Full On Learning is about understanding this brave new world, recognising the skills that our pupils need to develop and understanding how we can help them develop them. In boat-building terms, Zoë Elder takes a long hard look at that big wide river and gives us a comprensive lesson in raft construction.

Eleven of the twelve chapters of Full On Learning describe a different characteristic of 21st century learners. We need to be sending students into the world who…

- are collaborative

- are emotionally intelligent

- develop expertise

- think creatively

- get involved

- are digitally literate

- give and take feedback

- question

- are motivated

- are risk-taking and can be described as learning entrepreneurs

Each chapter is as much a wake-up call to us as teachers as a blueprint for developing these skills in our students. If we’re honest, isn’t it easy to just go through the motions in a lesson? Just glide along for 50 minutes or so, dealing with issues as they crop up and generally make sure everyone gets on with their work? What Zoë Elder argues is that each and every interruption, activity and lesson is a considered one…

This idea hit home with us and proved to be one of the most powerful themes in the book. To be honest, this sort of thing doesn’t come naturally and it provoked some guilt! When was the last time we approached a lesson with that level of insight and planning? Like the movements of a surgeon’s knife, each time we intervene with a question or a direction, it should be considered and precise. And if we’re going to interrupt a student’s train of thought, the development of an idea or a learning journey, we’d better have a good reason to do so. Full On Learning gives us those reasons, ensures nothing is in our planning that doesn’t need to be there and provides plenty of effective strategies that do.

If you follow Zoë Elder on Twitter (which you should do, she’s @fullonlearning), you’ll realise the author is a well-read individual with a keen taste in TED talks! And so, Full On Learning contains ideas, examples, quotes and website links* drawn from all over the place to tie her thinking together. Try reading a chapter at a time with an open laptop next to you to watch the appropriate YouTube video or check out a related blog – it makes for a rich feast of ideas. Immensely practical, you will want to try out these ideas at once. Perhaps, though, to borrow an idea from the author’s Marginal Learning Gains blog, it’s more important to focus on doing a few small things well and reap the rewards from those before trying to cover more.

*Some of the links could have possibly done with being put through a link shortener (e.g. http://www.amazon.co.uk/Start-Why-Leaders_Inspire-Every-one/dp/0241958229/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF&qid=1317915333&sr=8–1 !!)

We’ve heard it said before that teachers can sometimes tend to overplay the whole “sending them out into the big bad changing world” card. This isn’t the case here. Full On Learning gently shows us how many of our 21st century learners are already pretty collaborative and creative outside of school through the internet. It’s our role to tap into these skills in the YouTube generation. The author “provides a blueprint for teachers to methodically and artfully create opportunities for learners to flourish” (Full On Learning, p.5). And as blueprints go, it does a pretty comprehensive job.

Full On Learning is a beautifully designed book. If you’re familiar with Zoë’s blogs, you’ll know she has an almost minimalist eye for design that (credit to the Independent Thinking Press designer too) has been translated onto the written page. Or perhaps her eye for a well-designed book has been translated onto her blogs?! Either way, it’s a well-presented book.

At just over 300 in-depth pages, this is no light read. You’ll need to devote time (how about this summer?) if you want to fully understand the river and how you can help your students build that boat. If you realise you have a duty to transform your teaching and make every intervention matter, you’ll need to sit down and concentrate. This is a book to make notes alongside, scribble in the margins of and fill with Post-Its.

But perhaps you’d expect that with a title like Full On Learning. As someone said to us recently – this is a pretty full on book.

FULL ON LINKS…
– Find ‘Full On Learning’ on Amazon
– Follow Zoë Elder on Twitter!
– Zoë’s blogs: Full On Learning and Marginal Learning Gains
– If you aren’t familiar with TED talks, you should be!

‘Learning to teach in the primary classroom’ never moulded the teachers the class of ’99 were to become, put fire in our minds or inspired us to inspire. In those pre-Twitter days, we learned to teach mostly by working alongside people who had been there, done that and were happy to share their advice.

