Subscribe for free June 2014 Issue 6
Pedagogy
Guide
Inspiration
Pedagogy
Using Maps to Stimulate students & take them to far off places
Finding your next teaching job using social media
Top 20 Teaching / CPD books that you simple cannot miss
Sharing teaching resources in a digital age
Issue 6: June 2014 Pedagogy & Skills
Discussion & Guides
4 Using Maps to Stimulate
8 Jobs: The Times They Are A-Changin
An exploration of how Google and other digital maps can be used in education to enrich the learning experience
Andy Lewis discussions the growing phenomenon of educators using online tools to look for and promote teaching jobs.
24 Creative Coding
12 Sharing Resources
A showcase of a range of coding applications, games and websites to get your class programming and to improve your own coding skills.
A discussion about UKEdChat’s new resource sharing site and how it uses the power of the cloud and the crowd to help the online educational community improve their lessons.
Regular Features
14 Teaching Books
18 Bookshelf Better than OK
We list the top 20 Teaching / CPD books as nominated by the UKEdChat Community Just in time to buy before the summer holidays
21 Recently on UKEdChat.com
16 Life After Levels
22 Educational Events 32 ICTmagic Educational Website
In England, the Government has dropped levels in the new national curriculum. There are a host of alternatives. Andy Knill offers his opinion for a replacement.
11 UKEdJobs listings
Contributors Julian S Wood @ideas_factory Andy Lewis @iTechRE Andy Knill @aknill Martin Burrett @ICTmagic James Abela @ESLweb Sway Grantham @SwayGrantham The publishers accepts no responsibility for any claims made in any advertisement appearing in this publication. Whilst every effort is made to ensure accuracy, the publishers accept no responsibility for errors, inaccuracies or omissions. Many images have been source under a Commercial Creative Commons License. See http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/2.0 Cover Photo Credit: https://www.flickr.com/photos/lupuca/8720604364 by Lucélia Ribeiro used under Commercial Creative Commons License
26 Handwriting—What’s the point A discussion on the importance of handwriting in the digital age.
28 Computing—Wasn’t even NEW in Greek Times! A brief guide to the history of computing. You might still have a few relics in your own classroom.
30 Riding the Routes of the Internet What to know where the bits and bytes live? Sway explores the backwaters of the Internet and where your information goes.
From the Editor For many years pedagogy and technology have been converging and digital communication and skills are essential to navigate the modern world. Teachers are becoming more tech savvy and better able to design useful learning opportunities using digital tools. This issue of UKED Magazine has a tech theme and this begins with Julian S Wood’s exploration of how digital maps can bring a new dimension for students outside their immediate sphere of experience. Andy Lewis guides us through the new frontiers of digital job-seeking with insight to his experience of using social media to promote and to get a teaching post. I write about a true passion of mine— sharing online. UKEdChat has launched a new platform where teachers can share resources, while retaining control over their creations.
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The results of our Top 20 Teaching / CPD books are in. Browse this eclectic mix of educational publications—Just in time to buy to read on a far off beach over the summer. Andy Knill offers his ideas for life after levels and how an old favourite could be adapted. We review ‘Better than OK’ on page 18, feature the best articles from ukedchat.com on page 21 and highlight CPD events happening all over the UK on page 22 I take a look at some of the best coding tools and website, while James Abela looks back at the early history of computing. Finally, ever wondered where your digital information goes? Sway Grantham looks behind the screen to the backwaters of the Internet.
Martin Burrett Editor @ICTmagic @UKedmag editor@ukedchat.com
Using Maps to Stimulate Who needs imagination when you can actually go there! By Julian S. Wood A meme was posted to Twitter recently which said:
Use of Google Earth… Allows you to explore the entire world Everyone just looks up pictures of their house I kind of agreed with this, but also knew of loads of great ways that I have used Google Earth, Maps and StreetView in my classroom. Maybe people only used it to look at their houses because they weren’t aware of all the great resources out there. In this article I’ll showcase some of the brilliant resources that will definitely stimulate learning, especially writing, in your class. I teach in the top 2% most deprived areas in Europe, the students have a paucity of imagination because of their lack of experience, missed opportunities to visit places and having very little background of wider reading. They don’t tend to watch the Discovery Channel either! So it’s with little surprise that they fail to be ignited when the teacher stands in front of them and tells them that they have just climbed the largest mountain in the world (Did we drive up?) and are now standing at the tallest point on Earth (I’ve been to the top of Blackpool tower). Could they now describe what they are looking at? (No) Could they write about they’re amazing journey? (Not really) and could they write a detailed description of the top? (No chance). Why do we as educators make the same mistakes? Are we trying to test how badly they could write about something? It’s not the students fault, when the nearest they’ve ever
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travelled is to the City Centre, they just haven’t the experience or the knowledge to formulate an accurate picture for their imagination to work. It’s not just those poorer students who suffer from this, for most pupils the top of Mount Everest might as well be an alien planet hundreds of light years away. That’s the beauty of today’s internet - the World Wide Web should be renamed Wherever, Whatever, Whoever because with the web you can visit places on this Earth (and beyond) that most of us will never have a chance to visit in the flesh in our lifetimes. Who needs imagination when you can actually go there! After mapping the world (well the places that will let them) with their streetview car, Google have now turned their attention to places that their car can’t get to. They called this Google Treks and use a backpack 360 camera to capture these places.
