Educational Technology and Mobile Learning: Top 10 Videos on 21st Century Learning 1- Expanded Learning Opportunities 2- What is 21st Century Education 3- Educate The Heart 4- Learn to Change, Change to Learn 5- Teachers Inspire Us ( this is really an amazing video I love it ) 6- The Art of Teaching ( Sir Ken Robinson ) 7- Make your Voice Heard: Discover Democratic Education 8- An Introduction to Technology Integration 9- Project Based Learning Explained 10- The Future Starts Now
The 5 Minute Lesson Plan *Updated* 28th October 2014 The 5 Minute Lesson Plan is now available in digital format! This means you can now create quick lesson plans online. Read my blog announcement here or go straight to test the software out here now! The 5 Minute Lesson Plan: Welcome to the original place to find context for The 5 Minute Lesson Plan; including history and evidence of how it’s being used by thousands of teachers and in hundreds of schools worldwide! If you would like to see other variations, please visit The #5MinPlan Series. which also has (FAQs) Frequently Asked Questions. Licence: The 5 Minute Lesson Plan is developed by @TeacherToolkit ( Ross Morrison McGill ) and is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivs 3.0 Unported License. Based on all work published at www.teachertoolkit.me. Digital Plan: Just announced! Listen: Listen to me talk about The 5 Minute Lesson Plan on @ChalkTalkPod. “Do outstanding lessons really require meticulous planning? The original: In video:
Little Story Maker App: Listening, Reading, Customizing, Personalizing I am completely impressed with the “Little Story Maker” App by Grasshopper Apps. (Thank you to Karen Lirenman, a first Grade teacher from Surrey, BC, Canada) I happen to visit my little niece in Canada this past week. In the app, we added a story. Then added the title of the story, added a cover image from the photo album and chose the template with the biggest image layout (I hope that a future update will bring more template layouts with multiple images as choices.) We kept adding pages with images and text for each page. The app allows you to have the book read to you, read it by yourself of set it to AutoPlay, which is really nothing new and most children’s book apps have the same feature. Where the customization comes in, is the fact, that you not only can enter you own text, then record your own voice (in any language of course) AND have individual words highlighted as it is being read! You an also tap individual words to hear them individually pronounced in your recorded voice.
Mozilla Firefox What's the best thing that happened at the last conference you attended? It's very likely that you'll remember one or more "hallway conversations," or perhaps a "Birds-Of-A-Feather" session. An OpenSpace conference creates that experience for the entire conference, by ensuring that you are always having the most interesting conversation possible. The emphasis is on discussion, instead of listening to eyes-forward presentations. Click here to view a brief screencast about Open Spaces (OpenSpace conferences have also been called "Unconferences." OpenSpace is a simple methodology for self-organizing conference tracks. OpenSpace has been used for conferences and as a facilitation technique for company meetings, community organizations, and other groups that wish to explore the emergent ideas and agendas of their members. Prepare to be surprised by the depth and breadth of topics that are discussed in OpenSpace. Some people have found this concept to be intimidating. How OpenSpace Works
Leading 21st C learning : getting my bearings for the journey ahead… I’ve been on a fantastic professional learning journey in recent weeks: listening and talking on the conference circuit (#lfe2012 #SSATNC12, #elconf); burying my head in my tweetdeck and the library of blogs and youtube clips that follow; hosting a TeachMeet (#TMEssex); reading a couple of books and having the privilege of visiting some amazing schools. All of this has brought me into contact with the ideas of some great educational thinkers (John Hattie, Dylan Wiliam, Guy Claxton and Bill Lucas, Eric Mazur, Carol Dweck, Tim Brighouse), the thoughts of some great practitioners (John Tomsett, Alex Quigley, David Didau, Vic Goddard, Tom Bennett, Christopher Waugh, Mark Anderson, Zoe Elder..) and the ethos of some amazing schools: Saffron Walden, Passmores and Wellington. Of course… there has also been the joy of working at my own school where magic happens every day. (I would say that wouldn’t I… but it’s true!!!) From all of this, I am now looking ahead. What works? Curriculum: Technology
Leadership and wisdom: Why us and them? I'm in serious mood today. None of the usual frivolities. OK, you might get a cartoon at the end, but until then, I'm talking business... I don't know about you, but I often have decent ideas which I'm developing at some bizarrely insane time of the day, when suddenly I will read someone else's blog which just, mortifyingly, turns out to be the perfect expression of what I've been struggling to articulate for so long. Today was such a day, when I read Kev Bartle's blog on line management, and the need to build a relationship of trust between manager and line managee (he made that word up by the way, not me). This line caught my eye: "And I trust that they (the people he line manages) are in this job for all the right reasons, as I hope they trust that I am in the job of senior leadership for all the right reasons." However, this line highlighted a problem I have perceived, which has puzzled me throughout my career as a teacher and middle leader: The divide between SLT and "staff".
