Excellence & Growth Schools Network | Working harder makes you smarter What If Every Teacher Tweeted? What If Every Teacher Tweeted? Why Teachers Should Tweet by Terry Heick What if every teacher tweeted? Is there some kind of sequence of events we might expect? We have to assume that somehow this trickles down to the learning experiences of the students–their writing, their skills, and the wandering of their thoughts–yes? Like any tool, twitter is designed for a task. And as teachers, we can use it, or leave it alone. Twitter’s Magic Mix In spite of its popularity (500 million tweets per day from 271 million active users–almost 80% outside of the United States), most teachers don’t tweet. In lieu of the pleadings from colleagues to “connect,” most teachers don’t use twitter, but are quite satisfied with facebook, thank you very much. A small handful of buttons, a simple interface that rarely changes, and a general humility about itself. So what if every teacher tweeted? …They found a voice Ideally, we’d see that every teacher had found their voice. They connected They started a global PLN
Talking about teaching in a world without lesson grades Images: @jasonramasami Teaching is a lonely profession. Outsiders rarely understand this. On any given day, I might communicate with over a hundred children, adapting my register and tone according to the needs of the class, the child and the situation as best I can. Yet, for many of us, communication with our colleagues can become little more than a passing word in a noisy corridor. Days or even weeks can gently slip by with little more than a cheery “Morning!” The equation we work by is simple but probably wrong: hard work equals better educational outcomes. Nothing, however, is worse than the forced feedback discussion that takes place after a graded lesson observation. This gross crudity destroys the opportunity for the feedback session to become the vital meeting it should be. Roll on this week and roll on my first non-graded lesson observation. In the feedback meeting our discussion was wide-ranging. The end of lesson grades has given birth to something much more exciting.
Find Teachers to Follow with Tweacher About ETR Community EdTechReview (ETR) is a community of and for everyone involved in education technology to connect and collaborate both online and offline to discover, learn, utilize and share about the best ways technology can improve learning, teaching, and leading in the 21st century. EdTechReview spreads awareness on education technology and its role in 21st century education through best research and practices of using technology in education, and by facilitating events, training, professional development, and consultation in its adoption and implementation.
National Teacher Enquiry Network | Teacher Development Trust There is huge pressure on schools and colleges to improve the quality of teaching and create better learning outcomes for young people. Research shows that the most effective way to achieve these goals, while also improving staff morale and engagement, is through high quality professional development. However, while this is easy to accept it is very hard to implement. The National Teacher Enquiry Network has been created to support organisations that are facing up to these challenges. It is a collaborative partnership of schools and colleges focused on innovation and improvement through highly effective and evidence-based staff professional development and learning. It has been developed alongside schools, in consultation with experts, through a series of pilots supported by the National College for Teaching and Leadership and the National Union of Teachers.
Using twitter in the classroom – from the perspective of students This year as I reflect on 4 terms of amazing learning within my school here in Singapore I asked the students about their highlights. Using twitter in the classroom was one of those. This year we trialled the use of Twitter as a tool to support student learning in the classroom. I asked the students involved a little bit about their use of Twitter to dig a little deeper into what makes them tick when learning through Social Media. All in all this was an incredible experience that I highly recommend to all educators. Craig Kemp I am a passionate Head of Educational Technology at a large International School in Singapore.
GoodCPDGuide Training, consultancy, INSET, and courses for teachers and education staff in schools and colleges. Twitter Rubric University of Wisconsin - Stout — Schedule of Online Courses, Online Certificate Programs, and Graduate Degree Follow us on Do you want to engage with research to become a better teacher/leader? | Are your students thinking? Just taken the lead on research in our Teaching School Alliance. This means we are expected to: “-build on existing research and contribute to alliance and wider priorities - base new initiatives within your alliance on existing evidence and ensure you can measure them - work with other teaching schools in your area, or nationally, where appropriate ensure that your staff use existing evidence - allow your staff the time and support they need take part in research and development activities - share learning from research and development work with the wider school system.”The Department for Education Things I have been doing to help us 1. Subscribe to NFER updates 2. We have experienced everything in school from an RCT conducted by EEF to large scale qualitative work with the IoE. In conclusion, as a staff we develop our thinking, but that has not had the impact it should on the school’s overall strategic thinking. Like this: Like Loading...
