Archive for the Category ◊ General Thoughts ◊

Saturday, January 05th, 2013 | Author: Ian Addison

Teachers are often familiar with the term magpie-ing ideas. Borrowing from someone else because it is a great, shiny idea and then adapting it and using it. We use the term ‘magpie’ mostly in Literacy lessons where a child has found a great word and then we can share it with others. Before anyone comments, I do remind them to thank the person they got the idea from. I often do things in class and say that I have found it on this website or borrowed from this teacher on Twitter. It’s good practice after-all.

Anyway, in one lesson, a year 3 child named Ben heard a good word and shouted “We should porcupine it!”. Cut to baffled faces as he replied saying he knew it was an animal but couldn’t remember which animal stole ideas.

When we discussed it further, my class suggested that a magpie can only carry one idea at a time in his beak but a porcupine could hold loads on his spikes, hence the birth of the porcupine. My teaching assistant then drew me a porcupine and he now lives on the wall.

We’re not sure how he’ll be used yet, but the plan is to stick great examples of work, exciting vocabulary and any other idea on and around him to inspire others.

Oh, if you want this idea for your classroom, feel free to porcupine it. Ben would be very happy.

porcupine

(edit – after a bit of discussion, it was decided that an angry magpie in the corner of this display might be a bit of fun. So @e_gran drew one here)

Category: General Thoughts | Tags: idea porcupine, ideas, magpie, porcupine | One Comment

My 2012

Monday, December 31st, 2012 | Author: Ian Addison

Before looking ahead to 2013, it is probably sensible to review the year that has been already. Last year I wrote a few targets for the year ahead and it’s odd, because many of the things that have happened weren’t on the list!

But let’s start with the 2012 targets first…

ICT Planning – The ICT Planning website (www.ictplanning.co.uk) changed guises a few times this year but is now in a state that I am happy with and teachers are not starting to pick and choose some of the ideas from it. I’m not sure if we’re covering everything, but I’m also not sure if we need to cover it all. Some children have challenging ICT and the task is to now push forward with making sure all of them are challenged.

ICT Assessment – We have started using ICT assessment cards to track the assessment of ICT, these launched in October but again, I am fairly happy that these will be used well in the coming months.

Home Learning – I had an idea of having loads of links to different areas for times tables, reading, spelling but because of other commitments (below) this never really happened!

Digital Leaders – Well we went to BETT, we launched the Digital Leader website for the SSAT, I shared it at the Teachmeet too. But then it didn’t take off because another one came along instead, so I deleted my Digital Leader site. Oh well. These things happen I guess.

Sharing – We have shared lots, through Teachmeets, conferences and such like.

So on reflection, things have gone ok from that list. But now to the top moments of the year.

*I wrote my first book. It seems hard to believe that even though I wrote my predictions for 2012 on December 27th, I didn’t know I was going to write a book in 2012. I wasn’t approached until mid-January, had it all written and checked by April/May and a copy in my hands before the Summer holidays. Wow. It seems to have gone down well so far and people have given some very positive comments too. For those going to BETT, I will be on the Rising Stars stand sharing some tips from the book at various times. I have also been involved in another (huge) project for Rising Stars but I’m not sure if I can share that just yet….

*I got nominated for “Primary Innovative Teacher of the Year“. Again in January, this came as a huge shock and honour. Despite not winning, it was a huge privilege to be nominated alongside Sir David Mitchell of Blogging.

*I helped organise Teachmeet at BETT. This time around it was fab to see Dawn Hallybone and Miles Berry hosting while Ian, Drew and I just kept things ticking along in the background. It was also much less scary than presenting!

*Teachmeets got bigger in Hampshire! We held a Teachmeet with 60 people at Titchfield Primary School and it went very well. People seemed happy and buzzing with ideas. Next stop is to have one every half-term in different parts of the county.

*I appeared on Brazilian TV. This was as part of their piece on programming in the classroom. They came in to talk about Scratch and the work we were doing and it was a fun few hours. The children loved being on TV, even if they didn’t know what was going on because most of it was in Spanish!

