ICT Teaching in the Information Age

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Mobiles in the Classroom – Try it!

April16

I’ve long been an advocate of using mobile’s and other devices in the classroom.  They are so much more than just phones and our students commonly use them for all of their other functionality.

I’m currently working in a school where mobiles are not banned – except in clasrooms.  This means that I can expect my students to have mobiles on them and I have had a number of opportunities to use them in lessons.  Firstly I’m teaching video editing to three different year groups.  Our department doesn’t have a camera!  There are a couple of cameras that can be borrowed from elsewhere but seriously what is the point when the students all have one in their pocket.  Not only do they have one, its one they are familiar with using and that they understand.  Our only difficulty is downloading the filmed material – I’ve been telling the students to do it at home and put it on Dropbox – unless they have an iPhone as I have a cable for mine.  Actually the students can’t download their own footage anyway – the school system doesn’t let them on a student account. 

I’ve also had some fun with year 9 and QR codes, I’ve had them download readers and they’ve been creating codes for eath other to try out – they’ve loved these lessons.

My most positive experience was at Easter School though – I ran a 4 day enterprise project in the Easter holidays.  It was for year 9 students and for most of the time they were working independently in groups.  I allowed them to have their phones out and on throughout.  Not one student took a call, I saw some texting/messaging going on but it didn’t detract from the lesson with the exception of one girl who was sending messages across the room and giggling.  Actually she greatly reminded me of a sixth former I taught a few years ago that did the same thing!  The rest of the time I saw mobiles being used productively – students using the calculator or looking things up (rather than using the school laptops!).  Students sending each other emails about their work (Hotmail doesn’t work on our system!).  One used her mobile to set up a Facebook page to promote their enterprise (Facebook is of course banned).

I even had a chat to a couple of the boys about how they are using their phones for education.  One showed me his timetable, another showed me the notes he makes about his homework and how he marks off when it is completed.  Both commendable uses of the device.  I’d like to run a survey of the entire school asking how everyone uses them – something I intend to ask about soon.

Its time to ban the word “phone” and start calling it something else.  Mobile Learning Device…..Pocket computer….Personal Pocket computer….

Learning – Motivating – Innovating

January16

I’ve just recorded the video part of my application for Google Teacher Academy.  Very excited and fingers crossed I can make it.  After the fun I had at BETT last week I’m determined to keep building myself professionally – even if I don’t have any classes to teach!  Would be a great experience to attend and hopefully it will be a useful addition to my CV.

I filmed this using only my iPhone (4) and edited it using iMovie – which I had only used once before.  I was assisted in the filming and editing by my son, James who is 9 and in year 5.  We both learned a lot during the filming and editing.  The music is by Kraftwerk – Home Computer.  Yes I do have purple hair!

Any feedback welcome, I’ve just got to fill out the application form and convince them I’m worthy!

Google Teacher Academy UK 2012

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

BETT Preparation

January11

For the first time this year I am able to attend the BETT show!  I’ve been after going ever since my first year of teaching but have never been able to get released and find going on the Saturday difficult.  This year I’m not working and I’m planning to make the most of it.

I’ve been reading all the blogs and I think I’ve gathered everything I need….

