Some of you may be familiar with TED Talks “Ideas Worth Spreading”. A great site that provides short talks on a huge range of topics. The quality of speakers and talks that can be found on TED Talk is excellent. So now TED have created TED Education. A site that brings together outstanding lessons by educators all over the world and employs professional animators to then animate those lessons to produce a quality videos (no longer than 10 minutes) for you to use free in your classroom. This in itself is good but there are a number of other functions the site offers. You can customise (flip) the videos provided on the site to suit your class and track your students success/use of the video(s). The videos are accompanied by lessons which are not designed to replace good teaching but are there to supplement a teachers lesson. These lessons contain quiz questions, open ended questions and resources to dig deeper into the topic. This site has only just got up and running, at the time I posted this the video below had only been on You Tube for 15 hours. This means there are currently not a huge number of videos available just yet (62 at the time of this post). I wouldn’t be put off by this however as I would be guessing this will increase rapidly over the next 12 months.
From the brief look I have had of the site it certainly seems to be more suited to secondary students.
Below I have embeded a couple of videos from Ted Ed including the TED Ed Website Tour plus one from Adam Savage (Mythbusters) who walks through two spectacular examples of profound scientific discoveries that came from simple, creative methods.
Click here to visit TED Ed Lessons Worth Sharing – put this site in your favourites!
Click here to visit TED Talks Ideas Worth Sharing – put this site in your favourites!
Please note the following changes to our structure in terms of who is working with who and on what.
This term sees the following:
R-6 staff working on AC maths
Tanya, Allan and Ed working on 7-10 AC maths
All other secondary staff working on the TfEL process. Same staff as term 1 with the addition of Justin and Nick.
Next Wednesday was to be our first TfEL & Australian Curriculum meeting of term two. This was poor planning on my part as secondary staff have parent teacher interviews through this week. This means for those staff involved in parent teacher interviews there will be no TfEL or AC meeting. If secondary staff do not have any (or many) interviews then it would be great if they were able to continue working on TfEL or the AC if possible – staff can make this decision on an individual basis.
For primary staff the planned meeting with Trish Boschetti will go ahead on Wednesday at 3:30pm. Last term Paul emailed me what staff wanted Trish to cover in this upcoming meeting which I forwarded to Trish. This meeting will take place in Kim’s room.
Just a reminder for staff to ensure their programs for term 2 are placed in the folder in the staff room and that they are saved on the Admin drive in the Curriculum Areas folder. Thanks.
I came across this video during the holidays which reminded me of how important play is for children. The video is about Caine a young boy in East L.A. who builds a cardboard amusement arcade at his fathers used car parts store. Credit to his father for encouraging Caine’s imagination, creativity and play. How do we foster creativity at P.B.A.S.?
This is a brilliant video, I guarantee it will make you smile!
During our recent student free day (term 1) part of my talk to staff was about ‘ego based feedback’ and ‘tasked based feedback’. Part of this revolved around the importance of task based feedback to assist with student learning. There seemed to be a general consensus that a combination of both was necessary. I do believe however that task based feedback is more important to learning but do agree that a combination is important. So after having raised this with staff it was interesting to listen to myself giving feedback to the receptions during an throwing activity I did with them. It’s amazing how many ‘good boy’ and ‘good girl’ statements I fitted into such a short space of time. Approximately a ratio of 14 good boy/girl statements to 1 task based piece of feedback. I see a use for ego based feedback but would prefer the ratio to be weighted in the favour of task based feedback. I knew that I used ego based feedback quite a bit with the receptions but until I listened to myself was not aware how much. My aim now is to improve this ratio in favour of task based feedback during term 2.
It is amazing what we don’t pick up when we are in the middle of a lesson and what we can pick up when we use video or have someone observe our teaching.
Love the reactions (many and varied) in this video of students recieving their grades. Our system requires grades (for better or worse – depending on your view). From personal experience it is hard to shift a student from believing they are a ‘C’ student to believing they can be a ‘B’ student. Are there better ways to feedback to students how they have gone?