Reading Phil Beadle’s ‘How to teach’ is like having a cuppa in the company of one of these staffroom sages. It covers the same subjects as you’d expect any other book on teaching to do, but the difference is that Phil Beadle speaks with a passion and liveliness that only comes from experience. And like an informal chat over a cup of tea, it’s packed with wit, warmth, a professional irreverance, some controversial opinions and the odd use of choice language. In short, it’s valuable advice from someone who know his onions and in no way could it ever be called dry. This is a book that explains why it’s important to sweat the small stuff, outlines the ‘Can You Tell What It Is Yet?’ paper-cutting approach to lessons, suggests a completely crazy class discussion technique and takes inspiration from Simon Cowell and Terry Venables on praise (and, if the latter idea intrigues you, you might be interested in this, guv).

Don’t fall into the trap of thinking that ‘How to teach’ is for trainee teachers and NQTs. It’s not. The ideas, methods and advice Phil Beadle provides will provoke any teacher – whatever their experience — to consider how they do things and, more importantly, how those things can be done better. In fact, it could be argued that it’s more experienced teachers, settled in their ways, that need a Beadle shake-up more than the current open-minded generation of Twittering NQTs who glean ideas wherever they can find them (Ooh — just had an idea for a TV series… The author pops his head out of unsuspecting teachers’ cupboards and prods them out of their stubborn worksheet ways into being more creative. ‘Watch Out, Beadle’s About’, anyone?).

‘How to teach’ is split into five main sections:
   — Management of Students
   — Knowledge and Understanding
   — Methods and Organisation
   — Lesson Planning
   — Assessment

Like any book that attempts to condense such broad subjects into 200-odd pages, it won’t all be relevant to your situation. Even so, you’ll find that this a manual for creative, lively teaching, whatever your subject or key stage.

In ‘How to teach’, Phil Beadle does something that many books that “teach how to teach” don’t do – he passes on gems of advice that aren’t based on dry notions, but the cut and thrust world of classroom reality. For example, in no other how-to-teach manual did we ever read that planning doesn’t have to be full-blown for every lesson (admittedly, we’ve already our displayed our limited knowledge of how-to-teach manuals, but you know what we mean!). It’s also seriously funny.

You may not agree with all of the author’s views (coming from a primary background, we’d say that lesson starters are more useful than he suggests — and don’t get him started on Interactive Whiteboards!), but that’s why ‘How to teach’ is useful for more experienced teachers. We can pick the gems we like. Here are some of our favourite things that Proctor, Entwhistle and Co. never told us:

How brilliant is that last one? Even if you found that sort of sentiment in other texts, we challenge you to find it so exquisitely written. That paragraph should be stuck on the inside of your diary, planning book or whatever, and inform your teaching every day. Ten feet tall children is what it’s all about.

We’re not sure what books are on the reading lists of PGCE and BEd courses — no doubt all sorts of worthy tomes — but if ‘How to teach’ isn’t on them, it’s a shame.

It’s the book we wish we’d read in 1999, but fourteen years on it’s no less relevant to us now.

FURTHER LINKS…
– Find ‘How to teach’ on Amazon
– El Tel and the Art of Pupil Praise is evidence of the directions this book can take you. Be warned!
– Dancing About Architecture, by the same author, gives techniques for keeping you creative in the classroom
– The author presents tips from ‘How to teach’ on Youtube
– Phil Beadle’s website

A couple of weeks ago, amused by the links between football cliches and teaching, we started a series of tweets with the hashtag #ClassroomPracticeInspiredByFootballManagers. The following is what’s left of the result. Apologies to Mr Beadle for taking what was a somewhat serious point, taking it and running with it off into the distance…

Our cliche stickers…

Some tweeters joined in…

Let us be a lesson to you all. Some things are best left where they were…

When our copy of ‘Brave Heads’ arrived on the doormat, guess what the first thing that sprung to mind was?

