Integrated E-Safety

So we have just started a new mini project in our ICT seminars about e-safety. The task is to make an informative presentation on the topic, which can show other trainee teachers how to teach the idea in the classroom. Our group got to work researching various resources through looking at sites such as VITAL, NAACE and swgfl where we found that a lot give the facts of what internet is and tips of things to be careful of but very little guidance of how to incorporate these into the classroom. After all, shouldn't e-safety be central to ensure that children fully understand safe practice of the devices that they are using to explore or learn from?

As a group, we became slightly stuck as where to take this project... Should we look at how to teach a good e-safety lesson? Doesn't that just involve giving the children tips? Which technologies should we focus on? What is the most effective way of doing this?

Probably my favourite e-safety site that I came across in the research - simple and to the point tips for children about using a varity of technologies safely

After a discussion, we agreed that we thought that at a time where devices are constantly being used in the classroom to support learning and where children have a wide range of them to use at home that e-safety shouldn't just be a standalone lesson but generally integrated throughout all teaching.

I began to research exactly that and googled 'integrated e-safety' with very little success. There were very few ideas of how to put this into place and no examples which really surprised us as it seemed like the best way for children to have all the knowledge they needed to stay safe when using technology. When writing previous ICT assignments it has always shocked me how little e-safety is mentioned in technology based text books, often given a paragraphs space at the end of the final chapter. It is great to be able to use so much new ICT in the classroom to support learning, so I feel that children need to also be taught common sense on how to use the huge variety without putting themselves in danger. In an assignment that I have just finished I referenced Ofsted's 'safe use of new technologies' document because it suggests that e-safety in outstanding schools was taught across the curriculum... through 'assemblies, tutorial time, personal, social, health and education lessons'.

Towards the end of our seminar we decided that although separate e-safety lessons can be useful, it should really be embedded into the curriculum as much as possible. Over the next few weeks, as we develop this resource/presentation, we're going take a 'how to' approach to the task and hopefully make something that demonstrates and teaches how to integrate e-safety into the primary curriculum.

I would be interested to hear how other people have seen e-safety taught in school, any integration seen/carried out or opinions on the best ways to teach children how the use the internet safely!

@HannahSheltonTT

Building Learning Power

So I have just finished my first year summer teaching placement and it has been an invaluable experience; from huge behavioural challenges that have developed my confidence in the classroom to learning new ideas and concepts that the school follows which improve the children's learning.

One of the main strategies that my placement school, HV, has implemented has become integral to every part of the school day, building learning power (BLP).  Just to add that this is my only experience of the idea so it might be different to how it works in other places or people might just disagree with it altogether.

From my first day it was apparent that in action BLP was a part of every aspect of the classroom through the language of the teachers and the way the children went about learning. In short Guy Claxton's idea of BLP is about helping young people to become better learners, in and out of school. He believes that pupils who are more confident of their learning ability, learn faster and learn better. Then once they have developed this, their confidence, capability and passion can be built up.

At HV I definitely felt part of the school through the welcoming of the staff and their support in challenging me to become a great teacher. A main factor in this was that the head teacher made time to look at each of our trainee teacher files every week to provide feedback. The week that she asked me to look into building learning power in the school gave me the chance to go more in depth about it's use in the classroom but also behind this in how it has effected the school and it's learning.

The most apparent way that building learning power was used in the classroom at my placement school was through the teacher's language. When discussing with the class teacher she explained to me that this was a main benefit of BLP as it gave staff a vocabulary to speak to the children in which promoted positive behaviour reinforcement and motivated them to learn more. Examples of this were phrases such as...

"Manage your distractions"
"Intelligent interruption"
"Brain ache questions"
"I've spotted something..." - children walk out from where they are sitting to come and point something out

The learning tree featured in every classroom (containing the four R's) - when a child feels they have been a resourceful learner, for example, they put a picture of their face on that part of tree.
  

Other noticeable ways...
Everything the pupils do being referred to as 'learning' rather than 'work' to come away from all the negative connotations of 'work'.... eg: home learning
Talk partners and collaboration are used in all lessons
Recognition of perseverance in a child's learning
Extending with 'challenges'

There is also a huge focus on independent learning and for the children to be in control of this. Through this the class feel even bigger positive benefits from their achievements in and outside of the classroom with understanding of the challenges they overcome. At the time before the school got into BLP they were struggling with the problem that they had great teachers but the children weren't learning well enough and when they came across this it appeared to be their solution and they have been using it since.

The whole concept of BLP obviously goes deeper than this but I thought it would be beneficial to blog about what I saw and how it worked in the classroom. The main part I liked was the focussing in on 'learning' and how the enjoyment for that really got the children motivated to challenge themselves. My view on how building learning power works is only from this one perspective though so I'm still very interested to find out why others don't like it, or maybe how it works in other schools, so feel free to comment!

@HannahSheltonTT

#pelc12 PELeCON

Pelecon 2012 has come to an end and I have had such an amazing experience as a student volunteer! I think I've heard some of best speakers of my entire first year at the university, that have definitely inspired and interested me. Stories of the great work they are doing within education from @deputymitchell @theheadsoffice @courosa @stevebunce @heloukee @mberry @gravesle, just to name a few of the people I have managed to see whilst helping out.

