Twitter and Haiti

The BBC's Newsround were due in today to cover a story about using Twitter to support learning. They didn't turn up, but we had great fun anyway! Two of the students acted as reporters during the lesson, so I'll let them sum up!

The lesson required very little planning, the main point was to collect some questions beforehand:

After some internet safety discussions, the students paired off and selected a lucky dip question: the tweets were printed off and cut up. My laptop case provided the 'hat' :-)

The lesson was livened up by some great interaction via my Twitter account. Students used a netbook, connected to my classroom's wifi,to communicate. The live feed was displayed for the class to see. An unexpected impact was the personalisation of learning. If the initial questions was too difficult to explore, pupils soon chose a new question from the live feed. In addition, I used Ian the iPhone to snap pictures of good work that were broadcast on the live feed.

I would like to thank all of those who supplied questions or got involved in the day. I'm not sure how sustainable this use of Twitter is, but as the interview at the start of this post reveals, the class seemed to value my small role in the lesson!

The PPT embedded below includes screenshots of both the incoming and outgoing live feed.

Haiti Earthquake 2 Weeks On

View more presentations from David Rogers.

Comments

What makes a learning experience profound? Personal reflections and possible implications for classroom practice.

I have recently begun a Leadership Pathways journey. As part of the first core day, we were asked to reflect on a profound learning experience. This got me thinking about how many profound learning experiences I have both been involved in, and how many I have been able to give to others. Our group came up with a huge long list, but these are my five. Emotional Connected Demanding Reflective Collaborative As always, these are personal thoughts and quite mixed up. I put them here so that I can look back on them (plus they’d get lost inside my world-cup-free brain) 1. Emotional I can’t think of a time where deep learning hasn’t engaged my emotions. From being awe inspired to that tingle feeling when a student gets a light bulb moment. From this-is-the-happiest-day-ever, to I-think-I’m-about-to die. How often do we engage the emotions of those we teach? Here, I would argue that having a safe learning environment i...

Banned Word Board

Today I want to share some simple ideas that I have found to be very effective in the classroom. I can't say that they are my own original ideas, although I have played around with them. The first is the Banned word Board. This is a simple display in the classroom that lists a number of words that are not allowed to be used by pupils in their written or oral answers. The effect has been an increase in the quality of written work, and I have almost made comments such as 'Sir it's simple, the stuff just affects the thing and causes people problems'. Pupils are now more able to use specific language, something that is vital especially at GCSE. I have had to make a few modifications, such as the introduction of 'Heavenly Words' This is an additional display placed on the ceiling. I found this necessary as pupils needed some stimulus in finding replacement words. After advice received after posting the idea on the SLN forum , I have also introduced semi-banned words...

Year 10 need your help! Can we get Twitter and Facebook in to a GCSE project?

I’ve been told that social media has no place in the classroom. Now, this post is not to battle that argument head on. Let’s smash it. This week, Year 10 are visiting Hengistbury Head . They are investigating whether this piece of coastline should be protected. They are wondering what you think? You may know the location well, you may not know it at all. But we’d like to hear from you all the same. This will either result in some usable data and comments, or not. Either way, we'll know and I’m sure that your comments will help spark discussion in class! What would Year 10 like me to do? Just simply comment on this post or tweet me, with an answer to this question: ‘Should Hengistubury Head be protected from the Sea? Just answer Yes or No and give a brief reason. It would also be useful if you could tell us whether you know the area or not. Many thanks in anticipation…… Image – my own.

David Rogers

Search This Blog