(fade to a Head’s office in a where the chair of governors is peering over a sheaf of papers)

CHAIR: (concerned) Just to make you aware, this is a very brave plan, Headteacher.

HEADTEACHER: (gulps) Brave, you say?

CHAIR: Very brave, Headteacher. Almost courageous.

HEAD: Oh deary me… We don’t want that. Are you sure?

(Long pause)

CHAIR: (wearily) Yes, Headteacher.

(Roll credits)

Well, it amused us anyway.

The second thought we had was that this was going to be a book entirely for school leaders. As such, we’d expect it to be riddled with management jargon and advice that meant little to non-leaders like ourselves. Nevertheless, we’d do our best to provide a helpful review for those who appreciate that sort of thing.

We were wrong.

Thankfully Dave Harris has nothing of Sir Humphrey about him! ‘Brave Heads’ (subtitle: “How to lead a school without selling your soul”) is personal, witty and pithy, showing not just what it takes to be a brave leader, but — we’d suggest — what it takes to be a brave teacher. Dave Harris speaks from experience — as the ex-Head of a 3–18 school (a fascinating story in itself) and Principal of the brand new Nottingham University Samworth Academy — and his book contains lessons learned, creative ideas and personal anecdotes to highlight his points. As Harris states, he wanted to write the book “that would have helped me at the lowest point of my change journey”. If you’re under any illusion that those in leadership don’t experience doubt, worry or wobbles in confidence, take a look. The author is a Headteacher with significant experience and he underlines the point that these feelings are pretty much normal for those in leadership roles. Its honesty is really refreshing from a book that (as we say) we thought was going to be jargon-heavy! Perhaps that says more about ourselves than anything else.

In ‘Brave Heads’, Dave Harris uses “Bravery is…” statements in small chapters to give you the confidence to be brave if you’re not and the encouragement to keep going if you already are. Some favourites were:

- Bravery is giving teachers the space to encourage genius (No.9)

- Bravery is not changing things, at least some of the time (No.14)

- Bravery is having jobs, rooms and people that no one else does (No.16)

- Bravery is making mistakes and then letting others know you made them (No.59)

There are 64 in all — this is just a sample.

The beauty of ‘Brave Heads’ is that it’s not just for those in leadership. It wouldn’t take much editing to title it ‘Brave Teaching’ and re-brand the book for classroom teachers. Take the above list. Here’s what we thought (as non-leaders) as we read it…

- We’ve got to look for opportunities to encourage genius in our classroom.

- Don’t change things just for the sake of it.

- Teach in ways that no one else does.

- Don’t worry about making mistakes — just make sure you admit them.

Thankfully, ‘Brave Heads’ isn’t packed with management-speak only for those who are in positions of leadership. Clearly, its target audience is Headteachers, Deputy Headteachers and so on, but we were intrigued to note its usefulness to a wider demographic too. This is solid advice for any teacher. And in our own small way, aren’t we all in positions of leadership?

‘Brave Heads’ encourages school leaders to stick to the things that are right and to let go of the things that aren’t necessary. See Dave Harris’ brilliant comments on moving away from that endemic disease “Wemustimpartforyoutolearn-itus” (isn’t “a propensity to talk too much in lessons” a symptom we’ve all suffered from? No? Just us, then!). It also challenges us to step outside of our comfort zone and think differently. Not for the sake of being gimmicky, but with “the whole pupil” in mind at all times. At NUSA, Harris employed an ‘Agent of Wonder’ (Matthew McFall) to run his own Wonder Room, encouraging natural curiosity and learning — not everything has to be taught with grades in mind (“Bravery is encouraging your staff to let go of the belief that their subject is the most important thing in a child’s life” is No.11!)

