Or at least thats what happened to me.

Today is a monumental day, I got my 1st pay check as a “proper” teacher. Scary. I am doing it for real. The training wheels are off!

So what do I have to tell you?

Well, its hard  (yeah, really!). But it’s good! I am in a really good dept, and my fellow ICT NQT is a great support. I couldn’t ask for more really. My classes are (on the whole) great. A few problems, but I hope to get them all under control quick sharp.

The new courses are tough, doing Full GCSE (year 10 and 11) and 3 classes off iMedia in yr9, is taxing, as is the new OCR Nationals Level 3. No easy rides fo me!

But even though, i find it hard, tough, difficult and challenging, I do think it is worth it. I don’t have a lot of time to do other things, but that is a blessing in disguise as it means I keep out of trouble!!!!

The things that seem to bother me the most is setting myself ridiculously high standards to achieve, and then beating myself up when I don’t meet them!

The thing that I am focusing on is this:

1) Become a good classroom teacher. Be kind, be fair, expect more!

I think that me focusing on classroom practice should help me really cement myself as a good teacher and not get to carried away with tech, or high flying ideas.

Hopefully I will post again before christmas. There is but hope!!!

Tags: long, summer,

Is this a technology thing? Is my need to gather and process information so strong that I actually don’t get anywhere. I research and learn, but rarely actually put things into gear.

Or is this some kind of fear. Fear of doing something wrong. Or just plain ol’ fear of failure?

I read, I think, I blog….. what next? I act. Oh yeah, actually do something.

I have spent most of this week looking through and organising all my lecture notes and hand-outs (all paper), from my year of teacher training. I started to wonder whether I had forgotten more then I actually know!!! Even by doing this, clearing some space in my house, has led me into finding material that I want to explore and blog about.

Overall I think the biggest reason why I personally am not implementing as much as I would like to do, is by asking myself these questions.

Where do I get the time?
How much effort does this involve?
What is the benefit to me/pupils?

Nearly always there is a negative response to one of those questions. I have not time, it is not doo-able. It will not help me/pupils.

Truth is, I probably need to spend less time questioning myself and more time doing. As Bruce Lee once questioned (and I paraphrase):

“Stumbling block? Or stepping stone? What is the difference?”

3,2,1 go.

Tags: thinking, motivation, planning, projects, implementer

Wow.

Tags: animoto, example, wow

I have also been trying to get involved in the social side of my new school too. I took part in the annual Lawn Tennis Championship, but was unfortunately knocked out in the 1st round. This might have been because I haven’t played tennis since 1996!

I have also been involved in a CLIL training day. This is Content Language Integrated Learning. Basically using a target language, in my case French, to teach in your own subject area. In my case, ICT.

Here is a short video explaining CLIL:

I was initially reticent about trying to do this, after all, it is hard to teach in English, never mind in French!

But, after spending a day planning and preparing resources I think it could really add benefit to my lessons. I think I need to be careful to focus on the core ICT learning, but the ability to bring in a new language or cultural viewpoint could be really interesting.

As I develop some more resources I will add them up here, and hopefully get some feedback from the learners of whether they like interacting in French.

Bonne Chance!

Tags: CLIL, planning, NQT, Language, France, French, ICT

Aaay! The Fonz wows at the Teaching Awards

Aaay! The Fonz wows at the Teaching Awards | News crumb | EducationGuardian.co.uk

This article is pretty interesting. It goes to show a few things. You don’t need to be a genius to work out that just because something is different, doesn’t mean it is bad or wrong:

Speaking of his dyslexia, Winkler said: “I was told I was stupid, lazy and not living up to my potential most of my life. And, when you’re younger and you’re told that, you believe it. It’s part of your self-image.

“Just because we learn differently, that does not mean that we are not incredibly smart human beings. That’s something I need every child to understand.”

I think it also shows, that for someone to make a difference, they need at least one thing. Charisma. Something he has bags off.

I caught the end of an interview with Henry Winkler on C4 yesterday, (Richard & Judy I am ashamed to add!) and he showed the problems that he has faced, and i wonder really whether things are much different today. As I don’t suffer from dyslexia, I can only imagine the difficulties that young people face.

This also makes me think back to another experience this week, a trip down memory lane shall we say. I discovered my Year 9 end of KS3 report and got a really interesting shock from it.

It is fair to say I underachieved in Maths. English, and Science, but excelled in History, French, and Design Technology. This is interesting, as I seem to have caught up to average by the time my GCSE’s occured. Another thing of interest is that on every single report, every one, there were the same comment. “Needs to improve his presentation”, “Work is not clear, presentation is poor”.

My perceived academic ability  was actually curtailed by my handwriting. Was this really less then 10 years ago?

This blast from my past makes me even more determined to find other ways to assess my students learning, rather then just written responses!

If I had trouble with it then, I bet people still struggle now. The knowledge was there, I just couldn’t get it out for people to see.

I will allow students to get their knowledge out in different ways. In any way I can.

Tags: knowledge, presentation, past

The government is to double the number of high-flying graduate teacher trainees placed in tough inner-city schools, the prime minister will say today.

Number of high-flying teacher trainees set to double | News crumb | EducationGuardian.co.uk

<Rant>

This got to me. The government want to send “high flying graduates” into inner city schools to help raise standards in departments. But what use are graduates? What use are people who have spent the last few years in lecture theatres, in academia, in all terms irrelevancy?

What experience could they bring to a challenging classrooms who students who have social and emotional difficulties?

Further more, how are they good role models?
Yes, they may be extremely intelligent and academically gifted, but  how could these people inspire people who, if not supported will fail, if they themselves have never failed at anything?
I doesn’t make sense to me.

And from 1st hand experience of a SCITT course and 2 teaching practices, a summers worth of training just will not prepare you for a classroom.

Dr Mary Bousted, general secretary of the Association of Teachers and Lecturers, said: “It’s an interesting idea but it’s wrong to assume that a short immersion training course is enough preparation to teach in schools that are particularly challenging

Number of high-flying teacher trainees set to double | News crumb | EducationGuardian.co.uk

Yes, I am a graduate, but you could never describe me as “High Flying”. I am “Hard Working” and there is a difference. I don’t find academic study easy, but I know its worth, and feel that I have a better ability to pass that on to other people. I just don’t feel that these graduates will be effective teachers, and will in the end damage the profession as a vocational career choice, rather then a way to remove student debt and get a wage for 2 years.

</Rant>

Tags: Rant, graduates, teacher training

www.learningscore.org

Learning Score looks to be a really nice looking tool to organise lesson activities. The ability to create drag-and-drop activities that can quickly be scheduled and organised is really easy to do, though I do not think this is a fully functioning version. Or it just didn’t work for me in Flock or Internet Explorer.

I also like to think that it could be used by students to (at somepoint) sequence their own learning plans and decide how and when to do activities. That would be a true test of personalised learning. Students given the success criteria for a lesson and they have to decide how they will do it (with a plan) in 5 mins. Sounds like a really interesting activity to me!

There are a few problems obviously.

1) It is online - what if internet connection goes down?
2) I would like to have a set of regularly used activities I can add to - Such as Mind Map, Pair Share etc.

As a concept I think this is good and look forward to see how it can be developed, and even used in classrooms.

Any comments?

Tags: lessonplanning, new tool,

Wow, this really impressed me:

Jott to Evernote or 4 Random ways to get more done with your PC

I have been using Evernote since it came out as beta (Cheers DK) but in a limited way. This week I have been using it as my main way to log all my Getting Things Done/To do things.

Now looking at the post above I wanted to try and get this recording/logging thing seamless. Only 1 problem - Jott is US only.

Here I turned to www.spinvox.com a company that offer UK based users the same features as Jott users in the US.

So I  logged into my Evernote account, got my Evernote email address.
This allows you to email things (images, text, audio, video) into your “digital memory”.

I then registered with Spinvox and used my Evernote email address to register.

Now I ring the Number Spinvox supply (I need to check it is included in my free minutes ) and left my self some messages.

I then looked at my Evernote client, Synced up and this was the result:

Whoaa! That is awesome. Now everytime, I have an idea, thought, reminder or just need to spout off about something I can ring the number leave the message, and find it all logged in my online brain. No more writing things down, logging on to my laptop, or even trying to remember them.

Next step, I need to cut out the speaking part and just store information by telepathy.

Until then combining Evernote and Spinvox is the next best thing!

Tags: amazing, spinvox, evernote, memo, digital brain, online memory,

“Now this is not the end. It is not even the beginning of the end. But it is, perhaps, the end of the beginning.”

       —Winston Churchill, Lord Mayor’s Luncheon, Mansion House following the victory at El Alameinin North Africa,  London, 10 November 1942.

I have now handed in my files, my teaching plans, my evaluations and my evidence. It is all out of my hands, in the hands of the assessors and moderators. I will find out in the next few weeks whether  I have “met the standards” for a classroom teacher.

I have spent a small amount of time in my new school, and frankly, I am excited, happy, motivated and really looking forward to starting in the school.

There is a lot of work to do, I am starting on writing Scheme’s of Work for the new OCR Nationals Level 3 ICT course, all 4 mandatory units to be completed in the 1st year. This is quite a daunting task, as I have only ever written 1 full 48 lesson scheme of work, and I haven’t had my result back from that “fictional” assignment!

Still, I am totally looking forward it, I have been given access to some excellent teaching tools, and have the ability to really push myself with some really able students. With all of this comes a lot of responsibility and when I think back to where I a year ago, I am amazed.

I am proud at the things I have achieved, and even though it has been hard I am so glad I have stuck it out and never quit.

Next steps for me, are to prepare for next year, have some time away from working, and finally next week, attending my PGCE graduation!!!!

i am going to keep updating this blog, as technically as a vehicle for self reflection it is useful, though I need to get out and comment more to generate more traffic. Or write better content, oh yeah, that might help!

Attribution:

Tags: end, start, graduation

I am working into my final fortnight at my 2nd placement school. In this time I have to complete all of my evidence of meeting “the standards”, and spend some time in my new school.

Starting into my new school is very exciting, a great step in the right direction for me!

I am also planning my time off for summer, this year I get a full 2 months off, to get preparted for next year and basically recover from this year!

So hopefully, as the pressure drops off, and I become fidgety from not having work to do at all hours of the day, the posts here will probably complete and I will get a bit of a clearer perspective on education, ICT and learning in general!

Attribution:

Tags: endof the line