Why did the Chickenman cross the road?

Yesterday I experienced one of the great days in education. We had a film crew come in (It was awesome to meet the tag team superhero duo of Ruth & Ralph – do you know them?) Ruth and Ralph were really nice and they were making a film for the Teaching Awards and Becta profiling the innovative use of ICT. They came and spent a whole day filming interviews with my Headteacher Isobel Bryce and myself but the best part of the day is where they filmed one of my lessons and interviewed the students.

They were really impressed with the work the students produced in such a short time and were bowled over by how effective their use of ICT was and how articulate they were about their own learning using ICT to enhance it. The students challenge in the short time was to produce a presentation to communicate a balanced argument for and against intensive farming. It was a similar lesson based on the famous recharge the battery project. If you haven’t heard of it, firstly where have you been? Ha ha Secondly you can read it now here: http://chickensaltash.edublogs.org/2009/06/07/recharge-the-battery/

Students then led the lesson creating their own success criteria for their presentation, then they selected the appropriate tool to use, some students chose to use moviemaker, some used photopeach, some used animoto. The students then collected their research and created their presentations. They obviously had a fantastic life example right on their door step too so within 10 minutes or so the students headed down to the schools livestock area to capture images, video and audio of the schools very own rescued battery chickens. If you haven’t visited our livestock area then please do so www.saltash.net/livestock you can keep up to date with some of the animals there on the pigcam or eggcam. Actually at the moment we have had a new pig arrive so please say hello. She is called Felicity and is the daughter of Boris and Princess Alice. (You may have seen Alice on the twitcamming sessions when she gave birth in July last year!)

Once students completed their videos they uploaded them to their ning community where they then peer assessed each other’s work before we discussed as a group what they had learnt from the lesson. The best bit of the day was hearing the conversations the students were having with the film crew, they were so passionate about their learning, and they loved using technology because it gave them the tools and confidence to take risks and to be creative. (This is why I became a teacher) One of the greatest compliments they had was when one girl said Mr Roberts is a good teacher because he lets me do things for myself, I am definitely becoming more independent but is there for me when I need some guidance. (I am not writing this because I am blowing my own trumpet, as I am not doing anything special, I am just highlighting the approach that any teacher can do) Just like Pink Floyd said teachers leave those kids alone! Kids need the space and time to make sense of their own learning teachers should be facilitators not the didactic dinosaurs disseminating their precious knowledge at the front of the class at the chalkboard.

 As always would appreciate your comments and look forward to discussing this more (sorry didn’t mean for it to turn into a mini rant at the end!)

This week we were visited by Bernhard who is carrying out research on e-learning in schools for his PhD. He came all the way over from Vienna to visit our school and the University of Plymouth. It was a fantastic opportunity for our students to discuss their work and how they use technology to enhance their learning. The visit was arranged by Steve Wheeler who you probably follow on twitter @timbuckteeth. He beat me to it and discussed this on his blog. Check out the post. It is really interesting particularly the discussions that the students were having about Farmville whilst eating pizza!

http://steve-wheeler.blogspot.com/2010/02/just-game.html

My students this week have been getting to know the delights of Tim and Moby by watching some of the movies and trying out the quizzes on Brainpop UK http://www.brainpop.co.uk/  We are fortunate enough to be an evaluator school and our kids have started to have a play around with the resources. The students have really been impressed and already love watching the movies; many have said that they make concepts really easy to understand often easier than the teachers can. They have also really enjoyed completing some of the online quizzes to test their knowledge from watching the movies.

I am really looking forward to the next couple of months while students really get to use the brainpop resources. A big thank you to the guys and galls at Brainpop UK for giving our students this opportunity.

Do you use Brainpop? How do you use it in your lessons?

