Learning, Teaching and ICT

Recently I blogged about my initial meeting with Kim and Gail (check out the responses from Cassie regarding their proposed visit to Carronshore! ) … and the comment response from John Connell was completely unexpected! 

I’m sure that the children from Easter Carmuirs are also looking forward to meeting the ‘virtual people’ face to face

I’ve now joined Kim and Gail on 2 of their Scotland visits – and my head is still swimming! I’ll need to create a couple of posts to cover all we experienced.

This is post number 1.

Last night I returned from Edinburgh after meeting with Kim and Gail. They were meeting with Judy, Tessa, Keiron and Cathrin from Edinburgh who worked on a recent research study into how game making might improve literacy. 

On the train back home, I reflected on what I had learned from the experience. Thinking about it passed the time on the train (delayed lots because of something happening on the line )

Here’s what I believe are just some of the things I got out of the short meeting:

• When I met with the others in Edinburgh this afternoon, it made me acutely aware of how small the world is! When they heard I was from Falkirk, Cathrin immediately responded that she works with Marilyn M and others from Falkirk on improving literacy (Bairns into Books) …. and Tessa and I were amazed to discover that our classes were blogging friends! 
• We discussed loads of educational matters, too, and everyone had so much to contribute. Games based learning was discussed in detail, and Kim and Gail talked about their introduction to the potentials of using Moshi Monsters with classes.
•  Maybe the main thing from last night’s meeting is that it was a ’sharing of ideas’ experience. We all gained from each other, and can now pass the information on in our own areas to improve the learning experiences of the children in our care. 

I’m glad I had the opportunity to attend yesterday’s meeting.

Post Number 2

Today’s visit to Musselburgh Grammar School and Wallyford Primary was superb and there was so much to take in ….. I’m glad I took notes:-)

 Post 2 will follow very soon … but I’m not sure what else I can add to Ollie’s great description of the day

At a social event just before the end of term, I was approached by a young probationary teacher (I’ll call her Ann). She asked for some advice regarding using online spaces with her primary 6 class of pupils. She shares the class with an experienced teacher who had set up a class blog and wiki space. Each of the children has their own page in the wiki.

Ann is finding it difficult to understand the point in the children having such an online space. At various times throughout the week, the children are expected to add to their space during their timetabled visits to the computer suite. She is aware that some children are beginning to resent this (they seem to be mainly reiterating what they’ve learned in class) and she asked if it would be possible for us to meet up soon after the holiday season to discuss these issues.

I’m hoping that, by ‘thinking out loud’ via this blog post, I’ll be in a better position to offer advice. ….. Once again I’ve reflected on my CT Case Study. The bullet points below have been extracted from the dissertation in order to help me articulate what I learned from my own experience of using online spaces with children.

• Prior to the commencement of the research period for the dissertation, the children my Primary 7 class were encouraged to use the tools in class time, especially during our timetabled visits to the school computer suite. Occasionally the children were asked to incorporate a homework tasks into their blog or wiki. For example, each child had a recordable mp3 player and when studying World War 2, they were asked to interview an older member of their family (e.g. gran or grandad) in order to find out about life in the past so as to give them a sense of history. These were then shared with all the class members via the interactive whiteboard. Once the study began, however, I refrained from these practices so that the children might establish ownership of the tools. They were encouraged to use them when and how they wanted to.

•  Each pupil personalised their blogs by choosing their own individual look and theme. All of them successfully created avatars and, in the case of the boys especially, the inclusion of pictures and videos in posts was very apparent. The children quickly established the different uses for the blogs and wikis. The blogs being used for reflections, thoughts, short pieces of writings and uploading pictures, and the wikis for more extended pieces of writing, such as imaginative stories – usually updated over an extended period of time.

• Buckingham (2008) argues that through using the new media, young people are learning primarily by means of discovery, experimentation, and play, rather than by following external instructions and directions.