  1. Spare phone battery …. seems like I’ll be tweeting, scanning, photographing and bumping all day.
  2. iPad charged…. I need something to do on the train!
  3. Badge confirmation printed…..Just needs scanning when I get there to be printed.  Greener than having it posted.
  4. Twitter QR & Name on sticker……to add to badge so the twitterati know who I am.
  5. Business cards printed…..I’ve done exhibitions before – need these for all those prize draws.  Have added QR codes for blog & twitter
  6. Small Rucksack ready….will need to take lunch and a water bottle.  I know how expensive Olympia is so its a packed lunch and take my own drink.
  7. Key locations noted….those that give out free water (will need to refill that bottle!) and one that have said they will buy us a coffee!
  8. Teachmeet sessions planned …. I have noted the times and locations of the teachmeet takeover sessions I want to attend.
  9. Interesting stands noted ……a list of stands I’m interested in visiting
  10. Product prices noted……..I’ve noted the prices of a few products I’m interested in, that way I can tell if the “show special” is really a bargain.
  11. Wardrobe planned……I’ve picked out comfortable clothing, trainers and a kagoule to shove in the bag when I get there.  It’ll be hot & cloakrooms are pricey.
I think I’m ready.  I’m very excited.   Its like getting ready for a festival, in fact I’m taking the same little rucksack – only difference is the lack of wellies.
Watch this space for information I glean from my big day out.   I’m even hoping to meet some of my PLN.
Let me know if there’s anything I’ve missed….

Screenr – Easy web 2.0 Screencasts

November18

Screenr

screen front screen

Screenr

A quick, easy, online way of creating a screencast to show your students a skill.  Screenr is FREE and online, works with Mac or PC and can be used to record anything you do on your computer.  Best of all there is no editing and you also record sound.  Oh and it works “out of the box”.  Pretty much everything I look for in a tool.

You need to signup but that can be done using any of your existing accounts (facebook, twitter, google etc) so the signup doesn’t even involve filling in a form.   

Its unbelievably easy to use - on the home page there is a 1 minute getting started screencast that tells you all you need to know.  I was hooked within minutes!  Once I dug out a pair of headphones with a microphone I was away and within 10 minutes I had my first screencast embedded in my Wiki.

Click Here to view my first screencast.

Once the screencast is made it carries on being that simple. 

Its saved “in the cloud” to your Screenr account

You can download (as MP4), embed, link to, like, tweet, or  upload to YouTube!  Oh and there is also an RSS feed of YOUR videos…  I think that’s a total lack of restriction for a freebie!   All the screencasts also get included in the public feed – so you can save yourself time by finding a screencast someone already made.

The restriction is the time – your screencasts need to be less than 5 minutes long.  Mind you I think that’s less of a restriction and more of a motivation.

The downside for me is that I HATE my voice!  The Estuary English is NOT a fashion statement – its me, unfortunately, pure Essex Girl.

There are endless applications for Education – this tool is simple enough to be used by the KS1 students – maybe they could record a commentary of some work they have done?  Its also simple enough to be used by most teachers – to demonstrate a task or some previous examples of work.

Let me now how you use it!

What is a Word Cloud?

July16

I mentioned word clouds recently when I was working with another teacher, although she is not a techie I was surprised that she didn’t know what they were and I assured her she has seen many.  To have never seen one you would need to live in a void – not a classroom.

A word cloud is simply a graphical representation of text.  It can be weighted to show the importance of words by making frequently used words like word cloud bigger than those used a few times.  A word cloud can be made from any collection of text – a web page, a word document, this blog post. You could have your students generate one simply by writing a list – one where you could repeat yourself.  Imagine asking each student to write a list of their 5 favorite games one after the other on a single document.  Then put the whole document into a word cloud and the result generated would weight them according to the frequency of use.

Word cloud generators

There are lots of word cloud generators out there to use and each gives you different options for presentation.  I’m just going to cover three here but I’d love to hear about your favorites in the comments!

Wordle
www.wordle.net

wordle

Probably one of the best known generators is Wordle.  Its free to use and you don’t need to sign up – brilliant for students who have no email addresses. It has some great features – I like the option of linking words which are related by adding a tilde (great word for scrabble!) ~ between them, for example word~cloud.  When Wordle generates your word cloud it will change the tilde to a space but keep the words together.  Think about it – the one you see here has the two biggest words as word and cloud but really they should be together.  Its fiddly though – but if you flick your document through find and replace in your word processor its easy to change!

My big problem with Wordle is that because it’s a Java applet you can’t save the cloud as an image.  You have to take a screen shot to do that.  Oh and to get one to print on a Mac you need to install another plugin.

