Ideas, Practices & Personal Insights

Records Management in Schools: E-mails

The Information and Records Management Society (IRMS) curates a regularly updated “Records Management Toolkit” to assist UK public sector schools in their compliance with the Freedom of Information Act 2000. Arena Group's Neil Maude has written for us a series of articles looking at the practical application of the principles described in this toolkit. In Part 5, Neil looks at e-mail management. E-mail has become the communication tool of choice for most ...

Using badges for learning

Inspired by the work of leading educators, Martin Waller explains how his class have embraced the notion of rewarding badges for both online and offline activities through a simple, yet innovative low-tech process. A couple of months ago I wrote about introducing badges for learning onto my class blog to link specifically to my classroom management system both in the online and offline world. I had initially encountered badges from ...

The 5 best blogging apps for teachers with an iPad

iPads are light, have great battery life and are ultra-portable, meaning that those of you who are tired of opening and starting up your PC, laptop or notebook to write a blog have a quick and easy means of doing so. And with blogging on-the-go becoming increasingly popular with iPad owners, it is important that people have an app that they feel comfortable with. We scour and sort through the ...

How can Twitter’s Vine be used in education?

When Twitter was first launched back in 2006, many of us were sceptical about whether it would last. What was the point of a tool that only let you send 140-character updates? Why not use Facebook which has a status function plus much more? Many social journalists never expected it to hit the 5 million mark of users, let alone 500 million. But almost overnight Twitter became an online phenomenon. Today, over 340 million ...

It's time for teachers to pair up: today's lesson is on 'Coaching'

It may be somewhat of an unspoken truth that some teachers instantly gauge the students' attention, whether by mastering their own pedagogy or just looking slightly scary, while others are simply swamped by a mass of bellowing noises and propelled objects. Maybe a tad too stereotypical. There is no substitute, nevertheless, as Deputy Head Shaun Allison points out, for teachers to discuss their methods and build up each other's capacity ...

Bullseye! A visual target that motivates students to progress in lessons

Inspired by a recent Pedagoo teacher meet, Assistant Head and PE specialist Jon Tait puts into practice a strategy to encourage students to work harder and faster by giving them a creative visual tool which shows how far each one is progressing with the lesson objective. The simple-to-draw circular board, which can be segmented several times into progressive achievements, could even be projected onto an interactive whiteboard. It's a great ...

Going beyond core values and raising achievement levels

We are living in an increasingly enlightened time when the understanding of the roles of teachers, parents and the power of 'values literacy', as an integral part of a school’s curriculum, are coalescing. The prospects are exciting. Children and young people need to be empowered with values literacy. The inspirational process engenders a rewarding sense of purpose and motivates participants so that they take more responsibility for their learning ...

The new dimension - Bring Your Own App

Just as we’re getting our heads around ‘Bring Your Own Device’ (BYOD) and their usage in schools and in the workplace, there’s a new trend on the block - now it’s about Bring Your Own Application (BYOA). With the availability of thousands of ‘applications’ (apps) for free, or at exceptionally low cost, BYOA is gaining momentum and users are choosing apps which are easily accessible and best ...

It's a spectacle! Is Google Glass a teacher's best friend or worst nightmare?

Would you really replace your specs with a computer? Or wear a camera on your head? It can only be a matter of time (and maybe not too much money) before Google Glass, or 'Glasses' as I call them, glide gracefully through the classroom doors and onto the heads of every boy, girl and teacher who cannot escape the futuristic amazement of this augmented reality phenomenon. Well, so they say. ...

Using pictures for effective teaching of inference and early comprehension skills

‘Reading pictures can be as easy or difficult as reading printed text.’ Gomez-Reino, 1996 My research into how to teach young children explicit inference skills began in 2001 when I observed that there was a discrepancy in my school between many of our fluent reader's ability to read and their overall comprehension. Evidence worryingly showed that an emphasis placed on phonics was producing readers who could decode the words but often had ...

iPad in Education Trial 2012-2013: Report, Evaluation and Data

Nine months after his school introduced iPads to the eager hands of pupils and a few not-so-eager teachers, Matt Britland offers us a rare insight into how effective their implementation has been in an evaluative study which incorporates the opinions of both teachers and students. We really like how the easily-digestable data is displayed visually, and the depth of the information provided in the project outlines, which is tailored to ...

Place your bets! How students can know where to improve

In his latest blog post, English teacher Adam Lewis describes an innovative yet stunningly simple method students can use to ensure they are improving in the actual areas where they need to improve. The so-called 'scaffolds' that Adam writes about are the tools a student may or may not need to answer a question and can 'bet' on, such as working with a partner, but there's a catch - each ...