With the new focus from Ofsted and a desire to improve our KS3 schemes of learning I have been revisiting APP and trying to figure out the best way to enable the pupils the opportunity to achieve L6 and above.  When looking at the APP grids it is obvious that explaining, reflecting and evaluating become a key factor in the higher levels. However in an average lesson and when you're introducing new topics, there is rarely time for pupils to get to grips with those higher level skills, especially if you are introducing new skills.
 
So my cunning plan, obviously acquired from other people and adapted, is:

1. Create level checklists in moodle, using the checklist. These have the relevant APP indicators in colour coordinated levels.  This then enables the students to see what they need to do to meet their target level. It also gives then the opportunity to see what else they could do to improve their level.
2. This second plan is a combination of various ideas that have either appeared on twitter, at TeachMeets1 and even in chats with colleagues2 at school. Basically I have targeted those pupils most likely to achieve L6 and created a posterous 'space' that they enrolled in. I post ideas, questions etc that I want them to think about and comment/discuss.  This should enable them to start analysing, reflecting and evaluating their work and their peers work.   This is pilot plan at the moment, but if they succeed and enjoy what they are doing, then it will probably be rolled out across the dept and to all pupils.

The topic I am trialling this on is Kodu.  Not the creation of games and programming, as the class have already done this, but the creation of advertising and support material for their game. They are all creating a document explaining the rules of the game, but have now been given the freedom to decide how they will advertise the game.  This freedom of choice is linked to the APP grids so that they can demonstrate that they have planned what they are going to create including:

1. What they will create
2. Why they will be creating it
3. What software package(s) they will use and why
4. Target audience
5. Success criteria
6. Selecting a test buddy to give feedback

 

 

So far some pupils are creating posters, some creating slideshows, animations and even some podcasts.  From a classroom management point of view this is proving quite interesting.

 

1The main influence was the Science dept at Saltash who had given exercise books to their A level pupils with the expectation that they would record and reflect on their learning after every lesson.  The dept. made it a compulsory task and collected the books in. This had a massive impact on the grades at A level.

2A colleague, in Maths (@jonsmcest), who has just discovered the wonders of twitter is doing a similar thing with his Y9 Maths group.

I have been attending BETT frequently over the last few years and have to admit the reason for going has changed since the advent of twitter. I now go to meet other twitterers and then get a chance to network and also cherry pick stands to look at based on feedback from others. I think it makes BETT less daunting than walking around for hours by yourself and not sure whether you have seen the right bits.

Anyway, before BETT, can I just say that Google Navigator on the android is awesome.  I lived in London for 3 years whilst at Uni and travelled most of it underground.  Now the last 2 times I have been to BETT I have used the navigator function in Google maps and walked instead. It's not far from Paddington...a couple of miles.  You get to walk down Kensington High Street and through Kensington Gardens. It either tells you when to turn left or right or, if you have the volume down just buzzes to let you know when you need to change direction.

On the walk back to Paddington, early Sunday morning I even took a few pictures of Kensington Gardens - was a tad cold and frosty. 

 

BETT itself was the same as ever, the big guns taking up masses of floor space, and some little gems of innovation hidden away in the smaller stands.  To be honest though, my main agenda was to try and sort out my Ks4 ICT curriculum that has now become devastated by the Gove changes and continued announcements. So I was heading off to chat to them.  Considering the recent Gove speech, at BETT, I was expecting lots of hard sells from examboards clammering for my business.  AQA were indfferent - so not using them.  Edexcel have signed me up for a chat with my regional rep who was otherwise engaged with other clients and I had a spend an inordinate amount of time at the OCR Nationals stand...oops Cambridge Nationals... a rebrand for a new course :)

So, Cambridge Nationals have changed and I will still be running the new course with my Vocational Pathway kids. No point doing the double as it is only worth a single in the new League tables. The Nationals have also changed at Ks5 but as yet have not been verified, but the lovely Alison Pearce, has said all info will be available come March (this means that kids who have already opted for Ks5 ICT will not being doing the course they signed up for).  The good news is that there are only 2 compulsory units, not 4. More info about the course can be found here. It looks like D* is also coming in.

Apart from sorting out my GCSEs I also had a good chat with webanywhere who run our moodle.  Think I have negotiated an upgrade to 2.0 which will have a working google edu  integration. I have been waiting for that for a year. We have also got the SIMs integration and I would highly recommend it.

Another stop was schoolcomms, who we use in school, but not to its true potential.  It links seemlessly with SIMs and therefore enables you to email, parents of classes, teachers of classes, pupils of classes etc.  It also can send home virtual reward postcards. Send texts etc. The new finance module (which was reasonably priced) enables you to collect and manage money for trips, funraising, or anything else that requires parents to pay money.  It makes tracking and monitoring the collection of money extremely easy. As it is linked to SIMs you have contact info as well so can send payment reminders etc home.

The other stand that really caught my eye and was shown to me by some other Cornish colleagues was the Avantis LearnPads.  Android tablets with manageable software packages that are subject specific and totally customisable that get activated and locked in, when a pupil scans a QR Code outside your classroom.  How amazing is that!  Kids just scan a code and all the software they need is then accessible on the pad. Rumour has it that the newer version of the pad will be £195 and run Icecream Sandwich and you can set them to be unlocked when/if a child takes it home.  Will be doing a lot more research into this one.

