As I said in my last post I’m looking for a new Wordpress theme for the Classroom Displays Blog. I’ve narrowed it down to three possibilities. Now I need your help again 
First the current theme - Regulus:
Then a suggestion from a couple of friends - Cordoba Green Park:
Finally a theme that I’ve used on other sites - Cutline
I need help to choose! Vote here:
I’m thinking of updating the Classroom Displays Blog theme. I’ve identified enough problems with the current one to make it seem like a good idea. But I think I need some help. Who better to ask than my Personal Learning Network?
I need a theme that:
compatibleIf you’d like to help me find one, please have a look at the Classroom Displays Blog and then either add to the wish list here or make suggestions for themes you think might work.
Back in early (Jan 2nd!) 2005 I created the Classroom Displays Group on Flickr as part of an ILM in my Year 2 research. The whole topic ended up taking over my degree
So here’s my advice to anyone in Ultraversity wondering what to do for their research. Choose something close to your heart, make something real that has a chance to make a difference to your own and other people’s learning, and don’t be discouraged if you have to wait to see its real impact. Impact doesn’t arrive to order. It’s subtle and difficult to pin down - especially online.
Classroom Displays Flickr Group - started Jan 2rd 2005
231 Members
1,283 Images
And here’s what some of the members have said:
Thanks for creating this group. What a great idea. We all know how long it can take to think up a display, let alone make one. It is so inspiring to look at everyones ideas and to share my own. Teachers are such creative people!
Then:
This site has given me inspiration and allowed me to see so many other creavtive souls. I am now designing ideas for displays and more able to delegate them to people in my team. So in effect I still get to be involved. Some of them I will definitely be having hands-on involvement.
We have requests from just about every dept in our school now. Word got out that teachers shouldn’t be doing it all, (the 21 tasks!) so I am planning 7 displays for Richard III (all the English dept are doing it), Of Mice and Men, a Cirque Du Freak display, a Roald Dahl display, The Wild West, 2 “Holes” displays, a display based on “Rabbit-proof fence”, something for “Stone Cold”, a display for a Carol Ann Duffy poem, 2 horror themed displays, a drama display based on “The Ballad of Charlotte Dymond” , lots of literacy word walls and 3 science displays. Plenty of photo opportunities for the rest of the term.
Oh to be busy…What I like about this group is how you can see how people interpret things visually and try things out.
And just today:
I would like to say a great big thank you to everyone on this site - i’ve just moved into a new year group and having to design and put up loads of displays when you’re only just getting used to the planning is a daunting task! You’ve all made it so much easier and have motivated me.
Thanks again
Nice to be thanked but even nicer to see the group growing and blossoming just as I hoped it would 3 years ago
Dy/dan fell in love with the design aesthetics of this hand written worksheet and started to question our obsession with the word processor:
dy/dan » Blog Archive » Careful now.
I saw this in a pile of forgotten masters while walking by the copier. It was love.
Check out the clear hierarchy. The single, legible font. The single style for emphasis. Margins tightly aligned. The second lines indenting just as they should. Spacing is evenly distributed. The kids know exactly where to look, where to go for their next question, and where to find important information.
Somewhere, until quite recently I still had all my hand written masters for worksheets. They were done in the far off days of the banda machine. Everything came out blue, very dark bluey/purple if you were lucky or, almost unreadable, light blue, if the ink was running out. Your hand writing had to be clear otherwise there was no chance of the children reading it. You had to use weight, bullet points and underlining to make things stand out.
Pupils were used to reading cursive script and they loved worksheets. It was so much easier than squinting, copying notes off a blackboard. We were taught at Teacher Training College that using blackboards full of notes (as many of the teachers in our TP schools did) was very poor practice and the banda worksheet was the way forward. I think the word ‘personalisation’ might even have been used!
I looked through those old worksheets before I threw them away and realised they were from a time that shared many ideas with where we are now in schools. The tasks they set were differentiated by “must, should and could”. They often sought personal responses and gave scope for extended writing. They even included some line drawings and diagrams or asked for a pictorial response ( my subjects were Middle School English and Comparative Religion - does anyone still teach that?) They were then my very best attempt at helping my pupils to learn and I was still proud of my 20 year old self for having made a good job of them. But I binned them anyway.
Now I question the value of worksheets, how ever well designed. After all, as Adrian says
* In years to come will you be stopped in the street by an ex-student and they will bow down before you and thank you for all the exciting worksheets they gave? I don’t think so!
* Please challenge your students and teach them to think.
* Please give your students a 21st Century Literacy skillset.
* Please hang this poster next to your school’s photocopier.
There’s a good discussion about the Accelerated Learning approach to displays in the History Teacher’s forum :
I have a colleague at my school who only displays students’ work outside of her classroom – that is in corridors really. She never displays work in her classroom.
She says it is because she went on an Inset course once about ‘classrooms as places of positive work patterns’.
The idea is that you should celebrate student work and achievement with displays of their work, but never inside a classroom. Inside a classroom should be entirely and only devoted to work and positive motivation.
I’ve read a lot about this approach but I’ve almost never seen it in action. It bothers me slightly, like an itch I can’t quite reach. I like so much of the theory of Accelerated Learning but this is just a sticking point for me, a blind spot.
What do others think?
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.
Booruch
Education Podcast Reflections #44bThis week, I am in conversation with Linda Hartley, a former Teaching Assistant, who runs the Classroom Displays Flickr Group and is introducing a variety of other Web 2.0 tools for sharing and collaboration between Teaching Assistants and the wider education community.
It hardly hurt at all
Marcia McGowan’s first grade class used their self-portaits to create some online fun. She’s also involved in lots of internet exchange projects and I love her quote:
This is purposeful, authentic, engaging work that begins to prepare today’s learners for new literacies in the technological world of today and tomorrow.
Now I wonder if she blogs……and if she’s got any nice photos of classroom displays?
Using Flickr photos from the Classroom Displays Group I made this in 30 seconds. Neat. It uses the Flickr slideshow format and you can post it to Facebook too.
Following on from Will’s post comes a suggestion of another route to teacher and headteachers grasping the power of blogging.Monkeymagic
A different way, which might be easier, is to reverse that. By doing so, the teachers and staff can learn from the ways the children use the technology.
I think this can happen too, especially with teachers who have the confidence to let the children become the experts.
Piers (MonkeyMagic) set up a blog for the children at his school to use with litttle or no teacher intervention beyond a little initial “hand-holding”. He didn’t publicise the blog in any way but handed ownership over to the children. Wow - powerful stuff ownership Their byline “Our News. Our Views” says it all.
..one boy called Max had done a little ‘viral’ marketing campaign round the school. He printed out some stickers and stuck them on friends jumpers, asking them to pass them on to a friend.
The blog started to get comments from teachers, pupils and parents.
Now here’s the crunch:
By watching how the children were using it day to day, it was much easier for staff to translate research and factoids about social computing to ideas for integrating it into the classroom.
And the big result was one of Roberta Linehan’s comments.“I think this is a great site! Can teachers have one too?”
Roberta happens to be the head teacher.
On a side note Piers also says:
Ali Lim, the art teacher, has begun to use Flickr as another way of displaying the children’s work.
I know! I know! I saw it when she first started posting. They just happen to be members of Classroom Displays Group too For a real treat have a look at the slideshow of their vision of London in 2057
I blog here and at the Classroom Displays Blog I am also involved in Usefulwiki- educational resources wiki