• It was decided to adopt such an approach during the research stage and pupils were left free to choose the content of their blog posts and wiki writing. Guidance was provided through creating a sense of online audience by submitting comments on the children’s posts regularly. Offline, new interesting posts were shared with the children. The findings show that this had the effect of influencing others to add new blog posts on their own blogs – often on the same subject. The findings in this study show that by laying the foundations, then allowing the children the freedom to write as individuals, led to blog posts such as Maryam’s

• Giving the children the freedom to use their online spaces as they wished allowed a deeper insight to their persona. An online community did develop, but that was on the periphery. The sharing of thoughts, opinions, ideas and personal likes and dislikes began as online blog posts. These were then developed in the offline classroom setting, giving rise to opportunities to increase motivation by modifying the programme of study to one that was more ‘child led’.  Early on in the study, doubts began to creep in about whether or not leaving the children ‘to their own devices’ might result in blog and wiki entries fizzling out. I felt despondent at the lack of written posts by the boys in particular. An entry in my online journal, however, describes the level of enthusiasm they displayed when demonstrating to adults how we use the new media.

• The findings show that the boys in the class were more interested in uploading pictures and videos than in writing blog posts.

• In her investigation of young people’s use of social media, Stern (2007) uncovered an explanation for the motives for including artwork and images in their blog pages. In the literature review, she was noted as arguing that the main audience for their blogs was the authors themselves and that they were self reflecting as they tested out different versions of their current and possible identities. She also maintains, however, that they were continually testing out other audiences too, and that they were hungry for peer approval.

• Typical examples of the children’s responses to being allowed to use their spaces this way are cited here: 

       ‘Yes, because in our own blogs we’re allowed to write about what we want to write, so we’ve got to know each other better.’

      ‘Some people in class don’t talk to me very much, but I can read their blog and find out more about them’

    ‘I feel that I know my close friends even more now because of what they write on their blog’ 

• Other ways in which the blogs and wikis directly influenced teaching and learning came about after the sharing of blog posts in class. For example:

     As the pupils began adding more posts about what jobs they would like to choose, we began to  seek out people from the ‘World of Work’ to come in to class and tell us about their job. We interviewed them and posted the videos on the class blog

     Some of the children shared their love of reading in their blog posts. As a direct result of those posts, a book club was formed. The club was run by the pupils themselves and they shared their favourite books on ‘library loan’ basis and discussed their favourites

     During her placement, Miss L agreed to set up an art club. This arose because a number of the children had written blog posts about their love of drawing

 

 Writing this post has definately helped me focus on what I’d like to say to ‘Ann’ during our meeting …… and I’m also delighted that my months of hard work collecting information for my research hasn’t resulted in my dissertation lying somewhere collecting dust

This afternoon I met up with KimP and her HeadTeacher, Gail. We had a lovely afternoon together …. and there are plans to meet up again during their short visit to Scotland.

More posts pending

Meanwhile here’s a flavour of our lunch together today. The champagne was planned ‘virtually’ a while ago when Kim helped me with my M.Ed by agreeing to be my ‘critical friend’. I can’t thank her enough for her effort in keeping me focussed when I really struggled at the ‘last lap’ as I out of steam

 We visited the Falkirk Wheel after lunch.

This week I delivered training on Internet Safety and wasn’t sure how to make it interesting! While playing around on Twitter, however, I noticed an entry by Neil Winton linking to this great resource.

Thanks Neil

I also caught site of Tom Barratt’s link to a slideshare presentation that gave (what I think anyway) a powerful message:

The quote by Will Richardson on slide 16 led me to talk about the importance of giving primary school age children their own online space in the form of a blog or wiki so that they can learn how to ‘act and present themselves’ in an safe manner when they ‘branch out’ and create their own personal space on bebo, Facebook etc. Early years teachers can begin by allowing them to post on a class blog.

