Stuart Ridout

Errrrm security HBSC?

Fri, 27 Aug 2010 12:24:44 +0100

I was in the bank today with my wife at the counter service section. A girl goes to the next counter, hands over a card to withdraw money. The member of staff asks why she doesn’t use the machine but the girl says she’s exceeded her daily limit.

The member of staff asks for her to sign a withdrawal slip. The signature doesn’t match.

The member of staff asks if she has any other ID. She doesn’t.

The member of staff asks her to fill out her date of birth and memorable name. She gets the name wrong and goes through a few but still doesn’t get it right.

The girl then says to leave it as she’ll borrow the money from a friend at which point the member of staff says that she’ll authorise the withdrawal.

Errrm. What’s the point of all those questions and systems if you don’t stick to them?

Has everyone gone ga-ga for Google?

Wed, 25 Aug 2010 17:18:00 +0100

Recently I have seen increasing mention of Google Apps and its use in schools in my Twitter feed from my personal learning network. More and more educators are looking to switch their whole school across to using Google Docs instead of Microsoft Office, GMail instead of Outlook and Google Apps with single sign-on instead of multiple login accounts for the various services.

Why have we suddenly gone Google mad and is it really better than the alternative?

A major advantage for Google Apps is that it is free … ish. It will still cost money in terms of people’s time to switch over and it will take time to administer the Google Apps set up, to create user passwords and to reset those passwords when they are forgotten. It is important to remember that free does not always mean free because of the ‘on-costs’ associated with it. However, it is probably less than the licensing costs for Microsoft Office and the relevant upgrade fees.

Another aspect of Google Apps is its collaborative nature. We seem to see more schools getting students to work collaboratively and indeed working collaboratively across different schools. This certainly fits in the Google model much better and sharing is easily accomplished using Google Apps. Historically this has not been the case with the Microsoft Office suite which has been much more single-user centric. This has been rectified with Sharepoint 2010 and the Office 2010 suite although this would come at extra expense.

The main sticking points for me when it comes to the switch are connection and features.

Google Docs’ strength is also its biggest weakness. You can access your documents from any Internet enabled computer, but if you have no Internet then you have no access to your documents. As a business tool this could be disastrous as you could have an office of staff twiddling their thumbs as you would have no access to software to even create new documents. Google have phased out their offline access to Docs so you could be left with nothing. This could equally happen using Microsoft Office if your network goes down but you would still be able to create new documents and it would not matter if the Internet was down. With the Google solution you would be scuppered either way and often the lack of Internet is out of your control, as was the case of a colleague who lost school Internet due to a workman cutting through a cable.

Although Google Docs has a wide range of features available it does seem to lack some of the more advanced features of its desktop counterparts. Although I could find mention of mail merge features on the Internet I couldn’t find anything related to mail merge on Google Docs when I searched. This is a big problem for schools where mail merged letters are commonplace. Google Docs also lacks the rich templates and presentation tools that are available in Microsoft Office. Some may say this is an advantage as many people overuse those features and end up with poor presentation as opposed to the clean Google Docs output but this choice is lacking in Docs. The Insert Image from Google Search function in GDocs is slick but when wrapping text I couldn’t find any options to increase the wrap distance as it was too close to the image.

Text wrapping in Google Docs

Google Spreadsheet is a feature rich application and has all features that most basic spreadsheet users would need. It does lack PivotTables which I use quite frequently and I couldn’t find a way to change the zoom percentage to view large spreadsheets at a glance. The formula list on Google Docs is way beyond anything I would need and the graphing tools are simple enough for most basic users.

My ‘features’ concerns are not limited to lack of features but addition of new ones. Google has a tendency to add new things in with little warning and this is not generally a problem for the tech-savvy user but those who are more wary of change may be a little irked by the changes. You can often disable new features and temporarily return to old versions but users may not be aware of this or know how to do so.

Am I ready to make the change?

Personally I wouldn’t be comfortable making the change to cloud based Office applications on a large scale across a school. My main reason for this is that I do not believe there is enough stability or bandwidth in the Internet connections that are provided to many schools, especially large schools or those in remote locations. If I were looking to reduce operating costs for a school I think I would rather go down the OpenOffice route so I still had a desktop client.

I would certainly make sure that students were aware of Google Docs as I think it provides excellent facilities for those who don’t have Microsoft Office at home. I also think it is important that students learn to use a range of tools so they are not slaves to Microsoft and are aware of a range of applications so they are able to select the most appropriate ones for their needs.

#newleaders appeal - Please help!

