Teachmeet North East London was different from any other teachmeet I’d been to but still invigorating, educational and fun!
A short blog post from me about 3 interesting issues raised. I also wanted to share what I thought were the outstanding presentations I heard.
But first a bit of self publicity – I presented on using Audacity to record revision songs – you can read about it on this separate post.
3 Issues Raised from Presentations:
- How do people use delicious in school? (Or other similar sites) I just don’t get how people set it up or use it. I use delicious but the power for me is the in browser tag button. Please share your tips! (This was mentioned by Tom Barrett in his talk as his school has delicious set as their homepage)
- Using Instant Messenger in the classroom. Undoubtedly a fun, attractive and powerful tool but how do you get students to use it without being silly and offensive. Is it just a matter of waiting until the novelty wears off or is it careful training?(Again brought up by Tom’s talk)
- Making school ICT lessons and use more exciting. Student Edith spoke about how she learns stuff in ICT lessons that she already knows how to do. I very much agree that much is uninspiring but many of my students are not as advanced and savvy as the rest and even the most savvy don’t know how to do an IF statement in a spreadsheet until I show them. What is the right balance? Is there a set of core skills students need in ICT? Is the attractive stuff all bells and whistles or is there as much substance.
Oh and the top 4 presentations… In no order, Tom Barrett was great as always, Ollie Bray showed me some amazing new stuff, Edith’s presentation was superb (though last years on how students get round security in schools was possibly even better!) and the new stars that I hadn’t seen before were Anjum Razaq and Simon White of Cleveland Junior School who presented their school blog and social space for students.
Well done to all who organised TeachmeetNEL09 it was just what the Doctor ordered.
Glad u enjoyed it, and thx for the feedback.
Re: your IF statement statement, and getting the right balance, I think a lot of people think that such things are intrinsically boring — but they’re not. It’s possible to make those things really interesting, by making them part of a larger system as part of a project. For me, the key thing is to avoid dumbing down and not, as Edith so memorably expressed it, under-teach the kids.