Modesty prevents me from saying who wrote the lead article in the current issue of the ICTopus Sharing Good Practice magazine

” Issue 8 of Sharing Good Practice is now available. This issue looks at three very diverse aspects of social interaction: Linda Hartley writes about teachers and teaching assistants using blogs, wikis and other forms of social software for informal professional development, Janice Staines tell us about some great resources for citizenship education and in the Inclusion slot we have an anonymous article on the ways in which technology has enabled one special child to communicate.”

My article, Sugaring the Pill, is about using blogs and wikis for informal learning by making stuff that’s relevant and useful to teachers and teaching assistants, things like the Classroom Displays Blog and Usefulwiki. The idea for the article came from a blog post I did a while ago Why is it so hard for educators to focus on their own learning?

The magazine is a pdf file and you have to create a log-in to view or download, for now. Creating a registration is a good idea as you don’t just get access to the pdfs but also good lesson ideas for integrating technology too. ICTopus is brought to you from some folks who were very involved in BECTA and has some great stuff. Sharing Good Practice has been going for a few months now and is usually a good read, with one lead article and some regular features.

Sometimes it feels like a bind to have to create a registration but it’s often the only way for funded projects to actually track and show impact to their stake holders. That ability to show impact is vital to continued funding and it’s a growing problem in the online world. But that’s another blog post….

ICTopus Sharing Good Practice magazine

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I found Jennifer’s blog because she started following me on Twitter. I’ve been using Twitter for a while but mostly to follow people I’ve had contact with on or off line. I’ve started to see how it can become more useful today. It’s partly because I now use Twitterific so it sits on my desktop the whole time and takes no effort to update/ read updates. Now some of the stuff is undoubtedly trivia but I’ve started to think there’s nothing wrong with that. It’s just like a quick chat with someone from another department you vaguely know that you might have in the lift. It makes the day more friendly, helps you feel rooted. Now that’s important stuff in this online world! Anyway, by looking at who she follows on Twitter I found lots of other interesting edtech people and expanded my network. Then I looked at their blogs and found some really good stuff So that’s my feed reader full, again!

One of the most interesting things Jennifer had to say, (apart from the fact that Twitter got her a job!) was this:

injenuity

What if we could increase the size of “The Network” ten fold. There are about 100 or so active ed techies in the network putting in more than a full day’s work of discovery every day. That’s certainly not enough people to stimulate change in educating our children or our workforce.What if, instead of discovering new tools, for one day we discover ten more people to add to the network. Do we really need a hundred social networking tools? Would we be better off with a hundred new techie teachers?

Answers on a postcard

If anyone wants to add me on Twitter I’m lindiop - don’t be shy

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Classroom Displays » Environment Display - Antarctica

I’ve been blogging about the environment over at the Classroom Displays Blog because today is Blog Action Day

Today’s classroom display has an environmental theme in honour of Blog Action Day. I love this project which was done as part of the International Polar Year .

Dee, the teacher writes:

I began with a classroom standard, a KWL chart. On the KWL chart, students first listed what they knew (K) about Antarctica. Next, they listed questions they wanted (W) answered. Eventually, they would list what they learned (L) on the last part of the chart. The students asked some very good questions. Where do icebergs come from? What do blue whales eat in the waters surrounding Antarctica? How tall are emperor penguins? How did Shackleton and his men survive being trapped in ice? Why don’t fish freeze in the cold waters? What’s on the ocean floor? These were just a few of the questions they listed.

This was such a great project I’d been waiting for a good excuse to write about it and this seemed an ideal opportunity. If you are at all interested check out the post for more details of their classroom field trip and how it came to life for them because of an expedition blog.

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I am about to embark on a new venture. I will be teaching NCFE level 2 with a group of teaching assistants for a few hours a week. It’s exciting and daunting at the same time. It’s an opportunity to put into practice all my constructivist ideals and my commitment to web 2.0 but it’s going to be a challenge. I’m putting all my teaching materials online in the Teaching Assistants area of usefulwiki and I hope to attract other UK based TA trainers and students to get involved.

Like the web head I am the first thing I did was ask round in the TA forums for people’s impressions and experiences of the course. I got lots of helpful advice and encouragement and a great book list! However one of the main thing that they agreed on was that sometimes the tutors ‘waffle on’ about things that don’t seem very relevant to the evidence based assessment criteria. This instantly rang bells for me. I could be wrong but this may be a case of surface versus deep learning. The TAs want their ‘bit of paper’ and as stressed, busy people, they want to achieve it by doing ‘just enough’ work to get them through. The tutors though have other objectives, they want to produce rounded, competent TAs who are reflective about their work, apply theory to their practice etc. Is this starting to sound familiar to any one? Especially people at Ultraversity?

I have no idea how to resolve this at the moment but I think the key is in carefully structured assessment assignments that encourage a reflective attitude without overburdening the students. Oh, and finding a variety of ways of providing evidence for meeting the assessment criteria. Time to put the money where the mouth is! Watch out for a batch of blogging TAs!

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