Tagul
www.tagul.com

Tagul

Tagul has a very nice user friendly interface and is simple for the novice to use.  You can easily choose the fonts, colours and shape of your word cloud and you get good options to save in different sizes as well as to print or embed your cloud in a page.

The downside for me is that you do need to sign up and you are limited to how many clouds you can generate for free.

Tagxedo
www.tagxedo.com

tagxedo

My personal favourite.  Even as an enlightened online cloud computing fanatic I find myself printing as many word clouds as I use online.  Tagxedo has given me all the options I want for generating printed clouds – lots of choices of size, file type and background colours, perfect for my needs.  They also have a great range of shapes to choose from and a lot of colour scheme choices.  You can even add your own image to create your own shape, although I have never tried that.  Another huge plus is that you don’t need to sign up so no email address is required.

My biggest problem is the name – even though I see it daily on their facebook post (they do a topical word cloud every day  – could be great to share with students to start a discussion) and regularly on the twitter feed I still constantly misspell it.  Maybe it’s the daft phonetic way I was originally taught to read and write but I pronounce it tag –ex-edo so that’s how I spell it!  My other niggle is that many features are “Pro” (free in beta) and its been in beta well over a year now, as if they can’t make their minds up.  Mind you if the price is right I would pay.

So word clouds, many uses, many ways of generating them and so many lessons they can enhance.  Get your students generating them and bring a new level to a book review or simple list.  Add them to your blogs, wikis and even just a plain old printed handout.  Start with the basics, just letting the inbuilt filters ignore the often repeated words and then try the advanced settings and see what you can do.

The word clouds on this post are each generated by the site it is embedded in.

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Audience Needed…..

May20

Kids start off proud of everything they do – those nursery finger paintings pinned up on the fridge by proud parents are just the beginning.  But somewhere their use of audience disappears – until we start forcing it to return.  Educators have the opportunity to change that by keeping kids work in front of an audience.

I don’t mean those classroom displays – that mostly only get seen by the kids and the occasional visiting parent.  See the sense of pride a child has when a piece of their work is put up in the school reception.  Imagine if you could show off their work EVERY day to a wide audience of parents, peers, the community, even the world.  Now stop imagining and start thinking “how”.

Mosaic Fish By James Evans-VinceHow about a class Facebook page?  Pages get “likes” by people and organisations.  When someone likes a page they don’t reveal themselves – they don’t open up their personal life to the page or its other “likers”  their name simply shows up on the “likes” list – and depending on their settings maybe their profile picture.  What does happen when you like a page is that you see that page’s feed, its status updates, links, uploaded pictures.  Imagine if that page belongs to your child’s class.  You have liked the class page so when the class (under the teachers supervision) uploads a picture of some work, a status update, a link to something they are learning about, you get to see it.  And comment on it.  So the class knows you have seen it – or you might actually go up to a child in the playground and say “hey I loved your picture today”.  Watch them puff out their chest with pride.

If Facebook is a step too far – what about a class Wiki?  Or a class Blog?

Or what about spending 3 hours putting up a display that the kids look at every single day.  Static, unchanging, time consuming and  about as useful as that dusty set of encyclopedias in the far corner of the library.

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Social Networking for kids

July23

The term social networking has become a bit of a demon to many. In an educational context it is seen as a tool to be feared and therefore banned by many. Yet social networking is becoming so widely embraced that it is rapidly becoming part of the daily life of many parents and educators. It is certainly part of the daily life of most teens and being fast picked up by many kids in primary education.

My son is 8 years old and he has had a Facebook account for the best part of a year now. It has helped with his reading and writing as he has a number of educational needs and has to be greatly encouraged to actively read or write. When he wants to go on facebook he has to do both. He likes to logon sometimes and say hello to one of his six friends! Other times he likes to try out one of the Facebook games he has seen us playing.

