Small room big world

I started this new job full of hope… how often have i felt myself say that and then years, sometimes only months into the new arena i end up feeling discouraged.  I am sure that at times this has much to do with the person i am and the frustrations i feel when people resist change, or the possibilities of doing things in a new way.

Education for me has always been about the possible rather than the impossible and in her latest blog post Josi Fraser i think sums it up for m:

“To many children and young people, adults seem distinguishable by their finishedness, their completeness. We have ‘grown up’. We have become inflexible, we have ceased to play, to imagine; our appetite for adventure has been diminished, not increased, by our understanding of the world; our wild and even gentle ambitions have been curtailed by the demands of making a living, of ‘the real world’. Instead of growing in confidence and maturity enough to hazard risk, to be wrong, to change our minds, the adult world seems very often to promote an infantile belief in the benefits and possibility of absolute certainty, mastery, fixedness.”

non of us have arrived yet and living in a fast changing technological society we do i don’t think we ever will.  The challenge of life is to adapt to change, surly the challenge of education is not Merle the acquisition of fact for fact’s sake but learning to form schema which allow for and embrace change.

It is interesting that working in an environment where we are data rich on our students but how many of us know why we do the things we do.

Take putting a lesson together, many will think of differentation, some will think of stepping through the concepts but how many think of actualy how people learn, and remember what is taught

It is strange you can feel confident in a task, say teaching, have lots of avalible evidence that you do have a good degree of aptitude and sucsess. Then as others see your sucsess their expectations raise my levels of stress and lower my confidence it seems in proportion to their paraise. arrgh

OK well that was never going to be my finest lesson, it was informative though.  30 kids very mixed abilities ranging from Assburgers and ADHD to one who i found coding in notebook.

The qualification is GCSE standard aimed at kids interested in working in ICT after school, oh did i say non of the kids want to work in ICT so this year is going to be a challenge.

There were some good points, i got through a 6 hour session with this 1 group and survived, and 4 students achived most of the intended outcomes, unfortunately most of the class either produced no work or varying degrees of thew final outputs at differing levels of competence or standard.

What would i have done different? that is a good question, not sure  i know at the moment, but in two weeks i might try streaming some of the kids, and try and push the 4 brightest through to complete the unit quickly and move on to a new unit.

Just been looking at the 1990 curriculum review for ICT and its five strands of competence, it does seem key to me that transferable skills both Kinestic and cognitive are the key to the subject area but the qualification we are doing does not pick up on that well, the units are dull (i mean apply for a job in IT is basic life skills not ICT)well time to sit down and try and do some planning…next week is 3 hours ICT and 3 hours Business communications, I am going to try and game business Communication and run a long simulation game, but i need now to write the rules.

I am moving on to a secondary school, an interesting job and back to my teaching roots.  It is realy nice to have to move from the theoretical frameworks of blended learning back into the reality of the classroom.

So how do you teach ICT skills to 15 -16 year olds, i have the curriculum and it bored me… so here is the plan, and over the next 2 years lets see if it can work, can i move blended learning into the class room

I am hoping to set up a newspaper (dont be afraid Bournemouth Echo), within this setting must be almost all of the IT skills needed to pass a GNVQ ICT at least to level 3.

Word processing is easy, if you conduct an interview you will at some point input it to a WP package, also students will need to cover stages such asthe standards here, which comprise the learning needed for 1 whole unit.

Documents can be divided into six basic types. These are:
• short formal documents
• extended formal documents
• graphical documents
• promotional documents
• presentations
• informal documents.

Well start of the first real day at big school, lots of prep over the weekend and not teaching till the end of the day.  It is exciting, being in at the begining of something you feel could be quite special, and a failed school being turned around is special.

Last week was all about starting and gettining the kids in and behaving appropriatly, we had noise and confusion but the basics are getting there and as long as staff are consistent the kids will change i am sure.

Got some great mentees, some a bit challenging some new to the school, it is quite a privilage working with younge people who have their whole lives in front of them and to be able to play a small part in that moving forward.

Mr Gent if you are out there thanks you did make a difference, it took time and a lot of paitence on your part (sorry for being so moody) but you made a difference.

Well it is official, i am moving job’s i have just handed in my resignation at Bournemouth University and it is off to a local Academy, what have i done?

It is always strange to put yourself in that limbo land between jobs, the new post is exciting, challenging and stimulating. A real oppertunity to get back to development of Blended learning and all things VLE.  Only this time it is in secondary education, and this is a chance to start with a blank canvass.

Maybe this time i will remember to Blog it all from the start!

Well the University of the creative arts have just quoted me, actually a really interesting discussion starting on how to present or teach. Thanks

I have a problem, and every time i talk about a possible solution people laugh.

Now you may by now be wondering what the problem is, it is a damaged wrist, it happend in hospital, just one of those things but it has left me unable to use a pen.

So what you might say, you use computers all day what do you need a pen for, well meetings, wrighting that first draft of a report, taking notes, all kinds of things i can not do without a pen. The solution is easy, an Ipad…. now how many of you laughed, sniggerd or just thought yep you would say that.

Think for a miniute, yes i would say that beacause it is a good solution. I can type fairly well with my left hand, i can use the ipad with one hand and it is light, portagble and has a long battery life. The note taking apps are getting better, but my notes are just for me so rough and ready is fine. I can type draft docs in and email them, or save them to dropbox, or google docs, i can read on it and (i think) annotate documents, it is ideal.

So why do people laugh, well it is not because it is a silly suggestion, it is that it is new, or just technology, and well It is Andy…..