They’ve included some fascinating places-The Great Barrier Reef and the Galapagos Islands Trek gives the viewer the opportunity to venture underwater and really explore aquatic life. For the Great Barrier Reef, you actually enter the sea from a beach in Google Streetview! Imagine using this a stimulus for writing about an underwater kingdom or using Finding Nemo as a complimentary learning topiccomplete engagement of pupils. Wanting your students to write factfiles of some of the worlds great wonders-Google has that covered too. Explore the Eifel Tower, the Taj Mahal, the canals of Venice and even the tallest building on the planet, the Burj Kalifa. Google also have a wonderful ‘World Wonders’ website where you can explore Stonehenge and the banks of the river Seine in Paris, amongst many others. Google have used Treks to map some of natures great places. Want to travel up Japan’s Mount Fuji, explore the Grand Canyon in America, walk along the Colorado River or the Amazon Basin? You can! Want to see the nature in Churchill (Canada’s capital of Polar Bears) or see the Arctic at Iqalut-you can! Talking of nature and especially animals, there are a number of animal tracking websites that will allow students to look at the movement of animals in real time. Fascinating when teaching about migration or nocturnal animals. You can imagine the students faces when they see just how far an animal travels around when seeing it on a map.
You can see Polar Bears with BearTracker and view the movement of Jaguars and many other species with the WWF wildlife tracker. These animals even have names and I have used this resource to ask the students to write about the day in the life of Naipi the Jaguar. There are also quite a few Shark trackers and one of the best is Ocearch, where you can see the migration of sharks and it gives plenty of details of each tagged animal.
Google Maps Views is a place where people upload their 360 photographs (photos that are scrollable through 360 degrees, giving the viewer an in-depth feel to the location) You can click on any place pin to access these and there are even a view surprises. Click on the pin in the middle of the Atlantic Ocean and you get a panoramic view of the International Space Station-complete with photo of astronauts. Panorama photos are great for taking pupils to places that they would never be able to visit. Using the Screencast-O-matic screen recorder website you can create a pretty realistic walk on the moon. Especially when on Panorama.de they have loads of photos (together with actual sounds from the landings) of every Apollo flight to the moon.
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Actually there is a little known trick in Google Earth-by selecting the right hand menu you can change Earth to Moon or Mars. You can explore them just like Earth and Google Mars even has real time updates of the Rovers mapping the planet out. It also has lots of handy information and even a virtual robot assistant. You can view the Himalayas from the highest point above sea level on Earth—at the top of Mount Everest. You can have a brilliant explore around using the panorama website and when you link it with Google Treks Streetview of Everest base camp it makes writing about the Epic journey of Edmund Hilary all the more realistic! I’m going to end this article with a few gems. These websites I have used to fill a little time and to stimulate art in class.
Firstly, there’s Geogessr, an amazing site where it randomly shows you a Google Streetview image and you have to pinpoint where it is in the world. You get points for getting close to real location and is great fun. See more on ukedchat.com. Next is Red Bull Street Art View. Red Bull had the great idea of tagging all the places in the world that you can see Street Art on Google Street View. Get glimpses of Banksy classics in the proper environments. Then there’s Tate Britain’s Google Maps Mash-up. On these maps you can select a location and it will show you any artwork that the Tate has in its possession that’s linked to that location. It’s a brilliant when
Let’s go back to the beginning - sometimes it’s really useful to use Google StreetView to explore where your house is. Especially when there’s two fabulous Streetview image manipulating websites that allows the user to create amazing images. Streetview StereoScopic turns your house (or the Eifel Tower) into a mini-planet. It is especially useful when asking children to make up alien planets and to describe them or using the Top Trumps Generator at the BigHugeLabs website to write planet factfiles. Finally, there’s Roschmap that mirrors the Streetview image to produce stunning pieces of art. I hope I’ve shared enough for you to see that Google Maps are more than just looking at your own house and that you can see how much potential they have to stimulate and engage writers in the classroom. All the resources (and more!) are available by typing this into the web address bar http://idsfac.me/urthere Julian has taught for 15 years across all year groups and Is an Assistant Headteacher in an Inner City Primary School. He is a passionate advocate of using technology to stimulate learning. Julian co-created the Creative Partnerships 'inathirdspace' project, which partnered teachers and artists. In 2010 he was awarded the Microsoft Innovative Educator award for using QR Codes to stimulate storytelling Julian shares his ideas at ideasfactory.me. Follow him on Twitter at @ideas_factory Image Credit: https://www.flickr.com/photos/80497449@N04/8280699806 by Nicolas Raymond under Commercial Creative Commons License. All other images have been supplied by Julian S. Wood Google images have been used inline with the guidelines at https://www.google.co.uk/permissions/using-product-graphics.html
Collaborating with other educators enriches our teaching and improves us in a myriad of ways. Social media now allows educators to collaborate with each other from across the globe. Devote just one hour to networking with other educators online and see just how much you will learn and how much inspiration is out there.