His account is set up with the security settings tightly controlled. Everything is set up to friends only with the option to be added by “friends of friends” this one is because he does NOT appear in the searches so if someone wants to add him I tell them to find him in my friends list and add him from there. All the emails he receives go straight to my inbox so he can’t accept a friend request without me knowing. So far he has 6 friends, myself and my partner, a friend of mine who has children in his class, his aunt, his gran and a 10 year old girl we met on holiday last Christmas. He sometimes sends a message through facebook to parents of his schoolfriends, many of them are friends of mine too.

james facebook settings

It’s a difficult decision to give your child Facebook access as there are so many factors to consider.  Who they become friends with is NOT the greatest fear.  It’s WHAT their friends say that scares me.  I have good friends who I would NEVER allow to be James’ friend, their statuses are far to inappropriate and often contain swearing.  One of these friends has a 10 year old son who is an active Facebook user, he is mates with all his classmates (about 60% of them anyway) and his mother and father are both on his friends list.  YES they need to keep an eye on what he is doing but he really shouldn’t be seeing what they are up to (they are not together).  The six friends my son has are all people who neither swear or reveal anything dodgy on Facebook.

I know parents who have decided that they would not like their children reading their own statuses so they have not allowed their children Facebook access yet.  This becomes a particular issue at this time of year when children are leaving primary school and want to stay in touch with friends they will no longer see.   This problem is compounded for us as we live in a small community and there are less than 100 children in the 6 year groups at James’ school.  These children are in mixed year group classes as there are only 4 classes and therefore some children have left class 4 to go to secondary school whilst some children remain in class 4 for another year of primary school.  It’s only natural that they want to stay in touch and Facebook is an easy choice to make.

As a mother I don’t fear social networking.  Children have to learn from their mistakes just as we did, sometimes posts will inadvertently hurt someone.  Just as words in the playground do.  Cyberbullying is no greater threat than any other kind of bullying – but it can offer more concrete proof of the activities than playground bullying.  My child is a digital citizen.  Technology enhances his learning.  He can operate the Sky+, DVD, TV and Wii far better than his gran and his great gran can only manage a TV!

Within a couple of years he will have his own mobile phone.  He already has a TV/DVD in his room linked to the Wii so he can watch iPlayer in bed (he does NOT have an aerial connection, with iPlayer he picks shows he knows – channel hopping in the evening is laden with pitfalls)  This is a child with a healthy imagination, a love of role playing and an enjoyment of the great outdoors.  Yes he has swimming lessons, Cubs, orchestra, choir and piano lessons (when did kids get so busy!)  But he also needs down time, chilling in front of his favorite kind of programme (often a DIY programme – no idea why!).  Looking for pictures on the internet.  Saying Hi to a friend on Facebook.  Plowing fields in Farmville.

We are all getting into social networking as people.  We can enhance our contacts as educators through social networking.  We can follow businesses and get special offers.  We can promote ourselves and our businesses.  Dialogues on Twitter may be a bit above an 8 year old who is a bit behind with reading but they help me greatly to keep abreast of developments within my field.  I want to see education embrace these tools rather than fear them.

Set up facebook groups for schools and classes –  let students communicate, collaborate and publish.  Give them an audience of trusted friends, their peers, mentors, parents, educators and others within the community.  Create a real sense of community cohesion.  These tools will shape their lives, lets guide them and teach them responsibly.  Create nings for your older classes. Encourage twitter discussions on a topic.  Set challenges that fit the digital world.  Look to the cloud as the future and social networking as one of the key educational tools.  I’ve learned far more this year in my online PLN than my offline one.  Encourage those enquiring young minds to do the same, seek knowledge rather than be given it.  Embrace technology as the future.

Look at the uptake figures on the BBC yesterday, this isn’t going away in a hurry.