….But what about direct benefits to learning and teaching? Writing this post led me to reflect on a section of the findings of my Chartered Teacher dissertation. I wrote:

“ Taking part in this case study has given me an opportunity to reflect on my own teaching. Some of the findings from the research were unexpected. I set out to investigate if the strategies I had put in place would lead to the creation of an online learning community. I was not prepared for the effect this would have on the offline environment of the classroom and for the changes to the content and delivery of the curriculum. Giving the children the freedom to use their online spaces as they wished allowed a deeper insight to their persona. An online community did develop, but that was on the periphery. The sharing of thoughts, opinions, ideas and personal likes and dislikes began as online blog posts. These were then developed in the offline classroom setting, giving rise to opportunities to increase motivation by modifying the programme of study to one that was more ‘child led’.”

GLOW and Twitter 

This week, I met up with Katie Barrowman, Jaye Richards and Sinclair McKenzie on GLOW messenger because of incidental comments left on Twitter. This impromptu meeting also led to me taking part in my first GLOW video conference session, and I have to admit that it was good fun and Katie was able to talk me through some of the applications available (saved me reading through the instructions!) We even tried out GLOW chat – and it worked well, too. On GLOW so far I’ve embedded a voki, uploaded a document and an mp3 file … I’ve even set up my own GLOW group! I’m beginning to see the potential

I wonder what tips I’ll pick up from Twitter this week       

I’ve been given the Key to GLOW

Thanks to Katie for the helpful e-mail attachment …… and to Con for the homework

I’ll do my best!

Thanks also to Jaye and Ollie who promised that I could pay a visit to their schools to see the good work they’re doing - can’t back down now that I’ve made the invitation public

Thank you also to John and to Robert for allowing me to use their good practice in my ‘Active Math’ CPD presentation today …. the teachers who attended were suitably impresssed

John provided ideas for using ComicLife to help P6 stage pupils understand ’shape properties’ and was very impressed by the motivational aspect of giving them a camera and a new resource.

 Robert used Go!Animate and wrote on his blog:

The pupils are enjoying learning how to make animations. Enjoyment is sometimes a bit thin on the ground in maths for some of these students, despite my efforts to jolly things up, so I’m delighted to see them turning up early to the computer lessons, bright-eyed and bushy-tailed.

AND!!

Last week was the busiest ever for CPD. Some sessions went without a hitch, others were more troublesome! In fact, there were so many disasters at the start of the week that, by the time Thursday’s Go!Animate course came around, I was prepared for every eventuality!

The two pictures above give a flavour of the more successful Go!Animate session.

 The decision to bring along some of the Primary 5 pupils who had been trialling the success of using Go!Animate to improve literacy skills was made after reflecting on the success I experienced when I gave my first CPD course as a class teacher.

I had been asked to do this to introduce other class teachers to the idea of setting up a class blog. I posted my thoughts about the decision to bring along some of my own pupils to give their perspective on things and I’ve revisited those posts, one of which can be found here.

At the time, Maryam reflected in her own blog how weird it felt for her to experience a reversion of roles

 “Yesterday Me,Anna,Sophie,Darcie,Rebecca and Ainsley had went to this place in Camelon to teach teachers who to use blogs.It was really fun! Though it was a little weird teaching teachers.But anyway it was still fun.

First we had went to the little café place.We had a scone,some biscuits and tea.The scones rocked!We got to put jam on them or butter.The tea was REALLY hot and my tongue went firey red.Aghhh!

Then we had went back upstairs and we waited for all the teachers to come.Then when they had all came we started our presantations.Anna and Sophie went first.Then me and Darcie but we had sort of made a muck up of it!Then after we had went around helping the teachers.

THAT WAS THE WEIRD BIT!

I’ve never helped a teacher and it was a bit emmbarrasing going up to them and saying, ”Do you need any help?”I had helped a few people but the computers there are a bit slow and they keep canceling things so it was a bit hard.Then after the teachers had went back and we got everything back in Mrs Vass’s Car.Mrs Brown had took some people and dropped them off at there homes.Mrs Vass took me,Anna,Rebecca and Darcie.It was really funny!

