubbl.us is the way forward. Simple to use, free and easy to embed, print and download it’s given me hope that my work won’t disappear into the ether with such dispiriting regularity.

Clay Shirky | TED talks | Cognitive Surplus

Clay Shirky’s TED talk about Cognitive Surplus chimes with my belief that we are entering a new time as teachers. The internet takes away the teacher’s role as a gatekeeper of knowledge, any literate student can now test the facts we used to be the guardian’s of with ease. The new paradigm is a world of creativity and collaboration where our time, in school as well as at our leisure, can be used to improve the quality of information out there in the wider world. To me this means students recreating the textbooks, adapting, collaborating and improving on work previously done. And that means the end of textbook companies. David McCandless’s infographic interpretation of Shirky’s idea is a stark reminder of what can be achieved in a fraction of the time we waste.

The Power of #hashtags

I’ve blogged a little before about the amazing power of twitter and it has been brought home to me again of late as the result of two incidents, one huge, one tiny. The events in Tunisia and Egypt are, of course the huge one, and reflect how information is freeing itself from the control of governments. The tiny one is the fact that I have a friend staying at the moment who is coming to my school tomorrow to observe. She’s doing a PGCE in English and I wanted to show her the power of twitter so posted a quick query to my PLN (Personal Learning Network ie. people I who follow me on twitter) about which would be the best hashtags for English teachers. The result was exceptionally swift and accurate and came from @lmsahistory, a history teacher in Chicago. Amazing and par for the course for the twitterati.

The experience got me thinking about the usefulness of hashtags in finding information and people to follow on twitter, I certainly found the service useless until I started following the right threads and hence found the right people, so I thought I’d blog some of the useful hashtags I’ve found in case anyone else is searching:
Education Technology
#edtech #ukedchat

History
#historyteacher #sschat

Politics
#politicsteacher (although I think there are only a few of us using this!

MFL teaching
#mfltips

English Language & Literature
#englishteacher #engchat

Those are the ones that spring to mind, I’ll add more to this post as I come across them.

My reflections on the ISC ICT strategy conference

As one of the few non SMT delegates at the ISC ICT Conference it was extremely encouraging to see the enthusiasm for and commitment to the adoption of e-learning that came out of last Tuesday’s meeting. For me concerns over capacity and safety were secondary to the emphasis on the transformative power that online tools can bring to learning. The ever entertaining Ian Yorston pointed to this with a rallying cry for less spoon-feeding and for schools to embrace the opportunities that online access to information has for making our students into independent learners and upgrading our schools from ‘Very Good’ to ‘Outstanding’. This call struck a nervous chord with the delegates and reflects the reality that in an information rich age the teacher must change, for decades teachers have played the role as guardian of the kingdom of fact, dispensing these to students as required for examinations and, in regretfully fewer cases, as a route to a more comprehensive understanding of the iniquities and wonders of the world. The internet has changed this, any and all facts are now at the fingertips of internet enabled students for verification or initial research. The teaching role must therefore change to facilitator, enabling discussions where factual knowledge can be organised, synthesised and analysed to address the real goal of education, finding the answers to the questions which human curiosity begs. The conference was liberally sprinkled with great tools to achieve this. Kerry Turner and Jose Picardo highlighted many of these, AQA chipped in with the prospect of internet enabled exams which promises a system where factual recall becomes secondary to the usage and deployment of understanding, enabling students to be stretched so much more whilst also preparing them for the real world they will have to deal with, a world where, with the exception of those planning a career in deep sea diving, the internet will make information readily available at all times through a community of sharing. This fledgling community was already in evidence through the twitter feed and the discussions it sparked at lunch between delegates who had met physically for the first time. For me the ISC needs to take a lead here, while the state sector has grids for learning that encourage teachers to share resources the independent sector has been slow in leveraging the wealth of material produced in our schools, an online forum where schools can list their curricula and exam boards to enable collaboration between teachers and students would be a start, the proposed ISC iTunes channel also looks like a potentially tremendous resource and advert for what we can offer. At a time where government seems to be encouraging the teaching profession to look backwards the independent sector has the reputation, the influence and through our freedom from government sanctioned examinations, the duty to make a case for embracing the future of learning.

Mystudiyo – adding value to embedded video

Once again I bow to the greatness of Larry Ferlazzo and the inexhaustible supply of resources on his excellent blog. This latest one to blow me away is called MyStudiyo and it is basically a tool to create multiple choice quizzes, the key advantage for me is the facility to allow youtube video to be embedded into the quiz and then for the quiz to be embedded within a blog or VLE.

Exam system in disarray

The Guardian covers the idea that the exam system is in disarray with a focus on the fact that standardised testing is removing soft skills from students and even A* are being let down on the creative side. A far more pressing concern is the quality of marking in subjects like History and Politics where, despite the in depth nature of the indicative content provided, glaring errors are still made on an annual basis. The reality is that many of these are in favour of the candidate, I have several students this year whose A grades are highly unrealistic and contradict my 2+ years of experience with them. These, of course are never questioned as they show the school, department and teacher in a good light. However for the second year in a row I have an outstanding student reduced to a B in Govt and Politics owing to the incompetence of a marker and subsequent intransigence of the board. Last year it didn’t cost, this year my student awaits a priority remark decision on a place to read PPE at Oxford. I don’t have any perfect answers to this question  but I suspect many examiners wouldn’t recognise one if I did.

TeachMeet Cheltenham

After a successful first go, I’ve booked another TeachMeet here in Cheltenham. More details to follow but this is the logo!