Download the poster and get more information at
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Jobs: “The Times They Are A-Changin” by Andy Lewis
From February to May the teacher job market gets busy. Retirement letters are handed in, applications are submitted, interviews are conducted and appointments made. It can be a hectic, stressful and potentially expensive time for schools. However, like many things, through necessity, things may be changing. In the future, will you look in the same way and in the same places for your new job, or for your new recruit? This article is inspired by two personal events. Firstly, a teacher in my department retires in August after many years of long service in our school. We wanted the very best candidate to replace her and wanted them to not only take on the job of classroom teacher, but also lead the chaplaincy in our school. Secondly, an internal position for Head of Year came up that I saw as perfect career progression for me. Advertising There was once a day when the only real place teachers looked for jobs was via the job listing in educational newspapers. Each Friday the ‘bumper’ job sections featured countless jobs. However given the budget constraints that many schools now find themselves with, it can be hard to justify the minimum cost of around £200 to advertise. More prominent adverts go above £1000, which may be worthwhile for a headteacher, but this may not be feasible for every classroom teacher. Many staff do still use these traditional outlets and the targeted ‘alerts’ still arrive in
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my email inbox each week. However other education supplements such as that in the Guardian continue to grow and searching for ‘education jobs’ in Google throws up an increasing number of recruitment sites, illustrating that schools and aspiring teachers now have a range of options. Some schools are also increasingly using various recruitment agencies; not just for temporary positions but for more permanent ones too. I don't think it's a coincidence that these agencies are more than happy to sponsor TeachMeet events where they can speak to staff about their services. They must work, or schools simply wouldn't be paying their fees. Some schools even use these firms to travel to Ireland and meet with large numbers of potential candidates before calling a selection to interview. However, is there potential for schools and even individual teachers to provide their own advertising via the internet and particularly social media? Many companies now advertise via Twitter, Facebook, Gumtree and LinkdIn and there is no reason why schools cannot join in. There are Twitter accounts dedicated to retweeting job adverts, which often link to school websites. Facebook groups also provide a forum for adverts to be shared too. Some schools, particularly for leadership roles, are also looking to LinkedIn. By using a variety of social media and professional networks, it is possible to reach a large proportion of teachers.
Image Credit: https://www.flickr.com/photos/44313045@N08/6290270129 by photologue_np under Commercial Creative Commons License.
I put together a post advertising the job on my personal teaching blog, then got my school to ensure the application form and job description was on the school website so I could link back to it. I then began sharing the advert on Twitter and asked a few prominent education tweeters to help out too. As a result, it was one of my most popular blog posts and I know a number of people applied, or considered applying as a result. It was definitely a success for us. UKEdChat has now started up a new jobs section using a far more affordable pricing structure than some other services. It is still a relatively new part of the site, and one that does depend on potential applicants being part of the UKEdChat community. However, as this community continues to grow through teachers choosing to engage in their own CPD, perhaps schools will find exactly the person they are looking for this way. Twitter can also be a way of ‘letting people know’ about jobs, and while it is important to remain professional when looking for new staff, Twitter does offer new networking opportunities and possibilities. It’s an easy way of keeping an eye on what is available in the local area. People often send Direct Messages saying, “Have you seen…?”, “Would you be interested in…?”.
Andy Lewis is currently Assistant Subject Leader in RE at a Catholic secondary school in Essex. Find him on Twitter @iTeachRE and his blog MrLewisRE.co.uk
Applying I didn't want to make a big thing of seeking advice, on a Friday night I sent one short tweet asking that if anyone was a Head of Year, could they get in contact with me. By the end of the evening, I had an offer to proof-read my application letter plus various questions, tips and other exemplar letters being emailed to me. I was genuinely overwhelmed by the kindness of strangers. The variety of people who offered their help was also wide ranging, a pastoral deputy head, a head of KS4 who line manages several Heads of Year, both existing and aspiring, many of whom had struggled first time round and were happy to share their mistakes. What more could I ask for? It is important to discuss things with people in your own school, but sometimes for a variety of reasons you can't do that. For an internal job, perhaps they are involved with the interview process? Maybe they are also applying for the job? Maybe they have some other vested interest? Sometimes you don't want to be asking around everyone publicly as it becomes 'staff room chat'. Sometimes you just want to hide behind an avatar and an unnamed handle to ask for help. If it is an external job, you perhaps simply don’t want people to know you are thinking of leaving? Thankfully, I did also have a few people in school who helped out greatly, but this combination of colleagues afar and closer to home was great as it enabled me to put together a variety of information, to prepare
myself fully and feel confident there was nothing more I could do. Thankfully I also got the job! Obviously, through various forums, blogs and educational website there is now more advice than ever on questions and interview lesson advice. This can help greatly with preparation, allowing you to consider all possible eventualities for the interview day. Caution I participate in a very active subject specific group on Facebook where someone posed a question in relation to the high number of requests for interview lesson help. They suggested that maybe the potential employer would also be in the group and make judgments on a teacher asking for help. This is a very real possibility; caution must always be used when blogging, tweeting, Facebooking, even professionally. You need to ask yourself what an employer, or potential employer may think of you and your postings. My personal view is that if I saw a potential future employee using social network appropriately to seek help and professional advice, it would actually work in their favour. No-one can teach that lesson for you, and a resource is only as good as the teacher using it. A resourceful colleague who knows where they can find information online can only be of benefit to the school environment; working more collaboratively is hopefully the future of good teaching. The Future Social networking does not seem to be going away. If it can be used to save money and target excellent candidates, then perhaps schools will be using social media and their own social media presence to greater extent in the future. However it must be considered to what extent it is limiting the field to only a small percentage of teachers and leaders. Yet as the job advertising market becomes more fragmented with more and more schools looking to a whole variety of websites, publications and agencies, will a whole new approach be needed anyway?