*I got my own class! After two years as a PPA teacher and two before that as a consultant, I finally got the chance to have my own class and I have loved every minute of it. I have a great bunch of children with varying abilities but they are amazing and they challenge me everyday. Particular highlights include a boy with Aspergers explaining QR codes to the rest of the class, the ideas porcupine (more on that another time) or the amazing websites they made about the Tudors. I was looking at other schools and I did apply for a few jobs elsewhere, but without having class-based experience (of my own class and not covering) it was going to be difficult to move.

*Hardware – I didn’t think that we would be getting any new tablets or devices this year, but we got ourselves a Nexus (which we didn’t like) and some Playbooks (which we love). The Nexus is great, personally I love it, but for school with the lack of a camera, it proved to be disappointing. The Playbooks however are cheaper, have a camera and play Flash so they can be used for Busy Things and Purple Mash which is great.

*Our school blog reached 600,000 views! This happened just yesterday and is a huge number. I wish there was a list of most viewed blogs in the country, but we must be in the Top 20. It’s a great achievement for the children We were also runner-up in the whole-school blog awards too!

*Writing – This year as well as writing the book I have written a few articles for Teach Primary and Springboard Stories magazines.

*I presented at a few conferences – and did my first keynote. I presented at the Hampshire ICT conference discussing Google Apps, the Future of Computing, Oxford Brookes and ReThinkingICT, all looking at the Primary ICT Curriculum, and I was one of the keynoted at the Edech conference in Blackburn where I shared a whole range of free tools to help with ICT.

*The Google Teacher Academy returned! This time not only was I attending, but I also helped to judge a few of the entry videos and then led the best group of people possible. I was very happy with my table and we had a lot of fun indeed.

* I created blogs for other people. As well as making blogs for my own projects, I helped a few teachers create their own too. I also steered @7puzzle into having his own website (www.7puzzleblog.com) to host his maths challenges. This has been a great resource and one we use at school a lot.

*My Digital Leaders are amazing – Firstly we took 4 DLs to BETT, they were interviewed by the legend that is Russell Prue and then they presented for Scholastic and Google. Just before going home they met Prince Andrew as well. Then just a few weeks later 3 different leaders went to Learning Without Frontiers to take part in a group presentation where they were also amazing. Then came Hampshire KidsMeet where loads of them led and presented on a range of tools and ideas before the Teachmeet last month where 2 groups showcased making websites and using Popplet. Phew.

*I ran a bit. I tried to run 1000 miles this year which was 20 miles a week. I know that Mike McSharry in particular will see this as a list of excuses,but I got injured around May and I did the man-thing of trying to run on it too early and making it worse. Then I ended up giving it 8 weeks or so of no running and finally around September it got better. But with writing the book, having my own class again and the injury, I just couldn’t manage the 1000miles. I think I probably ended up with around half of that, maybe a bit more but I did raise £420, before Gift Aid, for charity. I also completed three half-marathons and the Great South Run.

*I turned 30. In February, Charlie organised a surprise party and loads of my friends were there and it was great. 30 isn’t that scary really is it?

*Oh yeah, I got married…probably the biggest thing to happen in this crazy, amazing year was that I married my wife, Charlie. It was wonderful having friends and family together at once for a fantastic day!

I think that’s about it…I must have missed something, but that was my 2012. I feel like I am never going to be able to top that and 2013 will be a damp squib, but if that ends up being half as good as 2012, I will be happy! Thank you to everyone that has read my book, my articles, my tweets, my blog or shared anything with me. Here’s to next year!

Category: General Thoughts | Tags: 2012 review | Leave a Comment

Top 5 Posts of 2012

Friday, December 28th, 2012 | Author: Ian Addison

Before writing a review of 2012, which will take a bit of thought, I thought I would share the top 5 posts on this blog throughout the whole of 2012. What this top 5 does show is that all of these posts are over a year old (the BETT one is 4 days from its first birthday). This appears to be because it takes a while to build an audience. The Bett Show post is 6/7th on Google’s search page for “Bett Show Tips” and search for Digital Leaders and my tag is 4th on the results page. Another thing that the most popular posts show is that the ‘how-to/guide’ type posts seem to get more hits than the reflection-type posts. Maybe teachers are looking for people to show them how to implement these tools in their classroom.

But hey, I’m just glad that anyone finds these posts useful!

Top 5 for 2012…

1. Bett for Beginners

This will be re-produced and updated in the coming days, but for now, the 2012 BETT guide is the most popular blog post on the site. This post gives a few tips and hints to getting the most out of the annual BETT show.

