Top 10 Songs of the decade
Dec 29th
Rather than going for a look back over the last year or decade I’ve decided to make my end of year post my first ever that is absolutely nothing to do with education!
Instead, as I am incredibly passionate about music i’ve decided to list what I humbly believe to be the greatest songs of the decade. I don’t expect anyone to agree, particularly as I’ve been told on more than one occasion that I have slightly alternative taste in music! However I hope by posting this at least one person discovers a great song or band that they hadn’t heard of before.
Restrictions:
- I have only included songs in my own music collection.
- I have tried to be as impartial as possible, distancing myself from any emotional attachments that may sway me (although detachment kind of defeats the point of music!)
- Only original songs are included, no covers.
- Only one song per artist can be included.
10 Live – Heaven
9 Everclear – Blackjack
8 Smashing Pumpkins – Tarantula
7 The Prodigy – Omen
6 The Killers – All These Things That I`ve Done
5 Black Car – Asleep at the wheel
4 Muse – Knights of Cydonia
3 Enjoy Destroy – Lobby Pianist or link for whole song if you have Spotify installed
2 Fightstar – Mono
1 Feeder – Buck Rogers
#BlogsiLike
Dec 27th
In reply to Doug Belshaw’s suggestion on his blog of sharing the blogs you have liked in 2009, below are just a few of mine that have significantly inspired me this year. As their are lots of teaching blogs I like to read, I have made my Google reader list of teaching RSS feeds available to view at the bottom of this post. Alternatively you can subscribe to it here. If you write a blog that a Primary School Teacher would find useful or interesting, please let me know about it on twitter @primarypete_.
http://edte.ch/ by @tombarrett. Inspiring and innovative approaches inside and outside the classroom. There are only a handful of people in your career that significantly effect how you approach teaching. For me, Tom is one such person. And i’ve never even met him!
http://www.timrylands.com/blog/ by @timrylands. Tim’s innovative and practical ideas have inspired me use and develop them in my classroom. Inspirational Stuff.
http://hallyd.edublogs.org/ by @dawnhallybone. As I am currently following a similar path to Dawn’s work with the Wii in the classroom and with the Redbridge Games Network, it has helped me validate my use by reading her practical applications and reflections on how the console has effected learning.
http://bitsbobsandwaffles.blogspot.com/ by @mynictle. Nicola’s blog is fantastic at showing the analytical and self questioning approach I find I go through related to the use of ICT in the classroom and it’s great to read someone else’s perspective.
http://lordlit.wordpress.com/ by @Joga5. As Bill is a Primary Literacy Adviser, his blog is great as its focus is on Literacy, supported by ICT. It has a perfect blend of practical examples and sound pedagogy.
Your Top 3 Leadership Decisions
Dec 22nd
As a single decision made in a leadership capacity can have such long lasting and profound impact on so many working structures it would be great to find out what other educators believe theirs are, and why!
So, please post the top 3 leadership decisions (not management decisions) you have made in any leadership capacity and why they have reached your top 3. E.g. as a subject coordinator, deputy head, head, year group leader, consultant to a cluster of schools etc
Here are mine as an ICT Coordinator in a Primary School:
1. The creation of a vision for ICT that is shared between staff, parents, pupils, governors. Reason: These few sentences have given a sharp focus on where ICT should be taken within the school. It gives direction and (hopefully!) motivates.
2. Moving the ICT Curriculum away from QCA units to a skills based, integrated ICT curriculum. Reason: Whilst this leads to significant management issues (e.g. progression, teaching subject knowledge etc) over time, transferable ICT skills, motivation and ICT use throughout the curriculum have been significantly raised.
3. ‘The one that got away’ – Changing the role of the ICT Coordinator into a Curriculum Development Group. Now this as not been a success as yet but I still think this would be a great move, enhancing collaboration, teachers taking more ownership of ICT etc. I just couldn’t sustain it at the time I introduced the structure change a few years ago. Now that we have an established learning platform, I am hoping that a second attempt, with interaction through the LP will support its development.
Macbeth Micro Theme
Dec 19th
Following on from our Armada Tudor theme, for the 3 weeks preceding Christmas we switched our attention to Macbeth. Our Literacy focus was Year 4 Plays with lots of speaking & listening, performance and development of adverbs (through stage directions).
The main resource that was used to support the unit was the outstanding Classic Comics ‘quick text’ version which I originally discovered from Olliebray. This was extended for higher achieving pupils by using the plain text version. Quite simply the boys went WILD for it. Especially when we used a digital copy on the interactive whiteboard. I’m not even generalising – every single one of them were gagging for Shakespeare, what a great resource!