An admission:
As you may have gathered, we’re not massive fans of jargon. We’ve always been about getting pupils interested and being lively, creative and well-rounded in the classroom. That’s what matters to us. In fact, we were pleased to see that No.39 was titled “Bravery is admitting when you don’t know the meaning of a long word”!! However, special mention must be made of the author’s explanations of Key Performance Indicators. Truth be told, on any other occasion, those three words would have caused our eyes to glaze over and we’d have skipped to the next inspiring idea or anecdote. But Dave Harris does an excellent job of explaining the issues behind using things like league tables and revised exam structures to measure success. For anyone who knows that the issues are issues, but isn’t 100% sure why the issues are issues because sometimes the issues are written about as if we all know already why the issues are issues, this book is for you!

Written by another author, ‘Brave Heads’ would be a completely different book. Dave Harris’ honesty, wit and personal style shine through (in fact, we never thought we’d laugh out loud at a book aimed at Headteachers!). If you are in management, it should provide a refreshing change to the sorts of Headship advice manuals out there. It’s the fact this isn’t a manual that sets it apart. The author is very clear that different situations call for different leadership styles and that the ideas he has used to good effect shouldn’t just be replicated. Bravery is having the strength to do things your way because deep down you know your way is the right way (No.8!)

There’s a great quote from Ralph Waldo Emerson in the introduction: “A hero is no braver than an ordinary man, but he is braver five minutes longer.” How fantastic is that? Bravery isn’t some golden quality for only the er… brave. As Dave Harris puts it:
 

Which is advice Jim Hacker could have done with.

If we had one criticism of the book, it would be that the title, cover etc. makes it look like a book for Headteachers. Don’t be fooled, though. Whilst it belongs on any self-respecting school leader’s bookshelf, if you’ve got aspirations of moving into management, need to understand that your Head faces the same doubts and fears as the rest of us or simply want to be encouraged to be a braver classroom teacher, ‘Brave Heads’ is well worth a read.

Think of the word ‘Heads’ in the title as being the bit that sits on top of your shoulders.

We all need a brave head, now and again, don’t we?

HERE’S WHERE TO FIND IT ON AMAZON.
 
SOME FURTHER READING:
Find out more about Dave Harris
Are You Dropping The Baton? — also by Dave Harris
Nottingham University Samworth Academy
What is a Wonder Room anyway?!
 

- turning to listen to a new speaker in a class discussion,

- making a disgusted face when you show them a photo of some mouldy bread in a Science lesson,

- recognising from the tone of your voice that you are not happy,

- reading large words on a whiteboard.

 
For those of you who read the question, it was fast thinking (instinct, if you will) that led most of you to think the ball costs 10p in the bat/ball problem at the head of this article. And it was fast thinking that led you to the wrong answer. Now that you consider it again, System 2 thinking can kick in and you’ll realise that if the bat is a pound more than the ball, it would have to be £1.05 and the ball 5p for that statement to be true. In other words, instinctive thinking can let us down, even when it looks so right. Although quick, System 1 can be a lazy way of thinking.
 
Slower thinking requires attention and as soon as it is drawn away, the thinking stops. Some examples in your classroom would be things like:

- scanning a text, looking for commas,

- trying to pick out a friend with blonde hair in the dinner hall,

- focusing on one voice in a crowded and noisy room,

- working out the answer to 26 x 42,

- bracing themselves for the whistle in a race on Sports Day.

 
Of course, most learning tasks in school need System 2 (slow) thinking which is why we try to provide a learning environment that is free from needless distractions, where attention can be devoted fully on the task in hand. However, even intense focusing on a task can make us blind to the obvious…
 

And as Daniel Kahneman points out, our unwillingness to believe we’ve been fooled makes us blind to our own blindness too!