2. How to Get Started with Google Apps for Education

Another post getting an update and a revamp is the guide to setting up Google Apps for Education. This has been popular since it was written and this year alone has had just under 5,000 views. I have started re-writing it to take recent changes into account and that should be due in early 2013.

3. Come and have a #ukedchat

This post is getting quite old now, but it gives a very brief overview of ukedchat, the weekly twitter discussion forum. There have probably been many more posts about it which are better and more up-to-date, but this still had 3,000 hits this year!

4. Primary Digital Leaders

Written in December 2010, this post laid out the plans for Digital Leaders in my school. This all started after a discussion with Chris Mayoh and Dawn Hallybone at a Microsoft event in November 2010. We had just seen Daniel Stucke talk about his digital leaders and we planned a few ways forward for our own schools too.

5. Manga High – an overview

With 2,500 hits this year, this post gives an insight into Manga High which used to an expensive online resource but for the past 18months or so has been free. My children love using it and it really challenges them to think quickly.

Category: General Thoughts | Tags: Bett Show, bettshow, Conferences / BETT, digital leaders, google apps, Google Apps For Education, manga high, ukedchat | Leave a Comment

Are you ready for seconds?

Saturday, June 16th, 2012 | Author: Ian Addison

Are you prepared for a child blogging about your school? What if the Never Seconds blog had happened in your school. What would you have done? How would you have reacted? Would it have been able to happen at all?

For those of you that have been under a rock for the last month, Never seconds is a blog created by a 9year old girl in Scotland with the purpose of rating her school dinners. Each day, she takes a photo, uploads it to the blog and gives the meal a score. Oh and she also happens to be raising money for charity (£45,000+) at the same time. She’s quite a girl is our Martha. (As an aside…@digitalmaverick tweeted and asked what if she had been rating her lessons rather than her lunches? Would we all be so supportive?)

This week, her local council banned her from taking any more photos as the publicity was getting a bit much for them but after a huge amount of support from the public and Jamie Oliver, the council changed their mind and Martha is now allowed to post once more. I have to say that I think the council have made a brave decision in changing their mind and fair play to them.

But the question remains, what would you have done if this happened in your school?

Now it must be said in the majority of schools, I would imagine that Martha wouldn’t have even been allowed to have her own camera in school, let alone in the dining hall to take photographs! So credit should go to the school for allowing her to be proactive in the first place.

I’m not sure what I’d say if a child asked me if they could take photos to share publicly. I think I would give them my permission and blessing but would the teacher in me want to check and approve what they were doing first? It also got me thinking…Do my children have their own blogs outside of school? Should I know about them? Should I check them?

We have been thinking about providing children with their own blogs, but my aim is to use these to share learning but maybe, just maybe, it will promote the use of blogging and the children will want to setup their own too for non-learning things. I know that since I’ve used Twitter in lessons a few children have created their own accounts, so maybe their own blogs are inevitable. Maybe I should praise it because if they’re blogging about something, anything, that they are passionate about then that should be encouraged? It sure has made me think about what we currently do and what we will be doing from September.

In a time when I am looking at how I teach, assess and share ICT across my school, Martha’s story has thrown loads more questions my way and although she’ll never know it, she has inspired me to rethink some plans for my school.

So, thank you, Martha. Enjoy your lunch.

ps: Steve Wheeler also blogged about the Never Seconds blog here.

Category: Blogging, General Thoughts | Tags: blog, blogging, blogs, neverseconds | Leave a Comment

Screencasts

Saturday, April 21st, 2012 | Author: Ian Addison

I use screencasts all of the time, mainly on Under Ten Minutes (www.undertenminutes.com) to record how-to videos for a variety of different tools. I usually use Camtasia as I have used it for a number of years and I also have a full license. I love Camtasia and the TechSmith team…but I was researching free alternatives for a thing I’m doing and that led me to a discovery.

Screencast-o-matic (http://www.screencast-o-matic.com) sounds like a made-up product that shouldn’t work. But it does. Brilliantly.

You simply accept the Java plugins, set your mic level and then adjust the box to the size of recording you need. Press go, start talking and then stop the recording when you’re finished. You are then presented with the option of downloading the resulting video or uploading it directly to YouTube. I did that and the result is below.

Screencasts for free, without any installation at all. Genius.

