Shortest Poem?

I watched this clip this morning and really enjoyed the analysis, so hope you do as well.

how to get out of the educational “death valley”

Sir Ken Robinson outlines 3 principles crucial for the human mind to flourish — and how current education culture works against them. In a funny, stirring talk he tells us how to get out of the educational “death valley” we now face, and how to nurture our youngest generations with a climate of possibility.

Maybe it is my fault

In this outstanding video Michael Jordan explains that you don't succeed unless you work hard and learn from failure.



"Maybe it's my fault.
Maybe I led you to believe it was easy, when it wasn't.
Maybe I made you think my highlights started at the free throw line, and not at the gym.
Maybe I made you think that every shot I took was a game winner.
That my game was built on flash, and not fire.
Maybe it's my fault that you didn't see that failure gave me strength, that my pain was my motivation.
Maybe I led you to believe that basketball was a God given gift, and not something I worked for every single day of my life.
Maybe I destroyed the game.
Or maybe you're just making excuses."

Great Crowdbreaker

I read this on Mark Oestreicher's blog [link here] which I thought that I could use sometime, so here it is...

 

• Get about 5 or 8 teenagers up front
• Tell them they have to say a tongue-twister as fast as possible, five times, and that there will be a prize for the two or three who can say the whole thing without messing up at all.
• The tongue-twister is: One smart fella and he felt smart
• To say it five times, though, it becomes: 

One smart fella and he felt smart

Two smart fellas and they felt smart

Three smart fellas and they felt smart

Four smart fellas and they felt smart

Five smart fellas and they felt smart

 

What inevitably happens is that many of them end up saying something like, “One fart smeller and…"


Wonderfully immature.and hilarious.

Walking meetings / lessons?

taken from Jessica Gross (TED)

Nilofer Merchant gives a startling statistic: we’re sitting, on average, for 9.3 hours per day—far more than the 7.7 hours we spend sleeping. “Sitting is so incredibly prevalent, we don’t even question how much we’re doing it.” Merchant says, "Got a meeting? Take a walk, in that way, sitting has become the smoking of our generation.” But there are consequences. Physical inactivity, Merchant says, leads to upticks in our risk of breast cancer, colon cancer, heart disease, and type II diabetes. Merchant’s own habits changed when a colleague couldn’t fit a meeting into her schedule and asked if Merchant could come along on a dog walk instead. Now, she says, “I’ve taken that idea and made it my own.” Instead of meeting in conference rooms, she asks people to go on walking meetings—20 to 30 miles’ worth a week. “It’s changed my life,” she says. Merchant is carrying on a long tradition of frequent, even ritualistic, walking.

Here are some other fans of the amble. Some are walk-and-talkers; others simply stroll for its own sake.

Aristotle allegedly instructed students while strolling about—which fits with his students’ being called “Peripatetics.” .

In August 1910, Sigmund Freud took a four-hour walk with the Austrian composer Gustav Mahler, who had requested an “urgent consultation” via telegraph, according to the BBC. Mahler’s marriage was disintegrating, and he was about to have a breakdown—hence the emergency walk-and-talk with the founder of psychoanalysis. In fact, Freud conducted a number of walking analyses, according to Freud: A Life for Our Time. Another significant example: Freud conducted his first training analysis on Max Eitingon in 1907 through a series of evening walks. Eitingon went to become president of the International Psychoanalytic Association.

Steve Jobs made a habit of the walking meeting, especially for first encounters, according to CNNMoney, which quotes from Jobs’ biography: “taking a long walk was his preferred way to have a serious conversation.”

Harry S. Truman was a routine-oriented man, and walking was a fundamental part of that routine. According to the University of Virginia’s Miller Center, Truman woke up at five in the morning for a “vigorous” walk of a mile or two, “wearing a business suit and tie!” (This in addition to his frequent midday swimming session in the White House pool, “with his eyeglasses on.”)

