Odblog

How did the dabble do?

2009-11-15T22:06:00.003Z

Categories: s1 and s2, Limestone, Advanced Higher
This post is mostly a follow up to the dabbleboard one the other day. I am looking at a collection of thoughts from my s3 who have been collaborating on a board since Thursday. I set some homework around conflicts in an upland limestone landscape. I am not sharing the link as it can be edited by anyone I share it with, but hopefully the picture above is a fair indicator of the potential in this resource. This is a fantastic way to let a class or a smaller group work around a topic. I like as a teacher seeing a variation in the depth of the information presented by the students, and I suppose in a way this kind of activity gives people an opportunity for extension, while being inclusive of the range of abilities in the class. I can also see some great discussion points for tomorrows lesson where we can address some issues of understanding or simply tease a bit more out of the points. Finally, I wonder how the class would fare if I presented a question or a series of questions where this was the 'textbook'? Would the information be sufficient, for instance, to provide a well exemplified response? This is a nice way to self assess the work that has been done and give students a bit of responsibility for their own learning. Overall, despite one individual trying to initiate the chat (no takers), I am very pleased with the output, particularly as this was a class who struggled to properly engage with the social aspect of etherpad last year. I suppose that in itself is a small triumph for the class too.
New s1 rotation tomorrow, I am handing the reins to Miss Lamont for a few weeks, which should allow me to sort a potential project with another school involving this class, while Advanced Higher are revisiting critical evaluation. I feel I handled the feedback from the last exercise quite poorly in retrospect, thinking that by holding it back I would allow individuals to focus on a piece of work due for Friday. I was reminded of Neil Winton's assertion that we should let students experience failure, and I think that by presenting the students with the gaps in their work, I would probably have served them better for Friday's hand in. Even though I think I did what I did for the right reasons, it had the wrong desired impact, so I feel a lot of responsibility to help the class get this right tomorrow.
Lastly, I am now on google wave. I haven't even started to consider the pros and cons of student use, but I have been very impressed with the way in which during a very short time period today, some colleagues and I managed to make some real headway in a collaborative project around Pixar movies. If you are a geography colleague and are interested in this, please contact me here or through twitter

Interactive Whiteboards for the school bag?

2009-11-11T22:33:00.004Z

Categories: Limestone, Other
I don't know how other Geography teachers feel, but I think there is a lot of repetition in the Intermediate course when teaching landscapes. The land use conflicts which occur in one are just as likely to occur in another, and for students, the devil is in the detail-using appropriate examples from case study material and so on. For the teacher, the challenge is to determine where time needs to be spent to avoid treading water, and vary learning actvities to liven up similar content. In an attempt to do that, I am going to try using dabbleboard as a kind of interactive whiteboard for homework. This is an online tool which probably lends itself best to mindmapping. Students can add text, connectors, images, files and more to a constantly evolving piece of work. The best thing about this for me is that students will be able to see each others changes in real time. My hope and expectation is that between them, the students will be able to succesfully map out all of the conflicts which affect limestone landscapes without having to construct the whole thing themselves. Another example of crowd sourcing a solution.
This leads me on to a discussion I had with a colleague who asked me how would I know that students were not just concentrating on what they were adding at the expense of the other information. I think there are a couple of ways round that. First, the teacher could assess knowledge using this as the 'text' with a group of students, the students could assess each other, or the students could 'teach' a part of the topic to the class on which they had not made a contribution. I also think that the biggest issue with using this tool is trust. There is a chat function and as changes are in real time, there is scope for abuse. I have used etherpad several times, which is similar, but have had complete control over this as it has been a classroom based activity. I will be sharing the link via edmodo, which allows me to keep it relatively private, but part of me also thinks how can we teach responsible use without giving the responsibility in the first place? I hope to be able to post the result here, and regardless of the outcome, will likely feed back on how the learning was affected by the use of this tool.

Blowin in the wind

2009-11-08T21:19:00.003Z

Visit msnbc.com for Breaking News, World News, and News about the Economy

Categories: s1 and s2
As often seems to be the case when we are studying natural disasters of some sort, one finds its way into the news. We have been looking at Hurricane Katrina in the last week with s1 and a hurricane is working its way towards the same area, Louisiana, even as we speak. Hurricane Ida is currently crossing the Gulf of Mexico and is expected to make landfall by November 10th. This graphic from MSNBC is excellent for emphasising some of the learning points we have been looking at. Watch how the hurricane speed changes as it moves out into the open water and what is expected to happen when it hits Louisiana and moves across Florida. Would you be able to account for the changes? The track also roughly follows the one our wiki map traces- why are hurricanes so common around here? Leading on to tomorrow's lesson, I've embedded a clip. 44 seconds of news footage which refers to Nicaragua being 'slammed' by the storm. I wonder how many students could point out Nicaragua? I am also acutely aware that the only reason I am hearing about Nicaragua is because the USA is next in line. Why do we hear less about storms in Developing countries when they are most likely to be badly affected by them? Finally, if you stayed in one of these countries who, like Nicaragua, were prone to storms, how would you prepare for its arrival. A couple of resources here might help us. Lots of great questions from a very short news article I spotted when my browser opened tonight.