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/technology-10719042

Tool of the week – Prezi

July16

Prezi is a cracking little cloud app that gives you a simple handy alternative to yet another PowerPoint. As an educator I avoid delivering lessons via PowerPoint wherever possible. Yes its a great tool for those who have limited ICT skills but not such a great one for all – death by PowerPoint is happening widely both in and out of education. Prezi is actually simpler to use – easier to embed to and gives a different perspective on the presentation. Brings it more alive somehow and gives you an easy way of avoiding the same old boring clipart and animations too (I remember 15 years ago EVERYWHERE you looked you saw that flippin duck smashing a PC!).

Visit Prezi

On the main page at Prezi is an introductory prezi that really sums it up for me – the scene of the woman giving the presentation to a sleeping audience reminded me greatly of our weekly staff briefing. Every week a different PowerPoint, I think on different subjects but I’m not sure as they seem to switch me right off. So I started playing with Prezi and this morning I saw an amusing blog post that I knew I wanted to use in lessons, but students don’t like reading blog posts so I made a prezi out of it.

Here is the original post

And here is my prezi of it

I think thats much more impressive than a PowerPoint and I’ve been using one with the students this week to a very favourable response. There are lots of great Prezi’s already accessible for education on Prezi and it’s well worth taking time to have a browse or search – I’m going to do a few days of supply next term and I’ll probably look up a few to liven up lesson which are out of my subject area. This one particularly excited me – I came across it through a post on my PLN this week and I was very impressed with the idea of using Facebook in the primary sector – I plan to introduce this to a school I’ll be working with next year. I can see a few applications for this in Secondary education too – Facebook and social networking in general should be playing a wider role in education – it will become more prominent in the future.

To sum up Prezi is a very useful cloud application. Its free for educational use. If you subscribe you get an offline version. Although it uses Flash a saved Prezi will run without it. You can download, link to, embed and share your prezis. And its simple enough to teach to very young children.

BLOCKED!

July6

The word of doom in education.  BLOCKED.  You’ve created an great lesson, put it all together, spent a couple of hours working on it and when the students try to access your materials they get the BLOCKED message.  It is very disheartening.  My current school blocks nearly as much for us as for them. 

Students are completely BLOCKED from all email sites.  Staff and students are BLOCKED from all “social networking” sites.  Our technicians say there is nothing they can do about it – yet other schools in the same area have access to some of these sites – certainly staff do.

I can watch and display YouTube but the students can’t.  I can’t do a lesson on facebook security without taking a million screen prints from home.  Today I found they had BLOCKED Wallwisher.  Not just for the students for me too.  All of the walls my students have previously done are inaccessible.  When they use my wiki to view their lesson if they page back to a previous lesson they get the BLOCKED screen instead of the wall they created.  My wiki allows me to embed all sorts of wonderful things.  The reality is that if I want students to actually see them I have to put them in as images or documents, nearly everything else is BLOCKED.

The ban on all email means that I can’t ask students to collaborate unless I spend an hour or so setting them each up an account using the Gmail hack.  All we see all day is BLOCKED.  I used to ask students to write a review for their GCSE coursework on the Cbeebies website and then it was BLOCKED because students were playing games on it in other lessons.

The answer is not to BLOCK everything.  Its to teach the students to use the internet responsibly.  Its to command the respect that a good teacher should have, so the students do not spend all lesson trying to get off task.  Its to train the teachers to use the tools at their fingertips to  BLOCK where and when they need to.  We have the tools – instead of letting teachers say BLOCK this site, we should be saying “OK you have a problem – let me show you how to BLOCK it for your lesson for those few kids who are abusing it.

 

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Thinking mobile..

July5

I started thinking the other day about the powerful convergent technology that is my smartphone. I’ve had a smartphone for a number of years and I think I use it well although there are undoubtedly other things I could be using it for and I’m sure I’ll come across them in the future. I’ve also long loved the idea that all this convergent technology will be a great and powerful tool that I will rely on. I first thought this a LOT of years ago. When I first read Bill Gates “The Road Ahead” and read his description of “the wallet PC” I saw straight away that this is the future of the mobile phone. We are not quite there yet with payment but most of what he described is sitting in front of me right now. For those of you who are not familiar with this concept….