Mon, 09 Aug 2010 10:09:15 +0100

So a while back we asked the wonderful people of Twitter to post their #newleaders tweets to help people who are taking on a new leadership role. The tweets came flooding in and since this time I have been working to strip out RTs, decipher meaning where people are limited to 140 chars and categorise the tweets to organise into an eBook.

There is a problem though, the #newleaders tweets are very different from the #movemeon tweets which could be summarised quite neatly in 140 chars. Whilst there are loads of #newleaders tweets there is a lack of depth in the book. So I am appealing for some short stories/anecdotes to use in the book.

I would love it if a few people could write a short passage (around 250 words) talking about a particular leadership experience they have had. We can anonymise them and we don’t want tales that would personally identify anyone.

We have split the tweets into these areas that might give you ideas

Making Changes/Change Management
Communication
Decision Making
Delegation
General Tips
Meetings
New role (advice for the first term of a new role)
Perceptions of others
Professional Development
School improvement

To contribute your story please email newleaderstweets@gmail.com and please tweet and RT this!

Thank you in advance!

Guilt Free 5 Minute Microwave Chocolate Cake

Thu, 05 Aug 2010 17:09:00 +0100

In a complete departure from the normal content on my blog I am trying my hand as a TV chef. This is a delicious guilt free (200-225 calories) chocolate cake that you can cook in the microwave in 5 minutes with minimal preparation.

Sounds too good to be true? Watch the video above!

Exciting new features for teachers in plannerLIVE! with video demo

Sun, 01 Aug 2010 18:00:00 +0100

Since I started teaching, students have had problems with homework - either getting it wrong … or not doing it at all! Students have homework diaries or planners but those students who need most help don’t fill them in properly or forget them. One solution is to use a VLE but for many staff the VLE has too many features for them and is too complex or not fit for purpose.

I started writing plannerLIVE! five years ago after using a message board for online homework in a previous school. In those five years I have made improvements and have now released brand new features that make it a brilliant tool for any school to use for homework. The best thing is that it is completely FREE!

The main guiding principles for plannerLIVE! were that it MUST be EASY for any teacher to use and there shouldn’t be any barriers for parents or students. As a result we don’t force parents or students to log-in and they can search the homework database without worrying about forgetting passwords (which can be a support nightmare for schools).

Searching homework

Searching homework is incredibly easy for students or parents to use. There are a number of drop down boxes and they can choose as many or few search criteria as they want.

Homework automatically disappears from the search listings when it expires so if users want to find a homework that they haven’t handed in they can click the “Search Past Assignments” to find old assignments.

Adding homework

Adding homework to the system has to be easy and I genuinely haven’t met any teachers who can’t use the system … it’s THAT EASY!

You fill in the form and it’s automagically added to the main search listings. The teacher doesn’t need to do anything else to make it happen.

You can also add web links or upload worksheets into the homework page by using the relevant buttons.

Don’t reinvent the wheel!

One of the main aims for plannerLIVE! was to save teacher time. Teachers are incredibly busy with more pressure being put on them to raise improvement. The Curriculum Library feature allows you to share and re-use homework assignments from other teachers. This allows the spreading of best practice and save you time!

Electronic hand-in and online questions

Last summer we introduced new features so students could register and are able to hand-in homework online or ask questions about the homework by sending a message to the teacher. Now we have hundreds of pieces of work handed in online.

New for 2010: Management overview

One of the features we were asked for a lot was a management overview of the homework showing what homework had been assigned and when by different members of staff.

We have now rolled out this feature on plannerLIVE! and members of staff who have been given the correct access rights can view a breakdown by subject or staff. By clicking the relevant number, you can view the homework that has been set in a particular month by any individual member of staff or in a subject.

New for 2010: School sub-units

A number of schools now separate groups of students into organisational units. These are different for different schools and could include

Houses
Halls
Bands
Campuses
or any other term a school uses

Schools have now got complete control over these sub-groupings and can name them to ensure minimal confusion for users.

The right price: FREE!

The best thing about plannerLIVE! is that it is completely FREE! No restrictions, no limits. Schools can register and start using the system immediately.

To sign-up your school visit http://www.plannerlive.com/new

Write just like me - iFontMaker Review

Wed, 28 Jul 2010 00:18:00 +0100

Admit it, you’ve needed a ‘handwritingy-looking’ font, trawled the web and then either given up or used the dreaded Comic Sans. What you really wanted was to use your own handwriting as a font … right?

Personalised handwriting fonts can cost $20 or more depending on the complexity of the font and your handwriting. Now it is quick and easy for you to create your own font using iFontMaker for iPad. You download the app for your iPad and you’re good to go.

The app takes you through the process step by step working through each of the characters needed in the font set. All you need to do is draw the letter, number or symbol using your finger. You can then type a sentence in the application to test what it looks like, re-do any letters you’re not happy with and create the font. It’s uploaded to the web and you can email a link and download it to your computer.

