A little holiday food for thought

Today I have been catching up on some tweets/blog posts that I  favourited on twitter. I thought that some of them were worth sharing. 


The first post I re-read this morning was Oliver Quinlan's Knowing Creativity. I took time to reply directly on the post, but had ipad failure once again and it deleted my comment. Next time I will try to remember to copy before I press send... In a very small nutshell (I recommend reading it for yourself), Oliver's post explores the idea of creativity being less of a result of inspiration and more as hard graft. I agree with this as it reflects my practice and who I am as a teacher/learner. My colleagues have described me as a creative teacher, but the approaches and ideas I use in the classroom have all been adapted or inspired from other people's ideas and practices. In short, I am a magpie - unashamedly so. It's not that all my ideas are pinched directly from other people, it's just that I could probably identify the initial inspiration for most of them (even if they do not seem at all related-my thought processes are not a uniform thing!) The more 'unique' ideas that I have had have not always worked so well, but I like to try them out, even if I fail. Taking risks is a big part of my learning. I would like to point out here though that if the idea ends up being a big one, I am always careful to attribute the source of my inspiration. 

Another related piece of reading and  TEDTalk is by Sir Ken Robinson 'Do school's kill creativity?' which I believe all edcuators should watch (2006 but very relevant).

Scratch

The third favourite was from @digitalmaverick about the Scratch Literacy Project between schools in London and Prague. This project involves year 8 children, but could be a great thing to adapt for younger children. 

Nick Chater also shared this youtube tutorial - how to create a duck hunt style game using Scratch. A great share for our digital leaders.

Ipads

This next favourite is a 'Bloom's taxonomy' in apps shared by @ethinking, created by @aangeli. Lots of great apps, even if you don't necessarily agree with their position in the table.

This was also shared by @ethinking and is a chart of key apps and a 'master plan for a 1:1 ipad programme.

And a final favourite that I felt important to share is this:

Pie Corbett ‏@PieCorbett25 Mar

In an interview, children reckon that writing the objective at the top of their work had never helped - personal targets and good marking do

Need I say any more?

Footnote

Some creative ideas that haven't reached fruition. Yet...

1. A set of story books based around the 'Fairytale Advice Bureau' ... seriously! I've written one. It's got chapters and everything!
2. A set of eco-friendly picture story books. Quentin Clancy lives in a beach hut ...
3. Betty Buttercup's recipe book. (A spin-off from the 'Fairytale Advice Bureau)
4. A blog by 'Billy Buttercup' that shares his personal, social and emotional problems, requiring children to help him through with their comments. (Another spin-off) 

There are more ... 

Some links from my twitter favourites

So finally I have had time to skim down my countless favourite tweets and look at some of the resources that I have saved. I thought I would share them as there are some spectacular resources here! Acknowledgement is given to the tweeters who shared the links - not necessarily the authors of the sites/blogs that are mentioned. This is only a sample of the many that I had favourited, but hopefully there will be something that will catch your eye as you scroll down.

It's nice to have a bit of thinking time!

ICT

The digital studies wiki shared at #rethinkingICT by the wonderful @teachesICT @sharland and @infernaldepart

@dajbelshaw Mozilla open badges and create and play text adventures (the latter looks more like a ks3/4 resource to me)

@itdirectorscut blockly a visual programming language like scratch, from google

@russellwareham 36 resources to get your children programming

@HywellRoberts Chaos in your town - hilarious fun 'blowing up' your house/neighbours (sounds terrible, but is great fun if you want to blow up your school!)

@rhp123 ideas for using minecraft in the classroom

@TomBarrett 80+ google forms for the classroom


@edtechtoday safe social networking sites for kids (has anyone tried any of these out?)

@simonhaughton create a simple angry birds scratch game (I've tried it out and it works)

@jobadge curriculum framework for ICT from CAS

@ictast innovation and QR codes in the primary school

@rhp123 50 web2.0 tools for schools

@SimonBainbridge   screencasting tools for schools

@mberry A recording of his #rethinkingICT presentation 'An open source curriculum'

Teacher well-being


@TomBarrett work-life balance a crowd-sourced resource that includes lots of other teaching tips


Brilliant books

@PosPositive  50 books with a positive message

@imaginationsoup 75 character-building books

Writing

@langwitches digital storytelling

@Cherise_Duxbury games to teach aspects of writing. From TES, I think these are the ones that Cherise uses during livewriting sessions.