I can’t wait till next week if we are going back!”

One of the CPD sessions this week was also designed to introduce teachers to Blogging ….. but It did not go well! The internet was VERY slow during the session and everyone soon became discouraged. As well as that, I was torn in all directions, trying to help the 15 or so participants. How I regretted not having brought along some extra Primary School age experts to offer some professional advice

Other CPD courses during the week had various little glitches, and by the time it came to delivering the Go!Animate one, I had put plans in place to cover all unforseen events! If the internet was to go down, then I had made arrangements for offline viewing of the benefits of using the freely available resource. My invited guests ‘experts’ provided first hand evidence of how it impacted positively on their ability to use direct speech in their writing  (I can’t find the link they used now – typical!). The group who came along produced this animation.

I’m also indebted to Cassie for helping me to make sure that the CPD session went smoothly. She offered to introduce her Primary 5 class to Go!Animate and evaluate its effect.

 If it wasn’t for the fact that I knew that it actually did have a positive impact on children’s motivation to learn, I wouldn’t have felt comfortable ’selling’ the idea to colleagues

Here’s a flavour of the successful CPD session!

Today and yesterday were our in-service days. For class teachers that usually means two days of some sort of CPD. In my present post, however, it consisted of both attending CPD courses delivered by others – and delivering CPD courses to others.

A CPD course delivered by others – Monday:

The first course I attended was some CPD about CPD  :-)

It was delivered by Con Morris and Katie Barrowman – two people I’ve only known virtually until yesterday. It was a very thought-provoking course, presented in an active and fun way. The chocolate orange was not won by anyone and a member of the Falkirk audience reminded Con that he’d promised to share it with everyone if no-one managed to get 2 correct answers to his question. (I was second last in the semi-circle, and was very pleased that there was a couple of slices left by the time Katie had made her way around the grateful recipients! )

We had all been asked to write down two forms of CPD that we knew of …. the ‘usual’ face to face type of twighlight session was not allowed to be one of them. Con spun the ‘random generator thing’ (I’ve seen Ewan use it in Teachmeet sessions – didn’t know it was from the classtools site), and if you had written that down then that was counted as you being half way to winning the chocolate orange all to yourself.

Although lots of people had managed to get one CPD option correct, no-one managed to get two. The whole exercise just brought it home to people the wide variety of activities that come under the umbrella of CPD.

……. Now for my embarrassing confession – I didn’t write down any of the generated answers!! In my defence, however, I took the ‘face-to-face’ type of CPD ban literally and tried to think of non ‘face-to-face’ activities only. What did I write down? ‘Reading educational blogs’ and ‘more recently, twittering’.

When the ‘generator thing’ came up with ‘other’, and Con asked if anyone had written something under that category, I almost admitted to my choice but was beaten to the post by someone at the other side of the room who admitted to writing down ‘going to the theatre’. Con’s reply was great (can’t remember his words exactly – but in summary it was something like ‘it’s ok to take time out to refresh’).

It was also a great surprise to everyone that Katie (I think she might have been the one who did this?) had taken the time to set us all up with a temporary Glow account and we all got to have a contemplative look at it – although I’m sure that there are more advantages available when you’re a fully paid up member

A CPD course delivered to others – Tuesday

Today it was my turn to deliver a course.

In the morning, I helped some staff in a school become familiar with their new Schools-Online website.
The afternoon session, however, was the highlight of my day! I was working with some teachers whose job it is to teach French to Primary 6 and 7 stage children. I introduced them to the effect that an audience can have on a class. We visited some schools that are using blogs to motivate children, and we looked at the use of freely available online tools to enrich learning and teaching.

The feedback forms they filled in made it very apparent that they were staggered by the number (and quality) of these tools. It was obvious that one of the main high spots of their CPD course was the delicious link given to me by Shirley via a recent comment on this blog – thank you for sharing, Shirley! You’ve made some teachers in Falkirk very, very happy