The joy of publication!

Well I have finally achieved a little goal of mine! I am now officially published on itunes! My podcasts are now live to the world and available nto just through my web site but to all who subscribe and use the itunes service!

My podcasts have been available for download for a few months now on my website and I have recently been working at how to present these audio files as itunes feeds and finally, after about 4 months - I managed to work it out. It is not as complicated as it seems.

My reason for doing this was to provide some additional support for my students in the run up to their exams. I thought that they could sit on the bus on the way to the exam room listening to my brief notes about what they need to know! Instead of nodding their head up and down to some serious beats they can not agreement to some serious treats!

Check out the podcasts here!

Trying something new!

I love my ipod and in May and June of this year I discovered podcasting. I love fiddling on computers but have to admit that when it comes to the actual nuts and bolts of how to do things on computers - I am a bit rubbish! So, I created these podcasts and stuck the files onto my website. Students could then go to my site and save the files to their computer, MP3 player or ipod. But . . . for some reason I just could not work out how to get these things onto itunes . . . . until now. The excitement is building as I think that I have now managed to create the appropriate feeds that will allow my podcasts to be on itunes . . . so hopefully in a few days my ramblings about A Level Geography will start to appear on itunes and be even easier for my students to download.

It was a lot harder than i thought but I think i have finally achieved it and have got to say that I am quite proud of myself!

So - search for podcasts on itunes called A Level Geography and you might hear me!

Ten things to learn this school year!

Staying with posts by Guy Kawasaki - he has posted a really good blog that mentions some of the things that he thinks that students should be learning today that teachers were not taught in 'Ten things to learn in school this year'

These include:

1. How to talk to your boss.
2. How to survive a meeting that is poorly run. (Not making a comment here!)
3. How to run a meeting.
4. How to figure out anything on your own. (Like that is going to happen!)
5. How to negotiate.
6. How to have a conversation.
7. How to explain something in thirty seconds. (I need this lesson)
8. How to write a one-page report.
9. How to write a five-sentence email.
10. How to get along with co-workers.
11. How to use PowerPoint.
12. How to leave a voicemail.


Thanks to Wesley Fryer for some of the content and the synopsis of the points!

But it does open the question that perhaps we have lost sight of over the years. What exactly is school for? What exactly are we supposed to be preparing the kids for? Are we giving the kids enough life skills to be able to cope with, operate in and succeed in our world today.

I have been speaking to students who got exam results today and have been pleased that so many students were able to get the grades that they need for the courses that they want to continue in - either back at school or in Further Education. But, if we read 'The World is Flat' - Freidman argues that the skills gap of the future will be in Engineering and the Sciences (and Maths). Yet I think (in Northern Ireland) that the shift seems to be away from these subjects and not towards - therefore are we adequatley preparing our kids for success or merely for survival and maintanence of the staus quo?

I am not sure of the answer but am sure of one thing, as a teacher starting the new year, my aim is that the kids that walk into my classroom walk out having learnt something and hopefully by having a bit of fun in the process. I call it my 'Learning through the backdoor' philosophy. If I have interesting and challenging activities available - the learning will slip in the backdoor.

The 10/20/30 rule of PowerPoint

I cam across a Blog by Guy Kawasaki today with a comment in relation to the amount of Overbearing and over-prepared powerpoint presentations that he has to put up with. His advice is simple

I am trying to evangelize the 10/20/30 Rule of PowerPoint. It’s quite simple: a PowerPoint presentation should have ten slides, last no more than twenty minutes, and contain no font smaller than thirty points.

I know exactly what he means - students often spend more time looking at fonts and background colours than they do thinking about the size of font or the style and setup of the slide. Kids find the concept of design a difficult one to grasp and need a lot of help in thinking about what a good powerpoint looks like! In recent months I have maybe gone even further than Guy and if I give a PowerPoint homework exercise I will now give a 6 slide maximum. However, this often means that the kids just cram more writing onto the slides, stand with their back to the audience and read the slide. One of these days I will get through a batch of presentations that does NOT do this!

Link:

Mashing ideas

In the techno/ICT world at present the concept of 'mashing' is when you take 2 completley different ideas or concepts and put them together. This summer I attended 2 conferenced - the first was in relation to assessment and the other was Alan November's Building Learning Communities in Boston, USA. A recurring theme to me at both conferences was a development in the feedback that students receive about the learning. At the Assessment conference I was encouraged to think about using a learning log with students. This would be something used in class to allow students to consider and reflect what tey have learnt recently and that would allow the teacher to comment on the reflection. It was hoped that this use of feedback would encourage the production of a development in a culture of working together.

