Hello lovely blog, I'm sorry I've neglected you rather a lot lately.....
I seem to have got out of the habit of blogging, very few posts this year compared to when I started it last year....so I'm aiming to gear myself up and start again!
So....recently there's been a lot going on...I'm going to start by writing about my headteacher who sadly died 3 weeks ago from cancer. Dave Murgett was the HT of our school, Holmfirth JI&N. He absolutely believed that every child matters, that every child should be allowed to be an individual and be encouraged to fly in whatever way they chose or could...in our school this shows in many ways, one of which is that we have an optional uniform that he fought hard to be allowed to have - I love to see my class looking different and definitely individual!
He also encouraged us as staff to be individual and fly in our own individual ways, he seemed to have a knack of knowing what we are all about...with me he nagged me to accept praise which is something I'm not very good at doing! When he found out he was poorly he came in most days to say something lovely and then would ask me if I believed him yet! For him, I'm determined to become a person who can accept praise without making some glib remark and believe that it's said because that's how it is!
He was passionate about ICT, he believed in the power of ICT and how it could be used to stimulate and enhance childrens learning. At school we have an ICT suite and each classroom has a mini-suite of 6 computers so that we can use ICT as an everyday part of our lessons. One of the things he said to me as I started teaching was that I should remember that this generation of children learn in a very different way to how I did learnt at school, that ICT was part of their lives and to think about what I could do to bring 'current media' into the classroom to enhance my teaching.
This has stuck with me all through my - so far fairly short - teaching career, it's become a kind of mantra.
We all miss him terribly, he was a very engaging person with a huge smile, we loved him, children loved him and if he came into class there was always a buzz at his presence...
So, he would have absolutely loved what's been going on in my life over the last 3 days!
On Tuesday evening I had the pleasure of a phone call from Tim Rylands! He was in Leeds training teachers in various ways like he does and on one day in particular he was showing them the possibilities of using a Wii in class. This was where I came in....some kind soul (really sorry I've forgotten who this was in all my excitement ...) had suggested to him that I might be someone that he could put the Leeds teachers in touch with as I'd used a Wii in my class. The idea was/is that they can get in touch, if and hopefully when, they start to use a Wii as a teaching tool to ask questions etc. We then kind of carried on chatting, Tim suggested a possible Skype session and I sort of volunteered myself to go along to Leeds to the actual session...which is what I did and thanks to Chris Cocker our acting HT for letting me go! Tim & Sarah were kind enough to blog about it all here! For me it was a first, the first time I'd ever 'spoken live' to other teachers about what I had done with ICT - in particular the Wii &
the African Safari game - in my class, Nabby3. Everyone was very kind and said they'd enjoyed what I said so in true 'new me' style I accepted it all because that's how it was! ....I was so excited about the whole thing and was just thrilled to have been asked to go along by Tim!
So on to yesterday, the bMobLe conference in Bradford.
Months ago I was asked by Dughall McCormick if I'd 'do something with him in Bradford in May,'....it was only about a month ago that I actually realised what that 'something' was and needed to be! I feel quite honoured that he asked me - so ta muchly Dugh!
I loved the bMobLe conference, I'd never been to one before and found myself starting to buzz. Tim was keynote speaker in the morning and wowed us all with an amazing presentation, his enthusiasm and lots of wonderful information that he kindly put in a link bunch which you can find here... I just loved meeting Tim and his colleague Sarah on both Tuesday and Wednesday. I loved how they welcomed me with such friendliness, how they were enthusiastic with me and also about how they were enthusiastic about what I was saying - massive thank you to both of them for that!
I then went to Tim and Sarah's breakout session and learnt much about using powerpoint. They also gave me ideas about how I could do things with my class and powerpoint. Another breakout session I went to was the one given by Steve Dale. This session was about using Flip cams for maths using a 'storyboard.' The idea is that the children think of their maths explanation as they would do when creating a storyboard, step by step in the right order. I tried this with my class today - still to video them - but the storyboard explanations worked really well. They worked in mixed ability pairs and really helped each other out and mostly wrote very clear explanations which I look forward to filming! Thank you Steve!!
After lunch I collared Dugh and we got round to having a bit of a practise for our breakout session, we'd already decided not to do a whizzy thing but to go down the simple route of talking and showing short but effective videos. I think this worked really well! I'd never done the 'conference presenter' thing before so I just kind of did my thing and hoped it would be interesting! It seemed to me that having a whizzy thing would make it all a bit scary in case it didn't work and by just talking and showing videos there was lots of leeway for me to go off at tangents!...too many 'things' in this paragraph! ...as I'd say to my class, what could you use instead?...mebbe that's a job for tomorrow. :-)
It went well! I really believe that people enjoyed it and found that we were interesting and said useful things. I wish we'd had more time as it seemed to me that we had to stop when it was all getting interesting with much audience participation...I could have happily gone on for much longer...
I also really enjoyed meeting a few fellow twitterers. It was great to see David Mitchell again (called him James to start with - big oops and very sorry :-) ) and to meet Doug Dickinson albeit very briefly,Doug Belshaw, Nick Jackson as well as James Langley & Steve Dale who I have already mentioned!
So - great day, huge thanks to James Langley and his team who worked incredibly hard to make the day a success....roll on the next one!