There are a variety of ways to create your letters, using a brush, caligraphy pen or a pencil … and you can vary the width of the output to create a fine or thick font. You can create a whole font in 5 minutes it really is THAT easy.

You can extend the font set beyond the standard characters and can include accented characters and other more ‘exotic’ symbol such as the Euro symbol in the extended Latin set. You are even able to create Japanese font characters using the extensive application.

It is a little more expensive than many apps, at £4.99 on the UK App Store or $6.99 on the US App Store but it is well worth the money as you can create a whole range of fonts and it is great for adults and children.

iFontMaker is a clever and different type of app to most of the others that are available and is a great way to show off your iPad to your friends!

Key information

Publisher: The 2TTF
Cost: £3.99/$6.99
Hardware: iPad only

… and if you really want to be able to write like me you can download my scrawly handwriting font by clicking below!

Hands On with The Early Edition on the iPad

Sun, 25 Jul 2010 00:00:00 +0100

We all like news, we all like bed. What could be better than an easy way to catch up with the news whilst in bed?

The Early Edition is a brilliant app for the iPad priced at £2.99 from the iTunes Store. It is a aggregator that pulls in news stories from all your favourite websites and presents them in a newspaper format.

The best thing about this is that the dynamic newspaper updates every time a new story is published on your RSS feeds and include links to videos from the news sites themselves. Think of the moving newspapers from Harry Potter!

The app is REALLY easy to use and the recent update means you don’t even have to know the RSS feed address. You enter the website address and it searches for the feed address for you.

Want to create specific supplements to really get that Sunday newspaper experience? You can now group your stories into sections e.g. Tech News and assign certain blogs or sites to those sections so you can browse specific types of news.

This is a five star app and is definitely worth the £2.99 cost.

If you need any more convincing of how great this app is, watch the video hands-on review below.

Stantonbury Campus - a very special school

Fri, 23 Jul 2010 09:35:47 +0100

It’s finally come; today is my last day at Stantonbury Campus. It seems so long ago that I got the job at Ousedale School and I’m really looking forward to starting in September but I will miss Stantonbury … a lot!

Stantonbury Campus is different from other schools I’ve experienced. Not because there are nearly 2800 students on site, not because students don’t wear uniform, not because they call teachers by their first name, but because of the quality of relationships with students. Stantonbury’s ethos is about equal value and determined optimism and this is at the heart of everything they say and do. This equality also applies to staff; it doesn’t matter whether you are a teacher, cleaner, secretary or the principal … everyone treats each other with respect.

I don’t think students are always aware of how lucky they are. The school has excellent facilities, well equipped ICT suites, a swimming pool, theatre, athletics track but the real asset at Stantonbury is the staff who work incredibly hard for students to ensure they achieve. Students receive an interesting and varied curriculum and the cross-curricular Rich Tasks that students complete in Key Stage 3 are something to be proud of.

I’ve had a fantastic and dedicated ICT teaching team who are committed to students and achievement. They are hardworking and produce excellent outcomes. They are also an incredibly friendly and caring team who take care of each other and help each other out.

I’ll miss Stantonbury Campus as it was where I got my education about working in partnership with students rather than teaching to them. It really is a special place and I hope to take some of the ethos with me wherever I go in the future.

Logos quiz from TeachMeet Milton Keynes

Sat, 10 Jul 2010 10:53:00 +0100

In the words of the Big Breakfast from 1994 … “Don’t phone, it’s just for fun!”

We ran a table quiz at TeachMeet Milton Keynes to win Camtasia licences that had been generously donated by TechSmith. Congrats to the winners.

A few people have asked for the quiz so they could use it at school. So here it is, if you want the answers you’ll need to DM me your email address (my Twitter name is stuartridout) and I can send you the answers.

Download the logo quiz

Implementing electronic behaviour management

Sat, 10 Jul 2010 10:41:17 +0100

“Bees!” by Todd Huffman on Flickr

Learning is paramount in school. I know it is an obvious thing to say but it’s easy to forget and to get caught up with the day-to-day things like behaviour. Of course, if you have good teaching then it usually leads to good behaviour which allows outstanding learning, but that’s for another post at another time!

It’s easy to let your behaviour tracking system become more important than the behaviour itself and you can forget why you have the tracking system in place. Most schools use a paper based system (in my current school it is the yellow sheet, in my previous the green sheet) and these sheets of paper move about via pigeon holes and clutter up desks.