Let the UKedchat Community help you Advertise your School Vacancies & Search for Teaching Jobs
ukedchat.com/jobs @ukedjobs Primary Class Teacher
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Eggar’s School
Lewisham, London Closing date: 12th July 2014
Hampshire Closing date: 13th June 2014
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Sharing with other educators just got a lot easier Introduced by Martin Burrett It’s finished. I run giddily to the printer and jump from foot to foot, impatient to see the results of my hours of toil and creativity, thinking wistfully about the learning that will soon ensue from a thing that I have made. Creating or discovering the perfect resource is often a gleeful experience for a teacher. Whether it is a simply maths worksheet or a complex self-assembly template of the Tower of London, each resource that we make is special and reflects a part of ourselves. Yet teachers are often shy about the resources they make and they are squirreled away in a locked cupboard or an overused hard drive. But I hope this is about to change and that the teaching profession will benefit from our collective expertise and resourcefulness. It’s time to put modesty aside and share the wonderful resources you make with UKEdChat’s Resources – an open access areas, free from logins and passwords, where the
educational community can share their homemade teaching materials with others and reclaim hours of reinventing wheels. There are a number of sites where you can share resources, but UKEdResources is a little different. Unlike some resource sharing services, you retain control of your resources and we do not ask you to relinquish ownership of your materials. In fact, your resources are not uploaded to our site at all. Instead, ask you to add them to an online storage service like Google Drive, DropBox or your school server and we catalogue the link for other educators to use. This means that you can edit your materials as you wish and removing them is as simple as deleting the file in your cloud storage service. So add your resources to the UKEdResources listings and continue the sharing, collaborative ethos that UKEdChat was built on.
ukedchat.com/resources @UKEdResources Add a resource by clicking here
Browse some of the great resources that have already been added
The 5 Minute Lesson Plan By @TeacherToolKit
Achievements Mind Map By @UKEdChat
Whole School - Pedagogical Ideas & Practice
Whole School - Achievement For All
Chemistry Tube Map & Travelcards By @DaK_74
First Twenty Elements By @Mrz__Black
Secondary Chemistry - Admin & Assessment
Secondary Chemistry - Atoms, Elements, Periodic Table
Minecraft Perimeter By @grahamandre
Word Problems Y2 Minibeast theme By @EmmaAnnHardy
Primary Maths - Measuring
Primary Maths - Calculating
Letter from the Frontline By @FatBlokeThins
School Monsters By @ICTmagic
Primary English - Non-Fiction
Primary English - Non-Fiction
The Top 20 Teaching / CPD Books As nominated by the UKEdChat Community Click the cover image to browse more information. Books appear in alphabetic order
100 Ideas for Secondary Teachers By Ross Morrison McGill
An Ethic of Excellence: Building a Culture of Craftsmanship with Students Ron Berger
Full on Learning; Involve me and I'll understand ZoĂŤ Elder
How to be an Outstanding Primary School Teacher David Dunn
Never Mind The Inspectors Tait Coles
Learning Through A Lens It's All About Photography Jane Hewitt
Oops! Helping children learn accidentally Hywel Roberts
Out of Our Minds: Learning to be Creative Ken Robinson
Outstanding Teaching: Engaging Learners
Supporting Effective Learning Eileen Carnell & Caroline Lodge
Teach Like a Champion Field Guide Doug Lemov
The Lazy Teacher's Handbook Jim Smith
Trivium 21c: Preparing young people for the future with lessons from the past Martin Robinson
The Book Whisperer: Awakening the Inner Reader in Every Child Donalyn Miller
The Perfect SENCO Natalie Packer
The Philosophy Shop Various
Unhomework: How to get the most out of homework, without really setting it Mark Creasy
The Hundred Languages of Children Carolyn Edwards
The Secret of Literacy: Making the implicit explicit David Didau
What's the Point of School?: Rediscovering The Heart Of Education Guy Claxton
Read our educational book review at http://ukedchat.com/category/book
Life After Levels By Andy Knill
Levels are going in England – how do you feel about that? Elated? Concerned? Prepared? This is a topic that affects me as a Key Stage 3 teacher (students of 11-14 years old) and one that I have invested a lot of thought in, a topic that has caused some heart searching. This piece is a summary of observations and thoughts I have had in 2014, if interested in following up or offering own views, let’s use UKEdChat as a forum. What’s next? As a recent online discussion has shown, there are a variety of ideas about how to move forward in a post-levels world. If comparisons between schools and phrases are to continue, imagine comparing between hundreds of different systems implemented by different schools. What was wrong with the yardstick from the out-going national curriculum? Central government is not offering a replacement. I believe that Solo taxonomy may be a viable solution to ensure an easy, workable and useful system can be established. Through my work advocating Solo taxonomy and other educational discussions, I’ve conversed with educators from across the world, especially from Australia and New Zealand, where the curriculum models are changing rapidly and
highlights how to think more deeply and to develop progress skills. But the question remains about how to compare and track progress. We need holistic system that could be used from Early Years up to external qualifications. Post by Andy Day @Andyphilipday who blogs at meridianvale.wordpress.com can offer some insight into possible solutions. We need a system where it is clear where progress has been made and one that is easily shared between colleagues and with students. My initial thoughts were as a framework based purely on the solo taxonomy, but this would be too vague as a curriculum tool to be utilised as it stands. Levels in their original National Curriculum format ran from 0 to 8. The numbers were a framework on which subject specific criteria could be “attached”. As the framework was used in a way it was not intended – as a summative end of key stage grade. The profession started to sub-divide levels on an annual basis. Schools started to look for linear progress on a termly or half termly basis. I would not want to see the same happen to the Solo taxonomy stages (do not call them levels, please). However, within each stage the reporting of knowledge and skills can be further differentiated by being linked to literacy expectations across the curriculum and wider subject knowledge criteria.
Andy Knill is a Secondary Geography teacher in Essex. You can find him on Twitter @aknill and @globalsolo. He blogs at mishmashlearning.wordpress.com
I believe a subject based recognition for the development of knowledge and skills could complement the Solo taxonomy, but I would caution against a set list of facts to know. Some subject associations have already started to work on how this framework could look. From my own subject specialism of geography, the Ordnance Survey have been working with primary and secondary geographers to look at a framework for mapping skills. A Geographical Association group has been investigating this area too and presented initial findings at their 2014 Easter conference.
