I Should Be Marking

Prompted by comments in this thread on the TES forums, I’ve been challenged to come up with “10 indispensible/extraodinarily useful piece of information that you gleaned from your CPD time on twitter (please not just a list of sites) but things/ideas that have transformed your ( an will transform our) teaching.”

First of all, I wouldn’t say that any one tool or communication method has transformed my teaching – but Twitter has enhanced it. A tool doesn’t have to lead to a renaissance in order to be valuable, and this is as much an exercise in reflection as it is anything else.

So here are 10 semi-random¹ things I can think of that have been beneficial to me (as I’m my primary conern when evaluating my use of any CPD resource).

1. EdTechRoundup – I suspect many on the TES forum wouldn’t be impressed at this, but through using Twitter I discovered ETRU; a weekly FlashMeeting of teachers and educators interested in using technology. Discussion topics have included Copyright (leading me to set up a Wiki on the topic with Theo Kuechel (@theokk)), relative merits of different (indeed, any) VLE, semantic web search engines (e.g. Google Squared) and much, much more besides.

2. Assessing Pupil Progress – I have been involved in a number of discussions about APP and how to improve the way we assess, record and feedback progress to students with the likes of Toby Holman (@tobyholman) and James Greenwood (@jpgreenwood). As I result I have found a couple of Moodle Blocks (Progress and Criteria Reference) that need a little tweaking but will help to make it simple for staff to flag passed criteria and feedback will be automatic, allowing students to better understand where they are – and why.

3. Wouldn’t It Be Great? – Thanks to Andy Field (@andyfield) I discovered a fantastic idea that I could steal and have just today finished a 6-week unit of work researching ideas on how technology will affect our lives in the future and then using different tools to present their ideas to the rest of the class.

4. Google Docs – Through Twitter I have met people like Mark Warner (@markw29) and Tom Barrett (@tombarrett) who have started off collaborative Google Docs presentations – and idea that I’ve borrowed as a way of collecting ideas in a sensible place, and in a nice format. Equally, I have met people like Drew Buddie (@digitalmaverick) who did something similar with a Wiki listing dozens of online tools. You can see some of the presentations at Ideas To Inspire and some at my website (mwclarkson.co.uk).

5. Checking policy – I have had a lot of discussions in which I have been forced to defend my standpoint, notably with Karl Goddard (@karl_goddard) about the use of Macs in schools. It is good to have our ideas challenged and although I didn’t change Karl’s mind, I went away from that discussion with more confidence that I’m doing the right thing.

6. Supporting others – I really enjoy sharing resources, websites, links and ideas with colleagues in other departments. I made the decision to produce a monthly newsletter to distribute amongst staff and thanks to Mark Berry (@markbezza) I managed to get more ideas and a better sense of audience as his magazine ideas were much better than mine.

7. Gifted and Talented – Thanks to an idea I got from a video shared on Twitter (I forget precisely who) I am in the process of setting up an after-school Digital Media club, the first project for which will be to interview people in the local community from ages 1 to 100 and present the data in meaningful ways. There are possiblities for citizenship, data handling parts of ICT and much more besides. In addition, Andy Wallis (@andywallis), a teacher on the isle of Islay, is planning on running an identical scheme. This should be a nice opportunity to compare results and see how our communities are both similar and different.

8. Everyday advice – This one is a little harder to quantify, but I get ideas, inspiration, feedback, suggestions and much more every day. I get to find out what ideas other teachers have come up with, what they’re doing in their lessons, what their students are particularly proud of and much more. And I like to think I give the same back in return.

9. Resources – I’ve discovered a multitude of websites, online tools, software and much more. I now use Celtx for all of my media pre-production (scripting, storyboarding, etc.) for example. A tool I had never heard of until someone mentioned it on Twitter. The same could be said for dozens of applications that have not revolutionised my teaching, but have provided me with better, more efficient and more engaging options.

10. Support – Of course I have only met a fraction of the 500-odd people I follow in person, but they are people I recognise and have what might be considered a friendship with. I’m looking forward to attending a TeachMeet next Thursday (guess how I discovered that was going on!) at which I will be meeting two more Twitterers I have been conversing with (Helena Butterfield (@langwitch) and Doug Belshaw (@dajbelshaw)). If I’m in a bad mood or have had a crap day then I know I can talk to these people about it. I know that if one of them has had a bad day then I will return the favour. I’m not claiming to have this relationship with all of the people I talk to, or even many. But there are enough and it feels nice to have the support of people in similar situations – who have bad lessons occasionally, frustrating students, annoying filtering policies and more besides.

11. Feedback for students – When my students produce a piece of work that is publically accessible online then I’ll sometimes post a link on Twitter and look for feedback. My Y7s thought this was marvellous just before half term and it kicked off some really good discussions. Their argument that we should allow IM during lessons so that they could improve their writing skills was soon shot down when one of my followers questioned the value of that given the txt speak used in that medium. So a Y7 student in Teesside got involved (indirectly) in a conversation with a Science teacher from Surrey and agreed that he needs a better justification if he wants to have access to those kinds of tools during the school day.