 
Chapter Four considers the idea of priming the mind to behave in certain ways. It describes several studies that show that even though we feel that we are behaving instinctively, we may be more open to priming that we know. For instance, one experiment asked students to unscramble sentences containing words related to the elderly (e.g. forgetful, bald, gray, wrinkle). A second group did not have these words. At the end of the activity, all the students were asked to walk along the corridor to another room. Although they thought their work was done, this was the experiment! What they thought was an instinctive stroll along a corridor was actually evidence of priming — the group of students who’d dealt with elderly-related words took longer to make their way to the new room than their peers. Other experiments showed that cues about money and wealth (e.g. dollar signs on a screensaver, monopoly money on the desk) primed people to become more self-oriented and less helpful to others. A particular favourite is the example of the office coffee money jar which received more donations during weeks when a photo of a pair of staring eyes was posted above it than when there was a photo of flowers! (Big Brother is watching you donate your coffee money!) John Bargh, the psychologist behind some of these experiments, called these cues “whistles that only mental butlers can hear”. Our seemingly instinctive behaviour is often our mental butlers responding to the calls we don’t even know are there. In fact, everything within us wants to deny we even have mental butlers. We weren’t influenced by that photo above the coffee money jar. Were we?
 
All of this got us thinking! Thinking about thinking. These ideas have implications for us as teachers, our classroom environment and the open minds we aim to inspire every day. It’s all very well being interested in how the brain works, but it’s of no worth unless we consider it’s applicability to the job in hand. So, with that in mind, here are some provocative questions to ponder/discuss/mentally chew over…

- Which thinking could be considered fast in your classroom? Which decisions are instinctive? Is there a chance they could be wrong?

- How can we teach our pupils to take a second look at instinctive answers? (for example, in a maths word problem like the one above)

- Is your classroom environment conducive to System 2 thinking? What are the potential attention-diverters?

- Is a pupil moving off-task something we should be more sympathetic to?

- How is the moonwalking bear relevant to learning? (put this question to your class here)

- If we can be primed to think in certain ways, does wearing the same uniform prime our pupils to be less creative?!

- Be honest — what cues do your pupils get from your classroom? Which whistles are your pupils’ mental butlers responding to?

- What cues do we have around the classroom to promote creativity and independence of mind?

 
Four chapters down. Twenty four to go. There may well be more from ‘Thinking, Fast and slow’.
 
And while we’re on the subject of priming your classroom for creativity…

Click here for more details.

FURTHER READING:
Find Thinking, Fast and Slow on Amazon
Priming Your Creativity by The Creativity Post
A somewhat-related Book Spine Poem by Brain Pickings

Behind every new idea, article or resource we do is usually something that inspired or provoked us into action. Our CPD posters were inspired by a poster idea we were sent by @paulyb37 on Twitter. The ‘M’ Files were provoked by a question we saw in a SATs paper and our ensuing annoyance! And our inspiration for Caution! Minds at work came from the work of a New York urban artist.

Recently we saw something that motivated us once again. It’s a TEDxTC talk given by Peter Benson in 2010 called ‘Sparks: How Youth Thrive’. Sadly, Mr Benson passed away in 2011 (we’d like to have sent him our thanks) but his message continues. It seems more relevant to our current educational climate than ever. Please take the time to watch this captivating message.

Our new resource is called SHINE! and its emphasis is on helping to make your classroom a place where sparks are nurtured and the focus is placed on things that matter. Out of all the resources we’ve made, this is the one we think is most important in the current climate.

Standardised testing has a lot to answer for in terms of dampening sparks in young people. After teaching mostly Year 6 for nine years, we’re convinced that SATs often do more harm than good in what should be the pinnacle year of a child’s primary school life. As well as the video, two other quotes resonate deeply. The first is this one:

The second is a Twitter profile description that struck a chord when we saw it recently:


In the above video, Peter Benson talks about a developmental study he had made about the things that make young people thrive. Unsurprisingly, it hasn’t got a lot to do with didactic teaching methods or standardised testing. As he says, “no one ever said ‘this child of mine, my fondest wish is to ace statewide benchmark maths and science tests when they are 16.’” Along the way, he examines the idea of a ‘spark’. The thing about a young person that gives them joy, energy and purpose.

It’s not a long talk and well worth investing twenty minutes in. We’d be interested in hearing what you think. Here are four things we thought were of note (to the powers that be as well as ourselves!):
 

1. THIS IS NOT WISHY-WASHY STUFF

We’re talking about the things that matter most to our students. Their driving force. Aren’t we supposed to tap into this in order to communicate effectively with them? Interestingly, Benson found that in his interviews, 100% of students asked got it. They knew exactly what he was talking about when he mentioned their “spark”. Two thirds of them could name at least one spark outright. What percentage of adults could do so? What’s happened to their spark in the intervening years? We have a duty to encourage and nurture, as Picasso’s quote implies. Their learning will benefit greatly — “Students learn best when they are known well,” Eve Gordon (Principal, MetWest High School).

2. CELEBRATE YOUR STUDENTS

There’s an episode of The Simpsons we’ve mentioned before (Saturdays of Thunder for the die-hards!) where Homer thinks he’s a bad father because he can’t answer the four question quiz from the National Fatherhood Institute — ‘Name one of your child’s friends’, ‘Who is your son’s hero?’, ‘Name another dad you’ve talked to about parenting’ and ‘What are your son’s hobbies?’ We’ve often thought it’s the sign of a good teacher to know the answers to these sorts of questions about our students. How much do you know about the children you teach? What is it about them that gives them joy and energy? In his talk, Benson says it is essential that we find out our young people’s sparks, that we name them and that we champion them. SHINE! will help you do so.

3. KEEP TESTING IN PERSPECTIVE

There are many things that can stifle the spark that gives a child joy and energy in learning. One of these is the pressure placed on our pupils at an early age by standardised testing. Yes, testing has its place, but these aren’t simple measures of progress — we’ve seen them destroy pupils’ confidence time and time again. At eleven years old. How often do you sit your class down and go through the many skills they’ve got that will never be tested? Does that mean they’re worthless? Is knowing how to multiply two 2-digit numbers using the grid method more important than having the gift of caring for elderly people? Why? SHINE! encourages your class that they’ve got all manner of skills that we don’t test and they are all the better for having them.

4. THE CREATIVE CURRICULUM MATTERS

In Benson’s study the largest category in which pupil sparks fell was ‘Creative Life’. Hardly a surprise, but a worrying fact when you think about it in relation to our present government’s attitude to provision of the creative arts. Creativity is not only a key skill for innovation and flexibility in these fast-moving times — it’s the chief source of thriving for our young people. Here in the UK, Mr Gove’s plans to limit creative subjects means, in effect, limiting opportunities to thrive. Getting rid of sparks. As someone wrote on a website we saw recently: “…art, music and a genuine interest in becoming life-long learners shouldn’t come to a screaming halt at third grade.“
 
So, please take a look at SHINE!. But, more importantly, please be the sort of person who doesn’t just teach how to count, but what counts. It takes a brave person to admit that they care more about the people their students will become than the scores on the tests they take, but we’d encourage you to consider it.

]]> http://www.sparkyteaching.com/creative/nurturing-sparks/feed/ 1 http://www.sparkyteaching.com/creative/nurturing-sparks/ http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/SparkyTeaching/~3/mwVMlQsX2HA/ http://www.sparkyteaching.com/creative/a-message-to-all-year-sixes/#comments Wed, 23 Jan 2013 17:30:50 +0000 admin http://www.sparkyteaching.com/creative/?p=3348 UPDATE: If you find this post resonates in any way, you like our new resource — SHINE!…


Having taught Upper KS2 for nine years, this post comes from experience. It also comes from tweets such as this one, which we came across today:



Now, if there’s one thing that rattles our cage, it’s seeing this kind of effect that SATs have on many 10 and 11 year olds. For many, what should be their best year of primary school, has become a year full of talk of SATs, Levels and past papers. What a shame.
 
As teachers, we have a responsibility to make SATs preparation as pressure-free as possible, but that’s easier said than done. Interestingly, the above was tweeted in January. Several months to go and already the pressure is setting in. SATs are often the focus of a year which, in reality, should surely be one of the most creative, most lively in a child’s primary education.
 
So, with Year 6 parents (and all sparky teachers who know there’s more to life than tests) primarily in mind, we offer the following advice to share with your children… This is the message all Year 6s should hear. There is no way that a child should be feeling pressure about SATs at all, let alone in January.

REMEMBER, SATS ONLY TEST TWO SUBJECTS…

At the moment, you’re doing a lot of English and Maths, but you’ve got lots of other skills. Unfortunately, SATs don’t test these. They don’t test whether you’re a creative person, good at I.T. or brilliant with animals. They don’t test your speaking skills or whether you’re fantastic at mending things. They don’t measure whether you’re arty or sporty, a musician or someone who really cares for other people. Although subjects like Maths and English are important, never forget you’ve been given talents in plenty of other areas too.

SATs are a bit like this cartoon…



Although the goldfish wouldn’t find the tree-climbing test too easy, in a swimming test she’d shine.  
Just like you do at the things you are good at.

Not every skill is taught in school and even less are tested. You might be a great golfer, fantastic at fashion design or have got green fingers… You might be a people-person, a problem-solver or a poet. SATs are never going to show off all these amazing skills.

Having taught Year 6 classes, we’ve prepared them for SATs and (believe us) we don’t like them much either… In Wales, where we are based, children don’t have to do them. Please try your best to think of them as “something I’ve got to do, but not the most important thing in the world.” When you were born, no one said “What I want for this child is a Level 4 in Maths!” (that would have been slightly weird!) The big things, the most important things are things like your personality, what you believe and think, your ideas and that spark inside you that makes you you.

 

In a year’s time, you’ll have forgotten about SATs, but don’t forget this little poem we made up… It might come in useful! Cut out these words and stick them somewhere you’ll see them (be inventive! try your ceiling or forehead!):


 

We don’t like SATs either, but we hope that’s a help.

 

Parents and Teachers: Not wanting you to feel left out, we thought you’d like a poem too:

 

Also, if you’re on Twitter, you might like to follow our mischievous alter-ego The Ministry of Maths. They are part of a resource we’ve made called The ‘M’ Files and you may find their tweets useful if nothing else. The idea behind them is that they’re the evil people who write Maths SATs tests* and as we get nearer to SATs time, your child/pupils may find their bad advice helpful (in an “I-won’t-be-caught-out-by-any-of-their-tricks” way). Here’s a taster:

 



 

*NB. Just to clarify in case Mr Gove reads this (perish the thought!), The Ministry of Maths may not actually write SATs tests, although if they did, they’d probably do something like this:


]]> http://www.sparkyteaching.com/creative/a-message-to-all-year-sixes/feed/ 8 http://www.sparkyteaching.com/creative/a-message-to-all-year-sixes/ http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/SparkyTeaching/~3/enKkPBQhXYE/ http://www.sparkyteaching.com/creative/free-cpd-posters/#comments Wed, 16 Jan 2013 23:20:38 +0000 admin http://www.sparkyteaching.com/creative/?p=3303

The eight posters below came as a result of a collaboration on the theme of CPD (Continuing Professional Development) between ourselves and one of our Twitter followers, @paulyb37. Initially, he came up with the first poster idea (“In the event of a sudden drop in pupil progress, please address your own learning before helping children with theirs”) and then we took his theme and went a bit overboard.

The idea is that, through a bit of humour, these posters can be used to advertise the fact(s) that:

• we need to attend to our own learning when addressing pupil progress,
• CPD is a cup of coffee with an inspiring teacher or a good book as much as it is an INSET course,
• good teachers are always learning,
• scepticism, jargon and negativity can take a running jump – developing as teachers keeps us on our toes and is actually quite rewarding.