Walking the Leadership Tightrope The Tightrope of Leadership As leaders and change-agents, we walk a daily tight-rope between how we “should” do things because that’s how they’ve always been done … which may be contrary to what believe matters today and tomorrow. Leadership is no different. To be a true leader, we must walk this tightrope in our daily actions. For almost 20 years I”ve been writing, speaking and coaching leaders to courageously use the “F” word and the “V” word. At first, I treaded lightly, because I was told if I didn’t, no one would listen. Sure, after about the 10 year milestone, and with the help of platforms like the Lead Change Blog, I no longer felt like a fish out of water. But who am I, one who’s never walked in a CEO -of-a-Fortune-500′s-Company’s-Shoes to tell YOU how to be a successful leader as a card-carrying MBA, CXO? Personally, I’m done walking the tightrope, being careful and “should-ing” when it comes to the words I choose to use to describe what it takes to lead people today.
365 days in my shoes Day 6 Personalised learning prompts for children. What types of learning prompt do you use to support children in their learning? These two are found in every classroom in my school – they vary from year group to year group to meet differing needs and abilities. Perhaps I shall blog on that one on a future date. The last class I taught before headship was a Year 4 class with another teacher. That particular cohort we taught together in 2 ability sets were incredibly challenging. Some wanted to be able to have horse riding lessons. others to swim a mile. Reading, writing and basic maths were a major push for this cohort as there seemed to be so many gaps in their learning based on our initial teaching and assessments. (Yes, there were questions to be asked about why there were so many gaps in the fundamentals. And, that is where the idea stemmed for our keys to learning. We gave all children a key ring fob and we took it from there. Every child’s key ring fob had their photograph and name on.
how-we-met-julia-donaldson--axel-scheffler-8444842 Scheffler has illustrated 15 books for children's author Julia Donaldson over the course of 20 years of collaboration, including 'The Snail and the Whale' and the award-winning 'The Gruffalo'. He lives in south London with his partner. I'd only done one or two picture books when I was approached by a publisher to illustrate Julia's first story [A Squash and a Squeeze], in 1992. With that first book, I remember drawing the main character, an old lady with a pointy nose and chin and looking wrinkly, as it was how I imagined her. We didn't actually meet until the book-launch party; it was a good first encounter and there was a great connection. I think when we first started working together Julia quite often thought, "That's not what I had in mind for the character!" We've been [creative] partners for 20 years now. Julia Donaldson MBE, 64 The current Children's Laureate is a publishing sensation, penning more than 150 works since her debut in 1993.
Six behaviors that could come back to bite you | Ward Wired As project managers we want our team members to have a commitment to deadlines, be optimistic about their work, stay focused on the goal, have a competitive mindset, stick to the budget, and please clients and management don’t we? And yet, these 6 behaviors, which most of us would readily agree are important, can precede a scandal, cause morale problems, and sink projects. In an interesting blog post David Gelber, author of The 3 Power Values provides some pertinent examples of disastrous business results from being obsessive about these behaviors. They intrigued me so I decided to write about them in a project management context. See what you think. Commitment to deadlines—While this is at the core of successful project management, when the schedule becomes sacrosanct and we do everything in our power to meet it, we create more problems than their worth. Excessive Optimism—Optimism can be a powerful influencer on projects.
This much I know about?how we teach reading skills to our weakest readers I have been a teacher of English for 24 years, a Headteacher for 9 years and, at the age of 48, this much I know about how we teach reading skills to our weakest readers. Primary-secondary transfer is profoundly important; I know we all know this, but I have to admit that it is only in the last three years that we have set up structures to enable us to prepare effective, targeted provision for our new Year 7s. Gail Naish, our Assistant Headteacher/ex-Subject Leader of English is dedicated to leading on transition and it has transformed our practice. We have seen a significant increase in Free School Meals and Special Educational Needs & Disability students, as the social fabric begins to fray in certain postcodes within our catchment. Our Golden 100 scheme is priceless. Effective preparation for primary-secondary transfer can change lives. Change your curriculum provision as the cohorts of Year 7 students change, year by year; it’s so obvious, but we’d never done that before. Like this:
20 Apps (Games) for Play-based Learning