I’m busy working out what to include in a one day ICT workshop for trainee primary school teaching assistants. I’ve got an ICT suite booked from 10 till 3 and I’m wondering what people think the TAs really need to know. I’ve had a few thoughts of my own and some great input from Andy. Last night I found that Anthony was thinking about something similar. He’s planning some longer training for TAs and has narrowed it down to 4 topics:

Redbridge Primary ICT Consultant: TA Training
* Using relevant software to support a child with special needs
* Training other TAs to create banners for display
* Researching websites for teachers and TAs to use in their lesson
* Using the IWB to teach

I agree with these and have added them to my list. I also think he’s hit on a couple of really important points but maybe not spelled them out. Teach one TA in a school how to do something really useful on the computer and it tends to spread without the need for formal training. Teaching assistants tend to be a resourceful lot and if something is actually useful it spreads virally through the school.

Of course I was interested that he’d picked out making banner titles for classroom displays. This is something I’ve banged on about for ages. Hand cutting lettering for displays is a hugely wasteful use of teaching assistants’ time. Often schools don’t even have die cutters for the letters so that means using wooden templates, drawing them out and then cutting by hand. If TAs, and so by implication teachers, learn how easy it is to do banner titles, and how good they can look, maybe this can change.

Other areas I’ve thought about:

• File saving and sharing - an introduction. Basic, but many people, including teachers, have no concept of the difference between files and folders, don’t understand about saving versions, or even sensible naming of .docs
• Calibrating white boards. This is a simple but really helpful classroom skill!
• Supporting from the side - how not to do it for them!
• Very basic troubleshooting. Things like checking knowing how to check the in control panel of the laptop when the sound doesn’t work. It’s often just defaulted to ‘mute’.

I think the best way to take this forward might be to use a wiki page so I’ve set up a Teaching Assistants ICT Training page on usefulwiki.

If anyone wants to join in it is easy to edit. Just set yourself up a user name and away you go

So what do you think teaching assistants need to know about using and supporting with ICT? Either add your thoughts to the wiki or leave a comment here.

Share This

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!

Share This

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

Share This

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

Share This

The Innovation Unit - It’s not 1996 - this century is a different place - The Innovation Unit Forums
It’s not 1996 - this century is a different place -

These people want to know what you think - now’s your chance

Stephen Heppell describes a world that is collaborative, peer-to-peer and mobile; where process is more important than practice. How would you measure success in this world - more joy, more smiling … ? What can you do to make it happen?

Interesting conversation? It should be but it hasn’t happened yet. The (ex-DFES) Innovation unit have made a public forum to try to start some discussions about the future of education in the UK but there’s not much going on there yet. One clue to the problem might be that you have to register to participate. If this is the case then it is a shame. It only took me a few minutes to register and it’s a nice, fairly user-friendly interface. You can quickly create a profile and upload an avatar. So come on why not join in the discussions?
(For the techie amongst you I think the web site is Joomla, and I think they’d be better with blogs and comments but hey what do I know?)

Share This

Eide Neurolearning Blog: Finding the Right Ways to Praise Kids

From Carol Dweck and her team, here’s research that shows that providing generic or trait-related praise to kids (”You are a good drawer”) is more likely to induce feelings and behaviors of helplessness when negative criticism about drawing is later received. Children who received more situation praise (”You did a good job drawing”), had fewer strong emotional feelings and were more likely to persist with drawing activities.

Yikes! This may catch a lot of us. When trying to foster positive self-esteem, it’s possible we may be discouraging resiliency.

I agree - specific rather than general praise is the most powerful kind. It’s much better to say “I like the way you did x..” especially if you are pointing out something they’ve made progress with. Schemes like Better Reading Partners use this theory to re-enforce children’s positive self image of themselves as learners. It’s interesting to see a quantitative study backing up something I’ve seen and used extensively.
As an aside of particular interest to Action Researchers the bloggers children were shocked:

that the teachers criticized the preschoolers’ artwork just to see what the effects of different praise were. They wondered whether the parents really knew what the study was going to be like - and they thought it was unethical!