Charles Dickens “was from childhood an avid, even compulsive, walker,” Sports Illustrated wrote in 1988. (Apparently, the mid-1800s was “the golden age of professional foot racing, or ‘pedestrianism.’” Who knew?) Dickens frequently walked around 20 miles a day—one night in 1857, he logged 30 miles—and often did so at night. Walking was a means of both observing the cities around him and de-stressing. “Dickens found composition to be hard, painful work,” SI writes. “The hours he spent at his desk agitated him tremendously, and walking served as a kind of safety valve.”

So the questions then begs, should I not be using more of this technique for teaching and learning. In the summer months, the pupils are always asking to work outside, so maybe I need to introduce "walking lessons". I know that we have the campus for it, so that would not be a problem, but I would have to consider the content, which does not require a desktop / laptop, but rather a smart phone or tablet.

The Death of Brennan Manning: A Tribute Cartoon

This article was written by David Hayward [link here]

“Tribute Cartoon to Brennan Manning”
I received an email from a friend informing me that Brennan Manning died yesterday. I can find no news articles confirming this, but his Wikipedia page dates his death as yesterday and his official website announces his passing.
Manning was an American author, friar, priest, contemplative and speaker best known for his book Ragamuffin Gospel: Good News for the Bedraggled, Beat-Up, and Burnt Out. As an advocate for the marginalized, he’s my kind of people. His voice for the church-abused and the marginalized was not only fueled by his take on the gospel of Jesus, but by his own personal experiences. He got married, marginalizing himself from his own home, the Roman Catholic church. Many of his friends urged him to seek accommodation from the church, but he refused to do so. He didn’t want to be a silent conspirator in what he considered a “corrupt and corrupting process”.
One of his most famous quotes:

“The greatest single cause of atheism in the world today is Christians who acknowledge Jesus with their lips and walk out the door and deny Him by their lifestyle… That is what an unbelieving world simply finds unbelievable.”

Whether you agree or not that this is the greatest single cause of atheism, it certainly does illuminate the hypocrisy so much religion is justifiably accused of.
He believed Jesus was the human face of God. According to Saint Paul, now he is face to face (1 Corinthians 13:12).
Read the kind words people are leaving on his Facebook page.
Rest in peace Brennan Manning

Amazing Grace as you have not heard it before...

I came across this clip from the Chapman University Choir in SoCal. Their "signature song", Amazing Grace is unforgettable. Listen through to the end!

Is there a shift in learning?

There has been much talk about Teaching and Learning in recent months in my establishment. It seems to be the buzz phrase and departmental meetings and staff INSEDs are all focused on this. I had a look around for some thoughts on the subject and found this quite interesting. There is a talk in a shift in learning and the following seven areas seem to be where the Shift is talking place (or they are stimulating the Shift). These include:

1. Digital & Research Literacy
2. A move from Standards to Habit
3. Game-based Learning
4. Connectivity
5. Transparency
6. Place-Based Education
7. Self-Directed Learning & Play

8 Apps To Turn Your iPad Into A Digital Whiteboard

Whether you’re interesting in blending, flipping, personalizing, or differentiating your classroom, technology can be a huge help. Technology gives students direct access to content, which frees the teacher up for other roles.
iPads function exceptionally well in this capacity, and one of their talents is to function as a digital whiteboard. Whether you want to lead an in-person class through the iPad screen, or you need remote access to eLearners or others in a school-to-school program, you’ve got options. Below are 8 apps (with various strengths and weaknesses–the only way to know if they truly fit your needs is to try them, unfortunately) that can help you blend and flip your classroom–or just give students more direct access to you, one another, and the content.

