I Should Be Marking

A colleague of mine in another school wanted to start an extra-curricular club involving a media project. As this could easily hit a number of cross-curricular themes, one of the Deputy Heads suggested he go and see the Head of English, Head of Drama, Head of ICT and the G&T Co-ordinator.

This got me thinking. And looking around. We have a number of school clubs. The ‘traditional’ clubs – sport, music, drama – all seem to have the usual cohorts of the very sporty, the very musical and often the more disenfranchised, respectively. But the other clubs all seem to draw almost if not exclusively from the G&T register.

As a teacher, there are advantages to this – you get the more able students, the more enthusiastic students, the more independent and hard-working students. This means that the outcomes are likely to be better and there will probably be fewer side-issues to deal with.

It seems to me though, that excluding the 90% of students who aren’t on the G&T register is a little unfair. Yes, the majority of those 90% would probably exclude themselves – but at least that is their choice. Why should only the academically gifted be given the best opportunities?

Drama is a case in point. Some of the students that struggle academically, and often those amongst the most challenging students we face suddenly thrive and find a place to participate and add value, both to their education and to the school, in the Drama department’s productions.

I have no doubt that targetting and stretching the more able children is important, but I just can’t help but feel a bit eliteist if I support the idea of G&T only opportunities.

Someone threw a statistic at me the other day – 1 in 5 pupils in school now has a Special Education Need (SEN). That got me to thinking – at what point are ’special’ needs not really special any more?

Anyone on the front lines will know what I mean. SEN booklets grow and grow, pupils with a variety of Specific Learning Difficulties (SpLD) are labelled, sorted, sifted and given a crutch to lean on. I recall talking to one pupil about maths. He told me that I don’t understand. He has discalcula and so he can never do maths.

In fact he has been told that he has some mild discalculaic tendencies. But it’s easier to throw a medical term at someone than to actually try and solve the problem in front of you.

There was a brilliant example in a recent episode of House (S5, E17) in which a patient with frontal lobe disinhibition turns to his partner and tells her that their daughter doesn’t have an auditory disability, she’s just below average. The episode highlighted a number of issues to me; the need for parents to excuse the fact that half of all children MUST be below average, the need for the medical system to back this up and the need for the educational system to deal with the fallout.

I often joke in the staffroom that I have severe disfootballia. Perhaps we all just need to accept that many people with SEN are not benefitting from being given a label (or worse, an excuse) to hide behind. I can’t see it happening any time soon though…

THE concept of “failure” should be removed from the British education system and be replaced with “deferred success”, according to a motion being considered by a teaching union.
Manchester Evening News, July 2005

Most teachers I speak to seem to agree with me on this one. Pupils are no longer ‘allowed’ to fail. They can’t compete in sports competitions at primary school (they all ‘participate’ instead), we have to provide all sorts of support and make allowances for pupils at KS3 and then offer an ubelievable amount of extra-curricular support at KS4.

One of my Y11s asked me when he can drop RE to spend more time completing his coursework for me. And this was back in November! I told him that if he didn’t waste 45 minutes of each 60 minute lesson with me he’d be finished by now, but alas, to no avail.

That same class now has a dedicated mentor waiting on them with regular meetings and other bits of mentoring, a number of them are involved in the ‘Starbucks’ (1) scheme – whereby they get a free trip out for a coffee once a fortnight in return for an hour’s after school work on the off-week, we’ve extended the deadline from Easter (on account of not one of them would pass otherwise) and the latest plan is to get them back after the exams and simply miss the August results day.

I despair, I really do. Because the course doesn’t feature any exams they can’t blame it on an off-day. We either get the work out of them and submit it or… well, that’s just it. There is no ‘or’. Most parents are completely unsupportive, the kids bone idle (and why would they be otherwise? There’s no incentive to work!) and the staff increasingly stressed and harried.

And heaven forbid you actually challenge one of the pupils over their work rate – abuse, storming out, Cold War scale sulking and the inevitable irate phone calls from normally apathetic parents claiming we are bullying their innocent, fragile little darlings!

I just wish that we were in a position to actually allow some of the students to fail. Based on tracking data from KS3, some KS4 students will fail to achieve a C or above – and that’s fine. But this bunch of reprobates with an average predicted grade of a D are all expected to pass, no matter what. Maybe if students were able to see that not doing the work actually means you fail then maybe a few might decide to pull their fingers out…

(1) Disclaimer: Other overpriced, trendy, non-alcoholic drinking establishments are available.

Work/life balance – the bain of a teacher’s life. We all know people who err too far on either side of the line, and I definitely do. Over Easter I spent far too much time marking coursework and preparing resources and Schemes of Work and not enough time with my family and the garden (which is looking pretty sorry for itself – as do I when Mrs. Hippy tackles me over it).

Last week the family were away for a short break, whilst I was back at school and left to my own devices of an evening – so more opportunities for looking at innovative and interesting ways of sucking more of my personal time away! At least part of the problem is that what a lot of people count as work, I count as fun. Investigating ways to use Google Docs in the classroom – or out of it, creating more graphics tutorials, finding out about new qualifications and so on is to me, what YouTube, MySpace and Facebook are for your average 13 year old.

