My Stuff

I have spent most of this afternoon trying to show my husband how to use Facebookwhich is similar to My Space, Bebo etc but apparently for the ahem… more mature person, or so I’m told! As I guided him through the process of uploading photos, filling in profiles, etc. it occurred to me that what those of us who are interested in blogging, ICT, podcasts and so on do naturally and intuitively can be challenging even for those who use `’technology`’ everyday. It is a different way of using it and is one which produces tremendous results and enthusiasm for both staff and children alike. This can be a steep learning curve for us as teachers and yet one which children embrace easily. We, as educators, have to remind ourselves that it is to enhance the children’s education when we are struggling at 2 am to figure out just how to make the video link work or the photos to upload. I guess what I am trying to say is that it we should stick at it because it is worth it. When I start my new job in August that is what I’m going to be saying to my staff when I ask them to come out their comfort zone and give new technologies a try.

Last night after much tinkering and pushing myself way out of my comfort/understanding zone I managed to embed my Primary 5 French podcast within my school blog - success!! This might not seem like a huge achievement to some of you bloggers out there, but to me it is another learning leap! Of course I had to do the actually posting at home as I couldn’t upload it within the school network, but I can listen to it in within the school network which is great. The kids are well impressed with how it/they sound and this is just another motivation for them. They love the idea of “real French people listening to them speak French”! Check it out for yourselves!
It really makes me think about the tools for collaboration and sharing that will be available within Glow. Having had access to the GLOW pilot, I was impressed with the GLOW groups and the functionality of them but must confess to getting a bit lost when trying to get anyone to join my group - Pam no pals here! I would really like to have seen the interface the children were viewing to give me a better understanding of how it all works for them so hopefully there will be that opportunity in the next round of the pilot.

So what have I been up to over the last few weeks? Basically, teaching! I have been trying to get on to Glow and look at the pilot but I managed to lock myself out - entirely my fault as I use the wrong password the magic three times in a row before I looked at my old-fashioned piece of paper in my diary where I have written it down!! I have managed to reset this, but I have not been able to explore this as much as I would have liked due to covering staff absence. What I have looked at very briefly seems to me to need more time to inspect, play about with, understand… comments, please!

I am really interested in how other authorities are planning to take this forward at “chalkface” level. How are they going to get staff onboard with all these new tools? Are they going to cascade it at a cluster level, area, etc? I fully expect there to be a number of staff who see the potential and will dive in and experiment right away (thank goodness!) but what about the other who need a bit more hand holding before they get on board. How are you going to support them? It is definitely an exciting time!

I had a meeting today with Susan Ronnie from Kirlandneuk PS about setting up our French blog between the two schools. It is great to be involved in this kind of collaboration and we both feel it will really benefit the children. Susan had found a great French podcast which she had encouraged her P5 French class to download and listen to on their mp3 players. The children loved this idea and were highly motivated to complete their homework!! Those who didn’t have an mp3 player were able to listen to it online.
So here we are, two enthusiastic Primary teachers with no real ICT training, apart from (me) a PostGrad in Educational Computing 8 years ago, really excited about setting up this new technology but the stumbling block for us is the understanding of how this new technology works and about html language, RSS feeds, tags, etc. It is a steep learning curve but one we feel really worth while. At least both of us can follow instructions from the help menus - just don’t ask us to repeat it on our own! We have set ourselves the task of linking our blog to Bubbleshare with pictures and audio this week and are meeting again next week to compare notes. Hey, we are nothing if not ambitious!! So please bear with us as we muddle our way through and thanks to all who have been leaving us comments.

I went on a great twilight course last night - Interview Skills with Shona Carmichael, Primary Consultation. Basically the aims of the course were to outline how to have a successful interview by having an understanding of what school management are looking for, how to answer questions and how to prepare. I thought this would be a useful course as I seem to have become less confident about interviews the older I get and, on a personal note, since I had my kids!! My friends tell me this is all part of motherhood, who knows?
Anyway, I duly went along not too sure what to expect and I was not disappointed. Shona pointed out that before you even think about applying for a job you need to consider why and examine your emotional intelligence. Daniel Goleman in his book “Working with Emotional Intelligence” defined this in five ways: self-awareness, self-regulation, motivation, empathy and social skills. These formed part of a self-analysis questionnaire which we went through. Something that struck me in particular was the debate about strengths and weaknesses. I was lucky enough to see Dr Brian Boyd, co-founder of Tapestry speak at SETT06 on Unlocking Creativity: Teaching Creative Thinking and Learning. One of the points he made is that we must teach children to celebrate failure as this is a necessary part of learning and we must talk about it. I totally get that, both as a teacher and a mum. My 4-year old currently cries every time he loses a game and I am trying to teach him that it is a part of learning!! So when I was on my course last night, someone made the point that in the interview we are hyping ourselves up and therefore, do we really want to talk about our weaknesses? The answer has to be yes so we can move forward and make changes, but that in itself can be a challenge. Shona gave us a list of things easy to spot in others but not so easy to spot in yourself, such as unrealistic goals, power hungry. You can see bits of yourself in all of them which is the scary thing!! What I really liked was the suggestion that you go away and make a list of your strengths and weaknesses and then give it to someone at work, eg. your boss and see if they agree with you. Or if you are feeling really brave, your partner! I don’t think I’d quite manage that one, but it did prompt me to start a conversation with my boss about my strengths today. Haven’t quite got to the weaknesses yet, but c’est la vie!!

I have just arrived back from our Primary ICT Co-ordinators meeting, put the kids to bed, have hubby cooking dinner (yes I do know how lucky I am!) and thought I should use this window to blog my thoughts on tonights meeting.
The presentation from Paul Smyth of RM on Glow gave me a feel for all the possibilities that Glow should create. I am particularly excited about the collaborative tools to help, as Paul said, teachers always reinventing the wheel which is a bug bear of mine! However, I do still have concerns regarding two things.
Firstly, parents coming online with this. I am not sure how far I want to go with shared information about everything. Teaching challenging pupils can be a hard enough job without being attacked (metaphorically) at every turn. As a parent myself I can see that it would be useful to have access to certain information but as my boys are not yet at school, I am unsure just how far I want to go. Those of you with kids at Secondary could maybe open my eyes more.
Secondly, I am concerned about how we are going to get on board all staff with this new technology. Of course, I’m sure there will be plenty of enthusiastic colleagues who will embrace the challenge of Glow and carry some staff along with them. But how do we get on board those who don’t “do computers”? How do we get the message to them that this will revolutionise (there’s that word again, Gordon!) the way they teach when some are quite happy with what they are doing, thank-you very much. I suppose a little at a time, showing them the benefits to their classroom, their subject, a little step at a time. Today’s mention of online report cards may be just the carrot we are looking for. Hope I’m not going negative again, it is a genuine concern for me from an authority point of view.