I seem to have got out of the habit of blogging, very few posts this year compared to when I started it last year....so I'm aiming to gear myself up and start again!
So....recently there's been a lot going on...I'm going to start by writing about my headteacher who sadly died 3 weeks ago from cancer. Dave Murgett was the HT of our school, Holmfirth JI&N. He absolutely believed that every child matters, that every child should be allowed to be an individual and be encouraged to fly in whatever way they chose or could...in our school this shows in many ways, one of which is that we have an optional uniform that he fought hard to be allowed to have - I love to see my class looking different and definitely individual!
He also encouraged us as staff to be individual and fly in our own individual ways, he seemed to have a knack of knowing what we are all about...with me he nagged me to accept praise which is something I'm not very good at doing! When he found out he was poorly he came in most days to say something lovely and then would ask me if I believed him yet! For him, I'm determined to become a person who can accept praise without making some glib remark and believe that it's said because that's how it is!
He was passionate about ICT, he believed in the power of ICT and how it could be used to stimulate and enhance childrens learning. At school we have an ICT suite and each classroom has a mini-suite of 6 computers so that we can use ICT as an everyday part of our lessons. One of the things he said to me as I started teaching was that I should remember that this generation of children learn in a very different way to how I did learnt at school, that ICT was part of their lives and to think about what I could do to bring 'current media' into the classroom to enhance my teaching.
This has stuck with me all through my - so far fairly short - teaching career, it's become a kind of mantra.
We all miss him terribly, he was a very engaging person with a huge smile, we loved him, children loved him and if he came into class there was always a buzz at his presence...
So, he would have absolutely loved what's been going on in my life over the last 3 days!
On Tuesday evening I had the pleasure of a phone call from Tim Rylands! He was in Leeds training teachers in various ways like he does and on one day in particular he was showing them the possibilities of using a Wii in class. This was where I came in....some kind soul (really sorry I've forgotten who this was in all my excitement ...) had suggested to him that I might be someone that he could put the Leeds teachers in touch with as I'd used a Wii in my class. The idea was/is that they can get in touch, if and hopefully when, they start to use a Wii as a teaching tool to ask questions etc. We then kind of carried on chatting, Tim suggested a possible Skype session and I sort of volunteered myself to go along to Leeds to the actual session...which is what I did and thanks to Chris Cocker our acting HT for letting me go! Tim & Sarah were kind enough to blog about it all here! For me it was a first, the first time I'd ever 'spoken live' to other teachers about what I had done with ICT - in particular the Wii &
the African Safari game - in my class, Nabby3. Everyone was very kind and said they'd enjoyed what I said so in true 'new me' style I accepted it all because that's how it was! ....I was so excited about the whole thing and was just thrilled to have been asked to go along by Tim!
So on to yesterday, the bMobLe conference in Bradford.
Months ago I was asked by Dughall McCormick if I'd 'do something with him in Bradford in May,'....it was only about a month ago that I actually realised what that 'something' was and needed to be! I feel quite honoured that he asked me - so ta muchly Dugh!
I loved the bMobLe conference, I'd never been to one before and found myself starting to buzz. Tim was keynote speaker in the morning and wowed us all with an amazing presentation, his enthusiasm and lots of wonderful information that he kindly put in a link bunch which you can find here... I just loved meeting Tim and his colleague Sarah on both Tuesday and Wednesday. I loved how they welcomed me with such friendliness, how they were enthusiastic with me and also about how they were enthusiastic about what I was saying - massive thank you to both of them for that!
I then went to Tim and Sarah's breakout session and learnt much about using powerpoint. They also gave me ideas about how I could do things with my class and powerpoint. Another breakout session I went to was the one given by Steve Dale. This session was about using Flip cams for maths using a 'storyboard.' The idea is that the children think of their maths explanation as they would do when creating a storyboard, step by step in the right order. I tried this with my class today - still to video them - but the storyboard explanations worked really well. They worked in mixed ability pairs and really helped each other out and mostly wrote very clear explanations which I look forward to filming! Thank you Steve!!
After lunch I collared Dugh and we got round to having a bit of a practise for our breakout session, we'd already decided not to do a whizzy thing but to go down the simple route of talking and showing short but effective videos. I think this worked really well! I'd never done the 'conference presenter' thing before so I just kind of did my thing and hoped it would be interesting! It seemed to me that having a whizzy thing would make it all a bit scary in case it didn't work and by just talking and showing videos there was lots of leeway for me to go off at tangents!...too many 'things' in this paragraph! ...as I'd say to my class, what could you use instead?...mebbe that's a job for tomorrow. :-)
It went well! I really believe that people enjoyed it and found that we were interesting and said useful things. I wish we'd had more time as it seemed to me that we had to stop when it was all getting interesting with much audience participation...I could have happily gone on for much longer...
I also really enjoyed meeting a few fellow twitterers. It was great to see David Mitchell again (called him James to start with - big oops and very sorry :-) ) and to meet Doug Dickinson albeit very briefly,Doug Belshaw, Nick Jackson as well as James Langley & Steve Dale who I have already mentioned!
So - great day, huge thanks to James Langley and his team who worked incredibly hard to make the day a success....roll on the next one!