Those who’ve read Danny Wallace’s Yes Man (the book, most definitely NOT the film) will know what happens when you say Yes to everything. It can be wonderful, but exhausting. I need to get used to saying No! Missing the odd Ed Tech Roundup is not a bad thing! Spending a night or two without using Twitter will not leave me socially bereft! Playing snap with my daughter and reading a book with my son are both more important than making sure a group of pupils have the opportunity to learn how to imitate Roy Lichtenstein using Photoshop, Fireworks, Paint.net AND GIMP!

Now, where did I put that report on Functional Skills…

I’m not sure why I do it¹. In recent weeks I have:

• spent an entire day signing every pupil in the school up to the World Maths Day website and collating the maths sets so that password can be distributed
• created Wordle quizzes based on the text from famous books for World Book Day, along with an online quiz using a Google Form which I still haven’t marked
• recorded around a dozen Moodle screencasts for my colleagues
• created resources for a Y9 options evening tomorrow
• set up an interactive (Google) calendar for the school website
• made a variety of subtle, but time consuming, alterations to the school website (you update an old logo and find the page it links to is subsequently out of date, and so you have to rewrite a whole page of text…)
• attempted to enter into negotiations with a major film studio over the use of 50 seconds of soundtrack
• co-created a wiki about copyright implications in education
• installed, edited, tweaked, hacked, advertised, recruited for and moderated a school-wide blog

And yesterday I decided that the visiting Cafe Scientifique visitor ought to be recorded and podcasted, rather than simply blogged about.

So here I sit, at 11:10pm, devising disclaimers for our guests to fill in, trying to work out whether I can use PodPress with a WPMU installation, worrying that the media tech returns the mixing desk tomorrow as promised – and I’ve yet to actually do any of the curriculum planning or marking that i need to get done for tomorrow.

Oh, and I had an idea today to gather some obsolete laptops and start a school Linux User Group.

I think I need a Time Turner…

¹ Of course I know why I do it. I love doing it!

This is categorised this under rants but it’s really more of a moan. Feel free to skip it if you;re in a good mood

Where to start? On Wednesday the Head of Science asked me to put some stuff on the school website. I said fine and shoved the paper into my inside pocket – my rolling To-Do list. I had a free this morning where I planned to get the job done but my inside pocket was bare! Had a frantic search through classroom, staffroom, jacket, coat, bag – nothing. Not a fantastic start to the day.

Then our VLE (hosted internally) decided to stop working for students (but not staff). Bit of frantic running around, problem diagnosed as an internal firewall error – something to do with certificates.

Next I had my horrible Y10 class. We’ve been doing Unit 6 of iMedia, which involves small groups going out and filming. Their behaviour is so poor that I don’t feel I can trust them – twice I’ve had a group disappear for half an hour and I’m not about to jeopardise my career for them. I’m on my own so can’t have a second body supervising. HoD and I have a few ideas but until then we’re treading water.

Bumped into the Head next, and got a chewing out because a member of the dept. hadn’t completed some paperwork relating to KS3. As the KS3 ICT guy I bore the brunt of it. This got to me quite a lot, partly because I’m not used to being told off and partly because I’d been doing most of the Asst. HoD job for a while before my promotion. Since then I’ve carried on as normal, with the exception of being an NQT mentor. This was the first time it really hit home that I have more ‘buck stops here’ responsibilities – it’s less casual than it was. I’m not used to the idea of being a manager – but I guess I have to be.

At lunchtime my HoD reminded me I had a lesson observation after lunch and I had 15 minutes to write a lesson plan, prepare a presentation to guide through the lesson and get to registration. After the lesson I got quick feedback that said ‘fine, a grade 2 (very good), and to improve you need to watch during chalk/talk time – too many of the kids were turning back to fiddle with the computers’. Now that isn’t a bad observation, but you can guess which one of those three bits of feedback has stuck most. Not a bad thing, really, but it all adds up.

What else – after hours this week playing WPMU, setting up themes, hacking at the PHP, writing an AUP, etc. my HoD turns to me and says he thinks it would be better to just use the blogging features in Mahara.

A few other annoying things went on too and it all feels like it’s built into a fairly crappy day, all things considered. I did warn you this was going to be a whine.

Never mind, I stuck some beers in the fridge when I got home and they should be just about reay to drink by now.

I was about to post about edtechroundup, but I’m going to leave it for a day or two now and write this instead.

When I first got into blogs I signed up to a load of RSS feeds, then some podcasts, then Facebook, now Twitter and so it goes on. You see the same names, faces and avatars and it can be quite intimidating. People seem to have ideas that you don’t quite understand, talk about things you;re not familiar with and there can be a real pressure to catch up. And trying to make sure you follow or sign up to the right sites (not missing anyone important out) can be exhausting.

Except that there isnt really any pressure – it’s all imaginary.

