Neil Goodfellow

With Celeb Big Brother hitting our screens this week, this is something I picked up from Alan Parkinsons blog and thought would be quite funny.  Haven’t heard of a few of these….Dirk Nowitzki…who??? 

A friend of mine made me aware of a website recently www.edge.org.

It is basically a club of leading thinkers who pose questions that are dangerous not because they are wrong, but that they might be true.  I then got hold of the book ‘What is your dangerous idea’ by Steven Pinker. 

It raises some interesting talking points.  There is an excellent part which argues that schools are bad for children.  Not something I entirely agree with, but something that as a teacher, I have considered.  I suppose the main point is that we are producing a bunch of stressed out students learning how to please the teacher and not themselves.  This then produces adults who hate learning becasue it reminds them of school.  Reading this I immediatley thought about the East Lothian Extreme Learning project.  The idea then must be to stop thinking children need to learn the same stuff and create adults who can think for themselves. 

It will be very interesting to see how the project evolves.  The school curriculum may be very different in a few years????

I’ve just made my first tour in Google Earth on the Rhone in France. THe Rhone glacier looks amazing.  If you turn the elevation exageratrion up to full you get a great view.  I’m really impressed with it.  I just hope the 3rd year are to, last period today.  I’ll post later and commnet on how it went down. Hopefully by then i’ll have it ready to upload….

Flicking through the latested issue of Connected from Learning and Teaching I came across this interesting website. 

Create-a-scape looks like, potentially, a very exciting idea, especially for Geography.  From what I can see, you create a mediascape (basically a digital map of an area with sounds and pictures attached).  Linked into this is the use of a PDA and GPS.  Using the PDA, you can hear the sounds and see the pictures in the places the author of the mediascape has put them.  All very interesting.  I will hopefully find some time to investigate this further.  Just wondering if anybody out there has had any experience of this type of thing?

This might sound daft, but my whiteboard has not been very interactive since I got it working.  The kids have been commenting, so now I’m acting.  How to make it interactive, that is the question?

The first quick, simple idea I came up with was for S1, an interactive map.  Easy peasy….blank world map, 7 labels (continents of the world) along the bottom, kids come up and drag the labels to the right place. 

Second idea, video of a river meander on a loop.  Pause the video and get the kids up to label the different parts.

I’m on a roll here…..third idea, cross-section of a river meander, blank out the labels, and let the class fill in the blanks.   This is now where I’m struggling for inspiration. Can anybody help?

Ah, feel better now thats off my chest.  Normal service will resume….

We started the 2nd of the Int2 case studies today, Mumbai.  I used this excellent Creative Storyboard idea to inspire a bit of creative writing.  I had the picture board on the IWB so the class could come up and have a closer look at the images. The stories were ‘interesting’, and raised a few stereotypes (swiftly dismissed).  It also identified some gaps in the kids general knowledge.  Apparently all people in India charm snakes and the Dali Lama, is actually Buddah (close!).

I think this idea would work as a great introduction to loads of different topics.  It certainly got the class talking.

India Storyboard

Creative Storyboard 6X6

I’m now in week 11, just about a third through the probation year.  How time flies! I’m putting in huge amounts of effort, to the detriment of my home life, and feel like I am working all the hours.  In work before 8, going home and working sometimes till 11 at night.  This is firstly because I have so much to do but also to make things good/ fun/ clear for my pupils (and for me!!). I’m also working hard for my own pride, so that when yet another week passes without a hint of praise or positive comment, I can tell myself I’ve done alright!

I know when I could do better, but there is so much to be done everyday.  I can however feel it getting much easier almost by the day, as I get my head aroung the curriculum and build up my resources and strategies.  When I think back to the planning workload from week 1, the amount has dropped by hunners!……..rant over

How good is Google Earth? A simple tour of Paris (thanks very much Kenny O’Donnell) had my class of sixteen years olds engrossed.  The Arc De Triomphe and Eurodisney parts went down really well.  It also something that can be made available to the class to use at home for revision. A great inspiration and its spurred me on to design a few of my own tours. Watch this space….

Another great thing happened today. I finally got my Interactive Whiteboard up and running.  I had a little play with it this afternoon.  I can’t wait to get using it with my classes.

Today with my S3 I did a mind movie about the Water cycle. Its very simple, but if i ever do it again I will demonstrate how to fold a piece of paper into 8 boxes.  I assumed, wrongly, that saying fold it in half three times would be okay.  How wrong was I. The instructions are attached, and I have a powerpoint that goes with it for anybody that is intereseted.

It worked really well as an introduction to the topic.  A large class of very mixed ability were all engaged (for a change!) and all left the room knowing about most of the terms. 

S3 Drippy the Raindrop 

here goes nothing….

Rather than dwell on my brief initiation into the profession (8 full weeks and counting) I felt for my first post I would hit the ground running and start off positively with something i’ve done today.

With my intermediate class we began to look at  urban change in Paris.  I decided, in my wisdom, to let them investigate the city and turned it over to them. I put them in pairs, gave them an area to focus on and set up a wiki to collate their research. I’ve been advised that the best site is wikispaces.com. It took all of 5 minutes to set up.  A word of caution however.  If the intention is to let the pupils update this information, warn them that inappropriate content will be removed.  Secondly, check they all have a valid email address and know how to log in to it. The, slightly limited, results can be seen here North Berwick Geography Wiki

The intention is allow them to update the information as the course progresses.  The end result will then be (fingers crossed) a full case study which everybody has contributed too.