It is the best of times, it is the worst of times…
to quote the first dozen words of Charles Dickens’ great novel, A Tale of Two Cities, though moved to the present rather than the past. The actual paragraph reads:
It was the best of times, it was the worst of times, it was the age of wisdom, it was the age of foolishness, it was the epoch of belief, it was the epoch of incredulity, it was the season of Light, it was the season of Darkness, it was the spring of hope, it was the winter of despair, we had everything before us, we had nothing before us, we were all going direct to heaven, we were all going direct the other way – in short, the period was so far like the present period, that some of its noisiest authorities insisted on its being received, for good or for evil, in the superlative degree of comparison only.
I’ll return to Dickens shortly, but I must say I am enjoying the discomfort many modern pedagogues must be feeling at the moment, as their adjustment of what is taught in schools to bring examination advantage at the expense of actual education is shown up to be the folly it always was by published research. For example, OfSTED have just pointed out the main problem with national music lessons is that their just isn’t enough music in them! A recent survey by Opinion research highlights that secondary school pupils are so scared of looking stupid in maths lessons they will not tell their teachers if they do not understand, suggests research. And it’s not just about progress in schools in Maths – the pressure group ‘National Numeracy’ quotes from research suggesting weak maths skills are linked with an array of poor life outcomes such as prison, unemployment, exclusion from school, poverty and long-term illness. The National Trust has also reported that children are being denied the enjoyment of the outdoors and nature with obvious consequences for their health.
I say enjoy because in my own school we really come to work each day to teach the whole child, academically, socially, spiritually, morally, athletically, culturally and then some. This last seven days or so have seen us involved in ‘world everything days’, from Maths, Books, Science, Blogging, Doodling and then some. Our sailors came third in the national two boat sailing championships, (and the second best school behind Magdalen College Oxford), our Under 16s won the national ISA Under 16 7s title up in Leamington Spa, our Year 7s have been romping in the fields with the Sheep and their Lambs and so it goes on. Today (Friday) we are building our BBC school report activities for next Thursday by interviewing the Home Secretary, Theresa May at the senior boys school. Apparently we are informal this year in our approach to TM; a ‘conversation with’ rather than ‘stilted questions’ of!
And to see the support of our parent teacher association at work this week has been the highlight – it is all about play with their outdoor castle installation at Ridgeway, both a physical construction that provides for new play space, but also with effective use of shape and colour, allowance for the child’s imagination to run riot. When schools get it right, the whole community is enhanced; children have their wildest dreams realised, teachers have their dedication rewarded by outstanding learning and parents have their own concerns for the present and future supported by the most amazing network of like-minded individuals – a Dickens story of success without the dark side!
So back to Dickens; what he was amazing at was creating an atmosphere that felt real in a story that gripped from beginning to end. As one critic writes “Dickens’s novels combine brutality with fairy-tale fantasy; sharp, realistic, concrete detail with romance, farce, and melodrama.; the ordinary with the strange. They range through the comic, tender, dramatic, sentimental, grotesque, melodramatic, horrible, eccentric, mysterious, violent, romantic, and morally earnest”. Now Dickens was all about writing for money, he was the most famous author in the world of his time, and he benefited too from touring the States as well as the UK. But he also write for moral purpose, to critic current policy and through his moral tales show his adoring public how the best could be achieved, even by the dissolute. The Tale of Two cities ends when the dubious Sydney Carton sacrifices himself for the honourable Charles Darnay, and ends his life on the guillotine with the words “It is a far, far better thing that I do, than I have ever done; it is a far, far better rest that I go to than I have ever known.“
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How building self-worth in school happens…
This week, a media agency from one of the major universities visited Claires Court to engage our Sixth Formers in some evaluative activities; research is vital to understand young adults views for their future, for University and for future employment. The agency made a particular call back to the head of Sixth Form to report that their experience with us and of our Sixth Formers was extraordinary. The openness and willingness of the students to engage second to none.
Well that’s all fine and dandy, but how’s it done, this building of ‘confidence’. In this bog that will develop a bit for a few days, I thought I would have a go at showing you some of our tools in action.
So have a good watch of the presentation I am using this morning Friday 25 November with the Sixth Form, which is about building self-worth. It’s also of course about building resilience, anger and shame; raising political awareness and teaching too about the Armour our society through parliament creates to protect civilians who genuinely care.
http://goo.gl/mZi4C
5 ways of improving ICT provision for pupils
Here’s 5 possible ways (for no cost) schools could improve their provision in terms of ICT for their pupils and staff.