It reminds me of being back at school and feeling I had to keep up with my mates’ CD collections and following the latest bands (and the ‘right’ bands at that). Actually I’m much better off liking what I like and being done with it.

And that’s what all these social networking innovations should be. There shouldn’t be a pressure to use them all, or any specific one, or even ANY of them at all. And you shouldn’t be intimidated by people who’ve been doing it for longer than you. In my experience they are, without fail, the nicest and most welcoming people imaginable.

Yes, it can sometimes be like going to the pub with a new friend and all his old mates with back-stories and past histories, but it all sorts itself out quite quickly and if people do talk over your head then they are very willing to explain if you point that fact out.

I’ve been talking about Twitter since I signed up (less than a week ago and I’m already dependant on it) both on here and on the TES and I know that some people feel obliged to take it up and they’re not being professional if they don’t force themselves to try and follow this stuff. Now I would encourage the willing to give it a go, and for me the benefits are enormous, but no-one should feel they have to, and if that is your main motivation then I doubt you’ll stick around long or get the full use out of it.

So if you see this blog, and you think it’s another one of those teachers in that social networking clique then PLEASE try not to. I’m also a human being – lazy, forgetful, perpetually behind with marking – just like you! And I’m going to try to avoid being cliquey in my posts. Promise.

Well, it finally happened – I was pestered into signing up for Twitter.

It took me a couple of days to get into it, but I have already picked up some useful links. The problem is this – I subscribe to a number of RSS feeds (including blogs and del.icio.us accounts), use Facebook, several forums and now Twitter (via Tweetdeck which I heartily recommend, having never used an alternative). Oh, and I run this blog and several in school as well.

It’s starting to sound a lot like work. I have decide what information to post here (longish thoughts and reflections), on Facebook (daily or bi-daily personal goings on mostly) and what to put on twitter (at the minute I’m still unsure as to the balance between hourly minutiae and daily things that are interesting).

My del.icio.us account has fallen by the wayside and I’m not even getting started on the likes of Flickr.

The point? There isn’t one really – I’m reflecting here! I need to make sure I’m doing what I want to do (at the minute that’s anything other than my Y9 reports) and that it’s useful in both a long term sense (making contacts, discussing technologies and being up on the latest trends) and in the short term (actually enjoying myself).

And besides, this wouldn’t fit under the Twitter character limit…

It’s taken me a while to even realise that I’ve discovered it but I appear to have found a winning formula with my last-lesson-on-a-friday Y8 class. Drink lots of coffee.

The result – a ’somewhat manic’ lesson with me literally bouncing around the room and making sure that the troublemakers don’t get the chance to let whatever is bothering them bubble to the surface, demonstrations and discussions that move a lot quicker and keep the pace up and a teacher that doesn’t ‘come down’ until at least 7pm.

Mind you, a new report from Durham university suggests that drinking too much coffee can trigger hallucinations – and so maybe they WERE little monsters and I just hallucinated a fun lesson.

I’ll take that

Clicky!

Phew! Well, it took two whole lessons to get right, but such is life.

My Year 8s spent half a lesson using the rubber stamp and lasso tools in Fireworks to create ‘Spot the Difference’ pictures. The plan was to spend half a lesson uploading them to the class blog for all the world to see. I’d spent quite a bit of time getting the permissions right on the blog to make sure the kids had access to the files area and had thought everything should be fine. Hmmm.

First of all, the file size limit was too small, so I opened it up.

Secondly, the files were still too big as we had saved the edited versions as PNG files. So do I stop and have a lengthy discussion on the pros and cons of file sizes or rush through a quick export in order to get it done? Well, as I’m being observed I go for the latter in order to reach my objective.

Thirdly I find we can’t upload files with spaces or punctuation in the filename – which is about two thirds of them, so we have to fix that.

Fourthly the software is set up to allow one directory per blog rather than per student, so we need to get them to create their own folder within the files section – using their first name for example.

Three of them are called Michael. At this point I’ve managed to create a nice head-sized dent in the wall.

Brilliant! We’re all uploaded. Now simply write a post and use the ‘Files’ button to add the images in. Except that this opens a new window which doesn’t automagically close once you’ve added the files. And so, Year 8 pupils being Year 8 pupils, they simply click the ‘Add’ button until it realises what they mean and does it right, resulting in half a dozen entries consisting of 24 copies of an image set to 1280×960. Then the bell went.

The next lesson we started from the point where we had done the image editing. I talked a lot about file types, the export process (people kept complaining that when they exported their PNG as a JPG they still had a PNG file on their desktop. Aaarrgghh!!), the upload process, the adding of images to the blog post and the structure of a blog entry (Introduction, Description, Discussion – the last part always being the most difficult to tease out).

So a partial success and a lot of lessons learned. I don’t think blogs are cutting edge, although their use in lessons still is to a large degree – especially in secondary schools where lessons are shorter, classes change more frequently, etc. I certainly feel like I’m on the forefront, but maybe that’s just me!