The problems with a paper based system are:

too many sheets of paper creating an unmanageable paper overload
it takes too long for actions to be carried out and the original incident becomes irrelevant
students can get so many yellow sheets that it can become a ‘badge of honour’ to collect them
it is easy for people to fill them in without taking any action and shifting the ‘teflon sheet’ to the pastoral team

The biggest problem with any behaviour tracking system is that it is easy to forget what the point of the system is! It is easy for the system to become an administrative nightmare that records actions but doesn’t effect change in students. It is important to record all actions that are carried out but …

… behaviour management systems exists to help students modify their behaviour so they can get back to the most important thing … LEARNING!

The next logical step is to move to an electronic system that links into your schools MIS. Most major schools MIS have a product that accomplishes this but there are external providers that will link into your MIS. We use Facility CMIS from Serco and are currently rolling out their electronic behaviour system using ePortal.

So far the roll out has gone extremely well and we are seeing more positive behaviours recorded centrally than negatives and this will be incredibly useful to share with students. If you are considering moving over to electronic behaviour management here are a few learning points that you will need to consider but we didn’t think about!

Everyone who comes into contact with young people will need access to the system including librarians, lunchtime supervisors, school nurse and other associate staff members.
All of these people will need access to a computer to record these behaviour events and need to be able to do this as part of their job. When, where and how does a lunchtime supervisor record an electronic incident?
Can you analyse the data in the way you want it to? We have halls (or houses) but our behaviour management system only allows analysis by years and subjects. This is a bit of a pain for us and we are finding a workaround.
Is the tutor aware of information throughout the process? It is very easy for the tutor to get missed out of behaviour management processes. The system we use puts the tutor at the heart of behaviour.
Eventually this information will be accessible online to parents. How are you going to ensure that spelling, grammar, tone and language is appropriate and acceptable to show to parents?

There are workarounds and ways to make all of these work but it is worth thinking about these as you prepare to move over to an electronic system. Already we have seen great success and I’m sure it will radically improve the way we manage behaviour in my school.

Are Facebook fan pages paving the way for viruses?

Thu, 03 Jun 2010 08:56:00 +0100

In the last few years society has become much more computer safety and virus savvy. That’s not to say that all viruses, spyware and malware have disappeared off the radar but people are starting to question content a little bit more. Many more people don’t open attachments from unknown senders although it is still easy to get caught by an email hoax.

The latest fashion of fan pages on Facebook is starting to erode all that good work on content awareness as they force people to click a link or Like button before they know what they are getting into. This is becoming more common and the characteristics are virus like.

How it works

1. The fan page publishes itself to your friend’s profile page and therefore shows up in your news feed.

2. You click on the “Hilarious” link to find out what it’s all about

3. You cannot view the content without signing up or clicking the Like button

4. You then get access to the picture BUT the page also publishes itself to your profile page and your friends’ news feeds

5. They click the link and the cycle starts all over again!

What’s the problem?

Some might say that this is no problem, it’s marketing and publicity. I have no problem with the pages themselves but the method used is desensitising users to ‘mindless’ clicking. There is no concept of questioning the content, it forces you to click/accept/like the page before you know what you’re getting.

This technique will lead us back to where we were a few years ago where people will click anything that is presented to them! It would be quite easy to spoof these pages and send them out as Facebook styled emails to get people to give up their Facebook passwords or download viruses/malware to their computer.

More information

See this BBC News article about ‘clickjacking’ (c/o twitter.com/xannov)

Hands On with Wired Magazine on the iPad

Tue, 01 Jun 2010 08:35:37 +0100

I heard all the buzz about the Wired Magazine iPad app so downloaded it for myself to see if it warranted the hype. Here’s my short tour and review of the online magazine.

My iPad experience ... so far!

Sun, 30 May 2010 10:39:00 +0100

It’s no secret that I’m an Apple guy! I don’t want to be labelled as a fanboi but I love my iPhone, iMac and my MacBook Pro.

The big question for me was did I need an iPad with this much Mac in my life?
The answer was NO!

The next question was did I WANT an iPad with this much Mac in my life?
The answer was maybe.

I think I did extremely well resisting a US import of the iPad. This was partly due to the cost but also due to the fact that it wouldn’t be long until it was launched in the UK (until Apple moved the goalposts … grrrrrrrr!) By the time it launched in the UK I had almost talked myself out of getting it with phrases like “it’s just a toy”, “it doesn’t do evereything a computer does” and “it’s expensive for a leisure device”.

These were the arguments my wife used back at me when I was thinking about buying one.

The little dance

When it comes to tech purchases my wife and I have a procedure that must be adhered to. It’s not written down anywhere; it’s just known!