Update: The track for Hurricane Ida is now available in Google Earth, thanks to Google Earth Blog for this.

Time to scribble

2009-11-06T10:14:00.002Z

Categories: Industry
Very quick post before the s4 lesson today, you will need to use scribble maps. Find Belfast or Glasgow. Use the scribble and text tool to annotate an area which you think is an old industrial site as well as one which you think is a new one. Best to use the satelite view for this. Label things which you think show that this is typical of either of these areas. Once you have completed that, save your map, copy the link and submit your map as a comment here. I'll tell you about the password.
After you have completed this, find the same area using wheres the path. You will see the satelite photo side by side with the OS map. In your work jotter, list the features on the map which allow you to recognise this as an old or new industrial area (refer back to your text in the original scribble map to help).

Homework wiki mapping

2009-11-03T10:27:00.003Z

Categories: s1 and s2
Here is the s1 homework activity. We are trying to create a wiki map of hurricane events to see if there is any pattern to where they occur. Pin your place to the map using the white markers, tell us the hurricane name and when it occured (actual dates if possible). If the map is not allowing you to do it, go to this link here. Thanks

Hurricane squares

2009-11-03T09:30:00.003Z

Categories: s1 and s2
Using another Ollie Bray idea, I've stuck hurricane events into a name picker from a google squared table and I'm using it with the register to assign a homework task

Click here for full screen version

Assessing the future

2009-11-02T21:51:00.004Z

Categories: Other
This is one of those posts where I think it probably shouldn't be on my class blog, but seeing as it stems from my class responses, I am housing it here. I have been asked along to a meeting about assessment by a colleague from the SQA. It's really made me question what I do and how I approach assessment in the classroom and at home. I have always felt that I have tried to vary the type of assessment I use in my teaching, using peer assessment regularly further up the school where there is pressure to teach to the exam. Here are a couple of examples of this- a collaborative wiki and videoing students talking about their work while inviting their peers to comment on the final result. In a discussion with my headteacher and one of our depute heads recently, I argued that this allowed me to teach the topics in a way that hopefully engaged students but also deepened their understanding. I also pointed out that creating time had not had an adverse impact on exam results and would suggest that it was one of the things that had facilitated a good performance. I'm now questioning whether students would agree with that, and whether they really recognise they were being assessed at all in instances like that.

My reason for this is on the back of a bit of preparation for the forthcoming meeting I mentioned. I decided to do a formal and anonymous survey of one of my s1 classes to see first of all what they thought assessment was all about, secondly when they felt their work was valued and finally how they would like to be assessed in future. I based this on one completed unit where children had taken a traditional end of unit test, but had also been assessed by each other and themselves (creating and playing games to develop map knowledge, self assessment of skills and knowledge in favela building, peer assessment of the final buildings, using etherpad to collaborate and debate, sharing and answering each others questions about a topic as homework, peer feedback on carnival songs etc). I wordled the main questions and the results are below:

How my students defined assessment

Where they felt their work was valued and by whom

and finally, how they would like to be assessed in future

I wasn't totally surprised but was a little disappointed that tests and testing was so prevalent in what kids thought assessment was about and also how they would like to be assessed. I think there are a lot of reasons for that. I think that tests are the known, children are comfortable with them and also, many have that competitive edge. Marks make it easy to compare performance, even if it's usually testing knowledge over skills. From broadening the discussion to my s6, what also came through was that this is really what students value over everything else. It's what the unis and, most importantly, their parents expect and many don't mind alternative methods but don't really see an overall value in them. When we got deeper into that discussion, however, the Advanced Higher students started to really contradict their own assertions. Where are the skills development? We are spoon fed. Too much value is given to the results. And so on and son on... I had to actually remind some of the students that they were the same ones who complained when I refused to give them a written note on work last year and asked them to think for themselves. I am not blaming the students for that confusion or that attitude to assessment, I know there is a huge cultural change which needs to take place involving teachers, students, parents, further ed and employers before people change their minds about exam results and their absolute importance. I also think from a personal point of view I have failed in being completely clear to students when and how they are being assessed. I am pretty certain that because I have not made that explicit, my s1 don't really recognise when they are involved in self or peer assessment, they just see it as another learning activity. I am also pretty sure that had we not had the discussion we did today, my Advanced Higher would be the same about the opportunities they had to peer assess.
One of the other things that came through from both the survey and the discussions is that absolute trust that the teacher is always the authority. When I put this to my s6 that sometimes constructive criticism of a piece of work from a peer would be something more easily accepted, only one student agreed and the rest had no faith in themselves to be a critical friend for others. 73% of my s1 felt that observations by a teacher were the most important feedback that they would receive. I felt that this was at odds with comments that the most critical person of a students work was the student themselves.
The survey had more surprises and some reassuring elements, but to sum up, I still feel that the variety of assessment offered is in the correct interests of the students. The majority of students I questioned and the survey support the fact that students felt most valued when they were involved in team activities, were praised by their peers or by the teacher. When looking at future assessment, students still wanted testing but the dominant theme was recognition for work, and on further questioning, students stated that review of work should be a continuous one. My own role has to be clearer in letting students know they have been assessed, and students must see their progress in terms other than that end of unit test. Finally, my survey has made me realise that changing established views about assessment is going to be a long process, but one which I think can be done. It's up to educators to convince others that new forms of assessment have the rigour and validity of tests while helping develop the whole child rather than just a child with a decent memory.

