David Rogers

The Textbooks: everyone's guilty pleasure workshop is now available as 10 handy YouTube clips. The idea was to provide a resource that can be used for CPD. Here's my favorite clip: And also tip 2 that talks about Twitter The others can be found on the Folens website . Make sure you watch in High Quality to be able to see the slides.

Urban Earth Day 1 from David Rogers on Vimeo . Enjoying the half term rain at the moment and just about to head out to prepare my bike for the South Downs Way. Getting distracted at the moment by the Discovery Channel. Sunday saw the first of 24 hour long walks. Part of an Urban earth project. The walks will build up into a picture of urban areas. As I had been invited to a BBQ at the potential-in-laws we decided to walk from the flat. A few things stuck me during the walk: How easy it was to get into a really rural feeling area dispite being surrounded by suburbia. There was a real urban adventure feel to some areas How British people love stripping off at the first sign of sun! I wonder if the pilgrimage to the seafront reflects the lack of space in our urban areas? How very very quiet suburbia is. Sunday afternoon, lots of BBQ smells but the only real sounds being birdsong and bees. Away from the seafront we saw no one! A very cool den, lots of improvised bike jumps and de...

Part of presentation given today to Hampshire teachers Gcse Sharing View more presentations from geogrocks . The materials can also be downloaded here

Have been reading and thinking about this blog post about Do, Discover, Design after a number of tip offs from Twitter. As I'm heading to the Burgate School this weekend to train staff on a Duke of Edinburgh course it strikes me that there is a similarity between 'Do, Discover, Design' and the ' Plan, Do, Review ' processes. (Link to Hampshire's Outdoor Service Newsletter in 2002, and mentions that the four Hampshire Centers use the model or learning) I was introduced to the latter during my Mountain Leader training and assessment and during my work with the Hampshire Outdoor Service. I'm going to think some more about this and hope to post at a later date. In the meantime, are there any other models of learning that you consider valuable? www.liverpool.gov.uk/Images/tcm21-97510.doc

Presentaion To Staff View more presentations from geogrocks . This was a presentation given to staff during a recent interview for a Director of E-Learning post. I decided to use pictures to illustrate my points. From experience, I have found that doing simple things well and using old technologies more effectively (those that have been around for a while but not used effectively to support learning) are the key to transforming learning, especially in schools where the e-learning journey has just begun. The presentation was aimed at the school in question. The first two slides sum up what I believe to be the fundamental points in developing e-learning: 1. that technology is just a tool in the box and needs to be used appropriately. Also, technology needs to be developed in conjunction with curriculum innovation and in partnership with teachers and pupils. Many thanks to @GeoBlogs for the quote via Twitter. 2. Existing technology is often not used to support learning effectively as ...

As part of the interview process yesterday I had to talk to a group of students. My brief was to talk about how new-technologies would change learning. Quite a tricky subject as the definition of 'new' varies immensely depending on your personal experience.As this session was being watched by a member of SLT, it was also about communicating a vision of e-learning. Taking inspiration from Doug Belshaw I decided upon a low-tech presentation technique. I took in a set of props and set them upon the table in front of the students. After introducing myself I explained that each item represented an aspect of e-learning. I had chosen some quite personal items so that the students and observers could gain an insight into my personality and interests. Tiny Welsh Kit Represented collaboration. Wales is the best ruby team and will collaborate with other teas during the British Lions tour. New technologies can be used to build personal learning networks on a vareity of scales, from ...

Received this email today from on of my Year 10 student s. On further investigation, the student had used Buzzword to share the first draft of his introduction. It's the first time I've come across this site, but I liked the way in which I could comment on the work. I hope that the student will then be able to improve the work. Could be a useful way to improve the quality and quantity

Have been introducing a Year 8 lower ability class to data collection, presentation and spatial analysis. This led to a rather random Tweet on Tuesday. I asked my network to tell me their location and whether they preferred their bread toasted on one, or both sides before adding the cheese when making cheese on toast. What led up to this? Well I was telling the class about my theory that Northern people liked their cheese on toast different to those down south. This theory, I explained, comes from my time working with the Hampshire Outdoor Education Service. The pupils challenged me ('Prove it!') and so I decided to set a hypothesis based upon my assumption. The next problem was how to collect data! The class cam up with the questionnaire idea although we identified that to be too geographically limited. I said I would ask my personal learning network. This modelled informal learning to the pupils. Thank you to those that replied! An unintended side effect was that my Facebo...

Vivo Miles has hit school. The scheme has had excellent feedback from staff and pupils and is already making a difference to behaviour and motivation. Look out for a Portsmouth based seminar on the system coming soon. The system is based upon on-line banking so can be linked to the business and enterprise curriculum. Pupils can earn interest, be taxed (money going to charity) and have to look after their card, user details and pin number. The first Vivo console is up and running in the school also, hope to get some feedback and details about this soon. Vivo as a compoany? I have to say that so far customer servivce and technical support have both been excellent. As the company is in its early days still, they are quick to respond to feedback. Was also very pleased to find that Vivo also has a iPhone site!