The steps to tech purchase are …

I express interest
She says that she is not interested and comes up with a counter argument (even though I know she is interested!
I leave it for a bit. This is important as if I try to force the issue the dance is over.
She decides that it’s ‘ok’ but still too pricey/we don’t need it/the one we have works fine/we should be saving* (* delete as appropriate)
We go into town to ‘have a look’ - (at this stage we both know it’s a done deal)
She becomes much more interested and decides that we should buy it
End of little dance.

The beauty of the system is that she gets to do the ‘responsible wife’ thing whilst indulging her ‘inner geek’! She also gets to feel like she made the decision … and I let her think that! Everyone’s a winner!

The iPad dance

The iPad was an extreme situation. This went beyond the protocol above and included extra steps. We were in the car and driving home before she decided that we should buy it. We turned around and parked up and headed straight for the Apple Store.

The purchase

We headed back to the Apple Store for the second time and there was a queuing system outside for people who wanted to actually purchase an iPad rather than just play on one.

We joined the queue and were shortly introduced to Jonny who would be taking us through the purchase. We were then ushered into a special area for purchasers where you could ask any questions before purchase. We when then escorted upstairs to wait by the accessories section whilst Jonny brought the device up to us. Here you could contemplate which of the cases you wanted to buy.

After a few minutes we were walking out of the store with a shiny iPad.

Set up

This was pretty much the same as an iPhone or iPod Touch. Connect to iTunes, sync, bam! We bought a 3G iPad so we had to set up an account for 3G data. We chose O2 and I think the rates are quite reasonable and you’re not tied into a contract.

Play time

Then it’s time to play. The device is gorgeous and it’s a joy to browse the web on it. Web pages seem richer than they do on a desktop or laptop. I suppose it’s because you don’t have all the other clutter on screen e.g. dock, Start menu, other windows.

YouTube is great and it becomes more social as it’s easier to turn it round and show it to someone or browse with a partner as it’s large enough that you can both see clearly.

I’ve purchased iWork but haven’t done anything with it yet as I’m too busy having fun to work!

The onscreen keyboard takes some getting used to as the backspace key is in a different place to the iPhone and I seem to be hitting the i key instead of the o key. That’s probably just something which will be fine once you’re used to it.

In summary, everything seems richer on the device. Email is beautiful and the web seems to ‘flow’ more seamlessly.

I’ve utilised RSS feeds a lot more with apps like The Early Edition which bring all your favourite blogs and sites into a newspaper style format. I haven’t seen a single Flash Lego brick yet but I don’t suppose I visit that many Flash sites.

My final question is would I return it and get my money back? No way!

Exciting new Storybird features for teachers

Sat, 22 May 2010 11:01:00 +0100

For those of you who haven’t see it, Storybird is a great website when you can write and publish electronic books using artwork supplied by a range of artists. If you want more information you can read about it in this post. Storybird is brilliant but the difficulty occurs when trying to collaborate and keep track of a whole class set of users and their work.

Thankfully Storybird have created some brilliant new class management features that are being launched next week. You can now add classes which provide you with a safe environment where students can collaborate, discuss and share work without sharing with the whole work.

Class Management

Once you have set up a class you can either invite existing users (who have already registered) into the class or you can register students on their behalf. Safety is important to Storybird so usernames can not personally identify students e.g. contain a student’s surname.

Assignments

It was often difficult with Storybird to ‘collect in’ work for marking. I did this by getting students to email me links to their published Storybird books but that didn’t work if they hadn’t made the book public. Now you can set the class an assignment and it will collate them all in one place for easy marking. The student books remain private from the world but students in the class can see each other’s work. It will even email users when the assignment is due so they can ensure it is handed in.

Student Management

Passwords are often an issue for students, especially on external websites where the teacher has no administrative rights and you rely on the ‘forgotten password’ functionality. The new class management functions allow you to reset a student’s password if he forgets it.

All the rest …

There are loads of other features and tweaks that make the experience a little easier for students (and the general user population) including the a feature request by my students to change the name that appears on the front of the book.

Pssst! I’ll let you into a secret!

Now I’m sure you’d love to have a go with the new teacher functionality to try it out for yourself. It doesn’t launch till next week but if you go to http://storybird.com/classes/create/ you can have a go yourself. Just don’t tell them that I told you!

Are you rounding up student answers? Teach like a Champion.

Wed, 12 May 2010 22:22:00 +0100

“Deep in thought” by RPatts on Flickr

An essential part of being a better teacher, manager, student or leader is the ability to review and refine your practice and to be open to new ideas. I am currently reading a book “Teach Like a Champion: 49 techniques that put students on the path to college” by Doug Lemov. Lemov is managing director of a group of ‘Uncommon Schools’ who are independently run charter schools aiming to be high performing regardless of social profile of the students.

