Enterprise March 12, 2007
Posted by Dave Cain in : CPD , add a commentAttended a good Enterprise probationer CPD course run by Scott Lavery today. Some of its’ thunder was perhaps stolen by attending similar CPD courses recently but it nevertheless described how best to link enterprise activities and CfE in the classroom. The session will make me focus more on making the learning opportunities I set up real, relevant and allowing the children more responsibility. I will pro-actively strive to create more cross-curricular links for enterprising activities and not simply wait for the enterprise topic or week to come along. I will also endeavour to make more of a conscious effort to incorporate business into my classroom by arranging workplace visits, asking them to come in for assemblies or even just sharing expertise. All in all, a very enlightning session which certainly made me think more about my teaching and how to improve it.
iMovie and Football after school club February 5, 2007
Posted by Dave Cain in : CPD , add a commentHaving taken a small video of my class during an experiment on magnets I spent a long and shambolic Sunday trying to
a) connect up the video camera to my school ibook (needless to say the ibook couldn`t detect a camera attached!)
b) Dig through my course notes to import and edit the movie together
c) convert the imovie format to quicktime format (75min on “expert settings”)
d) post the finished product onto the Pencaitland Blog
only to find it wouldn`t work …… Fortunately the Man Utd game was excellent and took my mind of my IT limitations. However all was not lost. In East Lothian we have some experts available who are only to willing to lend a hand and after some emails to and from David Gilmour and Ewan MacIntosh (thanks guys) I was able this evening to remedy the situation and the video is finally up on display on the Pencaitland Blog
http://edubuzz.org/blogs/pencaitland/category/primary-three/forces
Please pop in and have a look. On a completely different topic, after numerous weeks of frustration over the adverse weather I was finally able to kick off my football after school club career. I had an absolutely great time with the P6 and P7 boys and the standard of football was far higher than I had anticipated. The highlights were my Cantona style lob over the keeper and getting a boot in the face from one of the P6 boys (can I put him on the tracking sheet for that !!). I`m definitely looking forward to next week although after today I`m already beginning to ache in places I never knew I had …….
iMovie 2 January 30, 2007
Posted by Dave Cain in : CPD, ICT , add a commentAttended the second of the four linked iMovie training courses this evening and this one dealt with the editing part of the software. There was a lot of detail to try and remember and perhaps a bit too much to cram into a one hour slot. However it was never less than informative and I suppose like a lot of ICT courses you really need to just get stuck in and experiment yourself, to become familiar with all the options. I`m looking forward to next weeks installment where I`ll hopefully learn how to add a movie clip to a blog.
iMovie January 23, 2007
Posted by Dave Cain in : CPD , 2commentsHaving had little or no experience with iBooks prior to coming into education (the brewing industry was populated solely with pc’s) I have been keen to book up as many CPD courses that deal with the apple software as possible. Today I attended the first of four connected courses on iMovie. While today was simply an introduction (how to film & import it into the iBook) the subsequent courses are intended to build up a portfolio of skills to allow editing, sharing etc culminating in producing a film project.
Johnny Baxter did a sterling job of explaining it in easy to grasp terminology and I am hoping that I will soon be able to add a video clip to my Forces blog on the Pencaitland weblog page.
Enterprising Your Curriculum January 22, 2007
Posted by Dave Cain in : CPD , 1 comment so farAttended another excellent CPD course on Friday. This one centred around the Ideas Explorers pack for creating enterprising activities in the classroom or school. While I perhaps did not fully embrace the off-the-wall method for generating ideas that was put forward (too much of a scientist and left-brain person!) I did see the value of the approach in getting children to debate the relative worth of different ideas and discuss the merits of each one. These skills are in my opinion some of the most central to the whole enterprising ideal.
While each school was given a pack to take back with them I managed, by playing the poor probationer card, to get an additional pack to take wherever I finally get a job. In the meantime I`ll be aiming to use the pack in my current classroom whenever I get the chance and report back here on how it goes.
Football After School Club January 15, 2007
Posted by Dave Cain in : CPD , add a commentAlthough the football afterschool club had been cancelled en-mass in December because of poor weather I was hoping to start with it this evening. While a keen (but perhaps not overly skillful) player in my youth I was still a bit unsure about translating what I know, and can practise, about football into actually teaching the basics of it to youngsters. I therefore felt divine intervention played a part when I was able to attend a football in-service course last Thursday at Longniddry Primary which covered all of the basics. Coupled with two extensive hand-outs - SFA/McDonalds and “First Touches” the demonstrations done during the course covered, warm-ups, passing, dribbling, shooting and control and all were focussed on what is needed at an after school club.
I came away armed with the practical knowledge about the routines needed to teach youngsters the basic football skills and was really looking forward to tonight. And yes, you’ve guessed it - the club was cancelled again because of poor weather. Oh well, there is always next week.
Learning Teams December 1, 2006
Posted by Dave Cain in : CPD , 1 comment so farThe staff at Pencaitland have split up into a variety of learning teams covering a number of topics across the curriculum. I volunteered for the Interactive Whiteboard group because although I don’t have one in my class currently it is clearly the way education is moving. We at least have two at Pencaitland so I should be able to beg (steal or borrow) a shot of one before my probationary year finishes. As long as people are not co:opted onto them then learning teams are a great way for similarly interested parties to produce some quality work on specific topics which will benefit the whole school.
The initial aims of our group are to build up a portfolio of resources split across early / middle / upper years that are already downloaded and available to all at a moments notice and to produce an “idiots guide” for some of the functions of the boards that are not commonly used (and therefore easily forgotton). I`ll post regular updates as we go.
Pageflakes November 29, 2006
Posted by Dave Cain in : CPD , 2commentsAnother excellent ICT workshop at Musselburgh Grammar this evening. Picked up some excellent tips for using the standard Google search engine to focus a search. But the real beauty of todays session for me was Pageflakes. I have now got my own page which will automatically update when any of the sites I have bookmarked are updated. No more searching round loads of sites looking to see if there are any changes. Just go to the one page now and all new updates are there. Invaluable. Another good site to discover was quintura which creates almost a mind map as it focuses an internet search. I am really enjoying these sessions (despite the lack of scones!)
ICT Workshop at Musselburgh Grammar November 22, 2006
Posted by Dave Cain in : CPD , 1 comment so farI attended the Musselburgh Grammar ICT workshop today and a very well attended session it was too (so much so that they ran out of scones before I arrived – bah!). I even recognised a couple of friendly faces. I have to say the course was excellent - covering various sites that are useful for capturing still images for use in the classroom. While SCRAN is pretty well covered at Moray House for us NQT’s, I had not heard of either Flickr or Bubbleshare. Ollie’s spiel was well judged, not too “ITish” and only lasting about 20min so it was easy to keep concentration levels high. However even in this relatively short period he still managed to cram in how to access these sites and outlined what their benefits were. We then all got a chance to try out the sites on PCs and there were sufficient “knowledgeable” staff patrolling to keep us delegates from getting into difficulty. It was certainly ideal to try out what had been discussed and have people on hand to answer questions. After about 20min practical hands-on we stopped for a 5min summary session before finishing bang on time at 5pm (another plus point!).
I found the overall session very enjoyable and informative and will certainly be turning up at the next one.
Powered by FireStats