Should everybody reading this rush out, sign up and feel compelled to stay online for 18 hours a day? Of course not. But the question was asked, can I justify my high opinion of twitter as a CPD tool with 10 practical uses. I feel I can – at least to myself. And that’ll do for me.

¹ Semi-random because my memory is appalling and I’m not prepared to look back through all of my previous messages for ideas and benefits that don’t spring to mind immediately.

Chatterbox1607 on the TES forum said “I have been asked to look into technology which does not support learning well.” This got me to thinking – we have lots of discussion about useful technolgies, but if there was one thing you could improve/get rid ofthen what would it be?

And while we’re at it, which is the single most useful? It could be a device, a piece of software, a website – OOo, MS Office, Moodle, the concept of open-source… Which would you say is the single most important?

As the school is getting a site licence for Quark Xpress I decided to teach myself how to use it. The end result? 15 posters giving a brief rundown of the tasks. skill and qualifications needed for 15 different IT based careers. Details are taken from Learndirect and the images from Stock Xchange (royalty free).

I actually did them a good while ago but have been posting them to Senduit (or is it USendIt?) and putting the link on the TES forums. Hopefully this will stop me having to update the thread every couple of weeks.

I’ve been teaching the Edexcel specification GCSE in ICT for almost 2 years now (erk!) and created a spreadsheet to help me mark it. I’ve been meaning to share it with a couple of colleagues at least and I thought that this might be a suitable platform.

It’s a bit ‘alpha’, but click onto the ‘Main Menu’ tab and change the names (you’ll have to start one cell above and use the cursor key to go down as the names are hyperlinks).

Anyone familiar with the spec should then find it straightforward to use – just traffic light the individual criteria and assign a mark for each section. The Overview page is a handy way of examing the class’ progress as a whole.

It’s currently limited to 15 pupils (simply because that’s my largest GCSE class size) but anyone competent enough to be teaching the course ought to be able to modify it sufficiently

Edexcel GCSE ICT Marking Spreadsheet

OK, so I made a post a week or so ago suggesting that I had cracked how to deal with my form group. Well, perhaps not so much after all. Waiting silently for them to be quiet is still a technique I’m using heavily but it’s not doing the job as well any more on its own.

Once a week (or sometimes twice) I have a full 20 minute registration with nothing to do – no assemblies, no planner signing, just the register and any notices to read out. So we played a counting game I read about on the TES forums and it seemed to go down fairly well. It was noisy, but fun and I think we need more of the latter (and I’d be happy for a better balance of the former – quiet for the register and notices, noisy when th activity allows it).

What I really need to do is find a strategy and stick to it in order to allow the kids time to get used to the routine. I’m getting better at doing that but there’s still a way to go – too many of my (good?) ideas fall by the wayside after a week or two and I’ve watched enough reality TV to know that isn’t the best way to deal with kids!

I think I’m going to have to add a new category for this blog, ‘Inspired by the TES forums, or something similar. I think fully half of these posts must have started out there and here we go with another…

There was a post late last night from a teacher who was finding it difficult to teach ICT. Pupils assuming they can come into a lesson and play Flash games, check email, etc. I’m sure all ICT teachers have seen that, but I think that for most it isn’t a huge problem (or it hasn’t been allowed to be a huge problem, I should say). Problems holding their attention was another difficulty cited and the first couple of posts (apparently not everyone is up as early as me this morning) talked about the boring nature of the National Strategy. Me, I’ve been up half the night (kids, blech!) and so my response turned into a bit of a rant.

I talked about a lot of the simple ideas I’ve used to make ICT more interesting. Instead of competing with Miniclip and MSN, why not use what the kids are interested in to hold their attention? I don’t mean bribe them with games, not by a long way. I know far too many ICT teachers that do this and it drives up the wall. What I mean is do things that are interesting.

Kids really don’t care about how much it costs to put on a school disco (7.4). I’m hoping they’ll have more fun next term when I have them pricing up sofas, pool tables and PS2s (should that be PS3s?) for a youth club. Still a bit dull on the face of it, but show me a kid who can resist flicking through the Argos catalogue and I’ll show you a kid in need of a big hug.

Instead of making a website about the school (8.2) or a PowerPoint about themselves (7.1), why not get them to make a PowerPoint about wild animals for their Y5 bretheren back at the Primary Schools? Why not get them to make a website for one of their clubs, groups, bands, etc? Why not get them to make a showcase for their Art work – take some still and video cameras up there and get some multimedia content.

Instead of filling in worksheets about communication methods (GNVQ), why not get them to make an advert for a mobile phone company, an office training video or a stop-motion animation?

The list goes on and on, A colleague of mine was desperate to get her Y9 pupils to really understand how attachments work on email in preparation for the QCA tests so they spent an hour drawing silly pictures and emailing them to each other. They had a great time and actually got the idea for how to attach and access files sent along with emails. Something obvious to us but actually quite difficult for a lot of kids.

My point is (and I’m aware I’m preaching to the converted) that we have so many tools at our disposal that it is criminal to allow them to learn Office for 5-7 years and call it ICT. No wonder pupils get bored and fed up with that. Using the Internet to teach yourself sign language is much more fun and probably more educational than making yet another poster in Publisher [spit].