Tumblr

I have started a tumblr account. It is a cross between a blog, Facebook and twitter. http://helenrogerson80.tumblr.com

You can have several different types of post: text, photo, quote, video and link. The posts can be tagged with numerous tags.

I like the idea of being able to share teaching ideas. Twitter is too "busy" and the 140 character limit restricts what can be said and how it can be categorised so it can be found later.

Full blown blogs: well I should follow blogs, and have new posts pushed to me. I should probably set up RSS feeds to collate these blogs so I can read them. But often the blogs of my favourite educators are long and political. Not something that quickly inspires me, but something that involves thought.

So I want to try and use tumblr as a short and easy way to share teaching resources, ideas and successes. A quick picture, video or link.

http://helenrogerson80.tumblr.com

If anyone wants to join me I'd appreciate the company.

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Olympics - inspiring a generation

I am fed up on reading tweets from teachers about how the Olympics will inspire them in September. Why weren't they doing this in June/July and even before this?

I know a lot of people have been, and have witnessed this myself when a few key members if staff have the passion. Personally I have had the Olympics in my mind to use constantly and wrote a project we used in 2010! I have been talking Olympics with my form class and used the In The Zone resources with year 9. Year 7 at our school went to see the torch relay.

These teachers need to find what is happening in the world. I just hope they aren't the same ones talking about making lessons relevant to students.

I should add a note that I love the Olympics and have since 1992 when I was 12. And I love sport in general.


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Location:Rudgleigh Ave,Bristol,United Kingdom

Page 25 Geoff Petty Evidence Based Teaching

Geoff Petty states in his book "evidence based teaching" that subjects have their own "epistemology or theory of knowledge and enquiry".

I haven't really thought of this before. I have often been told if you are a teacher you can teach any subject. But really I know this isn't the case. My experience hasn't just given me a bigger subject knowledge and range of activities to lean on, but also an idea of the skills and big ideas students need to grasp in order to be able to progress in my subject. These are at the heart of my teaching, but I don't feel like it is explicit to me or the students I have taught in the past couple of years. This can be attributed to a "weird" key stage 3 curriculum I taught at my previous school and the odd structure to the 2006 and 2011 GCSE specifications in my opinion.

The book gives an example of a history teacher who used displays to explicitly show students the development of a skill and this display was improved/adapted as the skills of the class developed. I am pondering if this is something I can use to help improve my teaching.


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Diptic and Instagram

It isn't directly related to teaching science, but I am pretty excited by these two services.

Diptic allows me to put several photographs together in one place.

First I chose a layout:



Then I select two photographs. This can be from the iPhone, from Flickr or from Facebook. I don't use flickr, I use Picasa instead as this blog links to it, but I do use Facebook.



Then it is possible to move the borders, adjust brightness, contrast etc and also add filters for various effects.


I can then export to the social media application of choice:



I am using Instagram to save my beautiful pictures.



Once uploaded to Instagram I have more filter options should I choose them.



And I share my image with the world. Or at least those people who follow me.

I am not a great photographer, but between these two services I can make my photographs beautiful.









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Using photos to give a lesson a context

@TESscience is collecting photos for his pinterest board. Details Here.

I think this will be a great resource for helping to put some contexts into science lessons and I can't wait to start collecting photos to add.

Things like:


Phototropism




Fossils



Endangered species

I will be keeping my camera close!

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Do we do AfL correctly?

In this article in TES: http://www.tes.co.uk/article.aspx?storycode=6261847 Dylan William says that he believed AfL is not done correctly in England's schools. This because in 2008 the government confused AfL with trying to give grades.

From the article

"How it should be

Dylan Wiliam's key Assessment for Learning strategies:

Clarifying, sharing and understanding learning intentions.

Eliciting evidence of pupil learning, through the use of tests and quizzes, for example.

Providing feedback that moves learning forward.

Using pupils as learning resources for one another, through methods such as peer assessment and peer tutoring.

Encouraging pupils to be owners of their own learning, through self-assessment and other methods."



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Location:UK

Evidence Based Practice

In his book Geoff Petty describes evidence based practice as needing the following:

1. You need all the evidence to make a sound decision
2. It is not enough to know what works, you need to understand why
3. You need to find the critical success factors that are failing in your teaching context and fix these
4. You need to review your teaching constantly in the light of the evidence from the points above

Evidence based teaching, does not show you what you should do; it shows you how best to achieve your own values priorities and goals. Evidence based professional development should give teachers control over initiatives to improve learning.




I find these points very useful to hear.

I have been searching in books for most of my career for a magic pill to make all my students behave beautifully and learn vast quantities every lesson. Moreover, from the beginning of my teaching career senior management have been pushing one way of doing things across the school. Geoff Petty seems to be advocating that one size fits all pedagogy is not necessarily the best thing and that it isn't important to take on all different approaches, but rather the approaches and techniques that work best for me.

It is interesting to me that in recent years the schools I am aware of take a more personalised approach to CPD, asking teachers to work on their own project for improving practice in someway. However, none of the schools I know of use the idea of evidence based teaching to justify this.

In my current role I will have more input into my own practice and look forward to developing my own teaching in an evidence-based way.



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Location:Rudgleigh Ave,,United Kingdom