The evening of the first day became #tmpelecon, a teach meet in the students union with some fantastic speakers sharing experiences and ideas. The main challenge of the night, well for me at least, came later. Despite being fairly comfortable at the front of the classroom teaching, the thought of speaking in front of an audience of professionals and students terrifies me. So I quickly hid my head when the presentations were finished and @terryfreedman asked if any student teacher bloggers would share their thoughts on the benefits of it.

Even though I vaguely heard someone say my name behind me I just pretended to write something down in my notebook! So my lecturer, Pete - @ethinking, decided to volunteer me much to my surprise. About five minutes later, and from lots of lovely encouragement from a fellow BEd student @amyparkinbed, I was up at the front talking about my recent experiences of blogging.

Sitting back down I realised that I probably hadn't made a lot of sense in what I was saying, and had spoken too quickly but I had definitely challenged myself to overcome a fear. What helped more was the really kind encouragement I received after the teach meet, on twitter and over the next two days as it really helped me with my confidence levels if I'm to do anything similar again. Over the three days of pelecon the word 'failures' has come up a lot and the way we can learn from these, in the confession booth too (http://www.youtube.com/channel/UCuaMu_dOzp-BS6H1j4Z6iXw). It's amazing to see how I've learnt already from the help of others persuading me to face my fears and talk and in pushing myself to get up there!

Alec Couros's (@courosa) talk the next day said that putting things out there before they are perfect is an important part of learning. This put into perspective for me that my skill to speak in public didn't need to be perfected before I did it, but I just needed to put myself out there to practice and learn from the experience. (And maybe from that people learnt or had an incite into student teacher blogging too)

There is so much else to talk about regarding #pelc12 but for now I'll leave it on my perspective of the event and how I learnt and began to overcome a fear.

@HannahSheltonTT

Motivation

(Writing this blog pen and paper style, an hour an half wait at a train station so small that it doesn't even have a shop!)

As I have said on twitter before, doing the BEd primary teaching degree has motivated me so much, that it has changed my whole attitude to learning. Motivation probably means different things to different people, but for me it is what pushes me to get involved in trainee teacher life and enjoy every minute of it. At school I was the kind of person who just went along with everything, based my learning around exams and tended to avoid extra curricular activities. This attitude has completely changed, coming from that I am finally enjoying education and the course that I'm on!

Sometimes motivation arrives in bursts giving you an incentive to do something that you have been dreading or sometimes it can be what gets you out of bed and excited for the coming day.  From my perspective a lot of my motivation is personal, with help from friends, lecturers and the uni. So I decided to tweet to get a few responses from other people who might have different influences. One response I had got me thinking, from @mikemcsharry.

I really liked that what influenced him is how other people are benefited from what he is doing, and are appreciating what he has showed them. This made me think more in terms of when I am teaching, placement or eventually full time. My motivations won't completely rely on the selfish reasons that I am loving what I do, but as well the way that what I will do each day will hopefully impact children's learning and understanding.

Another response I received was from @missjbutt, taking a different angle:

Jennifer's views were based around what gets her going with assignments, and the group thing is quite interesting. Do some people's motivations come from seeing other people doing well around them? People around me can definitely be an influential factor, that's a good thing. Not in a jealous or bitter way of a person succeeding, but in a positive way that drives you to initiate the good qualities of that person in yourself.

My new found motivation since starting the degree has benefited my learning dramatically, giving me confidence to take advantage of opportunities and get on with my work, without seeing these as a waste of time. I think direction and focus are key factors in this because I seem to know what I want and what I want to do and these push me forward to take advantage of my whole university and trainee teacher experience.

ICT: Completely Cross Curricular

One of the great things about my Primary ICT specialism at Plymouth Uni is how we have learnt to use technology to benefit learning across the curriculum. Before starting my degree I was still under the assumption that this would be my subject, however in my learning already I have seen the huge variety of resources available to impact children throughout the classroom, in all lessons. Watching the live stream of #TMRoehampton last night at the university I saw some really interesting presentations, one in particular by Mary Farmer @ebd35. She spoke about the challenges of traditional literacy, especially within her SEN setting, 'literacy doesn't have to be about pen and paper'. This was great in demonstrating the ways multimedia resources can assist learning in other subjects, such as literacy. The children found that the different ways to tell stories were making a huge difference to their lessons, through video recording and animation to build their confidence.

Through the many ways technology can benefit learning I have grown a new love for geography, thanks to my module that started about three weeks ago. If I'm honest I was dreading the seminar as I've never taken a huge interest in the subject. The furthest I have probably gone with geography since I was fourteen has been downloading an app that quizzes you on capitals and flags, and that is about it!