Some may consider the advice in the teaching manual to be for new and inexperienced teachers but there is something there for everyone who is keen to refine their craft and improve the performance of their students.

Lemov has sought out and observed high performing teachers, especially those from schools whose level of social deprivation is preventing students from achieving. He has identified common themes and techniques that can be applied in your classroom now and will improve performance. These have been organised into areas:

Setting High Academic Expectations
Planning that Ensures Academic Achievement
Structuring and Delivering Your Lessons
Engaging Students in Your Lessons
Creating a Strong Classroom Culture
Setting and Maintaining High Behaviour Expectations
Building Character and Trust

Within these seven areas are 49 techniques, each with catchy names (Precise Praise, Sweat the Details, Right is Right), simple explanations and successful case studies. I am part way through the book but a technique that grabbed me in Setting High Academic Expectations is Right is Right. This is my summary of that section.

Right is Right

This section is about having high expectations for ‘correctness’ in the classroom. A partially correct answer is not good enough in the high achieving classroom. There are a number of ways that teachers can ensure that students are always fully correct and are achieving the highest standards.

1. Hold out for all the way

Teachers try to encourage students and stay positive but their rounding up of answers lulls students into a false sense of security. Consider the situation

Teacher: Katie, how will the introduction of computers into the factory affect the workers?

Katie: Well, they won’t be very happy!

Teacher: Right, they won’t be very happy as the new technology could mean that they would lose their jobs.

The teacher has ‘rounded up’ Katie’s answer here and set a low standard of ‘correctness’. Katie may feel happier and more confident but this confidence is misplaced as she would not get the marks in an exam situation. This situation is all too familiar in the classroom; it’s important that Katie is told that she is ‘almost there’ but that she is not completely correct. The teacher can improve Katie’s performance in the final exam by using simple techniques.

The teacher should praise the student but prompt them and assist them in expanding their answer to be fully correct. They can do this by using phrases such as

“You’re getting there. Can you expand that answer?”
“That’s part of the solution. Can you complete it?”
“Can you develop that answer further?”
“Okay, but there’s a bit more to this answer than that”

2. Answer the question

Students can often answer the question they WANT to answer rather than the question that is being asked. Quite often they can get away with that as the teacher is delighted that they have learned something and can recall it, but the teacher should stick to their guns and insist that the question asked should be answered.

Example

Teacher: Who can tell me what a high-level language is?

Tim: C++ is a high-level language.

Teacher: Thank you Tim but C++ is an example. I am looking for a definition of what a high-level language is.

3. Right answer, right time

We’ve all had the keen student who want to demonstrate their understanding by jumping ahead of the question that you asked. This is fine for that student but it doesn’t help the other students in the class who need the process to be broken down into the manageable chunks that you originally planned. It also creates the impression that the pace of understanding is much faster than it really is.

Effective teachers should tactfully but forcefully ask the student to explain the NEXT step, not the whole process. They should then carry on as they originally planned the delivery of the material. This is not to say that if you should not move ahead if the whole class has genuinely understood the concept faster than you expected.

4. Use of technical vocabulary

This final point is about getting teachers to not only use technical vocabulary in the classroom but to expect it back from students and not ‘round up’ the vocabulary. Great teachers should insist on precise technical vocabulary.

In Lemov’s book he illustrates this with video clips, one of which shows a maths teacher asking a student about how ordered pairs of co-ordinates work. The student answers that “the x-axis comes first and then the y-axis”. Many teachers would accept this answer as it is or ‘round up’ and say “That’s right, the x co-ordinate comes first and then the y co-ordinate”. In this scenario the student probably wouldn’t even realise that their technical vocabulary was wrong. The teacher in the video clip questions the student to coax the correct vocabulary out of them and then insists on them answering the question in full using the correct technical vocabulary.
.

Summary

Regardless of whether you are new to teaching or have been teaching for a number of years, “Teach like a champion” allows you to identify the little things that make a big difference in the classroom. I have already used some of the points in my classroom and will be using some of these suggestions for staff when observing lessons for professional development and mentoring.

Teach Like A Champion: 49 Techniques That Put Students On The Path To College (Doug Lemov) is available from Amazon.co.uk

~~RRP: £18.99~~
Sale Price (at time of publishing): £12.34

Amazon also have a live preview where you can read a sample of the book before you purchase.

Do you like this? Engaging learners with Facebook

Thu, 22 Apr 2010 10:25:00 +0100

No matter how much you deny it, Facebook is more interesting than learning as far as many students are concerned. However, we could spice things up a little by mixing the social world of Facebook with the educational content by using some of the new plugins available from the social networking giant.