Assessment survey

2009-11-02T07:02:00.002Z

Categories: s1 and s2
As part of my ongoing thoughts about assessment, which woke me up at half past 5 this morning (sad, I know), if you are in s1 and have completed the Brazil topic, could you please take some time to fill in this survey

Click Here to take survey

Many thanks

Mr O'D

Starting with starters...

2009-11-01T21:18:00.002Z

Categories: Geography General
I don't know where to start tonight, have got so many things I want to blog about and probably won't manage them all. First of all, it was my annual trip to the Scottish Association of Geography Teachers conference in Edinburgh on Saturday, and as usual have learned a lot and want to try a lot of what I've seen. On top of that, I have been drawn to a couple of really nice resources which I'm trying to find a way to bring into lessons, so here goes...

Starters

I attended Ollie Bray's seminar as well as enjoying his keynote and picked up some useful things to think about as lesson starters. Ollie spoke about the search engine Bing having an image every day which is mostly to do with landscapes- to illustrate that, today's was the Yorkshire Dales, a location my s3 are studying right now. The picture has 3 hidden clues to the location and it's a great and simple way to introduce place. He also spoke about some great ways to get place into lessons through google maps. From something like smoke signal lesson objectives from the place you are studying to geogreetings spelling out children's names (suggested as a good home learning activity where students indentified countries where the letters come from, pick one country and create a profile), all the ideas were appealing as they were easily reconstructed to suit the needs of your own class. Something that Ollie used as a lesson ender to develop a knowledge of place was using google squared as a search tool, selecting cities from, for example, Europe and then sticking these into the classtools random name picker. Whichever name came out, he then opened (or let the students open?) it up in Google Earth and turn the layers on bit by bit to explore the place.
I am already thinking of using the smoke signals from the New Orleans superdome with lesson objectives for s1 tomorrow. We are about to start looking at the impact of hurricanes on people and landscapes, and will be using one of Tony Cassidy's activities again, this time around the BBC special from the time. I thought it would be good to start the lesson by showing the dome satelite photo showing before and after, so beginning at this location makes perfect sense.
Two other things outwith SAGT that I particularly liked were flickr's five card story and one word, both from a Tom Barrett presentation via Mark Warner's ideas to inspire site. I have created a 5 card story with no narrative (pictures above) which I'd like a class to try for homework to see if they can use geography as the theme to link all 5. I'm also going to warm up my s3 class for their limestory by using one word and asking them to write for 60 seconds in geographical terms about it. This is a great activity for any subject to encourage students to write. Finally, back to Ollie, I am really going to make a conscienscious effort to start using the news at the beginning of lessons, particularly with the new s1 rotations later this month.
Right, that's it for tonight. I have a whole post to write about David Rogers session on citizenship through Geography, as I see loads of spaces in our present schemes of work which would benefit from the ideas he presented, and I am also hoping to write up something about assessment too, as I have really been challenged by something I've been asked about future assessment. I can think of lots of ways that either the students or myself as the teacher assess during lessons, but I wonder if the kids know they are being assessed? I wonder what they understand by that term?Would they feel the same or a greater sense of achievement if they were assessed in less traditional ways? I also wonder if my assessment of students carries enough rigour. I hope to talk to some classes about this in the coming week as I gather my thoughts on it.

Out with the old, in with the new...

2009-10-29T22:52:00.008Z

Categories: Industry, Advanced Higher, s1 and s2
Tomorrow is the single period where I have the pleasure of teaching s4. From my understanding, they have been working on industry type and a little about factors affecting industrial location. One of the things I find is that NAB and exam questions about industrial location tend to see students get a little bit confused about which factors affect old and which affect new industries. For instance, in a recent assessment, several candidates spoke about the need for new businesses to be close to large populations. I think I'll start the period with a discussion about industrial location and then do two seperate diamond 9s for both old and new industry. I will also begin to look at features of industrial landscapes, and Ollie Bray some time ago posted about some great images, some of which are shown below (click on the picture to link to all the photos)
Ollie also posted about Eurocentral, just along the M8 from us, and I am going to use these pictures as an example of a new industrial landscape:
Advanced Higher started looking at standard deviation today and for the first time I was able to share a valid use of this statistical technique for each of the geographical studies the students are doing. I don't know if this was luck or just that teaching it for the last couple of years helps me understand its usefulness. Finishing this tomorrow, while I was really pleased with how our pop-ups went with s1 Hurricanes, as well as quite a rowdy singalong to The Hurricane Song! Round two of this with my other s1 class tomorrow