The first video is from ABC’s Lateline. Finland’s director of education Pasi Sahlberg joins Lateline to discuss the nation’s world-leading education system.
The second video has nothing new about Finland’s Education system that I haven’t posted before however I did enjoy the presenter of the show. He goes to town on American education policy makers and America’s attitude in general to change (or lack of) in the face of mounting evidence about what makes a good educational system.
Quite often when we think about professional learning/reading (T&D) we envisage reading from a book or sitting and listening to a speaker who for the most part is talking about something we often don’t want to hear about. My own professional learning is at times this sort of traditional T & D (and it still needs to be), however a large portion (95%) is made up of Twitter and blogs, the majority of my ongoing regular professional development is online. Online learning allows me to focus on what I want to learn about. It helps me filter the stuff that I don’t want to hear about and its regular and constant. It is not one day here and one day there through a year.
The following video featuring Will Richardson explains briefly at the start of the video the power of online learning which I guess is the message I’m trying to pass on to you through this post. He refers to its power using two examples of teenagers but at the end of the video also makes mention of the fact that if this learning is out there for students to access it is also out there for us to access. His discussion moves away from this topic in the middle section and discusses how poorly US education is going and the problems with ‘test prep’ compared with real learning – worth the watch.
“We have to see it for the networks and connections that are possible and each of us needs to be able to reexamine our own learning.” Will Richardson in reference to the online learning available to us.
Using Twitter and blogs as a source of professional reading requires you to consider the following:
1. Do I have time! – If you know you will not make time for professional reading/viewing/learning online then you might need to stop reading this post . Just before you do though can I just say that reading/viewing/listening about the latest educational issues/debates and being challenged by other teachers/educators views and philosophies on a regular basis is (I have found) one of the most powerful learning tools I have come across. Anything that makes you think more deeply about your profession has to be good. So …….you need to make time each day, every second day, each week, whatever suits you and your current hectic lifestyle. Decide how long at the time you have to read – be flexible with this as sometimes you will be busier than others.
2. I don’t like using computers/social networks etc – As our careers evolve more and more of our learning will be online (good and bad). Lots of the tools that will benefit our students with learning will be found online. Online technologies will only continue to grow and we either choose to get on board or we can choose to ignore it. If we choose to ignore it who are we doing a diservice to? Remember you don’t have to do everything but you might do something.
2. Do I have to contribute if I create a Twitter account? No. You can just follow educators and access their resources, thoughts and ideas for free without anyone knowing you have done so. Of course contributing back can be rewarding also. At the risk of alienating everyone except Tanya and Dave if you have an iPad/tablet you can click the Twitter app and spend as little as 5-10 min flicking through tweets to see what educational resources and ideas people are putting out there. Of course you can also do this on your computer it is just not as convenient. If you connect to a blog post through Twitter but have no time to read it you can email the tweet to yourself and read it at a later date.
3. How do I find blogs? Finding blogs that interest you and that focus on the area you want to learn about is the key. I have started to collect some blogs as starting points for staff. Just go to the page tab titled ‘Teacher Blogs’ on this site and look through the list to see if you might connect with any of them. As time goes on I will try to build this list. Of course it is also very easy to Google ‘blogs about insert topic here’ to find blogs on topics you want to know more about.
4. Aren’t blogs just other peoples opinions with no foundation or research? Yes and no. Some blogs provide personal opinion based on their experience in classrooms, some provide resources and ideas that have worked for them, others go more deeply into issues and will cite current research to support their position on a topic. All are useful!
I hope this wasn’t to preachy, it was not my intention. My intention was to make you consider or think about what else is out there in terms of professional development. At the very least I hope that you check out some of the ‘Teacher Blogs’ listed on this site which might spark an interest in regularly going to the Web for a ‘hit’ of professional learning on a regular basis.
These links will take you to the scope and sequence papers for English, science, math and history. These documents give a great overview of the ‘scope and sequence’ of a subjects concepts. It makes it easy to see how the curriculum links from year to year which should assist with teacher planning, particularly in vertically grouped classes. These links can also be found on the Curriculum page of this blog under the appropriate subject heading.