Mark Zuckerberg launched a number of new ways to integrate your site with Facebook at the F8 conference including the ability to place the Like {thumbs up!} button on your site. This would then show up in the Activity Feed on the user’s Facebook page.

Imagine a situation where a student enjoys a piece of learning content on your VLE and clicks the Like button. This appears in their Facebook friend’s news feed and they click on it and learn something new. This could be a new world where social networking and education intermingle!

How do you start using this TODAY?

It’s easy to use.

1. Just copy the code below and paste it into the page where you want the Like button to appear.

http://example.com” scrolling=”no” frameborder=”0” style=”border:none; width:450px; height:80px”>

2. Change the http://example.com to be the web page address.

3. Hit save and you’re done!

If you are putting this on your blog you can usually modify the template to dynamically generate Step 2. I use tumblr so the code for me is …

{Permalink}” scrolling=”no” frameborder=”0” style=”border:none; width:450px; height:80px”>

The fly in the ointment

The problem with this is that you would not be able to click the Like button anywhere where Facebook is blocked … but it does allow students to engage from home. This will also require that we start to reexamine the place of social networks in schools.

There are a range of configuration options to fine tune how the button appears on your site. For more information visit http://developers.facebook.com/docs/reference/plugins/like

Do you like this? Make sure you click the Like button below!

Tips for new tweeters

Sun, 18 Apr 2010 22:26:00 +0100

I think Twitter is great. I go on about it all the time to everyone I meet and justify my usage as ‘excellent professional development’. Today one of the ICT teachers from my team joined Twitter! Shane Gallaher @shanegallaher signed up.

Apparently I joined Twitter on 14th May 2007. It doesn’t seem like it was that long ago but that’s what http://www.whendidyoujointwitter.com/ tells me. In that time it becomes easy to forget that the network is still growing and there are new users every day. We talk about hashtags and @ replies, DMs and TweetDecks with a carefree attitude and the newbies are sitting scratching their heads.

So I went back to basics and wrote this post to help the newbies make the most of Twitter … quickly!

Step 1: Complete your profile

Nothing is more frustrating that checking out a Twitter follower to find that their profile is empty. Lots of Twitter users will switch off at this point and will not follow ‘empty profile’ users.

Upload a profile picture. It doesn’t need to be a photo (although I like to see who I’m tweeting with) but it should be something different from the default Twitter bird.
Put in your location. Just the general area is fine but people like to know if you are in their town, country or continent!
Fill in your bio. You’ve only got 160 characters so you need to make it snappy and interesting. People like to know what you’re all about and the lack of profile can turn a potential follower off.

Step 2: Post!

People are not going to follow someone who has not posted anything. They don’t know whether you’re interesting or not. You can start by posting

a little hello
what you’re about
what you’re looking for
a couple of interesting links

Step 3: Find people to follow

The beauty of Twitter is that it is a network but you need to follow people before other people will start following you back. If you don’t follow people, nobody will know you’re out there and nobody will see your brilliance.

You can find people to follow by

finding the person who introduced you to Twitter
look to see who they follow and find people from there
looking on a Twitter directory service like http://wefollow.com/ These sites hold directories of users in different categories so you can browse to find the most popular or useful people in your area of interest.

Step 4: Find followers

A lot of people will follow back if you follow them but not everyone will, so don’t be offended! Your follower count may start small but the best way to get more followers is to just use it and that number will grow quickly! Other ways to get more followers are

by getting the person who introduced you to Twitter to put a ‘shout out’ to their Twitter network and ask people to say hello and follow
by posting interesting stuff on Twitter. People will then retweet your tweet (see the Lingo below) and expose other people to your brilliance!

Step 5: Get a client

People start out by using the Twitter website but many move on to use a Twitter client as they find it’s easier. This is a program that usually runs in the background and alerts you when tweets come in. This means you don’t have to keep checking the website and means you can respond to and interact with tweets much more quickly.

There are loads of Twitter clients out there and everyone has their own opinion on which is best but here are a few …

Tweetdeck Adobe AIR client - PC/Mac/Linux - FREE
Seesmic Desktop - Dedicated PC client or Mac/Linux client via Adobe AIR - FREE
Twirl - PC or Mac - FREE
Tweetie - Mac Only

screenshot of TweetDeck

Step 6: Go mobile

Tweet during your downtime. Get a Twitter client for your iPhone, Android phone, Blackberry or other web enabled device to tweet ‘on-the-go’

Step 7: Learn the lingo

One of the hardest parts of being a new Twitter user is knowing what people are going on about all of the time! So here are some of the key terms:

Retweet or RT

If somebody likes what you wrote (or you like what someone else wrote) you can retweet it. This is the Twitter equivalent of forwarding an email. There are two types of RT (old style and new style) and a RT may look a little like this …

This tweet was originally posted by @tombarrett and if you think this is interesting you might choose to follow him.