Limestory

2009-10-28T23:17:00.005Z

Categories: Limestone, s1 and s2, Advanced Higher
Running very low on the inspirational juices just now, and feeling that I am relying too much on powerpoint and text with s3 just now. Thought I would maybe use a Question of Limestone with the class as a period starter tomorrow and find some way of making this competitive, before introducing limestone stories, which Miss Green did a couple of years ago and seemed to go down well while providing a challenge to students. I am not sure how she did it, but I think I'll suggest that plot is up to students themselves, could be a murder mystery for instance, could be in the form of a graphic novel, anything goes really. I'll be specifying that students must cover all aspects of the landscape, both surface and undergound. There must be a fully descriptive account of the surface landscape and the cavern network as the main backdrop within the story. Students must find a way to shoehorn into their stories reference to chemical weathering of the landscape and an explanation of how one part of the landscape has been formed. For those interested in the Graphic Novel style, I think I'll direct them to the resources mentioned in Ollie's post on creating comics in the classroom, but will get them to storyboard it first. This will probably carry over into completion as a homework task, and I think I have to be careful this year, as s3 and s6 have been getting quite a bit of homework with me neglecting s1 a bit here.
Speaking of s1, it really amazes me how different classes respond differently to the same activity. I did the hurricane in a bottle with both my s1. With 1 class, it worked an absolute treat, and we got an awful lot out of it. The class were really sharp and clued up on the science of what was happening. My other class today took longer to reach the same conclusions, but they responded much better to another activity I had used. We are building on this by using Tony Cassidy's pop-up hurricane tomorrow, followed by a bit of homework courtesy of the same author.
Finally, Advanced Higher were all a bit ring rusty today after Halloween discos and so on and so forth, so I've left the lovely statistics and standard deviation for tomorrow, but feel we made progress with the folio today, oddly. Right, off for a sleep...

Cartoon Cavalcade

2009-10-25T21:49:00.002Z

Categories: Geography General, Advanced Higher, s1 and s2, Environmental Hazard
Trying to put a very busy few weeks behind me and get back to the blog. As a result, this might be a bit of a ramble, so apologies as I try to cram quite a bit in here. More about the title later, first, it's s1. One of the things that has been keeping me busy is an attempt to write a unit on wild weather which has been coming in fits and starts. I didn't want to do a full on weather unit with a wee bit about hurricanes tacked on to the end, as it's my experience that the students prefer more of the latter and less of the former. I know it shouldn't all be about student preference, but I thought there was scope to tip the balance and this was confirmed by a quick question round I conducted with my classes prior to beginning the new topic. I told the s1 we would be studying weather and asked them to think that, if they had one thing they could find out during the topic, what would it be? I got lots of responses about hurricanes and tornadoes, but also, surprisingly, lots wanting to know why we don't get that kind of weather phenomenon and, of course, why it always rains here! I've decided that we can do this through an introduction to weather and climate which then takes us on to the impact of climate on wild weather e.g. summer norms leading to warm water sufficient to trigger tropical storms. There are some excellent resources to use for this topic without re-inventing the wheel, lots from Tony Cassidy, some nice experiments like this one and a load of stuff available on the Abbeyfield blog. I also hadn't seen this singalong before from the GATM site. All will hopefully be used at some point in the coming weeks, so many thanks to the authors.
Speaking of schemes of work, a post by Alan Parkinson, who has often highlighted the potential for using kids animation films in teaching Geography, sparked an idea (here comes the cartoon bit). I am lucky enough to have two young children, which means that I have the perfect excuse to own and watch many of the Pixar films and say that they are really for my kids. I see a real potential to use these in a scheme of work to engage students in Geography in the lower school. Just throwing thoughts together quickly, I can think of changes in retail (Al's Toy Barn in toy story), the impact of transport changes on rural towns (Cars), Desert landscapes from the same film, sustainability (Wall-E), Urban landscapes (The Incredibles), ocean conservation and ocean currents (Finding Nemo) as just a few of the geographical themes covered. David Rogers also expressed an interest and it would be a nice theme to collaborate around. I think it could be a really good way of making some of the themes that students would study later in geography accessible at an earlier age. I hope that this gets off the ground and that there is much more to come here.
Something that the films won't do is help my Advanced Higher understand a nearest neighbour analysis. Fortunately, Ollie Bray will, and I also think this is a technique that several of the students might be able to use in the Geographical Study, particularly those that might be looking at clustering of services and land use patterns. We'll be looking at the dams outside Newton Mearns to see whether these are randomly distributed or not, but there is also scope to do some fieldwork in the school grounds and in particular the woodland area if the weather is nice in future. At the moment, that looks highly unlikely....

Crowd sourcing

2009-10-13T22:47:00.004Z

Categories: Other
I have been asked to follow up a course that I delivered last year for teachers in the school this coming week. The course had the rather grand title 'Embedding ICT in Teaching and Learning'. I had a look at what my classes have been doing over the last year as I really didn't want to do a rehash of what I had talked about before-blogs, wikis, mobiles etc. I decided to look at instances where we had either tried to bring opinion from outside of the class into the learning environment through online tools, or where we had used ICT to provide an instant audience for students work. I narrowed this down to 10, and cheated just a bit as I included Glow, which I am planning to use pre-Christmas with a colleague in Ayrshire. Apologies if the prezi makes you seasick, it's my first time trying it (due to the nature of the course wanted to try presenting it in a different way too). The examples I have mentioned are:

1) Ask 500 - find opinions for your class by posing them to a worldwide audience and seeing any patterns in the return. I asked a question about conflict in the DR Congo last year when we were using Rwanda as a case study of forced migration. I was amazed at the number of people who listed a 'don't care' attitude, but it also helped illustrate why the genocide in Rwanda was just a distant news story to many here at the time it occured.

2) Twitter- for me, the best place to get instant responses to any question. A number of times over the past year, I have asked questions which I could use in class, from things as simple as asking people what the weather was like and asking my class to map it, to having 'interviews' where the class drove the questions and therefore became the audience themselves

3) Voicethread- There are better examples than mine of this great site and its uses, but I have used it as a unit starter. While most students are working on other tasks, I have asked individuals to post a question, something they would like to know about the topic they are studying. The class becomes my crowd, and I take direction from them throughout the rest of the unit, answering their questions where possible and indulging them in areas they want to explore further. Paired with a knowledge starter, this makes teaching the unit a lot easier, as I find out straight away knowledge highs and lows and avoid repetition. One feature I haven't explored and would like to is the whiteboard function where students can draw on the slides too.

4) Google Docs- I had to use this in a slightly manufactured way, as I couldn't assume that students had access from home, but I know that there are school based packages for google apps, and I love the idea of collaborating on a presentation, spreadsheet or document as a class. We collaborated around a few questions, students prepared a response to an issue I had set (where they had to have a definite opinion) and we then inserted our slides into the presentation to showcase the work.

5) Wallwisher- I have already posted about this recently, a homework wall of student produced sticky notes, very quick and easy to do, but because of the numbers of people contributing, the end result was a highly visual and engaging display of student work for all to see.

6) Edmodo- My platform of choice for keeping all my students homework in the one place, an easy way to give meaningful feedback to individuals, but also somewhere where it is easy to encourage groups to work together. The beauty is that links can be made public at the teachers choice. Students work can be celebrated and given to a wider audience while still maintaining pupil privacy

7) Glow- This is the cheat. Myself and Val Adam from Maybole are looking at doing a linking activity between an s1 or s2 class before Christmas. Glow gives us the opportunity to link our classes or indeed any other class in Scotland. Our students will be hopefully asking questions of each other, sharing their work, and with the ability to have a glow meet, maybe even talking or engaging face to face through the web. All we need to do to get started is create a group and invite students from both classes as members. I am really looking forward to this, especially as the communication is secure

8) Posterous- I have started using Posterous occasionally to quickly post classes work during or immediately after a lesson, or by sticking possible resources on it beforehand. I do all this by simply e-mailing from my phone. The example I have included is when my s3 class were doing glaciation modelling. I was able to post the results directly after the lesson. I love the fact that students can then go home and show their parents what they were doing as I feel it brings parents a bit closer to the classroom too.

9) Etherpad- Again, something I have blogged about before, an online debate where anonymity is key and students build their permanent record of the debate. More details here.

10) Wordle- or a 'crowd cloud' as I have called it in the prezi, an easy way to see at a glance opinions on a subject ( I like using it before really delving into a topic and then revisiting it to see if the perceptions were correct). This is also a great tool to use for revision. I pasted a bunch of text from a textbook case study and had students use the 'wordle mat' as a reference when attempting past papers.

Hope all this kind of makes sense, I'm also happy recapping as it gives me the chance to showcase the classes work again :)

Know your source

2009-10-05T10:05:00.002Z

Click here for full screen version

Categories: Advanced Higher
I have been doing some practice NAB work for Geographical Issues with my class. There are still some problems recognising a good source for the Issues essay, but hopefully this template will help us with both the NAB and the essay itself. If your source can't be fitted into this, then you probably shouldn't be using it (most likely because it's a report rather than an opinion). For the NAB, this is exactly what you need to do with all of your sources to summarise and evaluate them. I'm using Benjamin P Nageak of the Inupiat people, a source freely available online and one we've used in class. Use the classtools template to do your own critical evaluation and then check it against the one at the top.

This is Music

2009-10-04T19:42:00.003Z

Categories: Other
I am struggling today. The reason is lack of sleep, as I sat up till after 1am participating in a 'chain' of music on Spotify, courtesy of an idea by John Daly, a primary teacher from Glasgow. I have to say that I am a sucker for this type of thing, and I'm trying hard to pull myself away from it just now to note a few thoughts. While we were sticking tracks on the chain, I had mentioned to John about a classroom use for this. The more I thought about it, the more uses came into my head. I am writing a few here, but please feel free to share more via a comment here or through twitter. The great thing about spotify is that, as far as my reading tells me, it's entirely legal, as it is backed by major labels and streams music like radio with adverts rather than relying on downloads.
1) Create a playlist of songs for use in the teaching of subject topics. I started a playlist of Geography songs with colleagues, where we used spotify and a google form to collect tracks and details of how they were used in class. Examples were 'Mosquito song' by Queens of the Stone Age, which I have been using when teaching about the Geography of disease and malaria, and one of the most oft used songs in the teaching of Volcanoes, Billy Jonas's 'Old St Helens'. The ways in which the songs could be used could vary from using the lyrics to setting a scene for the topic.
2) Alan Parkinson added to this idea tonight through twitter by suggesting that the playlist could be used where students are asked to choose three most appropriate songs to accompany a video. The video could be one that the teacher is using, one created for the lesson with no backing or videos created by the students themselves. Asking the students to justify the choice would further strengthen their understanding of the topic-which songs have lyrical relevance, for example.
3) Alan also suggested starting a 'Country' chain of tracks. I've been thinking about this and like the idea of using that to help aid students memory of a sequence. For example, when we teach Brazil in s1, we talk about the origins of carnival and migration to Brazil from elsewhere. It would be nice to let students collaborate on a playlist which took them round the countries, or for the teacher to play music from each of the countries and see if students could puzzle out where people had come from.
4) Mood music- I always start the same topic with last.fm playing samba or Bossa Nova music and have found the students respond well to this when they are mind mapping their previous knowledge. Spotify could be used in the same way, except I would have more control over the content and form
5) Reward music- There is an English teacher who I worked with who quite often played music lowly in her class while the children were completing an activity. I know some people might think that music could be distracting, but I remember listening to music for as long as I have been studying as background, and I see students every day working in free periods while listening to their ipods. The teacher who played her music had one of the most settled and attentive classes I've visited. I think a nice way to reward the class for their efforts would be to allow them to collaborate on the background tunes for the last period of English in the week, for instance.
6) Musical timing, genre, mood, instrumentation- I can only begin to imagine the possibilities spotify would have for a music teacher. Imagine a class trying to collaborate on music which had 4/4 time, for instance? That instant streaming of relevant music would save time, money and access problems for music departments.
7) For Drama- although I've already said that spotify could be used for mood music in my lessons, there is probably no better example of a subject which would benefit from spotify than drama. Students could act out their own scenes to, for instance, a piece of charged classical music. Their own performances could be linked to the time of the piece of music.
8) PE- I often see PE classes using music for dance etc. Spotify would allow them to hand pick their tunes, while again slashing their budget for CDs/tapes etc
There are probably many more uses for this, although I am not sure how many schools would see this pass a filter. This is my list to try to justify why it's a useful tool in the classroom. Please feel free to add your own thoughts, even if it's just to disagree :)

What you think of Mrs Marta

2009-09-28T22:56:00.003Z

Categories: s1 and s2
Just a quick post for our lesson tomorrow. I asked 1@10 to give me their initial impression of a favela, including its appearance and how they would feel to live or visit there. Here it is, I wonder if it will change after finishing watching Acerola in our clip?

Mountain People

2009-09-28T22:15:00.004Z

Catgegories: Glaciation
My s3 class only had a brief couple of periods on mapping and I have been reminded by them (how conscientious is this!) that they are due an assessment on Glaciation soon. I think tomorrow, we'll take a period out and use it to discover the map. As I went walking today on Buachaille Etive Mor, I thought I could use the experience and bring it in to the class. I had planned to tweet on the walk, but the weather was terrible and as I have detailed here, almost ruined my phone. I decided to tweet retrospectively using an account I set up for use in the class creating narratives and take my journey step by step. I thought this would be an ideal opportunity to use students map skills as they could try to map the tweets using some clues I have dropped in. The second aspect of the mapwork involved some questioning from me. As the weather at the summit meant that visibility was very poor, I have asked the class to tell me what I missed out on in terms of the views. Between mapping the tweets and doing this, I thought that students would have a good opportunity to use their geographical vocabulary for physical features of the landscape. The third aspect of the mapping through the tweets is where I have mentioned either land uses or conflicts. I am going to ask the class to find where these might be occuring and why e.g. Why is the hotel or the small patch of forestry sited where they are on the map, or why is footpath erosion a problem on the high ridge.

Lovely Biscuits! (well, just the tin...)

2009-09-23T21:03:00.004Z

Categories: Limestone
Thought the limestone lesson with the little experiment went better than it ever has the other day. Not sure if this is because I am getting competent at teaching it, or because the group of students were so responsive- I think we might go with the latter there though ;) We have since started watching a video about the creation of limestone landscapes, but I think I'll pause the class for a bit at the start of the lesson and use an activity not altogether dissimilar to the 'can of worms' one I blogged about last post. I have in the past asked students to write on a post-it note something about a new topic that they would like to find out, or that so far, they don't understand. I then take in the post-its in a tin, read a few through to the class and then (have to say, this bit never goes down well) tell the students that I'll be coming back round with the tin-at which point, they have to pick one of the post-its out, prepare for a few minutes (or as homework) and then deliver a mini-lesson to the person with the question. Dead simple, but really effective at prompting students to take a bit of responsibility for their learning.

Cover Version

2009-09-23T20:36:00.004Z

Categories: Rural Land Resources, Rural, Geography General
Got 4 cover lessons tomorrow, and been having a look back through the blog at ways to maybe break up the work that has been left. Higher have just started looking at land use issues in coastal areas and we did a bit of work today about both potential conflicts. I used an idea of Alan Parkinsons, found in this great collaborative presentation called 'can of worms'. Students were given a contentious issue e.g 'Leave homes threatened by cliff erosion unprotected' and had to decide whether to stop or allow the development. We got a good discussion of the issues in coastal areas from this and how they are not always straightforward. After this, we watched a video about coastal management, which looked at the various ways in which the coast could be protected from wave action. This reminded me of a classtools dustbin that I had created as a really simple starter before, so I'm going to use it as a recap at the start of tomorrows lesson:

Click here for full screen version

Miss Armstrongs s3 class are doing a mapwork exercise and today my time was pretty much dominated by a small group who had been on retreat and had not looked at any mapwork or feature recognition. This meant that others in the class were pretty much left to get on with the questions and I sensed a bit of confusion about a couple of the tasks. Tomorrow, with the help of Gavin Brock, I hope to take the class through the basics of interpreting the map, particularly in relation to land uses. Thanks be for 3D mapping!
s4 classes, depending on which one, are looking at environmental issues surrounding farms or urban sprawl. I am thinking about an activity involving post it notes...more on this in the next post, as I'll be doing something similar with my own s3 class. Right, back to my lot now...

Post Donna Marta

2009-09-23T20:20:00.002Z

5Ws Template City of Men
Categories: s1 and s2
The 5 Ws exercise that we are going to use in class is above. This is adapted from something that I saw Christine Llloyd Staples use at a conference last year. For my s1, now that we have watched the video clip of Acerola in the Donna Marta favela, I am looking for the same again:-
1) How would you describe the favela from the video clip (have your thoughts changed?)
2) How would you describe life and people in the favelas?
Remember, only list the words, no need for long sentences as I am going to be copying and pasting all the text. Homework due for Tuesday, all you need to do is leave it here as a comment :-)

Pre Donna Marta

2009-09-23T19:55:00.007Z

Catgeories: s1 and s2
Got a busy day tomorrow, covering quite a few classes (only fair as Miss Armstrong has taken my Advanced Higher away on fieldwork). This is for my s1, and will allow me to collect responses for a wordle. We are beginning to look at cities in Brazil and I want to gauge what your first impressions of a favela are. Here are a few images, please use the comment link underneath to a) list words which you think accurately describe the favela b) would describe how you would feel if you were visiting the area or lived in it:After you have left a comment, I'll be showing you a ten minute video clip, which might reinforce your views or might change them significantly. Your homework will be to comment on the post above with your impressions of life in the Donna Marta favela -see above.

Acid Rock...

2009-09-20T19:12:00.002Z

Click here for full screen version

Categories: Limestone, s1 and s2, Advanced Higher
Going to mash two previous lessons together tomorrow, providing I have a) the time, and b) the kind co-operation of my colleagues in the Chemistry department. We are just about done with Glaciated Landscapes. I think the kids are ready to move on, and anything that we need to go back over can be done in revision sessions and mapwork catch up. We are going to begin looking at limestone scenery in the British Isles and will start by an activity based around experiences. I have previously given out small pieces of limestone and let students examine them for a few minutes- What do they feel like to touch, how would you describe the appearance, looking closer under the glass-what do you see, are there any shiny crystals and so on? Then, we use the acid dropper on a larger limestone piece and see what happens. Some of the students are usually able to work out that acid and alkali are reacting, and that's where the idea of rainwater as a weak acid would normally come into the lesson. We then try and guage what kind of impact that would have on this type of rock surface-great for bringing to the fore weathering, but a different kind to the freeze-thaw that the class have already learned about. Tomorrow, I would hope to follow this up with a lights out activity above, hiding the pavement above malham and asking students to describe a landscape that very few will have seen.
s1 were experimenting with etherpad on Thursday and our biggest task will be to move away from that experimentation I feel. We will probably spend ten minutes research time at the start of the lesson before focusing on our debate, quite similar, but not entirely the same as last year. I also might ask for each group to make a closing statement to give them a chance to round up their thoughts.
Finally, I see Advanced Higher for all of one double period this week as they go off to do some physical fieldwork with Miss Armstrong for a few days. I don't see any point in doing any new GMT work as I think we are reasonably well prepared for the exercises, so it's Issues tomorrow, and, I fear, some people looking for a new topic...

Do Farmers twitter and facebook?

2009-09-18T20:29:00.007Z

Categories: Rural
I have an s4 class who I share with Miss Gordon. I only see them once a week and sometimes because of that, continuity in the lessons can be a bit difficult. On the other hand, there's always an opportunity to do something a little different while my colleague does all the hard work ;) We have been studying rural geography and, having been suitably inspired by ideas and links courtesy of Tony Cassidy and Alan Parkinson, I thought I would have a go at two things. I suggested to the class that we try 'talking' to a farmer through twitter, an idea Tony had used when studying Hurricane Katrina with a group. They seemed keen on this, and we arranged it a week or so after discussing the possibility. I was unsure how the exercise would work and whether I would have too much waiting throughout the period, so I set the class a note taking task throughout the exercise. Fortunately, Gerry Chalmers, our farming friend from Norfolk and a close mate of Alan ;) had provided the answers to some questions we had sent in advance:
The class took notes on a variety of things pre-interview, such as his views on diversification, conservation and the recession, all the while discussing why he might have certain views or have made certain decisions. The writing wasn't onerous and we mostly talked about the responses.
When we had our live part of the discussion, there were a few things I noted. It could be quite stop-start due to the lag in responses, and with the benefit of hindsight, something like twitcam or tinychat would maybe be more immediate. That said, when I tried to wrap up the questioning, I got a volley of unanswered ones from the class, so it would appear that despite my fears, the activity did keep them involved and interested. The note taking also helped keep a focus during quiet times. I also noticed that this activity allowed us to a) go into much more depth than the text based resources allowed us, and b) we learned a lot of good up to the minute examples of changes in farming which could definitely be used in exam responses. Thanks to Angus Willson, who took screen dumps of the whole conversation in chronological order (although it might not come out like this!) Here are the screenshots:-

