So Much to Learn...So Little Time

Re first slidecast

Told my S2 French class about the slidecast to help them with their revision and played it in class and had them drill the words....they loved it.
Every single pupil in the class listened and repeated the words in unison. WHY?

Any answers?

Generic Job Spec for Teachers

As teachers we often reinvent the wheel when it comes to preparing resources.
Some kindly soul out there has decided to save our administrator's time and put together a generic job descriptor for (primary) teachers. Thanks to Rachel for leading me to this.

Next Season on Survivor (Rewritten by G. Lovegrove)
Have you heard about the next planned "Survivor" show?

Three businessmen and three businesswomen will be dropped in a primary school classroom for 6 weeks. Each business person will be provided with a copy of the school curriculum, and a class of 28 students.

Each class will have five learning-disabled children, three with A.D.D., one gifted child, and two who speak limited English. Three will be labelled with severe behaviour problems.

Each business person must complete lesson plans at least 3 days in advance, with annotations for curriculum objectives and modify, organise, or create materials accordingly. They will be required to teach students, handle misconduct, implement technology, document attendance, write referrals, correct homework, make bulletin boards, conduct assessments, complete report forms, document benchmarks, communicate with parents, and arrange parent interviews. They must also supervise morning tea and lunchtime breaks and monitor the entrance foyer.

In addition, they will complete drills for fire, earthquakes, tornados, and shooting attacks. They must attend workshops, (100 hours), staff meetings, union meetings, and attend curriculum development meetings.

They must also tutor those students who are behind and strive to get their 2 non-English speaking children proficient in English. If they are sick or having a bad day they must not let it show.

Each day they must incorporate reading, writing, maths, science, technology and social studies into the programme. They must maintain discipline and provide an educationally stimulating environment at all times.

The business people will only have access to the golf course on the weekends, but on their new salary they will not be able to afford it anyway. There will be no access to vendors who want to take them out to lunch, and lunch (raw vegetables and water) will be limited to 20 minutes. On days when they do not have playground duty, the business people will be permitted to use the staff toilets as long as another survival candidate is supervising their class.

They will be provided with two days per term of Classroom Release Time, during which time they must maintain all individual assessment checks, running records, numeracy tests and keep all health and attendance records up to date.

If the copier is operable, they may make copies of necessary materials at this time. The business people must continually advance their education on their own time and pay for this advanced training themselves. This can be accomplished by moonlighting at a second job or marrying someone with money.

The winner will be allowed to return to his or her job.

Pass this to any friends who think teaching is easy.
 

An Experiment in Action Learning

The posts linked below on RateMyMates  are the result of a wee experiment with my students in 1F. Instead of using the usual direct teaching methods to cover the topic of school I asked the students to work in groups to produce either a film or a radio show.
The aim of the production was to introduce German-speaking visitors to The Gordon Schools; to give an idea about its history, the subjects studied, give some opinions, some interviews etc. The only real guideline I gave them was to use the vocabulary from their vocab guides to ensure reasonable quality German. You can see/hear the results for yourselves but here is my own analysis of how the experiment went.

1. I allowed it to go on for too long, although much of the time was down to various disruptions
2. some level of direct teaching is involved beforehand to ensure some familiarity with the labguage to be used
3. I'm not sure how much of the language they have learned
4. there are some fantastic ideas in there which with a little tweaking could produce really high quality work, both language-wise and creatively
5. once again just when you are getting brassed off and you think they are taking the mick the students come up with the goods...in general.
6. the script is king, queen, emperor and general dictator all rolled into one
7. on the whole THEY HAD A BALL..look at the bloopers at the end of the films

Will I do it again? YES, but with the above in mind.

Please leave 2 stars and a wish-type comments on their work!!!

Der_BJKKM_Shau

Die_Gordon_Schule

Ein_Tag_in_der_Gordon_Schule

Technology Gap

Is there now a technology chasm between the developed and the developing worlds?

