What can we harvest at Paganel?

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Day 1 of our harvest topic began with a tour of the school to see what grows here. Quite a lot as you’ll see…

 

We are intending to see what we can make from our produce, but we would also like to find out what grows in other parts of the country or even the world. If you’d like to help out by telling us something that grows near you, fill in this questionnaire

 

The video tells the story of our walk around Paganel and what we found It was filmed by two children and edited by Mr Philp. The writing is what was recorded by a child on the way round.

Universities Destroy My User Experience

I’ve recently noticed two ways that higher education spoils my life. The first is more annoying, the second is probably more serious. They are: the tech and the system.

 

The tech at universities is designed for grown ups. I teach small children. It’s simple really. I have no problem with universities having fantastic technology that supports their students’ learning*. But why does it have to be foisted upon me and my children. I’m sure Moodle does a grand job in its place. And all those other ones – Blackboard, Fronter and the like. But they’re so hard to manage – they require a full time position to keep parents engaged, encourage teachers to create meaningful online learning and to reset student passwords. I don’t know many primary schools who can afford that full time job. Then there’s all the training – how do I teach my teachers how to use it properly, given all the other training needs. 

 

 

 

I have to say that I didn’t even bother with Moodle. I had seen how it looked and thought how firstly my staff as users and then my children would suffer a poor experience. Not all teachers can be picked up from a poor leaning experience – they look at the failing tech and it confirms all they ever thought about computers. This is mainly down to the design – not only does it look wrong, but it’s designed for a different kind of productivity – primary school teachers are productive when they are having lots of 1:1 interactions with children in their class during the day, whereas students and lecturers at university interact with the knowledge, which can be held by the VLE. And of course VLEs (like Moodle) have come from universities originally, sidled into secondary schools where they are just about manageable and on, in their predictable way, into Primary schools where we know no better. Until now.

 

 


The alternative is Google and other web2.0 tools. Yes I am a Google Certified Teacher, so I am biased, but when I did collaborative data analysis with my staff a few days ago, they got it instantly – with no prior training. They collaborated on the same, secure Google spreadsheet at the same time, initially made mistakes but learnt from each other and from myself, getting the job done. The same had happened with Calendars a few days earlier. I couldn’t imagine being able to do the same things so efficiently and smoothly with the clunky systems that Moodle have to offer, or indeed Excel.

 

Other alternatives also exist. Textease is a brilliant suite of tools that work a bit like Microsoft Office, but start from where the children are. Similarly 2Simple produce some great software for very young children

The System is based on university success. Nations crave it. Lord Mandelson said it (when he was in power). Sir Ken Robinson declared it in 2006. And so on… The problem I have is not that some of the children will go to university and some won’t. It’s the stuff that comes the other way. And the thing is – it starts with the children who won’t go to university.

Opt in or opt out. It is not a choice for the primary child. You have to go to school. Parents can now be prosecuted if you don’t. By contrast, you don’t have to go to university. It’s a choice – a choice that takes considerable financial risk if you’re at or below the median** salary. Much of the primary school teacher’s effort can be taken up by ensuring motivation. This is not an issue at university – a student goes there by choice. And that student can fail the course if they don’t put the required effort in.*** So of course the concept of failure creeps back to secondary schools, where you can fail at ‘A’ levels and GCSEs, even though it goes all the way down to ‘G’ now. Apparently 6% of students don’t get a ‘G’ grade in maths and over 40% don’t achieve ‘C’ – the grade at which a GCSE becomes useful. This then finds its way into primary schools where you can fail by not reaching a ‘Level 3’ in the level 3-5 SATs, or where, if the school labours the point you can fail by not achieving the level 4, or not making 12 points progress. Some 11 year olds can’t opt out of this. They have no choice. They have to fail.

 

Failure hurts. It’s good to get use to that pain. But is 11 the right age? And is it even 11? Recently my own son started in a Year 3 class (aged 7) and was given a test in his first week. Of course he had been tested prior to that – there are assessments in Year 2, but I remember him coming home and talking about the ‘special booklet’ he had done that day – the teachers were keen to exert any stress with the concept of being able to fail at a test. Not so in Year 3. A test was sat. In reading skills I believe. We await the results with bated breath.

Is seven the right age to learn about failing in tests?

 

*although I suspect much of it is about guarding the knowledge so they can charge more money from it, rather than actually encouraging their students to learn.
**Never trust a set of data unless you know the range, median, mean and mode
***Unless they’re studying English. Or history.

First reflections on the impact of calendar training

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Today I gave some training on using Google Calendars.

 

The training had two useful outcomes:
  1. It showed how useful online Calendars are and everybody grasped the basics of how to add events.
  2. It got everyone together in the same room to sort out some important rotas for the year.
I began planning the training back on August 25th when I wrote this blog post about my ideas for this training. Soon after I hit a snag with my decision making, when I’d been trying to kill too many ICT birds with one stone – I had ended up taking one step forward for every two steps back. I then decided to use videos as my main vehicle for the instruction. I even included a second video to really go over how to create repeated events, in case staff didn’t quite get it. I used Google Sites as the repository for the training:
What was really interesting was the the whole ‘I’m not going to talk approach’. I’m so used to presenting with
  • a little preamble,
  • a spot of humour,
  • some theory,
  • practical application,

that it was really weird just letting my video do the talking – we didn’t even watch the video as a group (which would have been a bit embarrassing).

 

Rather each teacher had headphones and watched it individually – there was an eerie silence around the place. Then, as people started to get it there was a slow murmur as people sitting near to each other explained or clarified their thinking about the task in hand or the instructions. Then the volume grew as the first events started appearing on the calendar and some people started to realise that they may miss all the best slots. This point was perhaps the most tense – a slight tone of anxiety creeping into the odd voice here and there. But finally everyone realised that we’re all colleagues still and began talking constructively about what slots to fill in. Within half an hour the training was finished, the calendars were done and staff were on there way to do stuff elsewhere.

 

What’s good for the staff now is that they all have a common framework and understanding of how Google Calendars work, with an expectation of being able to use them productively in the future. What’s good for me is that I’ve got the bulk of the rotas sorted without having to traipse around the school.

Help! Workflow crisis!

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First day back at school and we begin with the usual. Big picture stuff: what happened last year and how we can get better.

 

Then the inevitable policy tweaks – and here’s one: educational visits. They’re the kind of activity that children remember, makes classroom learning more real, but can be a nightmare for teachers to organise and schools to administer. Having listened to the talk by the EVC (Educational Visits co-ordinator), I tried to draw out the workflow on my new ACECAD Digital Notepad. But it looks a bit complicated.

 

So 2 questions…

 

  1. Does anyone have a really smooth and efficient process for educational visits?
  2. Are there any good software packages for presenting flow diagram type material?
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