I chose Macbeth as our play in particular as, in addition to the gore and murder, it had the extremely strong female lead of Lady Macbeth. The girls (now I am generalising) enjoyed her manipulative characteristics. I obviously wasn’t pushing this ’skill’ however it certainly grounded the bravado of the boys when they realised that Lady Macbeth was the real brains behind the operation.
The main ICT involvement was at the start of the theme, using Voicethread (for the first time) to support Talk for Writing-y retellings of the story. This gave the children the context and depth of understanding to develop their own parallel versions of Macbeth as well as turning the comic into a play and create some 1st person stories (pushing the higher achievers by focusing on a different character to Macbeth).
A couple of days before the Christmas break we had a ‘Tudor Celebration Day’ with children dressed as Tudors or Macbeth characters. They performed some of their retellings and their versions of the play (helped by @chrisleach78 who kindly sent me an appropriate version for the children’s age which we then adapted for our use). We ended our day with a feast including blancmange and butter beer. Without the beer. Or butter.
I would love to have spent longer on the theme as it had a lot of potential and the children and parents had a lot of enthusiasm for it. I was a little apprehensive before tackling Shakespeare with eight year olds as I wasn’t sure if it would be accessible but the comic really made it work and brought the whole world to life.
TMETRU09 “Wii are learning” Mario Kart
Dec 6th
This presentation was created for Teach Meet Ed Tech Round Up 2009. It focuses on the use of Mario Kart Wii in a year 4 classroom to enhance learning experiences.
http://www.mindmeister.com/25819414/mario-kart
http://primarypete.net/mario-kart-theme
Getting the most from your Twitter learning network
Dec 5th
This post is designed to support educators get the most out of a twitter based learning network, with the minimal amount of effort.
- Go to a page on the twitter website of someone you already follow. If you are new to twitter, you could start with @tombarrett @timrylands @dawnhallybone @dajbelshaw or even me! @primarypete_. On their page click ‘listed’. View a list made from educators on twitter and click it. When you find a list you want to follow click ‘follow this list’.
- Install an application that allows you to easily access Twitter lists. I currently use Tweetdeck. View the bottom of this post for more on how to use Tweetdeck. Click the ‘+’ icon at top and add a column. Click groups/lists and add the list you followed in step 1. (The newly followed list may take a few minutes to show up).
- You are now following any updates from anyone in the list. Strategy A: Over a week (as different people tend to tweet at different times) follow anyone in the list that interests you or will add to your professional development. (Advantage: more manageable amount of users to follow when viewing ‘all followers’. Disadvantage: potentially smaller network of support). Strategy B: Blanket follow everyone then after a week unfollow anyone that you find is not adding to your professional development. (Advantage: potentially larger network of support. Disadvantage: less manageable when viewing ‘all followers’).
- Create your own list of users that contribute heavily to your own professional development (I have an ‘a’ and ‘b’ list both with 40 or so in). My preference is to keep these lists private (the default setting).
- Read your own list/s most frequently. Occasionally check all your followers and the lists you follow. This allows your professional development ‘net’ to be thrown wider and wider rather than stay ‘cliquey’. Over time you may want to stop following the original lists you followed, depending on what works for you.
Why not just use Tweetdeck groups to access my professional network? Using the list system, you have a system that can be accessed on the twitter website, an application such as Tweetdeck or a mobile phone such as Tweetie2 (I’m hoping a forthcoming Tweetdeck IPhone update will include lists in the same way they do in the desktop version).
Why do I need to bother creating my own lists? Without creating your own lists, following the above method very quickly gives you access to a wide professional development network. However, if you follow others and then create a personal list it gives you a method of making the information more personal and manageable.
Why use Tweetdeck? The short answer, once you are up and running with it…speed! The longer (and slightly more techie) answer below:
- If you have the same people in more than 1 list you follow, or in your personally created list and ‘all followers’, by clicking the ‘eye icon’ to mark your personal list as read and then clicking the ’scissors icon’ in ‘all followers’ you can remove just the tweets you have already looked at, saving you time.
- When searching large lists or ‘all followers’ you can click the ‘cloud icon’ and skip to information mentioned most frequently. Useful if you want a very quick look.
- When searching large lists or ‘all followers’ you can click the ‘filter icon’ and type in ‘http’ or ‘?’ to just view weblinks or questions people are asking. I use this method a lot when I want a quick look at large amounts of tweets.
- You can choose when you want to be notified of updates by clicking the ’spanner icon’ you access settings. My notification settings are below:
