misterel.co.uk

Injuries have besieged my attempts at running a 1000miles in 2012.  So it’s either give up or try something different. So I’m going to look at running differently.  Going for a barefoot approach… not sure if it’ll work, but I’d prefer to get out and do something rather than slowly loose fitness and quickly gain weight!

Having done some research this will be a slow process as I have to retrain my body to run in a different style…So 1000in2012 may still be a bit of an issue. However the longterm gains seem to me to be more beneficial… Guess I’ll just have to give it a go and see what happens. This video was one of many that I have watched.

I stumbled into a discussion on twitter today about writing new courses for ICT now that the PoS is dead.  I’m writing courses in moodle and adding assessments and using the ICT APP as a baseline for the rubrics that I am adding to each assessment.  If I map the assessments onto the APP then I’ll know that I have covered all the required areas.

Then  Chris (@infernaldepart) mentioned he was using the ‘new’ 4 strands for assessment. This confused me for a while until he enlightened me to the discussions about #digitalstudies and the work that various people have been doing on it. More info on this wiki. However, the discussions gained momentum when I asked whether their would be a form of ‘levelling’ to access the progress of pupils.  This for me is important as my school would still like some formal data to use for analysis, reports etc. Below are the responses.

@misterel @infernaldepart @teachesict not sure about need to level – are you referring to NC levels?

— Brian Sharland (@sharland) April 6, 2012

@misterel @sharland @infernaldepart #digitalstudies needs to avoid levelling, progression shown through pupil blogging + AfL + hack days

— Nic (@teachesict) April 6, 2012

@teachesict @misterel @infernaldepart agree – want to try and encourage non-trad forms of assessment

— Brian Sharland (@sharland) April 6, 2012

@teachesict @misterel @infernaldepart agree – want to try and encourage non-trad forms of assessment

— Brian Sharland (@sharland) April 6, 2012

@misterel @infernaldepart @teachesict pupils should be collecting skills evidence rather than levelling up – subtle diff #digitalstudies

— Brian Sharland (@sharland) April 6, 2012

@sharland @teachesict @misterel @infernaldepart how about progression demonstrated through quality of output? ie website/blog/gfx/robots!

— Jonathan Torbitt (@Jon_Torbitt) April 6, 2012

@teachesict @sharland @misterel agree on all levels. I’m using levels initially as structure for me to put to slt and 4 when have to report

— ? infernaldepart (@infernaldepart) April 6, 2012

@misterel @sharland @infernaldepart with blogs style evidence parents would have far more evidence than they do now with trad. reports

— Nic (@teachesict) April 6, 2012

@misterel @teachesict @sharland I can see it as a combo as both. The PBl approach with afl and digital portfolio plus teacher assess either

— ? infernaldepart (@infernaldepart) April 6, 2012

@misterel SLT is one thing. HMI would, I think, react +vely to alternative approaches. Badges? @teachesict @sharland @infernaldepart

— Miles Berry (@mberry) April 6, 2012

@mberry @misterel @teachesict @sharland awarded not just for attainment. achievement n progression but recognising individual work /skills

— ? infernaldepart (@infernaldepart) April 6, 2012

Based on the above twitter chat I got quite excited about badges.  Badges are not a new invention.  Anyone who joined the scouts is well aware of the power of badges and I think that model is something to be considered. Most Scouts are very proud of their achievements and were very keen to ‘collect’ and ‘achieve’ badges.  Also having read about Mozilla’s Open Badge Scheme  and also a potential moodle integration  the badge idea looks like it could be onto a winner in schools.

However, I think the badges offer the opportunities for pupils to decide to work towards achieving these badges rather than being a part of the formal assessment in units of work.  If pupils complete skills and/or achievements within a unit of work, I feel that they should then be encouraged to gather the evidence in an eportfolio (google sites etc) to actually achieve the award.  This then means that the pupils have chosen to work for this award and have taken ownership of their achievement. It also means that you can still incorporate a formal assessment criteria to the units of work that will meet the requirements of SLT, parents and if I am being honest, me as a HOD. I would like to know what progress has taken place, track pupils and also target pupils if and when required.

 I finished the Easter term on a two day ‘aspring SLT’ course run in association with NCSL.  3 charismatic, dynamic Head teachers ran the sessions and I have learnt a lot. I thought I was ready, and still do…but I am not READY! We went on a rollercoaster ride of the theory of leadership coupled with anecdotal evidence from their respective schools.

A lot that they had to say resonated.  I became very aware of the work I needed to do to push beyond middle management and focus upon the leadership at SLT level.   So first up on my reading list is ‘School Culture‘ by Louise Stoll.  How can you as a member of SLT look at changing the culture of a school without first understanding it?

We discussed types of schools. Confident or reactionary.  The present Government generated unrest is an ideal example of this.  Confident schools will weather the storm and back their decisions, lead the staff through the changes in a confident manner.  Reactionary schools are trying to second guess the situation, firefighting change as it happens without the confidence to make a decision and stick to it.  Changing the culture of the school requires transformational leaders…but what are they?

We had case studies delivered to us about the changes that these Head teachers had done in their school.  What was interesting was their grounding in theory.  Michael Fullan was quoted a lot.  Change was discussed a lot.  Implementing was discussed a lot.  But the most fundamental area of discussion was TRUST.  As a leader you need to be trusted.  All other attributes, skills are required but without trust leadership becomes problematic. If you lose that trust, you lose the credibility, and eventually your team.  This was an interesting way to look at leadership.

We did a lot of work on leadership styles.  We discussed our default style, but also were told that as a leader you would need to be able to slot into anyone of the styles if and when required.

Basically there is a lot for me to think about.  A lot of reading to do.  A lot of looking at teams and change.  After these two days I am more confident in my ability to join a SLT, however I need to make sure that I prepare well before, during and after the process of applying for a job.

Finally a few quotes and questions from the sessions…

Is it wrong to say that the salary and improved pension is a factor in applying for a SLT position?

Practitioner led training is OK, but without a grounding in educational theory we are dumbing down our training

What have you read in the last 6 months that has had a profound effect on your job?

What type of leader are you? Don’t say ‘people person’ quote a style from the theory and explain it.

When you become a member of SLT you need to be seen, don’t be in your office during break, or lunch.  It is easy to be visible when the weather is nice

Being part of the SLT is the best job in the world and you’ll never want to go back….

 

 

My  year 7 class have been designing posters to advertise the games they designed in scratch.  As is normal, they aren’t  brilliant at it.  You can discuss, content, layout, persuasive language etc, but the majority still end up with a title centred at the top, a picture or three dotted about the page and font choices that are bright, colourful and totally illegible.  So I decided to adapt an L2L lesson that I used to teach to try and get the design, content, layout message across.

Firstly I needed to get some posters.  I decided to use old 1950 -60 movie posters. I printed them off in colour and laminated them.  These were then placed in various locations in the corridor outside my room.

The task.

I put the pupils into groups, originally I was going to put them in mixed ability groups that I had chosen, but instead used the group tool in triptico. (if you havent seen triptico, I fully recommend it, it is awesome).  The group sorting tool was awesome as it sorted the class into groups ‘live’ and on the IWB so that the class could see that they were randomly generated.  This cut down on a lot of the usual moaning associated with group work. Once they were in groups they were placed strategically around the room and given a large sheet of sugar paper.  All they now needed was a pen….or pencil.

The task is quite simple.  Each group was assigned a poster (which they hadn’t seen). Each member of the group would have 1 minute to go out into the corridor, look at their assigned poster and then come back and tell another member of the group what was on the poster. The other person then had to draw it onto the paper. Everyone in the group got to go out once and also got to draw on the paper.  Once that had happened, I then had a chat with the class to see if the groups had developed any tactics to remember information, and discussed splitting the poster up into sections to allow them to target areas where information was missing.  The process was then repeated but this time the time was reduced to 30 seconds, apart from the last student who had 2 minutes.  This meant the team had to decide who had the best memory from round 1 and let them go last.

Once activity was completed we analysed their work against the real posters and discussed not only how well they had recreated the task, but also why I had set the task and what they had learnt. The pupils highlighted that they had learnt:

• teamwork
• communication
• memory
• drawing

When I then pushed about the relevance to their ICT lessons they said:

• the things you remember the most
• what makes a good poster
• layout
• content
• colours
• images

I was pretty impressed with how they worked and the answers and learning that took place.  You can click here to see the original images as well as the recreated poster that the year 7 teams created. The follow up lesson was to try and recreate the poster they looked at, using SERIF pageplus.

This has whole process is easily transferable to understanding web design, magazines, multimedia, spreadsheets….the possibilities are endless.

Decided to make a QR Code treasure hunt for my Y11 class.  Nothing too complex and as I didn’t google it first, it was all done the long way rather than using http://classtools.net/QR/but I still had fun making it and the kids really enjoyed playing.

So the idea was to create QR codes that linked to various obscure photos around the school.  All the kids had to do was scan the code, recognise the photo, go to that location and find the next code.  A very simple game, working on the teamwork and problem solving skills. Creating it, however, tested many of my own skills.

Firstly, to get the photos. I used my Android phone to take the pictures, as I knew they would auto upload to google plus and therefore each photo would have a unique URL.  What I also found was that when I put all the pictures into an album, I had the ability to move the photos around into the order I wanted the kids to go, and by right clicking on the smaller album pictures I was still able to get a unique URL, but with the knowledge that it was a smaller picture and would therefore download quicker.

Creating the QR Codes was fun.  I wanted to be able to add an image to each one – basically some text that numbered the QRcodes so that I knew which order to put them in.  I used http://www.unitaglive.com/qrcode It enabled me to change colours, add logo and save very easily.  I created the logos in SERIF Draw and they were just text saying Y11QR1 etc.

I then printed and lamented all the QR codes out.  I then created a massive table where  I added the photo, the QRcode and a description of location.  For the treasure trail to work, I obviously had to place the QR codes, one before the actual location so that when they scanned it, it would show the next location (i think that makes sense!).  Once I had created the table, it was then very easy to go around the school and put all the QR codes in the correct location.

The pupils had been pre warned that they were doing this challenge and between them they had enough smart phones to be able to work in small groups. Many different QR code scanners were used, but the best one was http://www.i-nigma.com/i-nigmahp.html It scanned every code ridiculously fast!

Things you need to consider when doing this activity are:

• that you have a WiFi network and that all your QR Codes are in the network area (a couple of mine weren’t)
• explain to the kids how long it took you to create the hunt, I had 30 QR Codes dotted around the school – some of my kids thought it was funny to hide some of them
• Having all the codes and photos in a table meant that when some of the codes went missing, kids were able to come back and see me and scan the one that was missing
• Stagger the teams at the start and record the time they left
• Have a prize for the winning team
• Have a couple of back up devices (I had a couple of iPods)
• The final QR code wasn’t a picture but a youtube video congratulating the team on finishing (for this to work you would need to have youtube unfiltered)

Was it a success?  All Y11 teams completed the challenge.  The fastest team completed all 30 in 75 minutes.  The last team was close to 2 hours!  I think that an activity that kept Y11′s entertained and engaged for a minimum of 75 minutes is a pretty good success.  The kids now want to have a go a creating their own, so there is my first follow on activity.  It has also raised their awareness of QR codes and they are going to include them in their magazines that they are creating.

What else am I going to do? I think stage 2 of this plan is to couple the photo trail with a question at each location as well.  I was thinking of creating a google site to host the questions so that I can create unique URLs or I may well use the QR treasure hunt tool created by Classtools. I’m still trying to figure out a way of not getting the codes moved by pupils…

With the potential demise of posterous arriving on the eve of my fortieth I have decided to go back and play with WordPress. However, there are still no guarantees that the posts will be frequent or interesting, but for this year I will aim to be a bit more diligent!

With the new focus from Ofsted and a desire to improve our KS3 schemes of learning I have been revisiting APP and trying to figure out the best way to enable the pupils the opportunity to achieve L6 and above.  When looking at the APP grids it is obvious that explaining, reflecting and evaluating become a key factor in the higher levels. However in an average lesson and when you’re introducing new topics, there is rarely time for pupils to get to grips with those higher level skills, especially if you are introducing new skills.
 
So my cunning plan, obviously acquired from other people and adapted, is:

1. Create level checklists in moodle, using the checklist. These have the relevant APP indicators in colour coordinated levels.  This then enables the students to see what they need to do to meet their target level. It also gives then the opportunity to see what else they could do to improve their level.
2. This second plan is a combination of various ideas that have either appeared on twitter, at TeachMeets1 and even in chats with colleagues2 at school. Basically I have targeted those pupils most likely to achieve L6 and created a posterous ‘space’ that they enrolled in. I post ideas, questions etc that I want them to think about and comment/discuss.  This should enable them to start analysing, reflecting and evaluating their work and their peers work.   This is pilot plan at the moment, but if they succeed and enjoy what they are doing, then it will probably be rolled out across the dept and to all pupils.

The topic I am trialling this on is Kodu.  Not the creation of games and programming, as the class have already done this, but the creation of advertising and support material for their game. They are all creating a document explaining the rules of the game, but have now been given the freedom to decide how they will advertise the game.  This freedom of choice is linked to the APP grids so that they can demonstrate that they have planned what they are going to create including:

1. What they will create
2. Why they will be creating it
3. What software package(s) they will use and why
4. Target audience
5. Success criteria
6. Selecting a test buddy to give feedback

So far some pupils are creating posters, some creating slideshows, animations and even some podcasts.  From a classroom management point of view this is proving quite interesting.

1The main influence was the Science dept at Saltash who had given exercise books to their A level pupils with the expectation that they would record and reflect on their learning after every lesson.  The dept. made it a compulsory task and collected the books in. This had a massive impact on the grades at A level.

2A colleague, in Maths (@jonsmcest), who has just discovered the wonders of twitter is doing a similar thing with his Y9 Maths group.

I have been attending BETT frequently over the last few years and have to admit the reason for going has changed since the advent of twitter. I now go to meet other twitterers and then get a chance to network and also cherry pick stands to look at based on feedback from others. I think it makes BETT less daunting than walking around for hours by yourself and not sure whether you have seen the right bits.

Anyway, before BETT, can I just say that Google Navigator on the android is awesome.  I lived in London for 3 years whilst at Uni and travelled most of it underground.  Now the last 2 times I have been to BETT I have used the navigator function in Google maps and walked instead. It’s not far from Paddington…a couple of miles.  You get to walk down Kensington High Street and through Kensington Gardens. It either tells you when to turn left or right or, if you have the volume down just buzzes to let you know when you need to change direction.

On the walk back to Paddington, early Sunday morning I even took a few pictures of Kensington Gardens – was a tad cold and frosty. 

See the full gallery on Posterous

BETT itself was the same as ever, the big guns taking up masses of floor space, and some little gems of innovation hidden away in the smaller stands.  To be honest though, my main agenda was to try and sort out my Ks4 ICT curriculum that has now become devastated by the Gove changes and continued announcements. So I was heading off to chat to them.  Considering the recent Gove speech, at BETT, I was expecting lots of hard sells from examboards clammering for my business.  AQA were indfferent – so not using them.  Edexcel have signed me up for a chat with my regional rep who was otherwise engaged with other clients and I had a spend an inordinate amount of time at the OCR Nationals stand…oops Cambridge Nationals… a rebrand for a new course

So, Cambridge Nationals have changed and I will still be running the new course with my Vocational Pathway kids. No point doing the double as it is only worth a single in the new League tables. The Nationals have also changed at Ks5 but as yet have not been verified, but the lovely Alison Pearce, has said all info will be available come March (this means that kids who have already opted for Ks5 ICT will not being doing the course they signed up for).  The good news is that there are only 2 compulsory units, not 4. More info about the course can be found here. It looks like D* is also coming in.