Then, at the ICT/ Learning conference I was challenged to use some of the new technological tools to perhaps meet this need. Getting students to produce and comment on a team web blog or even to strt their own blogs would be an excellent way to meet this need. i am going to try this with some of my Year 14 students initially.

Exam results

I work as the Exams Officer for my school. We have just recently got the exam results in for our A Level students and I have been doing some statistics based on the results and have been doing some thinking about these exams.

Most students do 3 subjects at A Level and use these to get into university. The media in the UK constantly undermine the progress of the students and claim that standards are getting lower. But are they? When I did my A Levels (15 years ago!) I did nothing in my Lower Sixth year and had 3 exams for each subject in Upper Sixth. These students have 6 exams to do spread over 2 years. I know that being able to resit certainly helps to pump up the grades but I dont know if I agree that standards are falling. Exams are different today. They focus on different things. They dont just aim to measure knowledge. They are measures of understanding and skills and values and connected thinking and learning.

I see the students nervously going into the exam hall. I know the work they need to do and the pressure of success - also knowing they now have to find the funds to go to a university course that will charge them £3,000 for tuition fees alone. So, they have got to be sure that they do the right course! When they achieve good results we should be celebrating with them.

Yea, exams were different in my day. But thats OK! If they were still the same and we had not moved on - how could we say that we have embraced the changes, the massive changes that have happened in the world in the same time. 15 years ago - who would have thought that my watch could store more information than the bulky and odd computer devices?

And . . . when we hear of improved grades, why can it not be because teachers are getting better? Can we not, for once, give credit to the idea that perhaps lots of teachers are working hard, harnessing this new technology for learning and that together - good resources and quality learning is driving the results higher and higher.

Well done to all my students at A2 and AVCE. I am proud of your success and proud to have been a small part of your learning!

Ponderings on The World is Flat

I was at a conference in Boston during the summer called 'Building learning Communities' and nearly all of the speakers that I heard mentioned a book by Thomas Friedman called The World is Flat. I managed to pick up a copy for myself in the airport coming home and started to read it the other day. It really is fascinating. The book attempts to analyse what is happening in the world of trade/globalization in this new 21st century and some of the conclusions that Friedman comes to are really quite scary and have been challenging my thinking about education. For example, in school, exactly what are we preparing our kids for? I think especially of a friend of mine who is teaching in a school in India and who told me about the different work ethic there is in schools there. The Young people take their schooling very seriously - especially Maths and Science. It made me wonder about those souls who trudge into my room every day - mostly without interest and the main outlet for their creativity being the excuse that they use to inform me that they have not completed a homework.

I think that our kids in NI, the UK, the Western World need to wake up to the fact that if they dont start to use their brains to be innovative and inventive that all the good jobs are going to be taken by the people in other countries and they will be left with the shelf-stacking jobs! It is time for our kids to wake up and start to work harder and take their (FREE!) education seriously so that they can compete with and perform alongside the students from India, China etc . . .

Flying will never be as easy . . . . .

I travelled through London to Boston and back from New York a few weeks ago. Security was heavy but not overbearing. You got the sense of vigilance but not panic and certainly nowhere near the level of concerns that have surfaced over the last week. This has made me wonder about the safety and security of travel. The pictures of people having to abandon their hand luggage to the hold, to empty pockets out and only carry on the very basic supplies is bizarre. liquids are suspect (how scary is that) and all things electronic are seen as being potential detonating devices (even electronic car keys!). Flying will never be as easy again. Will we once again be allowed our ipods on those cross-atlantic flights? In an age of technology for everything . . will technology prevail? Have we finally got the stage where the terrorist use of technology outstrips our ability to cope with and search for this? Ester Boserup argued that 'Necessity is the mother of invention' and i do agree (in an optimist kind of a way) - hopefully the necessity of our comforts in interntational travel can again be established and made safe - so that we can again enjoy our laptops/ipods etc as we travel. And not having that bag of goodies on board . . . it is so hard . . . I like my sweets, my book, my bottle of water - never mind the fact that parents have to suck down some of the milk for their baby . . I do wonder if flying will ever be as easy . . .

Why I hate GPS!

