i see tea

Y9 setting up Posterous 7/365 tags: edtech3652010

My Y9 class setting up their Posterous blogs. Maybe they will do 365 challenge too?

Posted via email from daibarnes’s posterous

Teacher toolkit 6/365

This morning I’m teaching for the first time this year. My waistcoat is my toolkit. Here it is including:
Micro SD 8gb memory card.
USB security key required to log on to school network.
Red & black biros.
Highlighter pen.
IWB pen.
Lens cloth (iPhone lives in this pocket too, but I’m taking the photo with it).
Laser pointer with keys for tech cupboards.
Notebook for tasks on the hoof (iPhone too slow).
My security badge to be worn at all times on site.

I unashamedly love my waistcoat. Everything always at my fingertips.

Posted via email from daibarnes’s posterous

Forgetmenot. To recall or not recall…

I had a conversation with one of our advisory governors and three experienced teachers.  The gist was how technology is changing things and the idea that pupils do not need to learn material off-by-heart any more; the power of recall is not required. Instead we need good research, interrogation, interpretation, and critical thinking skills. Is this true?

forgetmenot - http://www.flickr.com/photos/balakov/ (CC)

The ‘clever’ people I know personally are able to recall a wealth of knowledge as well as employ high-end thinking skills to draw patterns and conclusions. It seems to me that this ability is somehow founded in the bed of knowledge they have accrued. I know of very few people I would consider ‘clever’ (I want a much better word) that do not have both these capacities. I am no academic but I believe I think well. I have a capacity to listen, assess, challenge and conclude. But I wouldn’t put myself in the clever category.

This leads me to wonder how the claim that because technology gives us full access to knowledge means that not ‘knowing’ anything is valid. [I've heard this argument a few times on the ed tech circuit] I can’t commit to this. Not yet anyway.

In our education system we start by teaching skills to youngsters, for example, reading. Next step (crudely speaking) is to make youngsters learn facts about stuff – rivers, anatomy, mathematical concepts. Then we examine them (GCSE) and introduce an element of analysis, but a lot of this is learnt beforehand. A Levels next. More specialist knowledge is learnt for recall but there is a clear step into assessing the pupils ability to respond to an unfamiliar question in a context outside an exam board specification (aside: thank you for improving ICT A Level at long last, it’s much better now). Having spent years and years doing exams leads to memorising a lot of things for regurgitation. Now you migrate to university where, at the higher levels, you are required to employ the high-end thinking skills.

My questions: has the fourteen years of recall-based learning been necessary to get to a position where you can be the high-end thinker? Should we abandon the curriculum as we know it? Has the evolution of education misled us? To be a critical thinker, assuming that is the goal, must we have a bedrock of verbatim learning? Do you know?

Moodle Database Photo Competition

EdTechRoundUp TeachMeet 2009 Presentation

#TMETRU09

This is my presentation for TeachMeet EdTechRoundUp 2009. I chose this topic because I wanted to show something pupils had used and that others might not have seen in action before. Therefore, this fitted my bill of being interesting for the new tech teacher and the more experienced.

Useful and relevant links:

My school Moodle: http://stbens.moodledo.co.uk

My sandpit Moodle: http://digabites.co.uk (please feel free to create an account)

Moodle FAQs on database activity: http://docs.moodle.org/en/Database_activity_module_FAQ

Search youtube for other screencasts on using the Moodle Database Activity Module

TMETRU bookmarks

Please use the comments to discuss any classroom ideas or success stories you have had with the Moodle Database Activity. Or share your ideas on twitter with the #TMETRU hashtag.

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