KSRA 2014 - Twitteracy: The What, Why and How Archimedean leadership (1): What problems could leverage observation solve? Give me but one firm spot on which to stand, and I will move the earth.” Archimedes, on the action of a lever More modestly, introducing leverage observations, Paul Bambrick-Santoyo quoted Abraham Lincoln: Give me six hours to chop down a tree and I will spend the first four sharpening the axe.” (citation issues) Many aspects of lesson observations inhibit their usefulness and prevent them from sharpening our metaphorical axes. They are usually infrequent. Many observations remain judgmental. Teachers often receive too much feedback. Alternatively, teachers may receive too little useful feedback. Observations rarely support teachers to implement change. Effective follow-up is very rare. Solutions to problems of frequency are often superficial or unhelpful. I’m painting a gloomy picture deliberately to set the stage for a proposed solution. At GFS, we introduced leverage observations this term, an approach developed at Uncommon Schools in the USA. Like this: Like Loading...
How to Be Successful on Twitter: 9 Surprising Stats to Know There are 284 million monthly active users on Twitter and chances are, you're one of them -- we certainly are. Unfortunately, just because all of us are active on Twitter doesn't mean we're using it the right way. And thanks to SocialBro, we have new data from over 200,000 corporate tweets to prove what works on Twitter ... and what doesn't. While some of it confirmed what we suspected, we were also shocked by some of the results. 1) Tweets from businesses that contain images are 34% more likely to get retweeted than tweets from businesses with no image at all. Are you using images on Twitter yet? 2) Tweets from businesses with a URL placed in the middle of the tweet are 26% more likely to get retweeted than those with a URL placed at the beginning or end of the tweet. I had no idea that this was the case and upon review, I was most often placing the URL at the end of the tweet -- lesson learned! When it comes to hashtags, remember that more is less.
How would you like to be observed? by As Ofsted continue to face yet more challenges over the validity of lesson observations, I discuss how best we can develop as teachers and ask the reader, ‘how would you like to be observed?’ Context: An article I wrote was published in The Guardian on 27th May 2014. The catalyst for writing this commentary, follows my blog on the future role of lesson observations in England, which stemmed from an event organised by The Teacher Development Trust at Teach First headquarters. Off-target: What has sparked The Guardian to publish my article (in my opinion), was this article by the TES: ‘Ofsted should no longer judge quality of teaching, says former Gove aide’. I may need to define what I mean by ‘observe learning’ in a future blogpost. I also argue, that none of the proposals I have read, shared by those in other echelons of education, for example Policy Exchange, the TES or by Ofsted, are proposed by current practising teachers. And does this matter? Carpe diem: A solution? Photograph: Alamy
Mrs P Teach: Very Late Thoughts on the Observation Game Ever since OfSTEd, at a meeting with education bloggers, confirmed that in most cases inspectors should not be giving judgements on individual lessons, I have deliberated again and again about my thoughts on the matter. I read the blogs of those in the meeting, followed by Mike Cladingbowl’s Guardian article and then the blogs of “mere mortal” teachers, those of us in the classroom day in and day out. As I read each article, the same question went through my head – is this a good idea or a bad idea? When I had two PGCE students in March, I came to think about observations again. I did it throughout my NQT observations. So, as I sat there giving meaningful and constructive feedback to these lovely PGCE students so early in their teaching careers, my mind was made up about observations. My own performance management observations this year show how fluid and unreliable the grades are. If that were the case, I wonder if teachers would welcome more observations. Links: