• » mini’s blogs Al Upton and the miniLegends 08
  Year 3 blogging…
  (tags: blog blogging students learning)
• » Class blogs – management, moderation and protection Al Upton and the miniLegends 08
  (tags: blog blogging ideas teaching Web2.0 learning)
• Where do we draw the line? at Students 2.0
  do you want to connect with your students?
  (tags: communication community students)

• Seth’s Blog: The posture of a communicator
  “If you are a student in my class and you don’t learn what I’m teaching, I’ve let you down.”
  (tags: communication teaching)

• Nabaztag/tag, the second first smart Rabbit ! – Nabaztag
  i DO want one… and would love to look at the educational possibilities. Supporting with literacy might be one way.
  (tags: toys cute literacy wifi Nabaztag cool)

• Mind42.com – Collaborative mind mapping in your browser
  (tags: collaboration ideas tools Web2.0 creativity learning online MindMapping mindmap)

I had an interesting, if slightly depressing, chat with a colleague this morning. She joined the school and our art team after many years working as a senior leader in a Primary school, and has been doing some fantastic work in an AST role with us. I think she’s one of the best teachers I’ve come across, for a whole host of reasons, and find it deeply troubling therefore that she’s currently so downbeat about the job here.

To be honest though I could empathise entirely with what she was saying, specifically about the KS3 groups that we teach for one hour every week. She was depressed at how it so often feels as though she is merely babysitting the students – that there is no opportunity for deep learning to happen, mostly because the attitudes of so many of the young people is so negative and that there is such a low level of engagement and interest. To be honest, I remember feeling a lot of the same things when I was doing a lot of KS3 teaching, and I wonder if it’s simply inevitable given the way in which we organise our time and learning communities at this age.

Having experience of teaching at all age groups (from Primary to Higher Education), my colleague was frustrated at the fact that this (11-16) age group is the one where the least learning is allowed to take place. I wonder if this all stems from the rigid timetabling issues which we have historically had at high school level? Think about it: in Primary school you spend the vast majority of your learning time in the same social group. It’s more or less the same when you move into Further and Higher education, often being members of fairly small learning groups within the bigger community (and a whole University learning community is immeasurably bigger than a High School). The world of work is the same too. For even given the increased fluidity of the contemporary career path, each stage of that path will be within a fairly stable working community, at least at a daily level. Yet take the High School experience: young people are forced to move from one working environment to the next every hour or so. Thanks to streaming and setting the make-up of their learning community in any given hour slot is often different to that in the one before, or after. There is precious little stability. And surely it’s stability that so many of these young people crave, or indeed need to be successful?

What wonder then that the ‘enterprise’ days in which we allow small groups to work together for a whole day are so successful?

Of course I’m interested in how we can use technologies to enable a more stable learning experience for this age group, but it has to go further than that surely? Do we not need to dismantle the subject-driven curriculum at KS3 and KS4 and embrace the holistic learning experience? In the immortal words of Kevin Rowland, ‘for God’s sake, burn it down…’

• 3 reasons the majority of students are NOT ‘digitally literate’
  (tags: ict learning teaching teenage)

• David Byrne’s Survival Strategies for Emerging Artists — and Megastars
  All music students should read this – and music teachers too i guess
  (tags: music online digital marketing media)
• Flickr: Photos from Andy Rosen
  superb collection of photos from the Punk era in the UK.
  (tags: photography culture history)
• Seth’s Blog: After the lawyers
  How could this apply to school rules?
  (tags: marketing rules leadership behaviour)
• Seth’s Blog: Tribe Management
  How to build this kind of connectivity in a school? How to manage the tribe(s) of the school…
  (tags: community culture leadership)

• Teaching with Animation
  a useful guide for using animation in the classroom
  (tags: animation teaching learning)
• Meryl.net » 70+ PowerPoint and Presentation Resources and Great Examples
  (tags: inspiration ideas slideshow teaching tools)
• how a heart works
  any use to the scientists?
  (tags: Science ict animation)

• Macworld | Mac OS X Hints | Use fine-grain volume control in 10.5
  geeky mac tip for volume adjustment…
  (tags: mac osx hints)
• MemoryMiner – Digital Storytelling Software – Homepage
  good looking piece of cheap software – windoze version available too!
  (tags: collaboration photography photos tools digital Storytelling)
• Just say it
  wonder what High School English teachers feel about this one
  (tags: blogging writing english)

• VGT home
  (tags: online tools e-safety Children internetsafety internet-safety)
• Putting public art on the map: Big Art Mob – The Channel 4 Big Art Project
  (tags: art photography Web2.0 mobile community public)
• Ideas and Thoughts from an EdTech » Blog Archive » Principals trying out cell phones
  head teachers in using mobile phones in classroom shocker…
  (tags: leadership learning mobile cellphones Mobile_Learning)
• 7 ways to improve your productivity as a teacher at dougbelshaw.com
  some pretty good tips here
  (tags: teaching learning)
• Calculated Risks at Students 2.0
  a student writes about Math and makes it interesting
  (tags: math ideas students blog blogging)
• Daphne Padden Posters – a photoset on Flickr
  fab posters from the 1950s and 1960s. yum!
  (tags: design art)