Interactive White Board

I've recently beeing working through our in-college Interactive White Board training programme.

I've found this to be of great benefit to me.  Whilst I have had training on the IWB, and had practiced using a variety of the tools that the IWB had to offer, I had not made extensive use of it in the classroom.  In fact, I thought I was doing quite well because I often get the students to come up and write on the board themselves and I've saved the odd file to put on Moodle afterwards.

However, doing the training reminded me to play with some of the more advanced features - recording the screen for example, or using the magic pen, changing the background and saving a series of pages as a PowerPoint presentation.  Having to evidence use of these tools in a real lesson made me think about how they might be useful, and I have definitely found this to be beneficial.  For example, I recently got a student to demonstrate how to add an icon to the desktop, and I recorded their actions.  I then saved this file and uploaded it to YouTube so that I could embed it into their Moodle pages.  Now they can remind themselves how to add an icon to the desktop, even when I'm not there.

This ability to extend the classroom time is something I will endeavour to do much more in the future, as it also means that those who miss the lesson, or found it particularly difficult, can revisit what was covered in their own time, and as often as they need to.

Differentiation - is it worth it?

Today I had the last official workshop for one of my Learn IT Centre groups.  I've worked hard to try and accommodate their individual and diverse needs.  I've worked at home to locate errors in pages of code to help a single learner, and researched specific add-ons at the request of another.  I know the project that each learner has produced in pretty fine detail.  In the lessons, I try to 'teach' a skill, and then spend the second half of the lesson doing mini one-to-ones so that everyone gets something they want.

At the end of our class today, I was presented with a small gift and a lovely card.  All the learners had written something personal about what they had gained from the classes, and what stood out was how much they valued the efforts I have made to accommodate each individual learner.

So, was it worth it?  Well, in the words of those infamous X-factor judges.... "100% yes".  This is not about patting myself on the back - but it's more to remind myself that we must never forget that our 'learners' are all individual people with individual needs, and every so often they let you know that they appreciate it when we remember that.

Enjoying teaching

I've had a busy few weeks.  Teaching observation one week, Estyn visit the next.  I've upped my game, there's no doubt of that, and I'm better equipped to include useful ILT, differentiation, classroom management techniques and many of the other elements that make up an 'excellent' lesson.

Now, the pressure is off - at least in the respect of being seen to be doing the right thing.  And yet, my two lessons yesterday were equally effective despite being much less well prepared on paper.  I didn't have PowerPoints, printed activities or videos to watch.  I didn't have group work lined up, with clearly defined objectives, and well stated differentiation.  I didn't write about literacy or numeracy.  I just did it.

The 'magic trick' I did with one group (which went wrong because of lack of clear instructions) proved an excellent way to revisit earlier learning on binary and parity bits, including an example of the reason it can be less effective because of where it went wrong.  The installation of a hardware device that I did with another group (which went wrong because I forgot to include a vital instruction) meant that the learners worked out for themselves what was wrong and resolved it.  Instead of giving diagrams out and explaining them, I doodled on the board, taking on board comments from the students as I went.  The lessons evolved naturally, and the skills that I have developed wove into the lesson with seeming ease.

It's reassuring to have a day when you feel like you've done things right, and your students have gone home having had an interesting and fun lesson, whilst still learning something.  Let's hope there are many more of these.

Where do you draw the line?

I had a lesson recently where I gave a presentation and encouraged discussion and input from my class throughout the session.

The class in question has a number of individuals who are difficult to engage and who find it difficult to concentrate.  Throughout the presentation, I was faced with bad language, innuendo after innuendo and some degree of disruption.  But.... and it's a big but.... the class did discuss the information required, and they did contribute to the content.

Afterwards, I considered whether I should have been more forceful in trying to stop them from using such language in class, but it was a pay off.  I didn't want to alienate them by coming down too hard, but neither do I want to be seen as a soft touch.  Where is the line between tolerance and weakness?  I think it's a judgement call for each and every case individually.  I hope I got the balance right on this occasion.

Dissertation Planning - Blended Learning

In the next few weeks I need to submit a protocol for my dissertation, which, all being well, I should be starting in September.

However, I'm struggling to decide what angle to take.  I know I want to do online learning / blended learning, but the focus is difficult to pin down.  I could work with a diverse group of students - ranging from my youngest (school leavers) in an FE setting through to mature learners in a community education setting, and look at the different levels of engagement in online learning from the different groups.  Alternatively, I could focus on a single cohort of students, and dig deeper into the individual experiences they have with online learning, and whether these are successful or not, and why.

I have started a literature review, but I think I've got some way to go with this.  So far, I have identified that Gilly Salmon's Five Stage Model forms an excellent starting point, but that less research has been done on student engagement with a specific task and that there is more focus on social engagement.

Perhaps starting with a well structured task (using the Five Stage Model) and rolling that out to all cohorts (in a relevant format) is the way to go.  This will then form a comparison of different cohorts and levels of engagement, and perhaps suggestions as to how to promote the benefits of online learning to different groups of students.

Any thoughts or suggestions would be gratefully received.  Is there a gap somewhere that needs investigating?  Feel free to comment!

Resolution Specific Web Design

Great web lesson today, discussing and trying out creating websites which use different css style sheets depending on the size of the display that the site is being viewed on.

Actually, this area of research is really interesting - it opens up lots of discussions about how far a designer should go to ensure their site looks good on a variety of devices.  Ultimately, because of all the various issues with compatibility, failings of Internet Explorer and so on, creating a full cross-platform friendly site is not as straightforward as it really should be.

One thing's for sure - my own site (which is really a very basic site to demonstrate some of the things we cover in class) desperately needs modifying itself.  It's not good form for the tutor to have a shabbier site than the students!!  If only I could stop time to give myself a couple of days to get it sorted!

QR codes

Well I've thoroughly enjoyed preparing my next web design lesson.  We'll be reviewing good & bad web design, which I think will be interesting and offers a great opportunity for collaborative working, and then I'm going to do a session on QR codes, which I think will be great fun.

I've generated a couple of codes of my own to get the class started, but I can see great potential for this with my teenage students, who I think could be very easily engaged in a variety of ways using QR codes.  Definitely one of the more interactive aspects of ICT at the moment!!