1. Doceri
Price: Free to try, $4.99 for full version
More information from developer: “Doceri allows me to present a lesson from anywhere in the classroom; a big plus when trying to manage 32+ middle school students. To actually see what I am writing and replay it while facing my students with my back to the board is amazing! I can work out equations ahead of time, or live in front of the students.” Anne Whitman, 7th grade math teacher at Oakdale Jr. High in California
2. Educreations Interactive Whiteboard
Price: Free
More information from developer: ”Educreations turns your iPad into a recordable whiteboard. Creating a great video tutorial is as simple as touching, tapping and talking. Explain a math formula. Create an animated lesson. Add commentary to your photos. Diagram a sports play. With voice recording, realistic digital ink, photos and text, and simple sharing through email, Facebook or Twitter, now you can broadcast your ideas from anywhere.
3. ShowMe Interactive Whiteboard
Price: Free
More information from developer: ”Turn your iPad into your personal interactive whiteboard!ShowMe allows you to record voice-over whiteboard tutorials and share them online.”

4. Whiteboard HD
Price $4.99
More information from developer: ”Collaboration on preliminary sketches, group brainstorming and student projects are all perfect uses for Whiteboard. You can even share ideas through external monitors or projectors in multiple aspect ratios when used with the iPad VGA adapter. At the end of class or a meeting, it’s easy to save and bookmark notes, images and diagrams in the apps project manager, then send out a copy of the groups work via email.”
5. Syncspace
Price: $8.49
More information from developer: ”SyncSpace lets people express and explore visual ideas together, wherever you are. It is a zoomable drawing space that can be shared in real time over the net. It is a shared whiteboard plus a whole lot more.”
6. Jot!
Price: Free
More information from developer: ”Jot! is a simple, fast whiteboard that lets you sketch out your ideas and share them in real time. Draw, take notes, or wireframe on your iPad quickly and easily as soon as ideas come to you. Share your ideas via email or save them as photos. Collaborate in real time over the internet with Live Sharing.”
7. BaiBoard
Price: Free
More information from developer: “Live collaboration from iPad, Mac and web via 1. Zoomable multi-page whiteboard, 2. Collaborative annotation on PDF docs, and 3. Screen Sharing from iPad to web browser.”
8. Groupboard
Price: Free for 5 students; class sizes available at subscription prices
More information from developer: ”Groupboard turns your iPhone, iPod Touch or iPad into a collaborative whiteboard, allowing you to draw and chat in real time with other people anywhere on the internet, even with users using a web browser.”

15 Free Learning Tools You’ve Probably Never Heard Of

I saw this post on the TeachThought site and felt that it was worth a repost.

It can be hard to keep up with the ever-growing list of free educational sites out there, much less distinguish which ones will best meet your needs and help you learn skills you really need without shelling out big bucks. New sites are always being launched and even those that have been on the scene for a while sometimes don’t garner enough attention to make it onto your radar, often getting overshadowed by more high-profile sites. As a result, even those who are in the ed tech loop can miss out on some seriously helpful free learning sites. Here we highlight just a few of these under-the-radar free learning sites, that run the gamut from providing full degree programs to simple job-skill training tools, offering a little something for every kind of learner.

 