The sessions started off in non technological way but this definitely got me engaged as it was all to do with getting the children to think and make inferences. We were shown this through developing a picture of a certain area (Dawlish in this case) through photographs, postcards and maps, and through this were asked to think around these to work out more about the town. Through the process of inferring more about the area we looked at geograph.org.uk, a great website dedicated to getting a photograph on every grid square in the UK and Ireland. I thought this was great as the pictures were very useful as they hadn't been put up for advertising. This would be lovely to use in the classroom as it gives the children an opportunity to explore different places around the county.

Another thing that interested me in a different seminar was Barnaby Bear, which I hadn't ever come across before. So many opportunities to link to ICT and new technologies! The idea originated from the idea of having a class bear  that children can take away with them over holidays or weekends to share to the rest of the class about where Barnaby has travelled to, allowed children to compare contrasting localities.

This session then showed us all the ways that we could adapt Barnaby bear. It made me think too of ideas that could benefit children, one of which could be to have a class blog alongside the activity, instead of the class scrap book. This would allow children to upload more about Barnaby's travels while on their adventures or holidays, meaning that other people in the class could follow along too. Or being able to upload lots of pictures, videos or multimedia about the locations they had been visiting!

Another idea we explored was geocaching and travel bugs, all accessible through their websites and GPS, allowing children to become completely involved with geography. I didn't had much experience with either of these, only knowing a little bit about geocaching. I thought this was a great idea, especially if there was a local box to the school that the children have a look for, through GPS and grid referencing. 

Travel bugs linked perfectly Barnaby bear again, but in a different way. The idea of having a bear (or any other object really!) that had a tracking number on it, then each time it was found by geocachers exploring an area they would log the location to the number, and then move it on to the next location they visited. This idea would work fantastically in a classroom as the children are able to follow the bear online through the map and see all of the places it was visiting. Our lecturer's class had worked its way over to Australia! So a really great way of getting the class interested in a particular town, city or country and it's geography. 

 

So yeah, geography is just one example of how ICT is a completely cross curricular but this has really excited me in learning and finding out about all the ways it links effectively into other subjects. 

@HannahSheltonTT

Extending Learning & Experiences

Since my last blog I have finished the amazing experience of my first school placement, as by the end, with some encouragement from my class teacher,  I was able to teach five whole class lessons and lead lots of morning and afternoon registration sessions. From this I definitely found that I learn the most when becoming involved in something to gain  from both my mistakes and the things that went well. Therefore, I have thrown myself into things that will hopefully continue to extend my learning and provide me with new experiences.

Continuing with Julia Skinner's 100 word challenge has allowed me to see the huge growth of the concept over the past few months. Schools from all over the place have become involved in getting their classes writing 100 words on that weeks particular topic. Digital learning can be used effectively to encourage a child, showing that the 100WC team, and many other individuals have impacted the young writers motivation by commenting positive and encouraging thoughts on each post. From my perspective it is great to be involved in something that seems to really help children to feel valued in the pieces of writing that they are sharing. It has also given me the opportunity, in my learning, to see a variety of writing from a range of ages and abilities. Interestingly, one thing that I have learnt through this is that sometimes  entries that lack grammar or correct spellings can be the most creative and engaging. 100WC is one of the many ways that I have found twitter to be a great network because through my PLN I have met a range of people from educators to specialists that are helping me along my journey in training to become a primary teacher.

Another thing that I have become involved with lately is a website set up by JC @JCBarrington called The Student Teacher Resource. At the moment there is a team of about fifteen people of all years and specialisms doing the Plymouth BEd course. So the website is aimed at the idea that during the course people go through a lot of placements in schools and rather than keeping resources to ourselves it would be great to make a place where all of these could be shared for everyone to see. Part of my learning and experience in joining the team was meeting lots of new people who were also passionate about teaching and the idea behind the website, branching out to a group that had different specialisms to myself has given me a whole new network for support along the course as well. 

However, there was one thing that struck me in this process, lack of interest from other year ones. As part of the team I've been trying to get other people in my year involved but out of around 200 people only a couple have replied. In my mind, if you are passionate about becoming a teacher, influencing children and the people around you, you would want to also extend your learning and experiences further by taking on as many opportunities as offered? It is great to be part in 'sharing a whole new generation of resources' but through this also having met a whole group of motivated trainee teachers. 

Something a little further away from teaching and ICT that caught my interest was an advocacy volunteering role at Barnardos. Although I only started the fairly long training process a couple of months ago I have learnt a lot already that will benefit me in the classroom towards issues of safeguarding and more about a variety of circumstances that a child could come from. This role will take me into schools from a whole different angle, supporting a child and having their voice heard in meetings. Hopefully this will give me a whole new perspective on the mixed backgrounds that children will be coming from into the classroom, extending my learning from the uni to develop my own experiences.

  

In my very first Life of a Trainee Teacher blog I ended on saying 'So far within my groups I have tended to be the slightly invisible one (as in everyone seems to forget me/my name) so hopefully in starting to blog about my life as a trainee teacher I will share some thoughts worth noticing or generally share how I'm getting along on the course.' and I think that comment has happened. For the first time I been able to get involved in so many things and can now probably say I am no longer the invisible girl. So any support on the blogs and helping me to get involved has been really appreciated.

@HannahSheltonTT