I was really pleased with the outcome of the exercise, and it seems to me that twitter, used in the correct way, is a great way to get characters of interest to the education of the students into the classroom. Something I'll definitely try again.
So, where does facebook fit in? Well, last Friday, after arranging our discussion for the following week with the farmer, we looked at what was happening to rural villages. The class have been studying France and the Paris Basin, so we moved south a little bit to Montperroux and watched a video looking at the development of dormitory settlements along new transport links. Tony had a great idea during the summer around 'What if they were on Facebook?' and it involved creating a mock facebook/bebo/myspace for anything/anyone that a class might be studying. I decided to set a ahomework to create a profile for a typical resident of Montperroux and it was really interesting to see the mix of characters that were created, from old to young, and how accurate the portrayals could be. We collected them through edmodo and I am either too tired or not smart enough to remember how to make this work public, but as soon as I work it out, I will share some excellent work on here. In the meantime, Tony, if you want a look, give me a shout and I'll send you some of the files :)

Lesson Handout (for me)

2009-09-15T21:05:00.002Z

Categories: Glaciation, Rural Land Resources
Blogging a nice idea from Miss Jamieson, which I used today and will definitely use again. I was struggling to think of a way to teach National Parks/Voluntary Bodies and their role in managing land use conflicts. I wanted to do something quite active with the class as the previous period had been a trawl through a homework where there had been some difficulty. All of the ideas that I had or had read about seemed either quite contrived or too complicated (if anyone knows of a lesson idea here that I've missed, please let me know). I ended up borrowing my colleagues lesson.
Simple starter- Students used a a source to extract short bullet points about the purpose and role of both the National Parks and the National Trust (5 minute time limit). Groups of 3 to 4 then set in stations around the class. Each station had a statement about an activity where there was a potential for conflict. In the groups, two questions had to be considered:
1) Which of the organisations would most likely deal with the conflicts presented?
2) What methods would they use to do so?
Again, this had a time limit- 3 minutes at each of the stations and then moving on. I like this type of activity as the students have to literally think on their feet a bit, and are constantly being presented with new challenges. Also, highlighted for me a less well developed idea of what the NT does, so we have been exploring a follow up activity where we are hoping to bring the NTS into class through twitter if this is possible. If not, we have still identified our next steps, so the exercise has been entirely valid. Thanks again to Miss Jamieson for a simple but really effective lesson.

Building Blocks

2009-09-13T20:14:00.002Z

Categories: s1 and s2

I am pretty dreadful at the game 'jenga' but I love using it in class as a teaching tool. I have used it to show sustainability when teaching about the decline of old industries and exhaustion of non-renewable resources. On Friday, I used it with my s1 class as a starter activity to help learn about the rainforest ecosystem. I had asked a different class on Thursday to share their understanding of the term 'ecosystem' and was quite surprised that few people in the class were really confident in what it meant or how it worked. We had started learning about the rainforest through looking at tribal Amerindians as an extension of our study of culture in Brazil and had looked at how they manage their use of the rainforest and I wanted to show how a wider use would have a bigger impact. So we played jenga. No mention of why, we just played.

The students were determined to keep the tower growing and the game going. Some would try to move a block and have second thoughts, others would be quite blase in stripping their block out and many took great care but the blocks still collapsed. We even managed to involve Mrs Graham, one of the deputes who visited our class during the lesson, who looked visibly stressed at the possibility of knocking everything down. This was great for our later discussion, because it chrsytallised the way some people or organisations view the rainforest and their impact on it. From the ensuing discussion we managed to decide that all the blocks were connected and, regardless of how you move them, you still weaken the overall structure. So we then named some of the blocks. What if we called this block logging, this mining, this hydro-electric etc? This highlighted the vast competition for use of resources, and how each builds their success on removing the resource which actually supports it.

We also looked at the idea of the blocks as representing a species of plant or animal which disappeared as activities spread into the rainforest, and how all of those species were connected as a web of support which kept the rainforest ecosystem from collapsing. Finally, we brought it back to the tribes and how careful use might have less impact. I started a game to show the class and put some blocks on top, but some back into the tower, and the students compared this to the fallow periods that tribes leave for former clearings to replenish themselves. Asides in the discussion also led us to think about the actual role that the forest and the canopy play in keeping the whole delicate system in balance and what happens when that protection is removed. My own thoughts are that this activity gives students a much deeper understanding of the connections than simply teacher talk or use of texts. The jenga is cheap (about two pounds in ASDA), easy to set up, involves just about everyone in the class and from previous use, sticks in the mind of the participants for the right reasons as well as the fact they get to play a game in class. Now, must check that those blocks were from sustainable forests... ;)