Like any coherent system, this would require coordination between schools and close cooperation to ensure cross phase progress could be shared and be useful. Whatever system a school eventually adopts, it is vital that this opportunity is seized to create something to enhance learning and empowers teachers and students – not hinder them. Dan Brinton @BelmontTeach a Deputy Head from Durham, has been developed a post-levels English curriculum framework for his school and reflects that “...the process would have fell flat without the freedom and trust to create the curriculum and assessment that *they* valued”. Find out more about Solo Taxonomy and discuss how it can be used in your classroom by following @GlobalSolo. Also see publications by Pam Hook @arti_choke and her website at www.pamhook.com. Read more about Solo Taxonomy in the January 2014 issue of UKEd Magazine. Image Credit: All images have been supplied by Andy Knill
Are you an educator or school Browse and add your requests to in search of a particular http://ukedchat.com/noticeboard resource? Need costumes for a drama production or need to borrow some equipment for an event? Perhaps you are a school about Click image to to throw something away which visit website others may want. Post your items and requests to the UKEdChat noticeboard for the next issue.
Bookshelf Bookshelf
Better than OK: Helping Young People to Flourish at School and Beyond
Edited by Dr Helen Street & Neil Porter The Australian Education System is currently in the midst of a massive change with a National Curriculum being implemented across all states, as well as calls for improvements in international rankings and a better provision for the indigenous population. At the core of this is a sense of wellbeing and flourishing for all students who are comfortable with their identity. Where schools fit into this equation cannot be under-estimated and, as purveyors of knowledge, need to think and adapt to the societal changes that are clear. Even a definition of 'knowledge' is critical as politicians and teachers grapple with the basics that young people need for a future that is incomprehensible to the â–˛ Click the image above to view this people who inhabit the 2014 world. Indeed, as search book on Amazon. engines make knowledge a quick and easy transaction, Andrew Fiu calls for teachers to instil a desire for students want to explore and be open to learning in areas which are relevant and of interest to the individual. The series of essays within 'Better than OK', written by a collection of educators focus on nine themes: Engaging with Life; Finding Motivation; Building Lifelong Resilience; Developing Positive Emotions and Behaviour; Embracing True Identities; Practicing Positive Relationships; Growing up in Nurturing Environments; Living with Technology, and; Flourishing at School. Comparisons and competition are a reality of life, with Professor Andrew J. Martin advocating that personal best and growth approaches are effective ways for learners to aim higher by using self-referencing goals. At the heart of this approach is a focus on mindsets; developing a growth mindset (re: Dweck) to support students incrementally view their progress and successes. (See http://lifelongachievement.com for more information about personal bests) UKEdChat regular, Dan Haesler, writes of his experiences of working in the UK, noting the trust and relationships that teachers can have with children, challenging self-fulfilling prophecies, and a call to celebrate the innate intelligence we all hold. Realising our talents and skills can be the challenge, especially as school curriculum is all about academic rigour, rather than a celebration of vocational skills. Helen Street writes a fascinating chapter on the detrimental factors associated with many reward systems, especially those aimed at motivating children. She reveals that research tells us that children are not becoming invested in the task they are being rewarded for, but simply compliant and invested in the reward. Rewards need to be personal, with the relationships built between teacher and student are crucial in supporting motivation to achieve better. The plight of the lives of refugees is given deserved space, as Dorothy Hoddinott reminds readers that they are not voluntary migrants. They have lost all that connects to their previous lives, yet education can give purpose and meaning to the lives of young refugees who have lost so much. With so many families moving around the globe, for whatever reasons, this chapter strikes a chord for teachers within different countries who will be faced pupils with new challenges to their young lives.
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Professor George W. Burns progresses us to consider happiness and that happy people enjoy longer-lasting relationships, thus enhancing society’s social capital – so as educators how can we best facilitate the happiness of our children. Burns offers a mix of areas for exploration in how educators can best facilitate these, mainly centred around relationships, spirituality, and a celebration of personal strengths. Happiness is not a fad that can be dropped into education policy every now and then, but a part of life which is often overlooked within schools. Happy students are more susceptible, willing and open to learning, so this area of human life should be given more attention. Professor Tim Sharp gives guidance on developing such positivity with strategies that can enhance the early stages of learning including, “Have fun and use humour appropriately (education is far too important to take too seriously)” The book continues, built around the core themes within Personal, Social and Health Education, tackling issues around sexuality and relationships education, supporting students with disabilities (seeing the whole child, not just the disability), recognising mental health issues, spirituality (including mindfulness, reflections and self-awareness), as well as technology and safe online activity In a intrinsically negative world, this book wants us to celebrate the positives. Education systems have made us all a little dog-eat-dog, forgetting the strengths and goodness that are within all of us and the real purpose of who are important in our schools – the pupils. Perhaps this is down to the accountability systems embedded within western education making people fearful. Perhaps it is down to news stories that tend to enjoy scaremongering. In a lot of cases, negativity is a sign of a breakdown in communication, so giving time and energy to explore how positive relationships between all is critical, which this book strongly advocates for. Written mainly for and by Australian parents and educationalists, the issues raised are certainly relevant for all in modern education and is certainly recommended to those who are willing to put time, effort and networks in to support and nurture pupils. The Better than OK: Helping Young People to Flourish at School and Beyond is published by Fremantle Press and is priced on Amazon at £19.89* for the paperback and £6.38* on Kindle. *Correct at the time of publishing
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Creative Coding By Martin Burrett Programming and coding in schools has gained increased prominence in the media with educational policy makers and practitioners. The late Steve Jobs said “I think everyone should learn how to program a computer, because it teaches you how to think.” But for many educators, teaching children to code is a daunting prospect. Here are a few websites and resources which should help make this a pleasurable and fascinating exploration of thinking and problem solving skills, discussion and design. A good way to begin is to start your children to think about actions and commands in a modular way. LightBot is a good game where players must guide a robot along a series of increasingly difficult obstacles by creating a set of pre-programmed commands. In the later levels, players also need to create a subroutine, a repeated or looped command, to complete the challenges. You can also make your own levels to complete and share with other players on online. CargoBot on iPad and MusicDroid on Android have similar features. For young learners, a good place to start is an iPad app called Daisy the Dinosaur. The children are presented with a cute pet dinosaur which they have to instruct to perform actions