So, enjoy the posters – please share any pics if you put them up – we love to see things being used. And make sure you follow and send your Twitter-based thanks to @paulyb37 who started this particular airline-based ball rolling.

Download the posters by right-clicking here.
 
 
PS. Our new resource for teaching what really matters is out now…


]]> http://www.sparkyteaching.com/creative/free-cpd-posters/feed/ 1 http://www.sparkyteaching.com/creative/free-cpd-posters/ http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/SparkyTeaching/~3/1KYIny4DTC8/ http://www.sparkyteaching.com/creative/adobes-great-cs2-giveaway/#comments Mon, 07 Jan 2013 20:27:40 +0000 admin http://www.sparkyteaching.com/creative/?p=3225

 

UPDATE: Further to our excited post below (and similar articles posted on popular design blogs yesterday), it seems that Adobe’s Great CS2 Giveaway is more of a technical loophole than an act of New Year generosity. It certainly had the design community fooled for much of yesterday.

After hundreds of legitimate commentators suggesting otherwise, here’s Adobe’s wonderfully vague response:



It remains to be seen what Adobe will do about the situation they’ve engineered for themselves. Yesterday, they were being praised for some great customer service and for inspiring designers of the future. Releasing an out-of-date program could have built customer loyalty and encouraged new users to upgrade to bought versions.

Adobe may still decide to tap into the positive feedback that they had yesterday and sanction the use of CS2. Until then, it is best to steer clear of this loophole and, while the original article remains below, we’ll be deleting the links. If Adobe ever decide to take advantage of the situation, we’ll re-post them.

It’s a shame for creative teachers, but watch this space…

ORIGINAL POST:
In what seems to be an outstanding piece of customer service today, Adobe released various programs from their Creative Suite 2 (ten years’ old, but still gold). This is free and legitimate and without a catch (although you do need to sign up to an Adobe account). The reason behind this “gesture” is that instead of keeping the activation servers running to support legitimate installs of CS2, it’s decided it’s easier to just give it away.

What does this mean for you? Three words. Photoshop for free. (Oh, and Illustrator, Premier Pro, Acrobat Pro, InDesign, InCopy…) OK, they’re not the latest versions, but they’re still top-notch, quality programs.

Why we’re excited: We’ve used various Adobe programs in our illustration and design work and long enjoyed the creative possibilities they offer. The fact that an old computer in the back of a classroom can now have a copy of Photoshop CS2 or teacher can now design posters using InDesign is so exiting and opens many possibilities. No more GIMP for a start! Your school may already have copies of later versions of Adobe Creative Suite software, but it’s still worth checking out for yourself. In one move, Adobe have opened up design to the masses and deserve credit for that.



As the software is ten years’ old, it requires slight adjustments… Apparently CS2 won’t work on later Mac OS versions — Snow Leopard or earlier as it is PPC code. A helpful link showing how to get it to run on Windows 7 64-bit is here.

The download link direct from Adobe is here, but as you can imagine it is currently getting a battering.

There are various blogs posting direct download links, but here are some of the highlights:

PHOTOSHOP CS2 (image editing software)

INDESIGN CS2 (desktop publishing)

ILLUSTRATOR CS2 (vector-based illustrations)

ACROBAT PRO 8.0 (create and edit PDFs… Yes, that’s edit PDFS!)

Other programs available are Adobe Audition (recording software / audio production), GoLive CS2 (a WYSIWYG HTML editor), InCopy CS2 (professional word processing) and Premiere Pro 2.0 for Windows (video editing).

If you’re interested in some of these other programs and Adobe’s link remains down, try here or here.

For the general public, this gesture seems too good to be true and is obviously a popular one. It’s a surprising move by Adobe, but one that should create many fans of their products and, in the long run, will build customer loyalty.

For the creatively-minded teacher, you can multiply that ten-fold. Unleashing the Creative Suite 2 programs on teachers and their sparky pupils means the possibilities are endless.

Let classroom creativity commence.

 

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