I have to say though that the best thing about BETT is meeting other colleagues, having time to chat and see what everyone else is doing and or struggling with and sharing those little gems that are hidden away in stands around the halls. 

 

 

In response to an email I sent my Head regarding GCSE Computer science possibly being considered for E-Bacc he replied (and he may well have nicked it himself!)

..when Gove speaks to DT conference last term, he decides that DT will continue to exist and it is suddenly very important; when speaking to Music conference he again promises to protect Music place and will ensure its taught to KS4; today, when speaking to ICT he adds it to the Eng Bacc?...Wonder what will happen when if he is invited to talk to the Melton Mowbray Beekeeping Society...

So before I panic, change everything that we do well in ICT at our school, I may just wait until the dust settles a bit.

 

I unintentionally caused a bit of a debate on twitter last night and sometimes 140 characters can be quite limiting so thought it best to explain in detail why the school has asked me to look into a GCSE ICT option instead of the Nationals.

Firstly to put it into context.  Our School runs a 3 year KS4, with a twist.  All pupils take ICT (OCR Nationals) in Y9 and Y10 and then can opt to do more ICT in Y11.  At the same time they have opted for other subjects to complete in Y9 and Y10 and can then opt again in Y11 for 2 more subjects. This is changing next academic year to a 3 year KS4, opting in Y8.

The fact the current Y9 finish OCR Nationals at the end of Y10 is one of the key issues.  They are currently working on the old spec.  However, the school can't cash them in for the league tables until they are in Y11, at which point it will be 2014 and the course will be worth nothing (not to the kids but to the schools results). 

Also the school feels (rightly or wrongly) that the ship has sailed on the Voc courses and even though they will adapt to meet the linear requirements and add an exam element the confidence in them has gone.  Also you will only be able to 'cash' in two equivalencies and no matter how many GCSEs they are equivalent too, they will only be worth one GCSE.

So my plan is:

• Switch current Y9 onto new spec OCR Nationals (if possible) so that their grades still count in 2014
• Offer a GCSE option to current Y8 going into Y9 (this will be a three year course with Y9 being a foundation course)
• Offer Y10 going into Y11 a GCSE option instead of more National units
• Run new OCR Nationals level 1 course over 3 years for our vocational pathways pupils
• Also have a core course for Y9 as well that is 2 hours a fortnight.  Thought I might do some codeacademy stuff with them :)

All I need to do now is find the correct GCSE course for us a a school and an ICT team.

So far it is looking like the Edexcel course as it seems to have the most relevant and up to date exam questions, although I am aware that the controlled assessment is still a tad frustrating in content, topic and tasks.

 

 

My Nexus S upgraded to icecreamsandwich during the holidays and since then I have been stumbling upon the changes... I would RTFM but haven't found one yet :)

So in no particular order, this is what I have found out....

Contacts - this went CRAZY.  

It seemed to pick up all your social media accounts and put them all in one place... Guess that's why they changed the name to 'people' instead of contacts. Fortunately this is all fully customisable and you can sort out the contacts into a more user friendly way.  If you have a G+ account it also links this to your profile so you get to see all that info and updates as well. I reckon if you had a lot of followers in twitter this could be quite a shock the first time you open it.

It also seems to be able to link your contacts to their twitter account so that you can also see their latest tweet. Also you can see the google chat status, thus enabling you to use that as well.  

The other great feature is the 'favourites' where you can add your favourite contacts and it also lists your most frequently contacted.  

Overall, once you get over the shock of opening 'people' for the first time, this upgrade is cool.

 

Screen capturing

As you can see already you now have the ability to capture what you see on the screen...Found this by accident!  All you need to do is press the vol control and the on/off button simultaneously and the screenshot is captured and placed in the gallery in a new folder called 'screenshots'. This is a great feature and I have used a lot...for this post anyway :)

 

Camera

The UI for the camera has changed and takes a bit of getting used to.  There are three icons which now appear on the bottom left.  Two are pretty self explainatory, the third wasn't and is new. The new icon is for panoramic pictures and it works really well.  You just start the panoramic option and then slowly pan across the panorama you want to take. Click once to start it, then click when you have finished.  The app then stitches it all together.

Our school is expanding its Facebook pages. Not only do we have a main school page, we also now have a surf academy page, English dept page, and I'm setting up the ICT dept page at the moment,

What I wanted to do with the ICT page was link it to the @ICTbude twitter account that has been gathering dust and start re-tweeting interesting tech based tweets. However working out where to get a consistent and comprehensive source of tweets was proving problematic.
Then I remembered Flipboard and it's ability to select areas of interest to follow. Now I have added the ICT twitter account to Flipboard it is easy to retweet all the tech news that I want, which will now auto post to the Facebook page.

I could probably do this by linking RSS feeds to Facebook, but by doing it this way I can select the stories and posts that I think are interesting.