A great spin off from Brainpop in one of my lessons this week was when some of my students requested to do an extension to the brainpop resources we were working on. They really enjoyed the quizzes but then said wouldn’t it be cool if they could make our own quizzes based on some of the movies. They said that it would really help them develop a deeper understanding as they would learn more about the content by thinking up questions and creating a quiz. I thought this was a fantastic idea but didn’t really know of any online quiz sites so I opened up twitter and asked everyone for help. Of course it never fails and within minutes we had 10 or so potential sites to use. My students had a quick look and decided to use Proprofs http://www.proprofs.com/

It is a great site where students can create quizzes very quickly for free to test other students. My students creating quizzes within less than 10 minutes, then they uploaded them to our ning community and they were testing each other by the end of the lesson. Students through this site had great potential and will definitely be using this again in other subjects in the future. Another site we liked the look of and are going to use is Quizlet which I will post about later. So do you use any of these online quizzes in class? What do you do with them? It would be great to hear from you. Here is one of the ones my students created in less than 10 minutes:

http://www.proprofs.com/quiz-school/story.php?title=materials-plastic

An international project that will reach 12 million children from 20 different countries by 2012 and we are very excited to be part of it. On the 1st of March I will be travelling to Nigeria to take part in the international inspiration event, the project involves working in partnership with UK sport, the British Council, UNICEF and the Government Olympic Executive. The project will be an important legacy from the 2012 Olympic Games as promised by the British Government when they were awarded the opportunity to host the games. The project will use the power of sport to transform the lives of millions of children and young people of all abilities, in schools and communities across the world, particularly in developing countries, through the power of high quality and inclusive physical education, sport and play. Our school is so excited to play a part in this project.

All I know at the moment is that we will be playing a part by first linking with a partner school in Nigeria and that I will be visiting there for a week in march. I also know that I will be staying in lagos for a bit before visiting the capital. It has all happened so quickly and I now have the next month to get my head round it all and start planning what we will actually do to ensure we meet the objectives and make international inspiration a success.

What I think we will be doing is…

Making a school link which are an integral part of the International Inspiration programme as a key tool aimed at developing young people through sport and supporting whole school development through international educational links. The school partnerships will enable secondary schools to implement an agreed joint partnership plan which will focus on using sport to achieve positive social and educational change in both the UK and international schools and their wider communities. So are you involved in this project too? Have you ever been to Nigeria? I would be Interested to hear your views on this project or if you have had any experience of a link with Nigeria.

Recently my year 8 students (just 12 years old) have been learning about lots of different memory techniques and how to practice them in other subjects. They have been trying out memory techniques that they may have used before or know such as mnemonics, raps, rhymes, SPECS, mindmaps, etc we even learned how to use Derren Brown’s memory peg system. They were learning about this to really begin to understand that there are ways to improve memory.

They all appreciate learning about this as they have been discussing why it is important to learn. The following reasons are what they came up with:

• In school examinations and, more importantly in life, a good memory is a predictor of success.
• If we know more about memory we can improve our recall and learn more effectively.
• If we can learn these memory techniques we can use them in all our other subjects.

 As part of the final session I asked them to explain to others about memory techniques. Some did posters, powerpoints or role play’s it was completely their choice. I recorded the sound on one of the role plays see below:

 These students can see the importance of learning these skills yet some teachers don’t. Do you allow students to develop and learn skills as part of your specific subject based curriculum or do you do it in other ways?

http://drop.io/saltashmemory

If you’re a regular reader of this blog, come on must be at least one of you! You will have seen my recent posts on creating revision podcasts. This is a follow up to that where my students have progressed in making their podcasts by making them slightly more professional and making them available to a wider audience by uploading to youtube.

It is really early days with this at the moment and we hope to produce more professional ones in the foreseeable future. Do your students upload their own material to itunes? We would be interested in hearing more about what they are doing so please leave a comment.

So my students recently had their first go of audacity to create their first revision podcasts so I decided to give them the opportunity to create a more advanced more professional sounding podcast by adding a BED. Now if you have worked or are familiar with the radio industry a BED is a background music track with the DJ will talk over, by adding a music track with no singing often an instrumental it creates a more professional sound. One of the advantages the students said was that it made the podcast more entertaining and interesting to listen to which is fantastic!

So the problem is where and what music can you put in the background? It is difficult to get free copyright music that you can use but there are some sites out there or you can buy a CD with library tracks pretty cheaply these days. Once you get the background music students can then record their podcast and save it. Actually another way of creating copyright free music is to grab a keyboard a create your own very simple tune and record this on to audacity!

