T&L Group December Meeting

Thanks to all for coming to the meeting this week - welcome to Christian, representing the Technology Department. I'm sure we all appreciated the work Jackie had done to facilitate our introduction to the VLE.
I have AfL audits from Art, Geography, MFL and RE - can I please have the others ASAP.

Next meeting: Wednesday 14th January 4 p.m.:

• your opportunity to share anything you've done with the VLE
• Rachel, Phil and myself to report back on recent INSET attended

Happy Christmas! Enjoy the break.

Paul

blog member from Learning support

Hello I am the contact for LS department if you have anything you wish to know about please leave a message in comments

I have arrived - at last!!

Hi All

I am a new user and am here to help as best I can with any technical or non-technical questions.

And unfortunately there is nothing I can do about the weight of the new laptops, I apologise for those of you that have inherted a brick!!

Educational Websites and Blogs

It occurred to me that it might be worth putting some links to educational or interesting websites and blogs. I have added these beneath the Blog Archive.

Let me know if you know of a website or blog that is a useful or is a good example of use in education, or which might be of interest or help to other members of staff - and I'll add it.

Adding labels to posts

I've added 'labels' to some of the posts so far. This will make it easier for people to search the blog for something. They are easy to add, just put them in at the bottom of the Post.

Put in a keyword, if something similar is already in there then you will get a list to choose from.

Posting Word and PowerPoint to Blogger

The simple answer is that Blogger has disabled a simple upload of the documents to your blog. It is very easy to upload pictures (jpg, gif, bmp and png), but Word and PowerPoint are a little harder. I believe that this is because of security issues. Office documents can have program code embedded in them, which can be used to make malicious attacks on the servers hosting Blogger.

However, it is possible to upload your documents to the Internet, using Google Docs, which you can then link to from your blog. As a member of Blogger you already have a Google account which you need for Google Docs.

I had never done this before, so I've done it now, and uploaded a document to tell you how to do it:

http://docs.google.com/Presentation?id=drd54bk_34fw4xsrcs

This has been set up so that anyone may view it. It is not limited to members of this blog.

I hope this is of help, if you need more information, or the presentation itself isn't completely clear, please get back to me.
CJF

Hello everyone!
Cath, I've had a go at setting up an RE teachers' blog for Herts. But is it possible to add powerpoints or word documents to a blog? If it is, can you tell me how?

new user

Hi, just to all of you out there I am a new member.

Anything you think I need to know tell me please!!

Correction!

The next meeting of the T&L group is Wednesday 10th December!

One giant leap for PN!

Thanks to all who attended last night's T&L group meeting.
What happened?
RC gave us a demo of the Geography blog and provided help with regard to starting blogging
CF showed us her ICT blog and has set up this T&L blog
PN referred to the AfL audit, reminding everyone of the task in hand - to complete this audit for your own subject area - this is now available electronically in the T&L folder on the Staff Shared Area
Next meeting: Wednesday 12th December 4 p.m.
Agenda:
V.L.E.
Gathering together the AfL audit

Blogging for teaching and learning

We had another meeting of the Assessment for Learning group this afternoon. We looked at the use of the Geography blog with years 12 and 13, for the dissemination of information to students, as well as the assessments of their comments to gauge understanding. This is a closed blog, visible only to members, so we cannot post a link.

In ICT we are experimenting with the use of a blog with 2 top set year 9 groups. The students have only been doing this for a few weeks, and only have one hour a week ICT, however, at the moment the results are very promising. The purpose was to get the students to use a variety of different means of electronic communication, view a wide range of samples of each others' work, and to make constructive comments on each others' work to help sharpen their critical facilities for their own work. In general the students find it very difficult to assess and suggest improvements for their own work, however; by reviewing the work of others they get practice at the skills. Future plans include: use of the on-line site SlideShare to share their presentations and setting targets for themselves for this year.

To emphasise the importance of on-line safety students have not been allowed to use personal names, photos of themselves or include any personal information in their profiles.

You can see their progress here.

Wordle - 'Word Clouds'

I really like Wordle - although in my subject its uses are largely limited to producing keyword posters. I'm sure that it could have a wide range of uses in many subjects. You can change the font, and the colour scheme, as well as the basic layout (every which way, horizontal, mostly horizontal, half and half, mostly vertical, all vertical). The more often you enter a word, the larger the word is in the Wordle. TIP - put your text into a wordprocessor and paste it into the web-site 'create' window, in case you need to go back and re-do it - as it is lost when you press the 'create' button.

Wordle produces 'word clouds'. It's online at http://wordle.net/, and at the moment there are some unresolved problems with using it on the school network, so you can't use it with your students in lessons until these have been sorted, but you should be able to use it at home. Here are some examples, some are produced by me, others have been taken from the web-site (click on any of these to display them full screen):

Word Processor - keywords poster












Dylan Thomas











Colour Keywords - I searched for as many colour names as I could










Beatles - All you need is love












The Sermon on the mount

Content Generator - more (free) software

I love this stuff - it's great fun, and really good for a quiz. I use it with my A level students to reinforce definitions - I just wish they wouldn't customise the teacher to look quite so much like me though!

Or - you can get your students to think up the questions and answers. We've done this in ICT with A level students to help reinforce definitions and understanding.

There are several content generator programs - most of them are a 'paid for' option, but "Fling the Teacher", "Teacher Invaders", and "Match Up Generator" are free downloads. The network managers have kindly put them onto the network, and they are available in the staff workroom. (NOTE: now in B29 and A18 too)

Fling the teacher - this allows you to enter 15 or more multiple choice questions (four choices). There is a Flash animation of a teacher in a mortarboard, which the students can customise for hair style, colour, etc. As they correctly answer the questions a trebuchet is constructed, and when they get all 15 correctly in a row the teacher is flung from the trebuchet, complete with a countdown ("you know enough to throw your teacher away"). Like "Who wants to be a millionaire", there are three lifelines - 50:50; what were previous answers to the question; and 'ask an expert'. If they get an answer wrong it's back to the beginning. You must enter 15 questions, but if you put in more than that then the students get a selection of 15, so the more you put in the greater the degree of randomisation between students.












Teacher Invaders - like space invaders, but blatting teachers instead of aliens - a question every 20 seconds to get more time.

Match Up Generator - matching 6 different paired items - with a time limit if you want.

A text file is produced, and then your Flash file is generated from this - you don't need the generator program on the computer you are playing it on as it is saved as a Flash file which plays in Internet Explorer.

Formulator Tarsia - some useful (free) software

Formulator Tarsia is a free download - it is designed for Maths, but can be adapted for many subjects. It allows you to quickly produce a variety of different 'jigsaws', which can be used as starters, or to reinforce definitions, etc. You can even upload small graphics files. The network managers have kindly put it onto the school network - it is currently available on the computers in the staff workroom and B29, or you can download it yourself at home.

This is what a completed 'solution' to a jigsaw looks like:
















These are the options available:













The variety allows you to adapt to the ability of the group - for really weak students you can give them the middle six of a hexagon.

I photocopy the output onto card, which I then cut into the triangles, squares, etc, and keep in a (labelled) envelope.

Teaching and Learning - the Meeting

We had a really interesting meeting, discussing teaching and learning after school today. PN was full of enthusiasm, and had loads of ideas. There were lots of other members of staff from a wide range of departments, with some really good ideas for starters.

I personally think that ICT is going to be increasingly important in education, and that we must equip ourselves with the skills that will allow us to support our students in this changing world - but then I would do, wouldn't I.

I decided to set up this blog so that staff can share experiences, ideas and materials - and, just as importantly, practice blogging skills.

This blog should be for all staff at JFK to share any information about teaching and learning. It is for ALL teaching and learning ideas - not just ICT.

If you would like to be able to post or comment on this blog send me an e-mail - we can have up to 100 authors.