For a while now something has been bugging me about all this wonderful web-based technology and these fantastic, new, freely available whizz-bang applications which could have an amazing effect on the education of our children. Don't get me wrong all these ideas really are superb, and there is a serious amount of work being put in to analyse the effect web 2.0 etc can have. BUT I am worried that all this stuff is being done for a generation for whom education is no-longer seen as a right with the accompanying responsibilities but as a mere disruption for 5 days a week; a generation to whom huge amounts are given yet relatively little is asked (that should be DEMANDED) in return.
Turn that around, what effect could all these resources, technology have on kids in the developing world, for some of whom school is an unattainable goal. Why shouldn't they be able to download free resources off the net to help them learn. Imagine if they could freely access learning resources instead of buying pre-loved text books (at close to brand new price). I, and many other fortunate people in this country, have experienced African children's desire to learn...over 200 students used to turn up to my Saturday morning classes.
If we could get this content to them the educational gaps which currently exist would surely shrink along with cultural misunderstandings. But here's the rub, HOW? I really wish I had an idea how something like this would work but I don't. Would pre-loaded mp3/4 players be an idea (a la DoBe)? How can countries whose telephone network barely functions bring it up to the necessary quality to enable high speed broadband...at an affordable price?
To be honest I would think using landline technology in somewhere like Cameroon would not work. But what about mobiles. Africa is the fastest growing mobile market in the world. Mobiles have completely changed how Africa communicates with itself. Would mobile phone companies allow for example educational resources to be placed on their portals and to be freely accessed by subscribers? Obviously requiring the necessary capacity on their networks? But then that would bring in the old chestnut of censorship...SMS has been disabled on the Ethiopian networks because anti-government protesters organised themselves via text during the last elections!!! Unfortunately I don't know the answers to these questions, but I am sure there are folk out there who do...and who will probably make a fortune out of the poor as usual.
Lets hope Nicholas Negroponte's One Laptop Per Child idea manages to work out and overcome Intels Classmate.

A top 10 minutes

Had one of the best ever meetings today. 10 mins at break time, 3 buttered pancakes and a cup of coffee...BUT. Someone who wanted to hear about some of the stuff I've been doing, who sounded genuinely excited about it and who thought my latest idea (see below) was rather interesting. Thank you Tracey Stewart from she Determined to Succeed...and thanks to Fiona for letting me know she would be in school.

As a result I have now spoken to Louise McDonough from DoBe about the possiblity of providing some content...could be interesting.

The Gordon Schools Television

...now known forever as TGStv.
What do you think of the logo...just thought it up on the spot now.

So of you may be aware of my adventure into internet radio with school this last session (TGSi.) Although we didn't get as many "listeners" as I would have hoped I thought the quality of broadcast that went out was pretty high. A lot of good work was done by quite a small team. This next session I am looking at moving on from that into the realms of "TV",  or vodcasts to be more precise. I would like to produce a monthly news programme featuring two anchors and reporters reporting from various TGS events on video which then by the miracles of Garageband can simply be turned into a video podcast.
I also want my more senior students to help create resources which can be accessed by the younger ones. I have a secret yet cunning plan to produce a  kind of soap opera which will back up the vocab guides. We shall see.

YO! Maths Raps.

C'mon all you maths teachers, git down with the Mrs Burk groove.

Mrs Burk is one brave American maths teacher. Her maths teaching raps are a stroke of genius. Have a look at this one then check the rest on you favourite video sharing site...Teacher Tube.

ECML Photos

Here's my photo's from ECML BLOGS Workshop

Why we should learn a foreign language

Here's a couple of good reasons why learning (any) foreign language is a good idea.
Thanks Kees-Jan.

Peter Ford: Blogging to Creativity and Beyond

This is Peter's presentation at the ECML BLOGS Workshop.

Peter gave the keynote at Communicate.06 which kind of launched me on  my merry blogging way.  A couple of points I picked up on:

• if you don't like blogs don't use them. They are only a tool to be used if you so wish
• a blog is just a box you write in with buttons to click
• teachers need to take risks in order to move forward
• blogs help give students a concept of audience
• "teach not tech" - whatever blogging platform you use the software should flow into the background and not become a hindrance to creativity

I've not edited the presentation at all so theres about 10 seconds until it starts:

Download peter_ford.MP3

Download ecml_final_workshop.ppt