1. SCITABLE
Scitable, created by NatureEducation, is an online collaborative space for science learning. Visitors to the site can browse or search through science articles and ebooks, ask experts science-related questions, build an online classroom, or even share their own content. Materials on the site are focused on the life sciences, but there are also numerous resources that can help learners start or accelerate a career in science.
2. TVO
Similar to PBS, the Ontario-based television station offers many of the same educational resources and opportunities for learning. Even if you can’t tune in live, you can take advantage of dozens of videos on topics like science, nature, business, tech, education, and culture. Connected to TVO is Big Ideas, a site that offers videos that touch on important and engaging topics like mathematics, economics, and even urban design. Other resources include educational tools for parents and kids, civics education on Canadian government, and access to loads of compelling documentaries.
3. SAYLOR
While sites like Coursera and Udacity have been drawing the most attention on the free education front these days, Saylor has largely flown under the radar. Created in 2008, the site offers nearly 250 free courses online, with topics centered on the 10 highest enrollment majors in the U.S. In addition to taking classes, learners can participate in discussion forums (organized by topic), track courses and print transcripts, and may soon even be able to access free textbooks.
4. GCF LEARNFREE.ORG
This North Carolina-based site is produced by Goodwill Industries and focuses on helping people from all walks of life build skills in technology, literacy, and math that will help them find work. All classes offered by the site are entirely free, and even come complete with mobile apps that make it possible to learn on-the-go. Currently, there are over 750 free lessons that teach everything from how to use Microsoft Office to basic addition and subtraction.
5. UNIVERSITY OF THE PEOPLE
The brainchild of educational entrepreneur Shai Reshef, University of the People is a tuition-fee, nonprofit, online academic institution that offers access to undergraduate degree programs in business administration and computer science. It maintains relationships with Yale, NYU, Hewlett-Packard, and the Catalyst Initiative to supply students with opportunities for research, future study, and internships. While the site focuses on helping learners in developing nations, students from nearly 130 different nations have been accepted (tuition is free, but you still have to apply).
6. ENGINEERING FOR CHANGE
Engineering for Change isn’t a traditional learning site with videos, courses, and lessons. Instead, it’s a live, interactive webcast that allows participants to learn and interact with others in engineering. It’s also a chance to play an active role in helping to solve humanitarian engineering issues. A new topic is addressed every month, and anyone interested in becoming more involved or learning more about engineering is encouraged to sign up.
7. THE FACULTY PROJECT
  Through The Faculty Project, learners can get access to professors from prestigious schools like Dartmouth, Vassar, Duke, and Northwestern, to name just a few. There are dozens of courses and lectures to choose from, covering a broad spectrum of topics. Launched just this year, the site is slowly building up a great collection of resources that can help students learn through video, PDF, PowerPoint, discussion boards, and educational articles.
8. TEXTBOOK REVOLUTION
There are a growing number of sites out there that are dedicated to providing users with access to free textbooks. Textbook Revolution is among them, and while it hasn’t received as much attention as some others, it’s still a solid place to look for free educational resources. Currently, the site offers up access to dozens of textbooks, ranging in topic from accounting to chemistry.
9. LEARNTHAT
Learnthat is an excellent place to explore tutorials that cover business, technology, and finance. Visitors to the site can learn how to improve their skills in Excel, digital marketing, or even management, through hundreds of helpful articles, videos, and photos.
10. UNIVERSITY OF REDDIT
Most web-savvy individuals have heard of Reddit, but many may not be familiar with the University of Reddit. The site offers anyone the chance to share their expertise through class lectures and videos with others in the web. Currently, the site is home to educational materials in art, computer science, general studies, language, math, music, philosophy, science, and social studies, which means most things are covered. If they’re not, learners are always welcome to add their own educational content.
11. MENTORMOB
MentorMob doesn’t supply any educational content of its own, but is an excellent tool for bringing together resources from other sites, organizing them, and sharing them with others. Users can create their own “playlists” of educational material or browse through existing collections compiled by other users. While it has been featured in a number of major publications, the site doesn’t have the widespread attention that others generate, but that could change as the Pinterest-like functionality helps users to create incredibly useful lists for learning.
12. MEMRISE
  Memrise promises to help users learn through a combination of brain science, fun, and community. Much of the content is game-based and highly visual, offering visitors to the site the chance to boost their skills in a variety of languages, or even to learn more about topics like cheese, herbs, and fish.
13. LEARNERSTV
LearnersTV brings together videos, audio lectures, science animations, lecture notes, online tests, presentations, and publications to offers visitors a wide range of material with which to learn. Those looking for an in-depth experience can find entire courses, while those just doing cursory research can browse through short articles and PowerPoints.
14. GROVO
Knowing how to use technology is an essential skill in today’s job market, but with so many new technologies popping up all the time, it can be hard to keep up with them all. That’s where Grovo can help. The online learning site specializes in offering video lessons on top Internet products. Visitors to the site can expand their knowledge of sites like Twitter, Gmail, Facebook, and WordPress, or just learn a bit more about netiquette and online marketing.
15. ALISON
Alison offers free online courses and certification through 400 different courses in 10 different course categories. Launched in 2007, the site helps people from around the world earn certification in topics like legal studies, psychology, health studies, project management, and human resources. All content is free but to get a copy of your certification, you’ll have to shell out about $20.