Category: General Thoughts | Tags: screencasts | 3 Comments

Useful Websites

Saturday, April 14th, 2012 | Author: Ian Addison

I am writing a guide for Primary Teachers and I am including a short section to showcase some websites that they might find useful. This does not include blogs as there is a separate section for teacher blogs. These could be sites that help with lesson planning, ideas, discussion, anything really. I am open to ideas!

So what sites would you include? and Why?

Thank you!

Category: General Thoughts | Leave a Comment

ReThinking ICT #ICT500

Sunday, April 01st, 2012 | Author: Ian Addison

This post is a response to Chris Leach’s invitation to write 500 words about Rethinking the ICT curriculum. Others including Miles Berry and @grumbledook have also blogged their thoughts.

Chris is also hosting an event where we can come together to share ideas and thoughts. Details can be found here. My comments below relate only to the primary curriculum as that is what I do! (it’s also over 500 words, but hey…)

Writing about my thoughts for changing ICT is a difficult process. On one hand I think that there isn’t much to change, after all we can teach ‘anything we like’ at the moment. I’ve taught children to make greenscreen videos, we’ve discussed and used Twitter in the classroom, we’ve Skype-d with Santa and we make our own games and we haven’t been chastised for this. We weren’t really following the National Curriculum, but all of those things we’ve done can be linked if you try hard enough. On the other hand, we need to do something about the schools who ‘do Office’.

I’ve written before about changing my ICT curriculum and to be honest, all of it can be covered under the current National Curriculum and all of it can still be used under whatever new curriculum comes out. I just looked at what I would want my learners to have. I want them to know that there are a range of tools out there that do the same job, or different jobs or a bit of a mixture. I try to include ‘new’ stuff like blogging as well as traditional stuff like ‘being able to do a presentation’. But when we present we work on how to present and not just how to add animation and effects. It’s all very subtle changes but that’s what will work. My planning is slowly moving on to www.ictplanning.co.uk - I don’t think it’s groundbreaking, but it might help someone.

I don’t buy into this current craze of wanting a huge emphasis on coding and programming in the curriculum. Yes it should be included, but it shouldn’t be the main driver. Children today want instant results and the thought of spending hours writing lines of code before seeing an end product would bore many of them, and their teachers. We use 2Do It Yourself which is a fabulous way of including game design with a bit of coding as it gives the children a graphical view of their game instantly. They can design it, try it our and refine it as they need to. For us, this is the building block before they move on to Scratch and Kodu.

Another problem is the staff. Teachers are worried that they need to know how everything works before the children can use it. How many teachers in a normal school would want to learn programming to then pass it on to the children? Now in an ideal world the teachers would be happy not knowing how something worked and giving the children the chance to explore and learn for themselves, but we all know that this doesn’t happen. One day maybe, but we’re not there yet.

Also, people often say “my 3year old can use my ipad, but at school he won’t be near a computer til he’s 6″ or whatever are missing the point. Yes your children can use a device, but in school we often just have PCs. Until schools have a range of devices to allow children a chance to explore different things, we will be ‘stuck’ with using PCs. And why don’t we have a range of devices? Often it is money. However I know a school that has bought a whole set of ipod touches but isn’t letting the staff or children use them yet until the staff are trained. Again it comes back to staff confidence which the more I think about it, the more I think that it could be the biggest issue.

How do we get our staff confident and comfortable trying new things?

How do we get them willing to let the children potentially fail first, and then succeed later?

How do we keep them informed of new developments and new websites to help them? Many of them won’t go on Twitter (I’m the only one in my school on it)

In this time of change and uncertainty, I don’t worry about schools with people like me, leading the ICT and finding out about new ideas. I worry about schools like the one I visited last week. They had very recently had an ICT inspection from Ofsted who has graded them good with outstanding features for ICT yet when I spoke to the children about ICT they said we ‘do Word, PowerPoint, Excel and sometimes if we’re good, drawing’. Those are the schools that we need to support and focus on. They need to be shown the light and shown the way forward.

How do we do that?

I don’t know. Answers on a postcard…oh wait, stamps have gone up in price, just comment below. It’ll be free.

Category: General Thoughts | Tags: ict500, rethinkingict | 4 Comments

Essentials ICT

Useful Links

Categories

Archive for the Category ◊ General Thoughts ◊