“What do you carry on your person now? Probably at least keys, identification, money, and a watch. Quite possibly you also carry credit cards, a checkbook, traveller’s checks, an address book, an appointment book, a notepad, reading material, a camera, a pocket tape recorder, a cellular phone, a pager, concert tickets, a map, a compass, a calculator, an electronic entry card, photographs, and perhaps a loud whistle to summon help.

You’ll be able to keep all these and more in another information appliance we call the Wallet PC. It will be about the same size as a wallet, which means you’ll be able to carry it in your pocket or purse. It will display messages and schedules and also let you read or send electronics mail and faxes, monitor weather and stock reports, and play both simple and sophisticated games. At a meeting you might take notes, check your appointments, browse information if you’re bored, or choose from amongst thousands of easy-to-call-up photos of your kids.

Rather than holding paper currency, the new wallet will store unforgeable digital money… “

It’s amazingly intuitive that concept – it was written back in the 20th century, in the early 1990′s.  Yes we had mobile phones then but that’s pretty much all they were – we used them to make calls and maybe send a few texts.  Not even my primary use anymore.

What started me thinking again about this was the sound of my phone going “ping” in my pocket, to signal that I had a new email.  I was enjoying a gloriously sunny day standing alone in a field picking rasberries to make jam.   The only sound had been birds and some fellow pickers chatting a few rows over and then there was a “ping” to tell me that I had a new email.  I’m always connected and never out of contact.  My phone pings away all day (except when it’s on silent!) it rarely rings or makes the text noise but it does ping.  I also keep it slid open (it’s a Nokia N97 with a nicely angled screen) so that I can read the live facebook feed on my home screen.  Or maybe hit a button and view my twitter feed.  I don’t find this annoying – it’s me.  I consider myself a digital citizen.

So here I am thinking – what do I use my phone for?  So being the geeky type I made a quick mindmap – and then ordered it into my most used things.  Not surprisingly making calls and sending texts isn’t at the top – have I mentioned I am actually telephobic?  This surprises most people I know – who say my phone is surgically attached, although ask them if they’ve ever seen me make a call and after a pause they usually say no.  Anyway – here is my rather geeky list.