HSE decisions about iPads and Tablets

Mark Steed posted the following entry on his blog :"Why IPads and Tablets in Schools don't sit well with me", which provokes some interesting thoughts. If we expect staff and pupils to be using technology for many hours a day and we know that they are using them socially as well (most pupils use technology for entertainment purposes), do we need to be teaching them about safe physical usage. Should this be part of the induction programme? Here is Mark's thoughts...

Why IPads and Tablets in Schools don't sit well with me

I am concerned that little discussion seems to have been given to the range of potential health issues surrounding the introduction of mobile technologies into the classroom. We have both a duty of care and a duty to educate young people in their safe and healthy use.

(If further incentive were required) In our increasingly litigious age, organisations lay themselves open to a potential liability claim if they do not provide adequate health and safety training. (think: 'Working at heights' training for use of ladders, workstation audits, the correct use of Rowing Machines or DT equipment etc.). It is likely to follow that where schools are providing iPads or tablets for use by pupils or staff, that there are potential liability issues, if appropriate training on their safe use is not in place.

Schools would be well advised to incorporate training into their ICT and/or PSHE curriculums on the health risks surrounding poor posture when using mobile devices. So what form would this take, given that it is almost impossible to maintain good posture when using them? (I am not occupational therapist but) I suspect the best advice is not to spend prolonged periods focused on our iPads, to take regular breaks, and to carry out exercises akin to those recommended on long-haul flights."

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This is not great news

On April 30th, we will turn off posterous.com and our mobile apps in order to focus 100% of our efforts on Twitter. This means that as of April 30, Posterous Spaces will no longer be available either to view or to edit. 

Now I will have to find another method to post online.

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Now that I sit on the Health and Safety Committee...

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Bring Your Own Device - Strategy and Exams

Headmaster, Mark Steed, and Dr Nick Dennis from Berkhamsted School made the following presentation at their ICT Open Day. I think it raises some very interesting points and things to consider when deciding on ICT strategy and its impact on examinations.

 

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Promoting your city with an iPad presentation...

Using technology with magic is not a new thing, but Charlie Caper and Erik Rosales take is a little further with the iPad. Here they are promoting Stockholm in Cannes in 2012. Enjoy!

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Hans Rosling shatters the myth of “developed” versus “developing” nations

Hans Rosling uses Gapminder.org to dispel the myth of the developing vs developed nations, by looking at the mortality rates of children in nations over the last 50 years. There are some interesting points, but I am not sure you can make such statements without looking at more than just the mortality rate. Also the idea that having between 2 and 4 children should be the norm, should be questioned.

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The power of the silent movie

Just in time for Valentines Day, I found this Disney short (2012) about the Paperman. It tells a story without the spoken word. It blends traditional animation and computer animation. The short has received a nomination for Best Animated Short Film at the 85th Academy Awards, and won the Annie Award for Best Animated Short Subject.

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The 15 Education Technologies To Know About This Year

Read an article by Julie DeNeen on the edudemic site (link here) where she looks at 15 "technologies" that she suspects will be used heavily in 2013.

I had not heard of most of these, but I am willing to try a couple and see how they go. Read her full article, but here is the list:

1. Flashnotes  

2. Lore  

3. Study Blue

4. LEAP Motion

5. Papertab

6. Chromebooks

7. Celly  

8. Flipped Classroom

9. Snagit, Jing, Camtasia

10. LessonCast

11. Kid Blog

12. Glogster EDU

13. Donors Choose

14. Live Binders

15. Knewton  

Give them a try and let me know what you think.

 

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United Values at Christmas

via youthblog.org

Loved this, which I received over the Christmas break

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