Apart from sorting out my GCSEs I also had a good chat with webanywhere who run our moodle.  Think I have negotiated an upgrade to 2.0 which will have a working google edu  integration. I have been waiting for that for a year. We have also got the SIMs integration and I would highly recommend it.

Another stop was schoolcomms, who we use in school, but not to its true potential.  It links seemlessly with SIMs and therefore enables you to email, parents of classes, teachers of classes, pupils of classes etc.  It also can send home virtual reward postcards. Send texts etc. The new finance module (which was reasonably priced) enables you to collect and manage money for trips, funraising, or anything else that requires parents to pay money.  It makes tracking and monitoring the collection of money extremely easy. As it is linked to SIMs you have contact info as well so can send payment reminders etc home.

The other stand that really caught my eye and was shown to me by some other Cornish colleagues was the Avantis LearnPads.  Android tablets with manageable software packages that are subject specific and totally customisable that get activated and locked in, when a pupil scans a QR Code outside your classroom.  How amazing is that!  Kids just scan a code and all the software they need is then accessible on the pad. Rumour has it that the newer version of the pad will be £195 and run Icecream Sandwich and you can set them to be unlocked when/if a child takes it home.  Will be doing a lot more research into this one.

I have to say though that the best thing about BETT is meeting other colleagues, having time to chat and see what everyone else is doing and or struggling with and sharing those little gems that are hidden away in stands around the halls. 

In response to an email I sent my Head regarding GCSE Computer science possibly being considered for E-Bacc he replied (and he may well have nicked it himself!)

..when Gove speaks to DT conference last term, he decides that DT will continue to exist and it is suddenly very important; when speaking to Music conference he again promises to protect Music place and will ensure its taught to KS4; today, when speaking to ICT he adds it to the Eng Bacc?…Wonder what will happen when if he is invited to talk to the Melton Mowbray Beekeeping Society…

So before I panic, change everything that we do well in ICT at our school, I may just wait until the dust settles a bit.

I unintentionally caused a bit of a debate on twitter last night and sometimes 140 characters can be quite limiting so thought it best to explain in detail why the school has asked me to look into a GCSE ICT option instead of the Nationals.

Firstly to put it into context.  Our School runs a 3 year KS4, with a twist.  All pupils take ICT (OCR Nationals) in Y9 and Y10 and then can opt to do more ICT in Y11.  At the same time they have opted for other subjects to complete in Y9 and Y10 and can then opt again in Y11 for 2 more subjects. This is changing next academic year to a 3 year KS4, opting in Y8.

The fact the current Y9 finish OCR Nationals at the end of Y10 is one of the key issues.  They are currently working on the old spec.  However, the school can’t cash them in for the league tables until they are in Y11, at which point it will be 2014 and the course will be worth nothing (not to the kids but to the schools results). 

Also the school feels (rightly or wrongly) that the ship has sailed on the Voc courses and even though they will adapt to meet the linear requirements and add an exam element the confidence in them has gone.  Also you will only be able to ‘cash’ in two equivalencies and no matter how many GCSEs they are equivalent too, they will only be worth one GCSE.

So my plan is:

• Switch current Y9 onto new spec OCR Nationals (if possible) so that their grades still count in 2014
• Offer a GCSE option to current Y8 going into Y9 (this will be a three year course with Y9 being a foundation course)
• Offer Y10 going into Y11 a GCSE option instead of more National units
• Run new OCR Nationals level 1 course over 3 years for our vocational pathways pupils
• Also have a core course for Y9 as well that is 2 hours a fortnight.  Thought I might do some codeacademy stuff with them

All I need to do now is find the correct GCSE course for us a a school and an ICT team.

So far it is looking like the Edexcel course as it seems to have the most relevant and up to date exam questions, although I am aware that the controlled assessment is still a tad frustrating in content, topic and tasks.