As I drove down England and France this year, I made a startling discovery. I hate GPS. Now, I have to admit that I dont have one of those fancy GPS/Sat Nav systems on my car and being the gadget freak that I am - i always expected to want one. but no! It is SO BORING! Where is the fun in having a computer generated voice issue instructions as you attempt to grapple with the traffic of the M25 or try to work out which lane I needed to be in for one of those bizarre French exits? Nope. Not interested. Mainly because the idea of sitting with my maps and planning my routes is one of the best things about holidays for me. I love planning the route and working out what is the best way to go - to avoid the traffic at what time of day. Maybe I am my own Sat Nav system? Probably not as reliable - certainly not as accurrate - but still, when I go from A to B I like to be able to look out the window and not have to keep concentrating on the little screen in the corner of my dashboard. So please, dont buy me one for Christmas - just a nice, traditional map or two will do the job just fine . . . . .

Holiday places list!

So what to do for a second list? What about a Geographical one then? Top 10 places that I want to go to on holiday (that I have not visitied yet) - sort of my homage to 1,000 places to see before you die, type thing! 1. The Grand Canyon (in a small plane!) 2. Antartica (ducking and diving through the icepack on a boat) 3. Easter Island (place of the massive heads and strange placements) 4. Hawaii to watch the volcanoes 5. The Canadian Rockies 6. Australia - outback, Sydney, Barrier Reef, Tasmania . . . 7. New Zealand - well, it looks pretty cool 8. Kruger National Park in South Africa 9. The Pyramids in Egypt 10. Jerusalem (when things are a bit calmer - well if it can happen in Belfast . . . .) What about you?

Lists!

Today in school my friend Mark showed me a book of lists that he reads for fun when he gets stressed and it actually got me thinking. Although I actually am not really interested in reading other people's lists (because lets face it - how could they possibly be right?) I am interested in creating my own lists of things. I am more of a top 10 lister - like in that Nick Hornby book/film with John Cusack - High Fidelity. List No 1 -Top 10 tracks (most played on my ipod) 1. Mas Que Nada by Sergio mendes and the BEP (makes me think brasil and fluid football) 2. The Scientist by Coldplay (cos I'm a bit of a scientist!) 3. Fix you by Coldplay (luv it! . . . especially the video of the spinning light!) 4. Pump it by the BEP (not sure how this got here - 19 listens - Erin likes it!) 5. Real love by David Gray (ole shaky head - a personal fav) 6. Chasing Cars by Snow Patrol (Belfast geeks . . . did I tell you my snow patrol story?) 7. Bad Day by Daniel Powter (how the flip did this get 18 listens . . must have been a bad day) 8. Hung up by Madonna (em . . . blame the daughter again methinks) 9. In the waiting line by Zero 7 (like their new album at present!) 10. The Zephry song by the Red Hot chilli peppers - when the RHCPs were good and not churning out a load of coddlers like Stadium Tedium What list next? My top 10 fav books?

My favourite thing about a holiday is . . .

You might find this hard to be believe but to me my favourite thing about a holiday is the actual anticipation of the holiday! I am such a forward planner that i always have our holidays booked months in advance and down to the last detail . . . . this means that i spend weeks and months of time reading, planning, looking at maps, learning routes and waiting for the holiday to happen! It is almost an anticlimax when I do in fact get to go on the holiday and i always worry that the holiday will not measure up to my expectations (though that has NOT happened so far!). This year is no different and I am organised and actually I'm starting to worry that i have forgotten to do something as i do not seem to be stressed enough!

London conferences

I live just outside Belfast and work in Ballymena. Yet, I somehow manage to get the opportunity to go to London for the odd conference now and again. I attended an Assessment for learning conference in London yesterday and am totally exhausted today! You get up at 4, get to the airport for 5am, fly at 620am, arrive at 730am, get into London by 0845 and the conferecne starts by 930. Blah Blah Blah . . . conference ends at 1630, get some dinner, get the train and back to the airport for flight at 2110 and Belfast by 2220 and home by 2300. Its a long old day! It causes serious brain drain - especially when you do try to listen and apply some of the thoughts and ideas that the speakers are talking about. The main reason I wanted to go was to hear the educational guru Paul Black talk and I have got to admit that I was disappointed not to have learnt anything new from him and to find his level of presentation was not good. However, did manage to get a lot out of a talk on peer assessment by a Geographer - which is always good!