The school got me an iPAd2 to learn how to use it and how best to integrate them into the classroom.  I am a lucky man.  I have downloaded loads of apps and been playing loads.  This week however, today and yesterday, the iPad became a fantastic tool for learning.

Yesterday, I had my Y11 class all day for a Flexi-learning day and we were working on spreadsheets.  One of the girls in the class was home ill with pleurisy, and her best friend in the class works pants without her.  So I used my iPad to skype the poorly girl and for two whole hours they chatted away and got on with their work.  It was ace.  Like she was in the room! Today they did the same thing.  

Also today, I run an APPS4Good course and one of the teams was missing a key member, so we skyped him...he was on holiday in Egypt, they not only had a chat about their work, but also had a group interview with our in house reporter to explain what app they were building and why...How cool is that?  I personally think he also wanted to show off how blue the sky was and the 30 degree temps he was enjoying!  But hey, he was willing to give up an hour of his holiday, plug into the hotel wifi and connect up with us.

Starting to now think of other ways of using skype... because it is portable on the iPad and we have wifi in the school, you can do guided tours for prospective parents. More kids can skype into lessons without having to be attached to a PC and can 'sit' at their desks...

 

 

This week SLT have been focussing on Sixth Form lessons and have been popping in on random lessons for a look to see what is going on.  I decided that I wanted to use something like John Davitts Random Activity Generator.  However, I needed to customise the 'DO' bit so it was relevant to the topic the sixth formers were studying - The dry and boring topic of Search Engines, types, differences and how to use them. However I still wanted the AS bit.  

Time was precious so I wasn't quite sure how best to go about this, then I remembered this site: classtools.net and their wonderful random name selector. The beauty of this was that they can take any text based info and can be embedded.  So I quickly created a name generator with the 'DO' lists and saved the embed code.  Then created another one with the 'AS' activities which I 'borrowed' from the RAG engine (I hope that's not going to get me into trouble).  Both codes were then embedded into a moodle course so that I could use it in the lesson.  One of the things you do need to be aware of is that the fruit machine option doesn't cope well with long sentences, however the typewriter does.  

Here are my first two tables:

DO

Click here for larger version

AS

Click here for larger version

 

All I can say is that my Y13 class fully embraced the task.  One group is still busy working on their playdough version of using keywords.  Another group did a very good non-dominant hand display on the differences between webcrawlers and meta search engines and below is the same topic as a Dear John letter...

Dear Google,

 I'm terribly sorry I had to do this through a letter, I would use Google+ but no one uses that, this didn't need to be done, but I wanted to... This note will be the last memory you'll ever have of me, Im done with you because I decided to be with a superior engine, Dog pile, my bad... Don't let it get you all upset inside; it was completely your fault, no doubt about it. It is because you suck, yes, that’s right, you suck, I want more results then just your biased Google results, and I want Yahoo, Bing and other search engine results, all in one!

 You'd be much better off finding a person that can handle your boring existence, the way that you correct what people are trying to say, ALL THE TIME and the way you constantly give people as many options and results as possible, even if it doesn’t make any sense.

 I'm glad this is done and we're going separate directions for good, and no I am not feeling lucky. I think you'll find someone who constantly searches for simple things like stupid pictures of Cats; I’m off to greener pastures, searching for complicated things, like literature and scientology.

 

Good riddance, David, Jack and Mike

 

P.S. Who’s Pete?

 

All I can say is that it was great fun to do and that I'll be doing it again soon.

Haven't posted for ages, but seeing as I am on a train for a few hours thought I'd do a bit.

Yesterday and today were out Year 6 induction days, where the new cohort get a chance to experience life in the secondary school. I had 2 ICT sessions. This year I wasn't sure what I was going to do, normally I do a session on storybird, but wanted to try something else.

I recently watched the TED video by Sugars Mitra on ' children as self educators' and decided to base my lessons loosely on that.

I borrowed the June 2011 Geography paper and found a suitable higher level question. It was all about plate tectonics. I then turned it into a simple worksheet.

The idea behind the lesson was to get the students to work in random groups of four and only use one PC. This was an important factor as it meant that the groups had to interact with each other to answer the questions.

They were allowed to use the internet and any software to answer the questions.

What really surprised me was the enthusiasm they showed in trying to answer the questions as well a how well they worked in groups with kids they had only met the day before.

The majority of the groups used powerpoint as a means to record their answers, but nearly all of them answered the questions in varying amounts of detail. I showed their answers to a Geography teacher, and not only was he impressed, he wondered why his Year 8 class couldn't produce work to the same level.

This was interesting as I am fully aware that in secondary schools we seem to be able to turn kids off learning. It becomes a chore and not as much fun. (I am also aware that this is a sweeping generalisation).

Why should a group of Y6 students in a new environment, with new people, be able to produce better work than Y8 students?

As an experiment in learning this hasn't finished, my colleague will be chatting with the classes again in september to see how much they can recall. in the TED video Sugata had a 76% pass rate inn the GCSE question when they worked in groups and 2 months later when they sat a written version if the same question they got the same pass rate. That's pretty powerful! It will be interesting to see the recall of these students in September.