Place your BETTs… *cringes*

Shocking title I know, apologies.  Anyway, I’ve wanted to go to BETT for a couple of years and finally made it down this year and am really glad I did.  It was as big and bustling as I expected but a couple of areas didn’t measure up to what I hoped.

It was very much a tech show rather than a teach show, with salesperson after salesperson trying to flog or promote their product.  However some stands had teachers or even students on hand to showcase their products. Even more exciting, it was great to see the fabled Teachmeet Takeover.  As the newbie that I was though I did seem to always be lost or in completely the wrong place to see the sessions I was hoping to catch, although did manage to get to one of them and it was really refreshing to see the passion and enthusiasm for something which he wasn’t getting paid to say!

So amid what seemed row upon row of IT solutions providers, 3D projectors and touch screen companies  (the latter two of which were actually pretty cool…for the first couple of stalls) I did manage to have a few interesting finds.  The first of which was the first stall I stopped at (albeit in a dazed, overwhelmed state) – Pop4Schools.  This is a website teaching the sound part of the science curriculum, with parts of music, DT and enterprise curriculum through recording and producing a pop music CD to market. As a science teacher who is also a musician and works in an enterprise academy this ticks  a few boxes!

Next I found a stand showcasing the use of PSPs (and a XBOX360 kinnect).  It’s possible to load them with powerpoint slides saved as JPEGs, actual images, videos, or with a camera add-on to use them as imagecode readers. A lot of my students last year had PSPs so there could be some potential there, especially with the older ones, using them as a revision tool.  That said I don’t think I’ve seen one this year so maybe that would be jumping on yesterday’s band wagon…

I then headed down the stairs right into the BrainPop UK stand.  Now I’ve not used the UK version

"beep beep"

before, but used to have access to the american version and found the videos really useful. Not only did I pick up a cool Brain Pop bag (which then carried my reams of waste paper for the rest of the day) and a free trial but I got to have my photo take with Moby himself! Happy days!

 

Last website I found which impressed me was myworks produced by the Boardworks people.  Two of our main foci at school this year are developing homework and improving the monitoring of students progress over time.  I think myworks could kill both those birds with one stone (or at least injure them!) Anyone had any experience using it before?

Finally for now, on the Saturday morning I managed to catch Stephen Heppell give a talk at the Visual learning area.  It was great to hear him speak and see some of the amazing learning spaces he’s been involved with/researched.  However the talk had a bit of a sales feel for it for Impleo(?) or whoever it was that were sponsoring the area which was a bit of a shame really. Either way it was great seeing the innovative learning spaces and extensive use of visual screens some schools have developed.  I work in a new build which has fairly innovative multifunctional areas compared with most older schools, but it was nothing to some of the things he showcased…

The wrong week to start blogging?

Well it looks like last week was the wrong week to start blogging as I ended up being away from school, home and my computers for most of it. But it turned out to be a great week to give me something to blog about after.

My first outing was with the other lead learners from my school and two of our partner schools down to visit Sandringham School in St. Albans, rated outstanding by OFSTED.  We met their equivalent group for a joint workshop Tuesday evening before spending the Wednesday touring the school, observing lessons, meeting staff, students and hearing about the school’s journey.  It really was a pleasure to walk around the site and the school’s ethos, atmosphere and approach to learning really is inspirational.  I’ll share more thoughts another time.

I was then back in school for Thursday before jumping on a train down to London to visit BETT2011 and attend TeachMeet@BETT2011.  Both events similar with a real focus on harnessing new technology and using it to enhance education; yet at the same time polar opposites. The exhibition full of folks who don’t necessarily know a thing about education, pushing a sales pitch in your face before you’ve even read the name of their stall compared to a TM organised by teachers, for teachers with a real enthusiasm for learning, sharing (not selling) things that they have tried themselves and you could use tomorrow.  That said TM wasn’t without its moments and BETT had a few hidden gems, both of which I look forward to sharing once I finally get chance to go through my bags for life full of goodies and what I imagine may soon become waste paper!