1. Check that their architecture fits the ISA model – and if it doesn’t, contact James or Ian for support – schools simply can’t provide basic pupil provision without this in place – we have two Independent school savvy consultants/practitioners just an email away! Let’s call this stage 1! Most of our schools are not at this level – oops – and where can you find these 2 likely lads, plus a whole load more ICT savvy people within ISA? www.isanet.ning.com – just a mouse click away.
2. Engage your staff as members of the ISANet for regular breaking news of what cool and happening in ICT for schools. Learn about the other Nings(etc) that exist for teaching staff, such as the http://englishcompanion.ning.com/, http://geographical.ning.com/ , http://isenet.ning.com/ and http://slners.ning.com/ (for school librarians) to name but 4. What is of particular interest is that the Librarians site has fewer members than the ISANet site but is far more active, indicative of their strong desire to find new solutions to school needs for research and resource.
3. http://www.google.com/a/help/intl/en/edu/index.html takes you to the resources provide by google for schools and their communities. Given that they are free, why would schools without email etc. not make use of these – after all the Open University has decided to go this route for all of their student body! – http://sclater.com/blog/ carries the story, and make no bones about this, google offers educators this remarkable gift to their schools for free! And if you sort of know about google, but want to know what you can do – have a look here: http://www.teachhub.com/news/article/cat/14/item/323
4. Sign up as teachers for the Taecanet Springboard www.taecanet.com – not only will it take them to a vast array of web-scrubbed resources for use with their classes, but interactive white board stuff too. No cost remember – unless the schools want to make use of the managed service for pupils – and with 20+ ISA schools now involved with this lowest of costs subscription service, perhaps some encouragement to spend a small amount of budget that will go a long way to providing snow-day resources when school is shut. With both Bridgewater and Claires Court working with the Taecanet people and Nokia to use handheld phone devices to create new teaching resources, this work is pretty close to the new digital frontiers!
5. Find some teachers who blog and start following them, and get your staff room doing so too – obviously the ISANet is such a thing, as are the other networks, but it is amazing just how following teachers’ blogs or on Twitter can transform what we know and can do. I got the #movemeon Twitter book (http://www.lulu.com/product/download/%23movemeon-2009/6170010) – by following one such blogger, and here’s another – http://www.freetech4teachers.com/2009/06/30-alternatives-to-youtube… that can point teachers in the right direction. And if you have views you would like to give broader audience too, remember – www.isaonline.wordpress.com – a place where it seems sensible for me to publish for a wider audience the best ISANet blog posts.
James Wilding
Dropbox is amazing…
Dropbox is amazing for on-line storage. 2gb, it sits as a folder on your desktop (or anywhere else) You just drag and drop files and folders in there and they’re auto uploaded. You can put a folder on any other machine which will auto sync with it, and you can invite others to view your content via links. Works in windows, linux and mac. Here are some photos of mine: http://www.dropbox.com/gallery/2777458/1/snow?h=96f8b3 Very simple and intuitive. Thoroughly recommended!
Chris Rowan
Movemeon – a Twitter Book
This book provides a huge amount of sane advice to teachers working hard in schools – compiled from Tweets provided by Twitter users in response to the #movemeon challenge – initiated by members of the Historical Association to provide advice for colleagues in education and published this last month December 2009. movemeonbook.pdf
You can find more out about this at http://dougbelshaw.com/blog/2009/12/01/my-tmetru09-micropresentation/
James Wilding
Wiki Wiki
I seem to have developed a desire to interfere with my colleague’s teaching. My Web 2.0 agenda does not stop at the door of the Physics lab or ICT room. I feel an evangelical lust upon me and have been imposing myself like a jehovah’s witness at the classroom doors of the unenlightened.
Helpful friend? or pain in the arse?…it depends on who you ask (and who they’re talking to) but I really don’t care…its amusing me.
My latest victim is the history department. It was suggested that a topic based Wiki was a good idea so I set one up using www.wikispaces.com . I’m sure that there are loads of other providers out there but this one came up first and said that they offered ad free , zero cost basic wiki functionality for educational establishments. (although the google ads are still there atm)
It took me about 5 minutes to open an account and the subsequent double ICT lesson with yr 7 to get them all enrolled as contributors and to work out how to use it. Armed with some information about their forthcoming Medievel topic, a couple of text books and the Internet we set to task. The resulting Wiki is a bit ropey and lacking in content…but it is up and running and the pupils have a basic idea of how to create ,edit and link pages together with lots of ideas about what to do with it.