and tricks. They do this by choosing the commands they want from the left panel, drag the blocks into the command window and set the values. There are a number of challenges to complete to ‘train’ the dinosaur and the children can modify the commands to help daisy perform some intricate tricks. You can add share the commands with others at the click on a button. You can begin looking at real programming language with a free downloadable resource called RobotMind. The users use programming commands to move a robot rover about the environment. Anyone who has used MS Logo will be familiar with the basic commands of the programme. They can make basic instructions to control the robot using repetition loops, conditional ‘if’ commands to add of element of logic. The commands range from simple movement, collecting ‘props’ from the environment, placing beacons and drawing. There is a detailed set of tutorials on the site and even planning for Primary and Secondary educators to use. The fun really begins with MicroSoft’s Kodu Game Lab, as it is the first resource where the only restriction on creativity are the ideas of the programmer themselves. This is a superb game creator where the programmer can create seemingly endless worlds of stunning 3D digital landscapes to explore. The games are based around a character called Kodu. Each character and some of the environment can be programmed to behaviour in a particular way. You can design enemy sprites to simply walk between two points or to activity seek out and attack the players. Each sprite has a collection of commands the designer can use to customise what it does.
The landscape can be modified easily by building up layers. You can create adventure games where you must seek out treasure or rescue someone, racing games where you create a track and outwit your opponents, and platform games where you collect tokens to complete the levels. The possibilities are endless. There is also a large community of Koduers who can help you develop games and who also have uploaded thousands of examples to the web.
Scratch is probably the best known and most widely used in schools. It is a platform which allows programmers to design games and other applications using a set of block commands which bolt together. A new 2.0 version came out midway through 2013 which added many new features, including moving Scratch online. There are many advantages to Scratch being online. The first is that the user can access their projects anywhere, which is invaluable for encouraging children to code both at school and at home. It also means that collaboration is so much easier. The you can draw, upload to use sprites and backgrounds from the Scratch gallery. You can make your characters move in response to key stroke to make classic arcade type games. The sensing commands allow you to make much more nuanced set of behaviours. The ‘data’ blocks opens the gateway to creating
scoring systems within your games. You can even use your webcam and body gestures to interact with you games. You can play and dissect games from other users from the Scratch community to learn and add code to your own games. You can also add your games to the network for others to play and learn from. You will find that imagination and continual refinement is key to the invention and creation process and using Scratch will quickly help users to think around problems and tinker around the edges for solutions. The last site is called X-Ray Goggles (formally Hackasaurus) and it has been developed by the same community as the FireFox Web browser. This wonderful tool allows you to make changes to the HTML coding, the programming language which most of the web is build from, to copy, edit and publish modified websites. You can easily add or delete images and rewrite the copy to add or delete text and much more. Just drag the bookmarklet to your browser’s toolbar and click to access the code from the site to edit. Once finished, you can publish the modified site and share the link with others. Also see https://www.codehunt.com, a fun code cracking programming web game, and http://www.codecademy.com for a superb interactive online programming course. Coding is becoming a vital skill to have in many of today’s jobs and workplaces and this is only going to increase – see http://code.org for the hard numbers. Like any creative language or design endeavour, it takes time, perseverance and imagination to hone. But it is also a lot of fun and children love to see their creations come to life. Create something amazing today.
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Handwriting What’s the Point?
It is easy to argue that now, with the advent of technology, there is little need to teach handwriting to pupils, as their lives will surely be dominated by fiddly little phone keyboards, computer keyboards, or impressively evolving voice recognition software – that can do all the hard work for you. Perhaps, in fact, skills could be taught to encourage young people how to use Swiftkey or Fleksy keyboards more effectively rather than the painstaking task of trying to get children to join up their letters using a pen or pencil – this is a more effective use of teaching time, surely? The importance of the skill of handwriting is markedly different among nations across the world. In Australia, pupils are expected to “Consolidate a personal handwriting style that is legible, fluent and automatic and supports writing for extended periods” (Year 7 expectation, ACELY1727), whereas in England pupils are expected to “write legibly, fluently and with increasing speed”. Often, there are debates about the handwriting style that should be taught (usually cursive or script), yet in contrast the USA Common Core standards call for teaching legible writing, but only in kindergarten and first grade. After that, the emphasis quickly shifts to proficiency on the keyboard. And maybe there is some justification in this approach. The way all media is changing, with paper being used less and less. Some technologists have argued that it is important to teach letters and numbers, but doing it in a way that children will be using in their lives,
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with a focus on keyboards and typing, not triple-lined paper – being able to print will suffice with the advances in technology. Aisling Brown notes this shift with her students, “A large proportion of students do the greater part of their revision on computers or tablets, if not their actual classwork. This has been the case for many years – even 10 years ago I wrote most of my school essays on the computer. The use of technology in the classroom is advancing in exciting directions and constantly developing. “So, if students hardly handwrite in the classroom, I am not convinced of the purpose of examination through this means. If nothing else, a typed essay is significantly quicker and easier to mark. A typed submission also enables easy editing – no more angrily crossed out misspellings or arrows squiggling across pages to insert further thoughts, no bringing five pens, a pencil, two rulers and a calculator just in case. And won’t somebody please think of the trees?” Although, we all know of colleagues who insist of printing EVERYTHING out. The digital education officer continues, “It appears to me that we have two options – students continue to come out of exams in physical pain from the quantity of writing they have to do, or lose valuable lesson time teaching handwriting purely for the purposes of an outdated form of examination. Not to mention the lost marks due to an indecipherable scrawl – some of the most able students are the most frustrating in terms of legibility. Exams are hugely stressful
and demanding experiences for students, teachers and examiners already, without insisting on an increasing outmoded form of notation. Exams should reflect and assess what is going on in the classroom. Handwriting is no longer an automatic part of the learning process and its use in the examination process therefore must be reevaluated.” But researchers are now discovering that the importance of handwriting and broader educational development are intrinsically linked. French psychologist, Stanislas Dehaene recently told the New York Times, “When we write, a unique neural circuit is automatically activated. There is a core recognition of the gesture in the written word, a sort of recognition by mental simulation in your brain. It seems that this circuit is contributing in unique ways we didn’t realise - Learning is made easier.” Indeed, another study has demonstrated that that people remember lectures better when they’ve taken handwritten notes, rather than typed ones. The research found, “even when laptops are used solely to take notes, they may still be impairing learning because their use results in shallower processing.”