Useful ipad links

@syded06 ipads and parental involvement

@janwebb21 the ipad as a tool for education - a case study

@rhp123 Report says giving iPads to Auburn kindergartners increases test scores http://zite.to/xK0bfP

@itdirectorscut a friendly guide to deploying ipads in your school

@EIKe199 A girl can live by apps alone

A scoopit page by @DavidMiller_UK

Scandinavian schools

@JackCWest A BBc report about Finland's educational success

@Cherise_Duxbury Swedish schools abandon the classroom

@pasi_sahlberg http://www.finnishlessons.com/

Amazing art

@dughall water and ink

@dughall make an avatar of your tweets

@dughall 50 best street art work selected in 2011 (truly amazing!)


Useful edu links

@knikitea steps to success in maths: securing progress for all children

Top blogs

I like this from @ktvee because it provides lots of food for thought.

Enabling environments shared by @marc_faulder has lots of ipad news

@teachesICT one of the digital studies crew has a blog here

@matthewbritton ICT in education

@normal_for_jp his forest school weebly should inspire you to get outdoors! I also love this little gem on the web 50 things to do before you are11 3/4

And finally, this was shared by @ChrisMayoh, @Dughall and @digitalmaverick. If that doesn't persuade you to watch, nothing will! What an inspirational and creative child! (It has given me an idea for school too!)

Naace 3rd millennium hothouse

I'm yet to blog properly about #rethinkingICT  (partly because of its timing) so thought I should blog about the 'hothouse' as soon as possible. This will be a very potted version - my highlights.

The reasons I was happy to give up a couple of days of my holiday (again) was because I know how inspired by other's achievements I am. They make me want to become a better person and to carry on learning. Discussions throughout the two days have challenged my views, changed some of my opinions and  given me a lot of food for thought. It was great to catch up again with awesome twitter 'giants' Jan, Tim, Dughall and Drew and to meet twitter friends like Emma, Nic, Ant, Robert, Cherise (who I feel I have known forever!) and Chris (the funniest and most intelligent/inspirational 'youngster' I have ever met!). I include their names here as great people to have in your PLN, if you do not already have them. They have all certainly inspired me over the past couple of days.

I thought @ohlottie's idea of using linoit to take notes at #gtauk was a great idea, so I used it initially as a reminder for me, then decided I wanted others to add to it as I couldn't be in two places at once. There are hopefully lots of useful links on it for others to learn from. Thanks to everyone who contributed.

The thing that will have the biggest (immediate) impact on my teaching
came from the appshed masterclass from @TorstenStauch. I intend to use this with my digital leaders and show our key stage 2 teachers too. Other notable learning aspects for me were @dajbelshaw's Mozilla gems - popcorn and thimble- which I will play with during this coming week. He also reminded me of hackasaurus, which I had learned about at #gtauk. Don't get me wrong, there was lots of amazing stuff going on throughout the two days, but it would appear that I am quite 'up' on the ICT front. It's always good to know that you are keeping up/ahead of the game. There were some great scratch workshops including an
impromptu one from @dughall and @digitalmaverick, which resulted in standing room only! @largerama showed us robomind - an alternative to scratch and a resource which I will definitely use in school. There was also a workshop showing how effectively ipads can be used to create multi-media presentations to promote your school. Programming seemed to be one of the key aspects of the hothouse and of course the raspberrypi was shown - and its value explored. I'm pleased that I have purchased and played with one and will blog about that at another point.

The speedshare (teachmeet) was a great way of hearing snippets of good practice from other schools - and a lot of great practice was showcased.

Naace's curriculum framework will no doubt prove to be a valuable resource that I can use to develop our school's ICT curriculum. The more I think of it, the more I believe that ICT is so fluid, that spending hours writing detailed plans is not the way forward. Having a bank of quality resources and sharing ideas for embedding their use is a more profitable way to continue to develop ICT in our school. This could be done through 'learning community' style staff meetings whereby staff are expected to take 1 minute to share an example of how they have embedded ICT. This could be done every other week, setting a standard and ensuring good practice is shared. In our school that would only take 10 minutes out of each staff meeting. A worthy investment of time. It was great that a headteacher from my cluster - Carol Green - was at the hothouse, because we had discussions about holding cluster teachmeets, which she can promote at head's meetings.  

