David Rogers

This is something that’s been on the wish list for a while.  We are putting together a Department Handbook using the Wiki format.  It’ll be a closed document for obvious reasons, but the idea is that everything will be in one place.

This is the second post focused on Priory Geography’s Curriculum Planning Day on Saturday.  Each year we have revisited and updated our vision.  The idea is to provide ourselves, students, well just about anyone, a quick idea of what we are about and what we are aiming to do.  The process is quite simple.  First, come up with some ideas . Secondly, get creative and take some photographs. Third, make a video. The quality of the visuals doesn’t really matter, as long as the message is clear. This is this year’s effort: What do you think? If you’d like to compare it to our past versions, you can find the 2011 version   and 2010 version . Funky.

On Saturday I was accompanied to Arundel’s wetland centre by Jo Debens and Sam Atkins for the annual Priory Geography away day.  Normally held in the week, this year we had to give up a Saturday.  The great thing is, none of us minded.  I’m hoping to get a few posts up in the coming week about the day.  The aim is to communicate why giving teachers the time and space to reflect, evaluate and plan results in better outcomes and happier staff. The rumour on the street is that teachers shouldn’t expect recognition nor praise for hard work.  I find that an alien idea.  I am well known for pushing the team hard, however, recognition and reward are part of the success story.  Part of the reward on Saturday was a pint at the Black Rabbit , a lovely West Sussex pub by the River Arun. I’ll talk about the excellent hosting by the WWT at Arundel in a future post. One of my favourite films is Cool Runnings .  One of the best exchanges between two ...

Now this looks like a job for me So everybody just follow me 'Cause we need a little controversy….

One of the exciting aspects of the Mobile @ Priory project, which all started with the creation of a mobile device policy allowing students to bring them in to school, is that effect it’s had on the whole school.  Rachel Jackson’s Spanish adventure is a good example.  This is the third in a series of guest posts about the project, giving you lovely readers a break from my random musings… You can find the first, written by our Headteacher, James Humphries ,  here and the second, by NQT mega star Sam Atkins (creator of Olympic Geocaching ), here .  I taught him everything I know Here’s Rachel’s post: I have been doing some mobile learning with my Year 7s in Spanish classes and I co-planned a two hour lesson with the creative partners and DiGITAL LEADERS to teach with iPads. The topic was ‘House and Home’. Pupils were divided into groups and each group was allocated a room in a house. There were enough groups to be able to create a ‘whole house’ so t...

Happy to announce that people who come along to #tmpompey on the 4th July will receive a goody bag with some volcanic ash and moisturiser thanks to Discover the World and some drinks provided by Geography All The Way and Rising Stars .  Thank you you lovely, lovely people! The event is filling up with a good diversity of speakers including some Primary and Secondary Digital Leaders and the Young Rewired State. You can sign up here! Hope to see you there

Mind Node is ‘pricy’ for an iPhone / iPad App (although I never really relate to that as quality is, erm, quality).  I’ve played around with a few mind mapping tools, and haven’t really got on with any of them before Mind Node.  I’m still a scribble it down sort of bloke. I thought I’d share a few ideas of using Mind Node that have been tried out at Priory Geography over the past few weeks. 1. Creating collaborative mind maps around Alan Parkinson’s landscape in a box idea. 2. Year 11 revision mindmaps 3. Planning my own lessons and developing something to do with something. 4. Creating mindmaps whilst watching video resources. I’ve found that less able students relate well to the interface, and I like the range of export and sharing options available through the App, you can even save work to Dropbox. Nice.

Continuing the series of posts about the cross-curricular Mobile @ Priory project, here’s one by Priory Geography’s own Sam Atkins . Great work Sam! The main objectives of this lesson were: To enable students to demonstrate and reflect on their progress in Geography, using mobile technology. To take pupils out of their comfort zone and create an experience of school life as an EAL student. To raise awareness of the great levels of diversity which exist in school; how some of these are considered, and how some are not. The class was specifically chosen for a few key reasons: Generally lower ability; progress needs to be more in explicit and in smaller steps. EAL students are part of this class. Mobile technology has previously shown to improve engagement, performance and behaviour. Here are the learning objectives presented to the students, met with many confused looks and puzzled feelings o...

I’ve been asked a few times recently how we conduct on-site fieldwork, especially the Guerrilla Geography stuff that generates posters etc. The first thing is that every student out of a geography classroom has a special ‘on a geography mission’ lanyard pass type thing designed by Priory Geography’s very own Sam Atkins: These allow other staff to identify those out on genuine geography missions.  Secondly, we now tag all of our work outside the classroom with a special badge designed for us by the lovely people at Borbonesa : The logo allows others in the school community to identify genuine geographical learning artefacts.