Who are you?

It's quiz week and the observation round this year has included this clip:



Gave me a lesson idea when examining British Identity. Some of our pupils next year will create their own 'I am' videos. I wonder what factors will be mentioned and which locations will be chosen!

21st Century Learning Alliance Fellowship

I was very pleased to receive an email on Thursday informing of our successful bid for a 21st Century Learning Alliance Fellowship. The 500 word bid submitted was:

Aims:

1. To engage learners in exploring and interpreting space, especially around school buildings.
2. To develop a core of learners that can actively, confidently and skilfully use their knowledge of the built environment to engage architects and planners during the BSF process.
3. To investigate how space around schools can be developed to maximise cross-curricular learning opportunities.
4. To provide a record of the transformation of Priory School

This project will allow learners and teachers understanding of how 21st Century Schools can use space to transform learning. Priory learners will be empowered as they will be able to make a positive contribution to the school's BSF journey.

As Space is one of the most important concepts of the Key Stage 3 Geography Curriculum, the department is ideally positioned to lead this project. Through his involvement in innovative projects such as Urban Earth and Mission Explore, David has a wide range of experience of successfully developing the conceptual understanding of learners while exploring spaces in new an innovative ways. Joanna is currently developing a group of young people who will engage with the BSF project in collaboration with the Solent Architecture Project.

The project will develop the understanding of learners and teachers:

Learners will begin by exploring the current school. They will record their feelings, thoughts, ideas and perceptions. What would they like to change? Why? Pupils will be encouraged to present their ideas in a range of formats. They will also use the language of the built environment. A small pilot group has already been engaged with the BSF design professionals. This project will develop their confidence through a range of workshops provided by community partners such as the Solent Architecture Project.

Visits to exemplar buildings that are innovative and aspirational will be organised. Pupils will explore these spaces and use their ideas and findings in order to inform their Priory vision.

Teachers will engage in action research. The purpose of which will be to recommend how the built environment can be used to maximise cross-curricular learning opportunities. This will inform the BSF process not only at Priory but in other schools in the future.

Outcomes

• Pupils will collaborate to produce a weblog of the project. This will be published via the school's VLE

• The ability of young people to successfully engage in discussions with professionals and their knowledge and understanding of the built environment will improve. This will be measured through online questionnaires at the beginning and end of the project.

• The understanding of how spaces can be designed in order to maximise learning will be shared through David's blog. It is hoped that educational professionals in other institutions will benefit from this

• The team will use Geographical Association (GA) contacts to report in GA publications.

• A record of the schools transformation will be produced. It is envisaged that this will utilises a wide range of media. This will form a 'digital time capsule of the journey' that can be shared.

This is where I could do with your help! Do you work in a modern school building? Do you use or have you adapted your school's grounds in order to support learning outside of the classroom?

If so it would be great to hear from you.

BBC Box and Interdependence

Just been sent the live link to my pupils work on the BBC Box webpage. The BBC came in to see how the box is being used in geography classrooms.



The Slideshare below was used during the lesson and gives the basic structure:

Declaration Of Interdependence

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Twitter, Facebook and Teachers TV

Not long finished a lesson using social networking and pirates. What follows is a brief description and evaluation of the use of Twitter and Facebook during the lesson. The lesson was filmed for a Teachers TV feature.

To start:

The Year 8 class have been working on interdependence, crime, trade and piracy for 3 lessons. During that time they have dispelled the stereotypical myths surrounding piracy and bought their understanding up-to-date and into the 21st century. To start the lesson I asked the pupils to respond to three questions. They were able to use mini-whiteboards to do this and I encouraged them to use images if they wanted. Below is an example:


This worked very well and allowed the students to revisit past lessons. I also shared some of my own ideas.

Twitter, Facebook and Pirates

View more documents from geogrocks.

Next, I introduced the task ( or mission in this case). The pupils were to use their new knowledge and understanding to let my Personal Learning Network (PLN) know all about modern day piracy.