So, whether this is an argument for the traditionalists versus the progressive thinkers the questions will continue, but for those (in England) who wish to know about what is expected you can refer to the National Handwriting Association Handwriting Guidance Notes: http://www.nha-handwriting.org.uk/NHA/ media/Public/Downloads/Handwritingchanges-in-the-National-Curriculum-KS1-2Sept-2013.pdf Further reading: http://aislingbrown.wordpress.com/2014/ 06/09/exams-and/
What do you think? Write your comments on Twitter using the #UKEdChat hashtag https://www.flickr.com/ photos/42931449@N07/5418402840 by photosteve101 under Commercial Creative Commons License. https://www.flickr.com/photos/joelmontes/4762384399 by Joel Montes de Oca under Commercial Creative Commons License.
Computing Wasn’t even NEW in Greek Times! By James Abela There is a lot of fuss at the moment about this new subject called Computing, but in fact like a lot of the world’s great inventions they have been around for a while. In fact analogue computers have been around since Greek times. The Antikythera is a complex device with about 72 gears. It was used to predict the position of the planets and stars and was also capable of predicting solar eclipses. If you want to see the history of categorisation and sorting you need to go even further back to ancient Mesopotamia where the first libraries were established. However the art of coding is much newer, Ada Lovelace who is credited as the first coder, only published her algorithms in 1842! She was the first person to write code for Babbage’s analytical engine. Over the next century, computers evolved and during the 2nd world war, Colossus became the world’s first electronic digital programmable computer. The digital age had arrived and with it Boolean logic and the kind of logical programming that is familiar to us with modern coding experiences. The 1960’s was also a great period for Computing and in 1967 LOGO was designed. This was different to other languages, because it was graphically oriented and in the late 1960’s supported a Turtle robot. This language is particularly important in education, because it eventually turned into Scratch. Meanwhile, in 1964, John Kemeny and Thomas Kurtz created BASIC which enabled students at Dartmouth University to write simple programs. In 1975 a young Bill Gates
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and Paul Allen made Altair basic, which eventually became the Visual basic we love today! Students can also play with the kids’ version at http://smallbasic.com Basic inspired a generation of children in the 1980’s to learn to code on BBC Micros, ZX Spectrums or Commodore 64’s and that generation have become the wildly successful programming teams making games, designing the insides of mobile phones and working for the world’s biggest technology players. The final ingredient that makes the modern computer so useful, is the Internet. ARPANET enabled computers to talk to each other at a distance and started operations in 1969. During the 1980’s it was possible to use computers to download files on bulletin boards and then in 1991 Tim Berners Lee outlined his World Wide Web project. It did not take long for the web to become popular and when the mosaic browser was born in 1993, it became a phenomenon that would change the world. ▼ Think your computer is slow? It’s likely to have hundreds of times the power of this 16k device.
▲ The Apple II—The first mass produced personal computer. Available in any colour you want… as long as it’s beige!
The simple truth, is that much of the computational thinking that we want to teach isn’t decades old, it isn’t centuries old, it has been around for millennia! We are merely rediscovering it and teaching what has been lost in a decade of consumerism with closed platforms that have closed minds. Further materials: The Antikythera Mechanism in Lego http://vimeo.com/17648733 The History of the Internet http://youtube.com/watch?v=9hIQjrMHTv4 Basic at 50 http://youtube.com/watch?v=gxo9LVIgOiI
The UKED Magazine and the UKEdChat website is read by tens of thousands of educators each month We offer a range of promotional opportunities to connect with our audience Contact us at editor@ukedchat.com for more details James Abela is a Computing teacher in Thailand. Find him at jamesabela.co.uk and @ESLweb
Image Credit: https://www.flickr.com/photos/sunfox/1561909692 by Sunny Ripert under Commercial Creative Commons License. https://www.flickr.com/photos/dottiemae/5311528896 by Jenn Durfey under Commercial Creative Commons License. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Ada_Lovelace.jpg under Commercial Creative Commons License.
