Packing, then off to bed. Off to National Christian Football Festival in Manchester tomorrow. Hannah & Ben not coming for obvious reasons!
Category Archive for ‘Education’ at dougbelshaw.com

Archive for the 'Education' Category

Help me fill in the gaps.

Published
by
Doug Belshaw
on 16 July 2008
in Education
.

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I need your help.

As I’ve already mentioned several times here already, next year I’m going to have the role of E-learning Staff Tutor at my school. This involves having a reduced timetable and spending time raising what I would term the ‘digital literacy’ of the teachers in my school.

To do this, I need examples of folks within their discipline who are using educational technology and Web 2.0 tools successfully. Whilst I could point people towards/use the International Edubloggers directory, there’s the problems of a) not everyone (including me) is on there, and b) I don’t ‘know’ them - and therefore can’t introduce others to them. Plus, I much prefer recommendations! :-)

Below is a list of the subjects taught in my school.* Next to them I’ve filled in the names of those that teach that subject who I follow on Twitter. I may have missed some out if I’m not entirely sure what they teach or if they’re a consultant.

I’d like to leverage the ‘power of the network’ to fill in the blanks so I can expand my network and make it more ’rounded’. In turn, I hope this will become a valuable resource for those in similar positions to me! Individuals in italics have been suggested in the comments section.

If you’ve got an individual to add to the list, please give their name, location and blog/wiki/Twitter/whatever URL. :-D

If I’ve got something wrong - your name(!) or your subject, please let me know ASAP so I can change it. :-p

So they don’t feel left out, there’s a host of primary school teachers doing amazing things, such as Al Upton (Australia), Amanda Rogers (USA), Brian Crosby (USA), Clarence Fisher (Canada), Doug Noon (Alaska, USA), Graham Wegner (Australia), John Johnston (Scotland), Jo Rhys-Jones (England), Lisa Stevens (England), Mark Ahlness (USA), Mark Warner (England), Steve Kirkpatrick (England), Tom Barrett (England), Wendy Goodwin (USA). Even members of Senior Leadership Teams around the world blog! For example, Chris Lehmann (USA)

The edublogosphere is also full of those hard-to-define characters who have job titles/roles such as ‘E-Learning Director’, ‘Technology Specialist’, ‘Digital Curriculum Co-ordinator’, and so on. Don’t worry - I’ve got something for YOU coming in the near future! :-D

*There are some subjects taught in my school because it’s a specialist Engineering school that you don’t tend to find much elsewhere. These (Catering, Construction, Engineering) I’ve left out - but I very much welcome links if you can find them! :-)

(Image credit: Bullseye by raspberreh @ Flickr)

I am Spart-arthus!

Published
by
Doug Belshaw
on 12 July 2008
in Education
.

OK, so I’m not really ‘Arthus Erea‘ the poster boy of the Student 2.0 ‘movement’. I considered pretenting to be though. :-p Apparently he’s going to launch a new blog as ‘a teacher’:

Here’s 3 reasons I don’t think 14 15 (whoops!) year-olds have a full part to play in the edublogosphere:

  1. They haven’t had much life experience. In the same way that you wouldn’t appoint a newly-qualified teacher to run a school, teenagers haven’t got the experience to make fully informed comments on education. They only see one side of the picture.
  2. The transparency that we almost demand in the edublogosphere - even the simple ‘what’s your name and where do you come from’ - cannot be provided by these youngsters due to child protection issues. The edublogosphere therefore just becomes another anonymous forum to them.
  3. They tend to be ships without a rudder, speeding off in one direction and then another. Yes, they need interactions with more mature people to give them this ‘rudder’, but I would argue that they learn by imitation. The best place for this is offline - especially given point 2!

It’s not up to me who you follow on Twitter or whose blogs you read, but I see teenagers as having the same role in the edublogosphere as student councils do in schools. That is informing professionals.

Finally, I just find it all a bit unhealthy that we treat a 14 year-old as a fully paid-up member of adult discussions. It’s a bit like me interacting with students on Facebook, MySpace or Bebo. As a teacher, I just don’t do it.

I’d love to hear some proper justifications of why I should that aren’t platitudes or crowd-pleasing posturing… ;-)

Skype Captain and the World of Tomorrow

Published
by
Doug Belshaw
on 6 July 2008
in Education and rename1
.

Nick Dennis and I are at the Schools History Project Conference this weekend. We’re doing a couple of sessions entitled Skype Captain and the World of Tomorrow: using new technologies to promote collaboration beyond the classroom. The page which goes with our session is at:

dougbelshaw.com/shp

If all goes well, we’re planning to broadcast the second session (10.30am BST, Sunday 6th July 2008) live over the Internet via UStream. The broadcast will appear in the box below and at this URL and will be recorded for later viewing. :-)