To introduce the task I had sent a Tweet on Tuesday asking my network to state the first 5 words that they associate with the word 'pirate'. I also asked for their location, but in the end didn't use the information. To provide a contrast I also posted a similar request as my Facebook status. The idea of using social media here was to provide a real world context and data: this wasn't just something that I had made up but addressed a real need.

Before revealing the data - I asked the class how many people they thought had responded to my requests. I told them that approximately 500 people are connected to me via facebook and twitter. Overall 42 people responded, less that 10%. The class were very quick to realise the implications of such a small sample size: it was neither representative or enough evidence to base sound conclusions on. One pupil used the example of ageing cream to illustrate the point further. This was an excellent discussion that tackled the issues behind using data and opinions to form firm conclusions. In summary, we couldn't support the statement: the whole of the UK has a stereotypical and romantic view of pirates.



The Wordle above summarises the responses. We talked a little about the random responses and the possible causes for this. Again, another excellent way of understanding information and its limitations.

I then asked the class to respond to three questions using my blog. This produced a starting point. At the same time I sent the following tweet:




I have to admit that this was an ad-hoc idea. I was stunned by the response. Here are some examples:


This gave the pupils a real audience as the work they are producing will be shared via my Twitter account. They were also happy to see that the responses mirrored their own comments shared via my blog. I found that this was an excellent way to motivate and interest pupils. The class also realised that they would have to change the format of the work they had already done - mirroring real world work situations.

Before moving on we shared the importance of making substantiated statements. I asked the class why I could simply state the all Somalians are pirates because they were poor. I backed up the point by using my favorite video that proves that I am a death-defying stuntman:



The pupils quickly agreed that they would have to support any ideas that they had.

The lesson then allowed pupils to work collaboratively to produce some responses to the questions and ideas posed in my tweet. The tweets continued to come in, and I used them to remind pupils to respond to their audience.

To finish, I got a number of the class to respond to my network via my Twitter account. This produced some excellent engagement and discussion, especially as they received some responses. Again, this was rather ad-hoc but demonstrated the power of social networks in driving learning.

Overall, the lesson has convinced me that social media can be successfully used. Like any tool, it must be used where appropriate and not used too often.


Wordle image created using wordle.net and used under creative commons
Many thanks to Tony Cassidy for the original pirate inspiration and to all those on Twitter and Facebook that took the time to respond - I hope I can repay the kindness soon.

Educating my Personal Learning Network about modern day piracy

This post is being set up for a lesson tomorrow.



Year 8! Use the comment function below to leave your thoughts and ideas on the following questions:

1. What do you want people to know about modern day piracy?

2. What issues need to be considered when producing information to share on the internet?

3. How could the information be presented while maintaining the geographical information?

Image created using http://www.wordle.net and used through a Creative Commons License

Teachers TV and Twitter

Teachers TV are popping in on Thursday morning to talk about and film Twitter's use in the classroom. Wanting to avoid a recreation of the Cheese on Toast experiment, I will be using a more profound question linked to Year 8's work on Interdependence and Piracy. The idea of using Twitter is to provide a fresh perspective that reaches beyond the classroom and an opportunity to handle real qualitative data.

I'll be tweeting a question later on today. I'm also going to tap into my Facebook network.

It's a big ask - but it would be great if you could find the time to tweet / comment an answer. The question is:

'What are the first 5 words that you think of after hearing the term 'pirate'?'


You can find me on Twitter here.

Action Aid Teach Climate Action - 3

The third post based upon the ideas shared at the Teach Climate Action is about the work of Robbie Sutton. Robbie is a psychologist and posed some excellent questions. He focused on some of the barriers to humans in changing their behaviour. I think that this are of climate change should be covered. For example, during and after the Carbon Footprint Project pupils are asked to consider some of the pshycological barriers to acting upon climate change. After all, if we are encouragng our pupils to act, shouldn't we explore some of the reasons why?

Robbie also argued that the environmental movement should be rebranded as being conservative. After all, they are often arguing to preserve the status quo rather than to change it. For example, we should be making a clear distinction between the direct action of illegally climbing towers and the direct action of writing to MPs and staging legal protests.

I would be interested to hear any ideas that colleagues have in getting this area of climate change education.