▲Portrait of Ada Lovelace
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Riding the Routes of the
Internet Do You Know Where Your Information Goes? By Sway Grantham The time is 8am and by this time in the morning I have relied on the Internet to complete 5 different tasks as part of my morning routine. Rising to the sound of my alarm, I check social media and news sites for an update into the happenings over night. Happy that the world is still turning, I now progress to my emails and begin compiling a mental todo list. Having filtered through the spam, I check the weather for the day to inform appropriate attire and begin getting ready to go to work. Potentially before I’m out of bed, I have trusted the Internet to accurately convey current events and recent developments from around the world and closer to home. I have trusted the Internet to reassure me that family and friends are doing ok through my maintained connection with social media. I have trusted the Internet to confirm important developments within my professional network via a different form of social media. I have even trusted the Internet to help me make an informed decision about the clothes I should wear. So I must know all about how the Internet gets this information, right?
According to the office of National Statistics, 36 million (73%) adults within UK used the Internet daily in 2013. A statistic which increases to 85% focusing on the 16-34 years age bracket. More people than ever before are trusting the Internet to provide their news updates via online newspapers or magazines (55%), to access their bank accounts (50%), to seek health information (43%) or to buy groceries (21%). So they must know all about how the Internet gets this information, right? The majority of adults have no idea how the Internet works, where information goes, how it is stored or how it is returned to their device. Based on a 152 responses from a recent survey which I sent out on several social media websites: adults from 16 to 65+ rated their own understanding of the Internet as an average of 3.60 out of 5. Now I guess this doesn’t seem too bad, they can nearly all explain that the Internet uses a phone line, as many remember the troublesome dial-up days of having to decide whether Internet browsing or your phone calls were more important! Following the departure of that signal down the phoneline – what does happen? Only 21.6% of those who didn’t need to understand the Internet for work, believed they could explain the journey of a website request from beginning to end. Now I wonder, does it really matter if the average adult understands as long as there are some Computer Scientists who do? In the simplest terms what happens is: your request to view a webpage travels along the phone line (along with 1000s ◄ Are you completely reliant on the Internet? What if it disappeared tomorrow?
of other requests from other people in your area) and is passed from router to router searching for the computer (or web server) where the website you requested is stored. When there, your computer is sent a message reporting where the destination is and can begin downloading its content (the text, images and videos which are shown on your screen). Anything sent across the Internet is broken up into small pieces and labelled with an address and which piece it is. They all travel separately to ensure the quickest possible speed. Once they reach the destination the computer reads the piece numbers which explains how to put it back together and the information displays on your computer as one complete piece. The whole process can take a matter of seconds, depending on your Internet speed. So does understanding this make a difference? Considering the fact that so many things in our world are now run by computers connected to the Internet, even before taking into account personal Internet usage, we are placing a lot of trust in systems the vast majority of us don’t understand. How can we make informed decisions about what we should and shouldn’t use the Internet for if we do not know what happens in the void that we
imagine the Internet to be? The Internet is a fantastic place, a lot of you probably wouldn’t be reading this if it wasn’t for the Internet, however, we all know it has to be used with caution. By understanding how it works, we can ensure that due caution is given without prohibiting access to the most substantial information-source on the planet. I now dare to mention the new Computing curriculum which will be statutory for all state schools in the UK from September 2014. Within the KS2 curriculum changes, there is more than just the inclusion of computer programming, but also the addition of an understanding of networks and the Internet. This, I believe, is the understated necessity for the next generation. As the Internet grows, and our reliance on the Internet grows even further beyond this, the next generation need to be able to make those informed decisions that many adults are not currently in a position to make. How else can we continue to place more and more trust in the Internet? It is now lunchtime and by this point in my day I have used the Internet to complete more tasks than I have been able to keep track of. I am lucky enough to have a basic understanding of how the Internet works and so I choose to place my trust with an open mind. I hope that I am critical when I need to be, but accepting when appropriate and that I can use the Internet as a tool rather than a magic wand. I am sure though that the next generation will be a lot better at this than we are. Remember, think about what you trust the Internet with and ask yourself: what if something
Sway Grantham is a primary school teacher in Milton Keynes. Read her blog at http://swaygrantham.co.uk and follow her on Twitter at @SwayGrantham Image Credit: https://www.flickr.com/photos/andrewfhart/8106189987 by Andrew Hart under Commercial Creative Commons License. https://www.flickr.com/photos/marcelograciolli/2807100863 by Marcelo Graciolliunder Commercial Creative Commons License. https://www.flickr.com/photos/dalbera/2738451853 by Jean-Pierre Dalbéra under Commercial Creative Commons License.
The best sites from
View thousand more at ictmagic.wikispaces.com https://www.codehunt.com A superb game where children must use their knowledge of coding to progress through the levels. There are two programming languages to choose from and tutorials at every step of the way.
https://www.canva.com A beautifully designed site for making posters, presentation slides and other images by dragging the large bank of images into place.
http://babadum.com This is a fab HTML5 language learning site which tests your language skills through a series of games with 1500 words. The site collects stats on your performance. Languages include English, Spanish, German, French, Japan, Italian, Russian and Polish.
http://giza3d.3ds.com/#discover A truly stunning 3D reconstruction and tour of the Giza pyramids, the Sphinx and other structures. Watch a guided tour around and inside the structures at various points in history. You can even view the site in full 3D. The site may take a little time to load.
http://recitethis.com Make beautiful posters with short messages or quotes with this great site. There are over 40 designs to choose from.
https://lookingglass.wustl.edu This is a superb site and download where you can make 3D animated cartoons by selecting your props, characters and locations and then use blocks to programme how things move and interact in a similar way to MIT's Scratch. You can upload your creations to the website to share. There are a set of challenges to try and you can even remix animations designed by other users.
Check out the UKedchat Educational Apps directory for the best apps for teaching and learning.
Go to
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