mobile log

mobile log

So my typical day with my smartphone goes along these lines.  I don’t touch it until I leave the house for work – I’ve checked my email and facebook on the PC before breakfast.   If I walk the dog I listen to the breakfast show on my phone.  Driving into work I’ll play music on it – handily it has an FM transmitter so no leads required!  I have around a thousand of my favorite tracks on there, I’ve ripped all my CD’s to it.  When I get to work I check Facebook and maybe add a tweet to twitter.  Then I logon to a computer and work – flicking my window over to my email whenever I hear that “ping”.  I usually connect via USB to the computer to use the phone as a portable hard drive – all of my work files are backed up on there and I tend to use it as primary storage when I move around.  Throughout the day I keep an eye on that Facebook feed and logon to facebook to make the odd comment.  I frequently take pictures in class which I then upload for the students to use in their work or refer back to at a later date.  At lunchtime I usually have a good read through my facebook and twitter feeds and often use the phone to check auctions on Ebay that I am watching – all social networking sites and Ebay (and many other shopping sites) are banned for staff in my school.  I might also send a text or make a call to my mother or my partner – rarely anyone else.
I don’t use maps or GPS on a daily basis – I have used google maps a few times when lost in foreign cities and also once when I got lost in the local woods!  The free Nokia maps GPS system is good but the aerial is not good enough for use in my car – I have a heated front screen which makes it harder for such devices to work.  Other apps are used infrequently but I do find it handy to always have internet access – yes I look up recipes whilst in the supermarket to make sure I buy the right ingredients!
How do I use phones in class.  Well the short answer is with difficulty – our school talks a tough line on phones, the students are allowed them but must not have them out in class – it was even pointed out that they shouldn’t be using them as calculators.  I think this line is not only short sighted but is impeding learning in many cases.  Using their phones as calculators is quite valid to me – that’s just 21st Century learners making good use of the tools at their disposal.
I suggested recently that my year 7 students should use their phones to take some pictures in other lessons – I explained that they should ask permission and explain that it was for an ICT project and that if the teach said “no” leave it at that.  Of course no teacher said no and the students produced some great pictures of work they had produced and things they had made. I was actually astonished that the students are not already doing this – it seems crazy that they will make something in cookery and then eat it without proudly taking a picture of their work (yes I’m ALWAYS taking pictures of food, but that’s a whole other blog!).  I asked the students to use their phones to take pictures on Enterprise day too – and again they responded positively.  All the pictures were bluetoothed to me afterwards and I uploaded them straight to the school network.  I’ve also had students bluetooth me music they wanted to include in their multimedia coursework and one send some videos that they later edited for coursework.
Of course the sixth form commonly use their phones to store their work – and tend to leave them behind a lot less than their memory sticks.  As an ICT teacher I see endless possibilities for the “computers” in their pockets, they are powerful tools – these students are connected and enabled to be independent learners whilst they can lookup information immediately.  Their true potential as learning tools lies outside of my subject but we really must encourage the students to use them responsibly and in ways which give them a positive, enjoyable learning experience.
Whilst we say NO PHONES we restrict them – we need to say NO CALLS – even the odd text is less distracting than watching them peering under blazers and desks as they try to hide their banned item.  In my current restricted environment their phone is their only access to email in school – I can’t invite them to collaborate on documents without sending them emails which they can only pick up on their phones.
Lets empower these students, lets embrace convergent technology and lets have the mobile phone as a useful tool to encourage independent learning.  Educators need to open their minds and allow the students to learn in ways they feel comfortable with.  Embrace technology don’t fear it.
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I’m an ICT teacher who is currently working freelance as a consultant and moderator.

I’ve been teaching for 7 years and have taught ICT across KS3, 4, & 5.  In this short time I have held a wide variety of responsibilities:

  • Designed and maintainted a school website
  • Introduced a VLE
  • Co-ordinated KS3
  • Co-ordnated KS4
  • Introduced 2 new GCSE courses
  • Designed curriculum and resources for a non-subject specialist team
  • Managed cross-curricular ICT projects
  • Run primary school liaison projects
  • Designed and delivered master-classes for KS1 & KS2
  • Designed and delivered master-classes for G&T students
  • Designed and delivered staff training for a variety of skills/initiatives
  • Organised whole-school events

I am currently taking a break from full time teaching and running a consultancy to deliver collaborative web 2.0 projects in primary schools.  I’m looking for forward thinking schools who want to:

  • Improve their communication and community cohesion through social networking
  • Embed ICT within their curriculum
  • Introduce web 2.0 tools to their daily routine
  • Develop blogs and wikis for use in the classroom
  • Run whole school projects and publish their work

Prior to training as a teacher I worked for a number of years in industry as an IT trainer for several blue chip companies.  I always had a love of e-learning and ran learning centres for a number of years.  I am currently studying for a masters degree in e-learning.

When I’m not busy running my business I relax by enjoying my own mini version of  ”The Good Life”.  I have a large garden where I try and build different areas like a woodland garden and a meadow.  I also have a vegetable garden in my front garden where I grow a variety of fruit and veg.  We are nowhere near self sufficiency but our chickens are!  I keep 12 chickens which free range in my back garden all day and they have become self-sufficient through the sales of their excess eggs.  The eggs led to a love of baking which in turn lead to the decision not to put in a new kitchen but to invest that money in an Aga.  I must be some sort of workaholic though because on the weekends I also run chicken keeping courses and even the odd baking course!

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