Once they save their podcast they then need to upload this to itunes. The easiest way we found to do this is with help from Jose Picardo – you can visit his post on creating a podcast in 5 easy steps, there is even a video which my students found really useful: http://www.boxoftricks.net/?p=367 Jose is Head of MFL at Nottingham High School and has some really innovative ideas in using other web 2.0 tools please check out his site or follow him on twitter @josepicardo.

It was really simple to actually upload the podcast – I suggest watching the video as it made it really easy for my students. You basically upload your podcast to a site called podomatic, you can actually record it directly on to the site and it is free. From here you have to publish your podcast to itunes. This is really easy and straightforward, you simply go to submit a podcast on itunes and copy and paste the RSS feed that podomatic automatically produces for you. Then after it is verified and checked by itunes you have your own podcast!

Our class have only spent an hour on this so far but managed to upload some, we hope to refine and improve them after the students practice more. You can hear one by one of my students on Polymers by clicking on the link: http://itunes.apple.com/WebObjects/MZStore.woa/wa/viewPodcast?id=352195733

The students loved creating these podcasts and really are amazed that their work is on itunes! What do you think?

Yes it is true, our school has a radio station. I know that lots of schools have them but they range from online ones run over the internet to pupils broadcasting over the schools basic PA system. The one we have is the latest hi-tech one available for schools and does cost a lot of money. We purchased ours this year as part of the money we received during our re-designation as a specialist school in Science, Maths and Computing with a rural dimension. As of yet we still haven’t fully utilized it within the school however I want to tell you about how I have been using it in lessons recently with my students. You can see some more background information on where you can buy them here: http://schoolradio.clydebroadcast.co.uk/ I should say that there may be other companies that sell these so please don’t think I am advertising for synergy I am just telling you where we got ours from.

The radio kit is fantastic and is really amazing in quality and I guess that is why it is the price it is, in fact we have bought a mobile version so it can be used in classrooms but it is exactly what they use in actual radio station which is brilliant. I really wanted to give it a go and was a little apprehensive as I had not received any training on how to use it but one of my students in Year 8 had and knew a lot about so I basically encouraged him to lead the lessons which he did. He was absolutely amazing, I won’t name him but for a 12 year old boy who is not very confident it was a fantastic learning experience for him and now I have definitely seen a change in his confidence after it.

So basically we planned a 2 hour lesson where students would use the first hour to write a short script for their radio broadcast in pairs. The topic of the radio broadcast was based on the subject we were currently studying, with the aim of all students recording their small radio broadcasts and we would then record the actual show of around 15 minutes in total including jingles and one song as a revision radio broadcast for them to download and listen to. I have an example that you can listen to by clicking on the link below. This example is from a Year 8 lower ability class who were working on digestion. I have edited it from a 18 minute radio broadcast to just over 5 minutes but shows some examples of what the broadcast was like.

The learning that took place was awesome and the final product I think for the first time that the group had done it and to do it in such a short timescale, for their ability was brilliant. The students were extremely engaged and they learnt lots from the activity and as a result now have created their own resource which can be used for revision. I then replicated these lessons for all my other classes and the feedback received from students was extremely positive not only did they learn more about the subject they were studying but they also developed many new skills such as understanding how the actual technology of the radio worked to the conditions and experience of carrying out a live radio broadcast. Do you have a school radio station? What sort of things do you do with a radio broadcast within your lessons?

Here is the link to the example lesson radio broadcast: http://drop.io/radiosaltash

So do you record your own revision podcasts for your students or do your students create their own? If so what do you use?

I have been creating revision audio podcasts for the last 5 years or so and my students have happily been downloading them to their ipods to revise on the school bus on the way to school or even on the toilet as some students have told me in the past. I remember some of my sixth formers a couple of years ago told me they listened to me in bed as it helped them go to sleep.

One guy I have been fortunate to meet who has taken his podcasting to the next stage and has a global audience of students is Andrew Douch from Australia. I first met Andrew at the Worldwide Innovative Teachers Forum in Hong Kong in 2008 where his global podcasting was an award winner. As a fellow winner myself and Andrew were then invited to NECC 09 in Washington DC last year in July were we spoke about our experiences of using technology in innovative ways. Some of the work that Andrew is doing with his students really is fantastic and I encourage you to check out some of his podcasts and his work: http://biologyoracle.podomatic.com/

At the beginning of January many of my GCSE students were sitting exams so before Christmas we decided to create some new revision podcasts to help for the January exams. Students collaborated by dividing up the topics and each taking responsibility to write and record a short revision podcast on that topic. Students as a whole group created their success criteria to what an ‘outstanding’ revision podcast would sound like to ensure that what was produced was consistently at a good standard. They also identified that among many other things that they must be memorable so interesting and as short as possible to help with their concentration levels.

