Exploring Learning

Following six difficult ‘teaching’ years tantamount to herding cats, I left the UK in search of ‘teaching Utopia’. I landed in the Middle East, where behaviour was improved and my teaching evolved into some semblance of the shaping of minds that I'd dreamed of. However, the ‘state of the art’ facilities I’d been promised were sadly lacking. The ban on all electronic devices in school seemed anachronistic so next came a move to SE Asia, into a world of Apple Macs that changed that way I teach forever. 1:1 Systems and Google Apps for Education   Classes were small, learners IT-savvy and Wi-Fi strong and through 1:1, I discovered Google Apps for Education (GAFE). The ability to create interactive multimedia Google sites as learning platforms, revolutionised the way I approached teaching. I went from a ‘teacher’ to a ‘facilitator of learning’ - my lessons were no longer paper references instructing me what to do to them; they became sites authored directly for the learners as the au...

"In terms of young children developing as writers this is the most interesting development in the last 20 years."  Pie Corbett As a culmination of the Snapshots project and to authenticate the digital citizenship work we have just done, I signed up my Grade 7s to Quadblogging . If my emphasise is that much of what they do and create is public, necessitating the need to be responsible in their posting, I need to give them an audience. All too often, we ask the learners to write a blog - but who sees it? Ok, I do. But do they care about that really, beyond me being their teacher? I see all their writing - no big deal to them. Parents? Some sign up but I have never yet seen a comment from one. Hence Quadblogging. The programme was specifically set to up to provide audiences for learner blogs. Peer audiences. Authentic, real life and structured - making it a part of 21st century skill learning. Awesome! I launched it with Grade 7 this week. The...

Can rubrics hinder as much as help? I had an official lesson observation for the purpose of our school Teacher Performance Assurance (TPA) about two weeks ago. I had my feedback meeting today, which is far longer than recommended 'same day' guidelines, but hey, life gets in the way most of the time. Peer Feedback Using Google Forms  My personal thoughts were that the lesson was 'bitty', as the learners were doing presentations that had spilled over from a prior lesson, followed by reflections on their learning. This meant that the lesson had two distinct halves - the half where learners were presenting or completing peer feedback on Google forms , and the half where they were working in groups to support each other to complete learning reflections on their project. This meant there were two learning intentions, one for each half of the lesson and, whilst success criteria were determined by me for the first half, to ensure they met the criteria for asses...