I hope you find the links on the linoit useful - I know I will keep referring back to them! Please add to it if you have any links that I missed.  I will write a separate post about the digital leader network presentation, because I think it deserves it!

Collaboration, inspiration and #tmeast

On Saturday afternoon I caught up with a group of people at the teach meet in Norwich organised by @tomhenzley - people that I have a huge amount of respect for. I enjoyed the afternoon very much because of this, but also because of the new ideas and inspiration that it brings. This post is a reflection of the teachmeet and some of the people who contributed. It is also testament to the friends you can make via twitter and how you can both learn from and inspire other people. 


I'm not going to shout about them all (you can watch them on the live stream site) but will share some notables. I also admit that my concentration is poor at times and I intend to watch some of those near to the end of the teachmeet again to digest them, particularly @BenRogersova's talk about evolutionary psychology and @teachitso's presentation. I admit I was distracted at times by the cake, the company and @JenniH68's new hair and nails!




Circus skills, forest schools and menus!


 I am always keen to try out new things and @MissRead10 showed how circus skills can provide great brain breaks for children. This is especially relevant when you have a class full of jiggery children who need to get up and move around. Likewise, @normal_for_JP talked about his inspirational forest school work and growth mindsets. He reminded us how intelligences can be developed and failure is an important part of learning.  I often feel constrained by the classroom and envy the fact that he has beautiful woodland on his doorstep. 


@MissJStanton shared her fab work on tri-planning  with google docs, demonstrating how effective it can be across schools. I was in awe of @kezzmerelda and her amazing EYFS digital learning stories and @julian3576, who shares some of my passions (another mantle of the expert/tech fan), when he talked about developing a menu for learning and creating magic moments. @TomHenzley showed some great maths apps, @wigglemyears some great embeddable ict stuff and @jodieworld a free screen casting tool.




Collaboration


My presentations covered the digital leader network, livewriting using coverit live and the power of three - twitter, drama and ICT. These presentations had a common theme - the power of collaborative working. They demonstrated the dedication of teachers and what can be achieved when people go the extra mile to support one other. Twitter has been pivotal in the way I work collaboratively, because the only person mentioned here I worked with BT (before twitter!) was Jenni. 
Whilst I was demonstrating the livewriting, the forces behind it - Cherise Duxbury (@Cherise_Duxbury) and Michelle Brayford (@mbrayford) -  were adding content and sharing ideas. Lisa P (@QueenyPrior) was supporting the flow. I had met Cherise briefly at the start of the Bett Show teachmeet, but it is through twitter that I have got to know her better. How wonderful that these three lovely ladies gave up time on a Saturday afternoon to support me. Does that not show dedication and passion for what they believe in?


I am going to watch some of the videos from the teachmeet again, because I know that I will learn even more with a second viewing - bits that I missed first time. I will wait until my brain can cope with more learning!

Believe it or not, I hate the mic!

My very last shout out goes to @rosiegirl7005 who came despite being poorly and showed me again her intelligence, wit and dedication to children's learning. We could all do with a Steph supporting us in the classroom!

Livewriting at teachmeet east

I have been inspired by top tweeting teachers - @Cherise_Duxbury and @MBrayford - to try out coveritlive as a form of livewriting. Having participated in the sessions that they have run, I had a go myself with my digital leaders and during outreach work. It is wonderful! The standard of writing that is produced from it is amazing.

So come on! Join in with me during the teachmeet and see for yourself! :)

Art work by Jacek Yerka

Answergarden

On Sunday I heard of another new (to me) online resource from @jobadge called answergarden. I thought I'd have a play, so asked some of my PLN to answer my question. As always they rose to the challenge. Proof again of the value of twitter friends! I'm going to show answergarden next week in a staff meeting, to show how it could be used in class. 

You can add to this answergarden here if the embedded form below doesn't work. 


The question: What do you want to learn about next?

at AnswerGarden.ch.

Trumpet blowing!

I've had a drama article published in Creative Teaching and Learning Magazine! I had written a blog post called 'A Waspish Sort of Problem' about a drama day that I had led, based on a book called 'The Giant Jam Sandwich'. 


I had blogged about the event and shared it on twitter and was subsequently approached to write the arcticle. I admit that I was unsure at first, because of time limitations and  my ability to do a good job.
 So, now that I have done it, I am going to blow my own trumpet! Fitting it in was a miracle in itself (the week before the google teacher academy and during those google app tests). I have no intention to 'tweet brag' about the article or this blog post, but am blogging just because I am wearing a *proud face* right now and want to have a 'look what I've done' moment! 

