| Digital - teacher | Education in a technological world

Science SATs to go, but testing...

Todays announcement that Science SATs will be scrapped from 2010 seem to have taken some people by suprise, but following on from previous news over the past week, was it really unexpected?

The Rose Review

Today the long awaited Rose Review on the future of the education system was published in the UK. Unsuprisingly many of the suggestions within it had already been announced. Here are just a few;

The Wikipedia Selection

Did you know that wikipedia have produced content especially for schools in the UK? No, neither did I until I was pointed towards it today by @dannynic

Wikipedias own explanation;

"This 2008/9 Wikipedia DVD Selection is a free, hand-checked, non-commercial selection from Wikipedia, targeted around the UK National Curriculum and useful for much of the English speaking world. It has about 5500 articles (as much as can be fitted on a DVD with good size images) and is about the size of a twenty volume encyclopaedia (34,000 images and 20 million words).
Wikipedia is the free encyclopaedia anyone can edit, and develops accurate content but suffers vandalism. Wikipedia is not necessarily a childsafe environment and has "adult" content. This selection of topics have been carefully chosen, tidied up, and checked for vandalism and suitability (by SOS Children volunteers, whom we gratefully acknowledge). We also gratefully acknowledge the Wikimedia Foundation for their support and their agreement to our use of the Wikipedia logo, and tens of thousands of contributors to Wikipedia who have written and researched the content in the first place, including this year adding content where gaps in the school curriculum were not covered"

The entire content of the Schools Selection can also be downloaded (no need to go online at all - ideal for a non internet PC), or as a DVD from the SOS Children website.

Laptop a go-go

It's "all change" (as the Mad Hatter would say) with laptops at the moment. Both myself and the DHT have taken the new machines, installed everything we want on each one, removed everything from the older ones and are ready to pass them on.

So, my older machine goes to another teacher in another classroom, and their current machine will be passed to a T.A. to use to create their Smartboard files out of the classroom.

The DHT's machine goes into the office for admin use, and the current "brick" of a laptop that is being used in the office goes into standby as "Supply Laptop2", so that if we have two supply staff in at the same time, both can use machines that will access the school network / internet / smartboard.

There's nothing wasted here you know. Everything gets recycled!

2DIY 1.3 coming soon

Since 2Simple launched their 2DIY software I've made several contacts at the company with whom I have been able to ask questions / fix bugs / make suggestions.

One of the outcomes of this has been the 2DIY ActionScript Archive I mentioned in a previous post - a blog that puts examples of ActionScript online for students to copy&paste into their activities.

Another outcome landed in my inbox on Friday. Following conversations with some of the programmers at 2Simple, I was sent details of the upcoming version 1.3 of the programme. This new version fixes a few bugs that they have discovered, but also the following;

1. Improved clipart within the programme - 200 new images added to the previous bank including several new categories (recycling / medical / parks / plants / pets)

2. A new script editor feature that makes it easier to add ActionScript to activities.

This second feature should really help to get children learning, using and understanding ActionScript within their activities. It blows my mind that I can now see the Yr3 and 4 children in school starting to play around with ActionScript settings to control their activities - and this new helper should enhance that further.

The official word is "It’s close to being released as a new master version", but I don't have the date of the update.

Competition Time

TESconnect partner with 2Simple to help you create and share your own Flash resources! 2Simple's brand new program, 2Do It Yourself (2DIY), lets you and your primary pupils create your own cross curricular, Flash resources in minutes. Once you create a 2DIY resource, you can save it as a Flash file (SWF). Once it's saved in this way, share your 2DIY resources with other teachers by uploading the link or file to the TES Resource bank.

Full details, rules and ideas can be found here

I was thinking about entering myself, but as I have had access for a while to some of the more advanced scripting options that have not yet gone public I feel it unfair to submit resources to a competition with features that others cannot include.

An indespensible list

Drew Buddie, (@digitalmaverick), has been busy creating a detailed list of ICT tools used within education. It's a living document, growing daily as new tools are added. Take a look and see what you didn't realise you were missing in your classroom.

Self imposed pressure

I've spent this evening putting data into a spreadsheet to show the progress that the children in my class are making. The problem with doing this though is the pressure that I can feel I am putting on myself - and the reason for it would to any non-educationalist seem bizzare. Take a look at this extract from my targets overview excel sheet;

In the left column you can see the targets that the pupils are expected to reach by July 2009, and looking across you can see the expected sublevels each term - rising towards the final July level. That seems normal, but I am pressurising myself to make the pupils reach the targets now. Why? Because this is what we do in education. If we are set a target for the end of the year, then until that child reaches the target we feel we are failing them. Never mind the fact they are "on track" to hit the target in July, we view it as 'they haven't reached their target yet'. Get them to the target early however, and we feel we haven't set them true targets and "reset" them to a higher level piling even more pressure on ourselves.

There is no other profession that does this. They set a target, and aim to reach it at the end of the cycle. For teachers, (with all the external checks made on us), if that target has not been reached when we are checked during the year we feel we've failed. It's a mindset that we have to get away from, and justify childrens' current achievments by saying "they are on track to reach their target when expected". 

Ideas to Inspire

Mark Warner - he of the www.teachingideas.co.uk website - has just launched the "Ideas to Inspire" website - As he says on the website himself;

...a collection of Google Docs presentations, which offer a large number of ideas for engaging lesson activities in a range of curriculum areas. The presentations are a collaboration between lots of fantastic teachers around the world.

Contact Mark on twitter: @markw29

Conference Completed

That's it, my talk to Derby City ICT coordinators is over. It had some hair raising moments - no access to the presentation blog I was using or the school website made me panic to begin with. Fortunately it was all sorted before I took to the projector so no one knew (although reading this anyone there will now know!)

If you want to see the presentation, you can! It's here;