Moving onwards and looking back

New year, new start, so it’s time to try blogging again, 11 months on after my last ‘new year let’s start blogging’ crashed and burned.  But rather dwell on that failure I’ll just look back on a few positives of 2010…

Professionally:

• Survived my first year teaching(!)
• Moved into a brand new shiny building, with my own brand new shiny lab
• Became ‘Employment Intelligence Coordinator’  for my Business Community (i.e. House group)
• Appointed as a member the schools team of ‘Lead Learners’
• Managed to get my head around AQA Applied Science, Edexcel 360 (core and additional) and BTEC Applied Science
• Attended the ASE annual conference
• Joined the trustee board for the charity YouthBank UK
• Given accredited training for using and implementing the resource u-xplore
• Taught myself how to edit videos using iMovie on a mac and used it to produce videos celebrating my students’ achievements in their BizCom project work

Personally:

• Completed my first year as a Musician in the Territorial Army
• Passed grade 6 tuba with distinction
• Ran ‘The Beast’
• Visited a new continent (Africa!) for the first time

a new challenge

#30goals day 3:  start a new challenge.  I’ve decided to take up the challenge of 365 – one photo for every day of the year.  A bit late starting in Feb but hey ho, better late than never!  My efforts can be found at Will Haywood 365.  I’m pretty excited about this concept, if I can see the challenge through to the end it’ll be great to look back through the year.

A second and more physical challenge that I’ve already set myself, is to compete in The Beast at the end of this month.  Hopefully a photo from the race will be making its way onto Will Haywood 365!

always check the settings

Today’s lesson learned was an interesting one:

• always check the settings on a balance before letting students use it

They were investigating what affects the rate of reaction through testing the stain removing prowess of different types of washing detergent – powder versus liquid.  Looking around the room I thought I better call things to a halt when every group was pouring more washing powder than water in their beakers (!) …

Everyone was adamant they only put 2 grams of powder in.  I watched someone re-weigh it… sure enough it was 2…  2 ounces that is! D’oh!

I think someone had got a bit button pressing happy when they switched it on. Never mind… better luck next time eh?

getting edgy

Today’s task was to contribute to a blog carnival, a concept I’ve not come across before.  It’s kinda like a magazine if you haven’t come across one either.  You submit one of your blog posts (on a particular theme) to the carnival, and the person who set it up selects a number of submissions and publishes it as an issue of the carnival.  The carnival I read through was the Edge of Education, which features innovative or ‘edgy’ teaching techniques or experiences and is definitely worth checking out. But looking at what’d I’ve had to say here so far, don’t think my blogging is quite up to scratch yet, so my contribution was a comment! Goal #2: DONE.

Take three…

Hello world! So here’s my third attempt at starting a blog.  Last two fizzled out after a post or two, hopefully it’ll be third time lucky!

Why start writing today? You may (or may not!) be asking… Well I’ve recently got back into Twitter again (still not tweeting an awful lot myself – but I don’t believe in doing it for the sake of it) and the other day one of my PLN (personal learning network) tweeted a link to a list of educational technology blogs they recommended. One of which was The Techno Tiger, reflecting on her attempts to try new things through achieving 30 goals.  It made interesting reading,  so I checked out the ‘30 Goals Challenge‘ (#30Goals on twitter) found at Teacher Reboot Camp and so this post is me achieving goal number 1… DONE. If all goes to plan, this blog will be a reflection of my attempts to achieve 30 new things in 30 days. Fingers crossed eh?

So why i-Will?  Well for one I couldn’t think of a decent name, secondly I’ve just upgraded myself to the shiney world of a mac user and lastly I will keep posting to this blog… I will, I will I will!

Anywhooo for now I must retire… getting late and need some sleep before tomorrows onslaught!