These yr 7 girls, having been converted to the faith by my religious fervour are now delivering the newly discovered media to the doors of the history room like they’ve found the Dead Sea Scrolls….It will be very difficult to ignore them from now on.
some initial thoughts on the process:
* When trying to “sell” this kind of idea to teachers, their first thought is “oh…more work” rather than “the same work in a different way”
* Getting the pupils enthusiastic about this sort of thing is far easier.
* I knew nothing about history or Wikis before the lesson. I’ve learned lots about both.
* The process of learning with my yr7 class was quite enjoyable. Lots of discovery and independent learning going on.
* The two most engaged pupils in the class were the same two that are notoriously not always engaged in history.
* The sense of ownership of the project amongst these pupils is palpable.
Right….I’m off to talk to the English dept about Blogging……
Paul Cross
BETT
Anyone seen anything good at BETT they want to share? We came across CAT testing online which we will adopt and will improve things for us. We went to see It’s Learning who host our VLE – lots of interesting things on the road map. Also interesting to learn about considerable power saving benefits of using Win 7 with Server 2008; they reckon you can save between £23 and £46 per desktop per year. We have been running a test bed to upgrade from XP to Windows 7 – took three and a half hours. MS were saying you can run Win 7 on an old 128 mg RAM machine but not if you have the XP mode on board which allows you to switch OS to ease compatibility problems. Mac went through a dual OS period with IX and X – it was nightmare.
Andrew Hampton
In Praise of the Technician…get one now
After my Wiki Wiki blog post it was (rather pointedly) suggested by our ICT technician that I had completely failed to acknowledge her efforts in this little project. This is sadly true. She not only inputted all the email addresses so the kids could be invited to join but also quickly taught herself how to work the thing so she could support them in the lesson. She was also very active during the lesson sorting out a work around for a broken link issue on one of the servers which meant a few of the pupils could not verify their new account (as well as making a note to fix the issue later)…Sorry, I don’t take you for granted.
The issue is far wider than this though…..what would have happened last year when there was no technician?…Not this lesson that’s for sure.
For years, our small school has laboured under the delusion that we could get away without employing someone for basic ICT help. From this year’s perspective, that seems incredibly naive. The jobs needed doing so I had to do them (eventually) and when it really hit the fan, all my teaching stopped, or I spent my time fire fighting and patching the system up.
I am far better at teaching than I am a sorting out ICT issues. I enjoy Teaching yr 10 more than rebooting another stroppy fat client and I’m paid far more than would be reasonable for the installation of a new printer. I rush things, don’t have time to follow through and forget what I did.
Allowing the ICT teacher/Coordinator time to do the basic system management tasks in a small school is a false economy. Let them teach. More than that, let them stand back and look strategically at the situation and start to direct the efforts and resources of the school towards better teaching and learning.
Get a technician.
She makes better coffee than me as well.
Paul Cross
A Brave ISANew World
One of the most inspiring activities I have engaged with in my professional career has been this engagement with social networking. To date, I have tried to find a better way of describing this research, but in truth, the users have it – these social tools are part of the web 2.0 revolution and the name has stuck. For good or ill, whether it be Facebook, eBay, Twitter or generic blogging, social networking software is here to stay!
Now the private side of ISA social networking is our ISANet Ning network, and it needs to be a private garden to assist newcomers to this activity gain their feet. Applicants apply to jtw@clairescourt.com for access, and providing all is well, ‘Ning’s your butler’ and they are being served straight away.
The trouble is of course that those not totally engaged with this private garden don’t and won’t get to read all the good stuff being published there. From Ian Nairn (the founder), Andrew Hampton, Chris Rowan, Rupert Fowke and Paul Cross to name but Five, those ISA friends deserve a wider audience. And for those within ISA who would like to engage in this vanity publishing, seeing the ISANet Blog writ large and in public might just encourage a little extra activity.
So the way in to our public wordpress blog is through the ISANet Ning private network, but what follows below are January 2010′s best bits, and here’s hoping this activity continues and gathers pace.
James Wilding