Share This

Classroom Displays » Rules of Display
Urgent
A few months ago I was sent a copy of Rules of Display to review on the Classroom Displays Blog.
I’ve decided to give the book away in a prize draw If you want it you have until June 1st to read the review and leave a comment. I will then put all the e-mail addresses in a hat (note the technical selection method!!) and choose one at random.

Share This

DARnet
Andy’s writing about wiki participation and some connections from the DARwiki to a conversation on a couple of blogs. He’s found people talking about the best ways to encourage wiki facilitation, but doing it on their ‘home turf’ rather than participating in the making of the DARwiki page. The irony isn’t lost on Andy I know that he’s not fully explored his thoughts on all of this yet but it did sort of get me thinking too. There’s a couple of aspects of this that resonate for me.
People who write blog entries pointing to the Classroom Displays Blog often suggest their readers will enjoy it or find it useful. Not once (as far as I’m aware) has someone who has blogged the Classroom Displays Blog or the Flickr group actually joined the group or uploaded images to the wikispace.
I think edubloggers are alerting their audience, saying ‘there’s something over there you might be interested in’, rather than spotting something they themselves would want to get involved with. Often they point out the blog as an example of sharing best practice or using a blog for career development, as if they are saying ‘you too could find a niche and blog about that’ rather than actually encouraging engagement with the subject matter of the blog. They too, like Andy’s examples, are working at a meta level. In a way that’s good for the CD blog. More people are learning about it all the time. It’s being promoted as part of teacher training courses (amazing what you can tell from referer stats!). I suppose where I’m going with this is that the bloggers (in this case) aren’t really participating in a connectivist conversation about the subject matter of the blog but rather in one about the bloggers favourite subject - blogging! I wonder if the people blogging about facilitating wiki are doing a similar sort of thing.
Then there’s the issue of ownership. If a wiki is set up to serve a pre-existing community, like the cider wiki, it is a very different entity than one which may be the ‘property’ of one individual. I’ve noticed my own reluctance to edit ‘other people’s’ wikis, even sometimes DARnet! It can feel like invading someone’s territory if all the edits have been done by one or two people. It’s hard to get a balance. Its’ easy to say don’t do it all yourself but if there have been no edits for months it starts to feel like a dead wiki. Hmm, no idea where I’m going with all of this. I suppose it’s partly because I’m contemplating starting a new project, possibly based on a wiki and I’m wondering how I’m going to populate it. I’ve been thinking that I’d have to do some F2F workshops to build a seed community. I think I may need a crash course in community building & wiki facilitation, so it’s back to the DARwiki page for me then!
Meanwhile on the CD blog there are few comments these days, even though the number of visiters is far higher than it was this time last year. The best bit of interaction recently has been a poll about the point of displays which has attracted 42 replies so far, (and the current winning answer was added by a reader!).

Share This

Howard Thurman - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Don’t ask yourself what the world needs. Ask yourself what makes you come alive and then go do that. Because what the world needs is people who have come alive.

I don’t often quote preachers but Thurman is a bit special and this advice went straight to the nub of my thinking today.
I’d applied for a job and convinced myself it was perfect for me - to cut a long story short I didn’t get it. It was worthwhile and interesting but I’m not at all sure I would have been doing that which makes me ‘come alive’.
Thurman had a lot to say about the importance of community and for me that’s one area that makes me come alive. Too much of my life has been standing on the brink watching slightly baffled by others’ ease in communities. On-line and off over the last 3 years I finally learned how to take part, contribute and even nurture communities. More of that has to be part of where I’m going next and what little there would have been in that job wouldn’t have been enough for me.

Share This

Tell me a story
The Lakes

Debbie sat on the grey stone wall, lit a cigarette and looked into the sheep pen.
“It’s supposed to be art, right? All those leaves and twigs woven into a wreath and balanced on here? I don’t get it.”
Richard sighed. She was becoming a real pain. She’d done nothing but moan all week. The hills were too steep, the sun was too hot, the pubs were boring. Nothing was to her taste.

I decided to start publishing my short stories hosted on a wordpress.com blog. Am I bored this weekend? You think?!!!! Anyway it’s about time I started to do more with these stories than just leave them on my computer. I’m very impressed with the wordpress.com blog service. Slick and easy to use with several customisable themes.

Share This