The students recorded their podcasts using audacity and they used a how 2 video I created years ago to help them, it was actually surprising how many hadn’t used it before! You can see the video here: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4y91WXpplwE

Here are a couple of the more entertaining ones – I particularly enjoyed the one involving the human beatbox! Please post comments on what you think of them, my students would appreciate any feedback. Or let me know if you do any revision podcasts or your students create their own.

Revision podcast 1

Revision Podcast 2

First of all to avoid any possible disappointed unfortunately this competition is for UK teachers only. Teachers from other countries are encouraged to contact Microsoft within your own country to see if they are running any other similar competition.

Basically the competition is to create your own ‘innovid’ which is a 4 minute how 2 video of how you use any Microsoft products to engage your students. The deadline for entries is the 29^th March 2010 and you can find more details of the competition by visiting the teaching ideas and resources blog by Stuart Ball and Kristen Weatherby:

http://blogs.msdn.com/teachers/archive/2010/01/13/Introducing-Microsoft-Innovid-Video-Competition.aspx

There are also lots more information on Microsoft’s partners in learning network which you can sign up to be a member for free. If you are not a member of this network then I really urge you to sign up by visiting: http://uk.partnersinlearningnetwork.com/Pages/default.aspx it is a fantastic community to develop your own professional development. If you sign up you will join one and a half million other teachers from over 59 different countries currently sharing good practice and collaborating on innovative projects. There are also lots of free resources that you can download and use in your own classroom, basically if you don’t sign up you and your students are really missing out.

So will you be submitting a video then? In the words of the mighty Take That it only takes a minute girl, well in the case it will only take 4 minutes and you could end up getting 20 netbooks to use every day. (Yes I really did just quote Gary Barlow!)

Welcome to 2010 ok yes I am sorry it is over 2 weeks late but I had my iphone surgically removed from my right hand, I went through cold turkey (more poultry mentions) after having my twitter account frozen and the password on my emails were unfortunately reset! I suppose in addition I booked myself off on a month long secondment over Christmas and the first 2 weeks in January to get to know my newborn – learning all about Max affectionately known as mini chickenman or chicken nugget.

Feel free to leave Max a message via the comment box as I will be collecting them all and putting them in his E-baby book to show him when he is older!

To ease myself in to work I thought I would share with you what I think are perhaps the top 5 blog posts from last year that you may have missed particularly as they are from June & July 2009. Here they are:

1. Why did the Chickenman cross the road? This was my first ever blog post and answers that question. I can’t believe how much my blog has improved yet a very informative blog post! This was back in May 2009 http://chickensaltash.edublogs.org/2009/05/30/why-did-the-chickenman-cross-the-road-first-ever-blog/  

2. Recharge the Battery – This is a blog post about the worldwide award winning project that really put some of the work the students at Saltash.net do up there with the best in the world whilst saving those lovely animals chickens! http://chickensaltash.edublogs.org/2009/06/07/recharge-the-battery/

3. Heroes are global – This is a fantastic blog post about a collaborative project between my students and students from 4 other countries all over the world. It really shows the power of international projects as part of the project our students talked live on Indonesian television to 30 million people! Wow certainly beats X factor & Strictly come dancing viewing figures! http://chickensaltash.edublogs.org/2009/06/23/you-heard-it-first-here-heroes-are-global/

4. To tweet or not to tweet that is the question – This is a really cool post about the use of twitter in the classroom and the use of 20 seconds tv for revision from back in June. This was quite unusual back in June with 20 seconds in beta version! http://chickensaltash.edublogs.org/2009/06/04/to-tweet-or-not-to-tweet-that-is-the-question/

5. Putting the ning into learning – This post is all about the use of ning in the classroom, ning is still a great tool for using with students and we have had huge success using it particularly now you can even remove the ads for free! Wahoo! http://chickensaltash.edublogs.org/2009/08/09/putting-the-ning-into-learning/