Ideas, Practices & Personal Insights

Teaching maths with 1:1 technology

When students have access to their own Internet-connected devices at any time, both at home and at school, maths instruction has the potential to be revolutionised. Here are three great innovations available to maths instructors in 1:1 classrooms: 1. Expanded Differentiation 1:1 technology allows for extreme differentiation, even individualisation, of both the type of content each student is working on and the tasks each student is asked to complete. Instead of all working ...

Using iPads to motivate children to write for different purposes

In recent literacy lessons I have been exploring the potential of the iPad to motivate children to write for different purposes. One ongoing target in our school is the emphasis on boys’ writing, so the theme here is going to be how one app has been used to encourage boys to write with confidence, in an appropriate style, and with a strong level of knowledge. Having collaborated with David Andrews ...

Understanding why employers want to work with schools

Careers Education, Impartial Advice and Guidance, Work Related Learning and Enterprise are all subjects when done well require input from employers. Previously there has been a plethora of organisations who were placed to be that link between education and employers, EBP’s who could put on a Careers Fair, Dragons' Den or Work Experience programme to meet the needs of the school. Sadly, in many cases they have gone, and ...

Can the iPad help enhance reading in the classroom?

Perhaps the biggest challenge for myself as an English and Media Studies teacher, and educators more broadly, is the constant fight against the steady decline of reading ability, and the capacity for reading for pleasure, that we find each year in our schools. Without wishing to sound like a jack-booted CBI spokesperson (who seem to exist only to reduce corporate taxes and demonise the state education system), there is undoubtedly ...

Wikispaces - create a set of revision notes for the year in 1 hour

I thought I would revisit Wikispaces with my Year 9 class this week. We have internal examinations next week so it was a revision lesson on Unit 1 AQA GCSE Physics. I thought, wouldn’t it be good to set up a wiki of revision notes in an hour? I set up a page for each section of the specification, which corresponded to a double page spread in their text book. I ...

Integrating music and technology

It is apparent that over the last few years more and more schools are investing in technology to enhance their music department. Back in my day as a student we were lucky to have an electronic keyboard and pair of headphones in order to try and cobble together a GCSE music composition. Nowadays, a lot of school music departments will have a plethora of keyboards all connected up to computers ...

Video games as learning tools

Eat chocolate and ice cream for a balanced diet! Be universally popular by saying exactly what’s on your mind! Pass exams by playing computer games! If you think this is fantasy, then you’d be right – 66.7% of the time. It’s the computer games claim that’s not fantasy. As early as 2002 a group called Teachers Evaluating Educational Multimedia produced a report which was consulted by the Department of ...

iPad journey - will your wireless network cope?

Since I started blogging about iPads in education, I've been getting carried away with the positives that this handheld technology can bring to the classroom. However, there's been one major area of concern that I keep encountering during this 'iPad journey': the school's wireless network! As ICT coordinator, one of my biggest headaches over the last year has been our wireless networking. The downsides are the notoriously unpredictable wireless technology ...

Apps to use as student eportfolios

I have yet to find the perfect digital portfolio app that I think I would use exclusively in a visual arts class. Some apps can be used as graphic portfolios or as beautiful sketchbooks, others are great at sharing. Not all of the apps available are great at all of these things. I have spent a heap of time trying to find one and would be more than happy for ...

#PEBible - the shared PE resources folder

What a great idea: a bible for PE resources shared by a number of PE teachers around the globe. This shared folder is on the ever-popular online ‘cloud’ called Dropbox. Now I have joined #PEBible, I have access to hundreds of resources that have been developed, tried and tested by other PE teachers globally. Not all resources will be for you, and I would recommend you always adapt the file ...

Revising using origami fortune tellers

I tried this out today with a Year 7 group of students. I am sure you remember using one of these when you were at school to predict who would be your next girlfriend or boyfriend! Here is a giant one some students made today. What did we do? Instead of predicting your future love interest, we replaced the names with science revision questions, then each student tested each other using ...

A teacher's guide to IT terminology

What do you know about Phishing, Cookies, Worms and Trojans in a technological world? Do they still mean sitting out by the river waiting for a bite, biscuits, small garden slimy things or a person from ancient Troy? The rise of online communication, financial management, social networking and education is expected to continue. As users of a whole host of technological appliances and devices, are you fully aware of potential ...