LOST without the West Wing

At the risk of being a bit of a bandwagon jumper - I have recently got into that rather surreal expression in group theatre that is LOST. I have always wondered what all the fuss was about and asked Stelios to send me a disk from LOST to try out to see if I liked it. My wife and I sat down to watch the first 4 shows and . . . . well, put it this way by the end of the disk my wife had already ordered the DVD set from Amazon to arrive asap. I have nearly finished the first season and have got to admit that I am hooked! I was dubious as to how the rustling branches and leaves every other episode would actually work - but it does! I am intrigued by the 'baggage' that each person has brought with them to the island and am intrigued as to why such a diverse set of social and societal disaster areas could all be booked on the one flight! I am seriously supressing my group management theories but lets just say that in Series 1 we probably have gone beyond the Form and Storm stages . . . does this mean we get a bit of Norm? Doubt it really!

Retirement for Bartlett

As people who know me will likely know - I am a big fan of the US drama - The West Wing. Last night was a sad night for me as at 11pm I sat down to watch the last ever episode on RTE (praise be for SKY!). I know it wasn't the best episode ever, I know it didnt have the usual laps round the corridors or the biting repartie between Josh and Donna, I know it didnt have the drama and intensity of a major crisis or a political quagmire to navigate. It DID have closure and the tying up of loose ends with the slighest whiff of sequel or spin-off. I suppose the females want to know what Josh and Donna's babies will look like? Does Josh make it as Chief of Staff? Does Will and that over-zealous national security type person whose name you can never remember actually work out? And anyway, who would be wearing the trousers in that house? Does Toby ever get to smile? Do CJ and Danny get to get away from it all? Does Sam get to be Sam? And I suppose I have a little (though, just a little!) interest in knowing how Santos does as president! I am sad to see it stop but glad that they had the sense not to keep going and loose the quality and interest of viewers. So, thank you for preserving my interest in US politics and bowing out gracefully!

The Informating Super Highway!

For a while now I have been struggling to reconcile the need that students have for ICT skills and for them to be able to process their thoughts in a logical manner in order to use the ICT to access appropriate information. For about 9 years I have been writing web sites. I have tried to consider the options available to me to allow students the opportunity to access useful information 24/7. As families have continued to increase their access to computers and the internet, I have found that students are increasingly interested in accessing information out of hours. I would be the first to admit that my sites are not the most technologically advanced - they don’t have all of the interactive features you might find on some. But then my job is not to be a web site developer but as an educator. My aim is to provide the information that students actually need to develop - The information that they need to complete tasks, homework and revision. For too long I have been fixated with the technological issues involved in this. But now I am realising that what I am doing by default is probably the best way to go. The key is in providing quality information that can be accessed for learning. So what is the next step? In addition to web blogs, podcasts for revision classes and bulletin boards – I am attempting to create a number of activities that strengthen the creativity of the students and act as enhanced accelerated learning lessons. It does take a lot of time to develop these – so watch this space!

School Leadership model: The West Wing

Most people who know me will know that probably my only televisual treat that I mould my day around is the mighty WEST WING. I got into this early on and now am a bit of a WW anorak - much to the amusement of most of my friends. I have been doing a course recently which is the PQH and prepares teachers to become head Teachers and I have decided that I can apply many of the management and leadership techniques as seen in the WW to my daily life as a school manager/leader. I like to think about the different styles of the different members of the Senior leadership team in our school and give them a possible WW role. I have always been a fan of Josh - so I like to think my management style pretty similiar. An eye for detail but sometimes not on this planet . . . wel sort of. if definitley is one of those management theories that I think could get me famous . . . More soon . .

Bono takes on the world

I suppose it is fitting that as I start a new web blog that one of my all-time heroes has been in the news today for being the Editor for the day of the Independent. Bono has for a long time been invloved in a series of 'good causes'. However, he has always been ahead of the fashion game. he started out supporting campaigns like Amnesty International, Greenpeace, the African Well Fund and has since been involved in DATA (Debt, Aids, Trade Africa), Chernobyl children's project, the Jublilee debt campaign, The ONE Campaign, Live 8, Make Poverty History and now RED. Unlike many stars who seem to use their charitable concerns - Bono seems ready to put the time, energy, money and effort into what he believes. Thats what I like. I like the entertainer who can captivate a crowd of 100,000 people with his words and music and use his veritable celebrity status to challenge both the world leader and the 'commoner' alike. Poverty . . debt . . AIDS and development problems are all issues in world geography today. We live in an unequal world and more people need to get off their comfortable backsides and stand with Bono in an effort to bring equality and freedom. AND he makes pretty fine music!