Hashtag

Sometimes people use a ‘hashtag’ to indicate they are discussing a certain topic. This is useful as it allows you to search for all tweets about that topic. This post uses a hashtag #newleaders which is about leadership tips.

If you click on #newleaders you would be able to view all the tweets about this topic.

DM or Direct Message

Everything you post in your Twitter feed is public (unless it is a protected Twitter account) so you need to be aware of that. If you want to send a private message to someone you can do so by using a direct message or DM.

You can only send a DM to someone who is following you. If you do send a DM to someone make sure you are following them otherwise they can’t DM you back!

@reply or mention

When you reply to someone, the way to do this is to start the message with @username (obviously inserting their username). This won’t mean that the message is private to them but it does highlight it to the person if they look in their ‘mentions’ or ‘@replies’

Web links, link shortening, bit.ly

Tweets are limited to 140 characters so usually people use a web shortening service such as http://bit.ly to shorten any web addresses. Many of the desktop or mobile clients will do this automatically.

Can you afford to integrate free tools into your curriculum?

Fri, 16 Apr 2010 19:21:43 +0100

image courtesy of whartz on Flickr

We all love something for nothing and the range of free web tools is amazing. Schools have ever decreasing budgets and we need to get as much value for money as possible but with free tools closing or moving to subscription models can you afford to integrate them into the curriculum?

TechCrunch are reporting that Ning, the “build your own social network” company will no longer be hosting free Nings. This has been a cause for consternation amongst many educators who had invested time into creating their own social networks for students and classes.

One Twitter user writes …

Is Joel justified in his “bushel of bad karma” or are Ning just protecting their business?

There’s no such thing as a free lunch and we are increasingly finding this on the web. Web owners still have to pay the bills on their accounts, and whilst these bills are small initially when you are writing and launching an amazing web product, the bills grow pretty quickly as your free product takes off!

Your options are :

go ‘freemium’: where you offer a free product with limited features in an effort to encourage people to try the product and move to the fully features free model
go ad supported: integrate adverts into your website using banner adverts and in-line search result adverts (such as those provided by Google)
ask for donations
wait it out to potentially get bought by a big company for a massive sum and make your fortune - even this is not a great option as the nature of the product changes!

The situation we potentially find ourselves in is that amazing new products come online, grow quickly and close down in a short space of time. The problems this cause is lack of continuity in the curriculum for educators and students. Whilst the ICT savvy staff will take to new tools quickly, it takes time to get best use of a product for many teachers and to embed the tool into the curriculum. We can only do this so many times before staff will no longer want to invest their time in software and online tools.

So the big question is “Why aren’t we willing to pay these developers a fair price for their work?”

About three years ago I wrote an online homework system called plannerLIVE! which aims to support parents and students by creating an online homework diary/planner where students and parents could access homework, download worksheets, get links to useful sites to help with a homework and, most importantly, the date the homework is due in.

It was a massive hit at my school, almost eliminated parental complaints re:homework and everybody said how easy it was to use. I thought I was on to a winner and started marketing it to schools but got little interest, although there were a couple of schools who were willing to pay. I changed this to a free model and although there were many more sign-ups, they weren’t using the tool the way I envisaged as a whole school reporting system.

I think this was partly down to the fact that there is less value in a free product.

Some of the reasons for the reluctance to pay could be:

these amazing products have not got to the people who hold the purse strings
the process of buying/paying is logistically too difficult in schools
there just isn’t the money to pay

I don’t believe that the last point has been true in the past (especially in secondary schools) although budgets are tightening so why are we so unwilling to invest in software?

I’ve been a Microsoft Outlook user for some time but ever...

Fri, 16 Apr 2010 12:01:00 +0100

I’ve been a Microsoft Outlook user for some time but ever since I had been a Mac user I’ve found the Outlook Web Access experience to be poor. Anyone who was not an Internet Explorer user was forced to use the Light web application.

Now my school has upgraded to Exchange 2010, we have access to the new Outlook Web App with cross-browser compatibility and a few other improvements. Here is my mini video review!

Microsoft UK Schools Blog

Thu, 15 Apr 2010 15:05:19 +0100

I was excited to see a tweet in my @replies today from the Microsoft UK Education team (@Microsoft_Ed_UK) saying that my Kodu tutorials had been featured in their blog.

The post covers my Kodu tutorials (which I must finish!) and gives a little nod to the “visualising revision” poster too.

You can read the full article at the Microsoft UK Schools Blog