Ideas, Practices & Personal Insights

Establishing independent learners using iPods

Since I began teaching over seven ago, I have always taught the Topic of World War 2. It's a subject I thoroughly enjoy teaching and always an area that the pupils show a real interest. The topic has developed from a stand alone 'History' topic loosely based on a scheme of work, to a topic which encompasses all areas of the curriculum - a creative curriculum. With the introduction of 1:1 iPods ...

Ideas for managing your workload and improving AfL

Daniel Edwards (read: @headguruteacher) was absolutely correct when he argued that too often we misjudge the impact of our work relative to the effort we have put in. He is right to focus on curriculum, timetabling, performance management and assessment 'overkill'; these all offer plenty of inefficiency and I fully agree that you really can have too much data. This last is quite a statement and I know that in ...

What “independent” careers guidance really means

From last September, all secondary schools must provide “independent” and “impartial” careers guidance to pupils in years 9-11. This should include information on all options available for 16-18 education or training, including apprenticeships. This article looks at what is meant by “independent guidance”, and how schools might best provide it. It is based on the findings of a pilot Transitions Programme, carried out in secondary schools between September 2011 and March 2012, ...

Digital Leaders – why you need them in your school

Students are curious. Without this curiosity, I don’t believe a Digital Leader programme would be so successful. Show them something they are interested in and they want to know more. If they come up against a barrier, they want to overcome it. If they can find out something no-one else knows, they want to share it. Successful Digital Leaders are the epitome of the curious student with more to ...

E-safety – enabler or showstopper?

There can be little doubt that e-safety is an important part of the well-being and safeguarding of children, young people and vulnerable adults. There is also no doubt that there is a significant amount of scaremongering that does little to give schools confidence to move forward and innovate strategically with ICT across the curriculum. E-safety is a journey; it is a sum of many parts which, combined, will allow schools ...

iPad 100 series

Below you will find all of my iPad 100 posts covering everything you will need to know when investing in iPads for your school. iPad in schools 101 – In the beginning http://buff.ly/TNmYa1 iPad in schools 102 – Why iPad? http://buff.ly/ZjYmuD iPad in schools 103 – THE device http://buff.ly/TNnbdB iPad in schools 104 – THE learning http://buff.ly/ZjYH0r iPad in schools 105 – Workflow – How to save, work with ...

7 ways to assess student knowledge

This is always challenging, isn't it? Finding evidence that students have learned what you taught, that they can apply their knowledge to complex problems. How do you do this? Rubrics? Group projects? Posters? None sound worthy of the Common Core educational environ - and too often, students have figured out how to deliver within these guidelines while on auto-pilot. Where can we find authentic assessments that are measurable yet student-centered, ...

Resilient learners and leaders

A resilient learner is not one that plugs away, writing everything down and not seeming to mind if they continue to get the same grade. Neither, obviously, is a resilient learner the pupil that sits in the class impervious to any form of learning going on around them. Resilience for me is about the acts of reflection and action that follow a challenge. Both teachers and pupils face constant challenges ...

Curtailing the calculator

Almost everyone who studied maths at school will at some point have bumped into BIDMAS or its twin, BODMAS. BIDMAS stands for Brackets, Indices (powers), Division and Multiplication, Addition and Subtraction. BODMAS is identical, except “indices” are called “Order”. Both acronyms tell us the same thing: the order in which to tackle the operators in an equation. For example, in the sum 1 + 22 - (3 + 2) x 4, we must first evaluate the contents ...

How to use internet radio to help protect young people

A curious title you might think. Well, these are curious times, as it would appear that life-sized posters, DVDs, pamphlets and YouTube videos are not getting the message across to young people. It also appears that not everything we are telling young people about how to behave on the internet is connecting with them. Why is this do you think? Might it have something to do with listening to older ...

iPads – The silver bullet that will kill all other technology?

Are iPads the latest big thing that will transform education, or yet another over-hyped technology that will be misused until the next big thing comes along? Computers in the late 80s were going to change everything, but then we realised they couldn’t do very much that was really different. In the 90s, CDs with encyclopedias such as Encarta appeared which were going to kill the textbook, but that never ...

Live learning versus online learning

As someone who has traditionally used live and creative methods for teaching young people - such as theatre in education - I wondered if I should be the first in the queue to rail against the insidious rise of online learning. How can online learning possibly replace an interactive learning experience between real people? Maybe to see technology as an enemy is to miss the point and misunderstand the potential ...