Drama in the classroom: the power of twitter

Many people know what a drama queen I am. Not always in real life; as a true Gemini I can go from confidently outspoken to self-conscious, uber-relaxed to hyperactive at the drop of a hat. But I do love a drama in the classroom and I enjoy taking risks and trying new things. Dressing up and pretending to be someone else takes me back to my childhood and, whilst I have no acting ambitions, I like the reaction I get from the children. It is amazing to see how some of them can drop into the drama with me, instantly.

I have been lucky in the past to have other staff who are willing to dress up and drop in with me too. My previous headteacher has kindly been Samuel Pepys, Percy the Park Keeper, Henry V111, a French chocolate spy and a space cadet before. Teaching assistants have been in role as such people as Maid Marion’s lady in waiting and Jacqueline Wilson. This is not part of their job description, they do it because they enjoy it and can see the benefits.

I have roped some of my family into playing a role too. My dad and sister have been giants complaining about small cakes, my son is regularly a manager, employee or traveller. Sometimes you need a fresh face though. So a few weeks ago I asked on twitter if anyone could help. Within 30 minutes I had a video message from Miss Read ( @MissRead10 )  asking for help from Badger Publishing company.  

She was going on holiday and didn't have enough room in the case for her daughter's favourite book - The Hungry Caterpillar. She wanted to know if we could help. I wanted the children (in role as publishers) to come up with the idea that creating a book on the ipad would solve this problem. The initial problem was that my class were really indignant that Miss Read couldn't remove some clothes and put the book in! 'It's quite small after all!' Luckily, one of my chaps said, 'Well we could make a book and email it to her", which then prompted the ibook idea. We had used book creator before, but I wanted them to make an animated story, so I joined in as I always do (as an employee) and dripped some more ideas in.  The videos below are examples of what Badger Publishing company created.

This was a what I would class as a mini-mantle. Dropping into a drama for a short time (2-3 lessons) to achieve the desired outcome, usually covering only one or two curriculum areas.

 The next mantle I wanted to do would involve many more curriculum areas. It needed to incorporate learning about night time and nocturnal animals as part of our work towards SATs. I asked another fellow tweeter (@normal_for_JP) if he would do me a small favour. I wanted a way of getting the children to try and deduce the difficulties of capturing nocturnal animals on film. I was expecting a short audio/film clip request for help to film creatures. I was absolutely amazed at what I actually got! See for yourself!

The mantle had already started in the morning with a letter of complaint 

from a fellow nature lover, who said that the WPIT website was not very informative. Creating dilemmas is what gets a drama started and keeps it going.

WPIT decided very quickly that they needed to add more content and should probably make sure that their animal facts were accurate, so they set to work. It was at the end of the morning session that I showed the film. 

Initially we discussed the problem and the children reasoned why the animals weren't being captured. In the afternoon the WPIT employees filmed tips like the one below as a response for Backwoods Bill, which you can see on our class blog. 

We carried on working on our company website that afternoon whilst I was plotting ways of extending the problem solving and learning from Billy's film. It turned out that I didn't have to do much thinking (as usual!) I had tweeted about the post on our class blog and by the morning we had a response from Ross Mannell (@RossMannell) in Australia! Even more incredible was the fact that he had responded with a post of his own! We studied it carefully and came to the conclusion that Backwood's Bill might not even know anything about the creatures he was trying to film. WPIT's solution to that problem - create a guide book for him. Great! Enquiry learning with outcomes and success criteria naturally set by the children.


As another part of our work on night time I wanted the children to learn 'Be Safe, Be Seen.' So cheekily I asked JP if he could drop into role again and have an accident ... Once again a brilliant film was delivered that kept the drama going. It allowed me to cover objectives, but once again my class thought that they had made the decisions about the learning and the outcomes. 

So what can I say but a HUGE thank you to three fellow tweeters who have taken the time and made a big effort to add a bit of variety to my classroom.


What about me? Well I did make the effort in the end and drop into role as Backwoods Belinda - Billy's team mate. No film clip I'm afraid. My Australian accent was dubious and it was one of those times when I was glad that I was on my own in the classroom!

Backwoods Belinda

If you want to read more, you can see our class blog here.