| Digital - teacher | Education in a technological world

Powerpoint - not just for text!

I hear people telling me that they cannot stand Powerpoint. They've been on a course and the leader has stood in front of a screen whilst text whizzes in, then read out exactly what's showing on the wall. "Death by Powerpoint" it's often referred to.
Powerpoint can do so much more, and I love using it to create animations for school plays.
At Christmas the lower school were presenting Roald Dahl's "Jack and the Beanstalk". I built the backdrop - using PP - and had growing beanstalks, falling bones, flying birds and all sorts of other delights in it. It was received very well. Parents thought it was wonderful, the kids loved it, and some people even thought we had had it made professionally (very flattering). Upper school asked for something similar for their carol concert and so had "snow" falling.
Now it seems I've given myself a great big ball and chain. Upper school have a summer concert based around Pirates and I've been asked to create the backdrop, so I'm currently working on making the illusion of a pirate ship travelling across the waves. It's a bit rough at the moment - the images need tidying up, but it looks like this so far; Download a_pirates_life_for_me.pps

B.A. lose Olympic torch?

So the Olympic torch is on its way to London as it makes it way to China ready for the games. However, there seems to be a bit of a problem with the clash of politics and sport. I read with interest that the French President is considering boycotting the games opening ceremony, and that many of the torch bearers are wondering whether they should carry the torch or not.

Well, there's no need to worry because this problem is going to go away itself. How do I know this? Simple really, the torch is making it's away across London towards the O2 arena. At the end of this journey, just send it to Heathrow and into the new joke that is Terminal 5. It will never be seen again. It will disappear into the bowels of the luggage sorting area and just vanish like everything else has before it.

Problem solved!

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It's above you

With the recent news about Jules Verne arriving safely at the ISS, I thought I'd try and find out something about the Space Station zooming around above my head. Well, this site, although not telling me much about the ISS, does show live tracking images of whereabouts it is above the Earth using google maps. It's strangely addictive and I find myself visiting to ask "Is it over me yet?"
If you want information about the International Space Station, try the Nasa ISS site

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Has Christmas come early?

"Hundreds of Ofsted inspectors are to be balloted for strike action after the break down of talks over pay.

Unison and the Public and Commercial Services (PCS) union said school inspections across England could be hit if the action goes ahead."

Sshhh - listen. Can you hear that. It's the sound of thousands of teachers and heads across the length and breadth of the country wishing for the perfect gift.

Go for it guys - hold out for your demands. Don't give in for anything less ;-)

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It's days like these...

...that make you realise why you became a teacher.

We were doing science - a topic of keeping warm - and I had set up an investigation to see how effective hands are at working out how warm water is;

There was a bowl of iced water for the left hand, a bowl of hot water for the right hand, and a bowl of tepid water in the middle of both.
Each child came out, put their hands into the cold/hot bowls and then plunged both into the tepid bowl. The looks on their faces was a picture - confusion / disbelief and complete shock at feeling the water being both hot and cold at the same time!
And once they had all tried out the investigation, they were superb at discussing what was happening. In the end, they did work it out, and decided that a thermometer would be much better to measure the warmth of the water.

Let's hope that tomorrow they are just as enthused.

We're back!

The school website problem has now been sorted out. Following a phone call from the new broadband consortium hosts at lunchtime, our educational address now maps to the website hosts perfectly once again. So, no excuses from staff now - they can get posting again...

...Unless of course, the entire network for the (we thought) local area goes down again. Turns out it wasn't local, or even county wide. It was only a problem that affected all schools in Derbyshire, Leicester City, Leicestershire, Lincolnshire, Nottingham City, Nottinghamshire, Northamptonshire and Rutland. Nothing major there then!! As they said on their website (which no one could access to read!!);

"Due to problems with URL filtering applying incorrect policies, it was decided in the best interest of internet safety to embc schools, that the URL filtering be taken out of service.  Apologies for the inconvenience this caused as internet access was withdrawn."

Major red face!

I can't believe that I forgot to put an RSS link onto this site! I used to have a little image - but I made a bit of a typo on it, so withdrew it a while back. I had another ready, but never added it at the time.

So, [big drum roll] ladies and gentlemen please note the tiny(!!) RSS logo on the right. Simply click on it and you'll hopefully get the feed. If you can't, try putting this into your favourite feed reader;

http://www.digital-teacher.co.uk/rss.xml

Everyone Out!

I mentioned the threat of strike action from the NUT in this post a while back, well Members of the NUT in England and Wales have voted for a one-day pay strike on 24 April.

Its ballot ran three to one in favour of what would be its first national stoppage for more than 20 years. Voting was 48,217 (75%) in favour and 15,884 (25%) against on a 32% turnout.

Fooled you?

Have you seen the one about the penguins that can fly? Saw it on the news this morning and had to do a double take. It looked so real until they were soaring through the air.

Mind you, on the day when you take everything with a pinch of salt, this webpage lists ten new stories that you would have sworn were hoaxes, but worryingly they're true!