As a teacher and a volunteer at a youth organisation I am in the enviable position of being able to learn alongside young people.

Just because I am older does not make me the expert. In many ways I have a better capacity to interpret new knowledge because I am often more aware of my own learning preferences and I have many more experiences with which to associate and compare new situation. In many ways I am at a disadvantage, previous misconceptions need to be overcome, it is often difficult to find a place for new information and I find it difficult to learn new practical skills.

Together my S3 class and I learned how to play Mario Kart – on Wednesday they beat me soundly – again!
Tonight I learned how an Air Speed Indicator works collaboratively with a group of cadets – although I’m not sure any of us know exactly what the Pitot tube is I know that they could offer explanations regarding pressure differences as well as me now.

Tonight I feel privileged to work with these people and tomorrow when they anger me I will try to remember writing this!

I’ve put this presentation together as an introduction to using a SMART Board in the classroom.

It is my intention that users will be able to use this as a guide and work through the excellent material already available online.

I would appreciate any comments that you have.

Many Thanks in advance.

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The idea has been bubbling away nicely all summer and last week my thoughts finally pulled together into a feasible learning experience.

Based on discussions with the class, the restrictions of hardware and software, advice from my PLN and the curriculum restraints this is what I have chosen to trial this term.

There will be 2 leagues.

The first is a competitive league where 8 pupils at a time will race their tennis stars in a classroom battle.

How?  I have set aside 8 of the DS devices which I am hoping I will be allowed to retain in my classroom solely for the use of the project until at least Easter.  The pupils have chosen to name the consoles after tennis players (yes, Wimbledon was on at the time).  The league has been drawn up on a point basis.  The game will work out winners and points and the pupils will record these.  For now I will keep the info in a Google spreadsheet with a view to possibly getting the pupils to duplicate the worksheet in an ICT lab.

What learning outcomes am I addressing here?

• reading tables, graphs and charts
• draw conclusions and explain them from data
• take an organised approach to solving problems

We will have 2 races each session, hopefully 6 sessions this term.
2 each time to ensure the whole class has the opportunity to play.

This will leave us time in the last week to draw our conclusions.

The second tournament will be a time trial competition.

Within the game there are 8 characters who each have 2 cars and 4 cups which each have 4 tracks.
This leaves a lot of space for trial and improvement of the project.

So we’re going to attack the first track in each cup with each player’s 2 cars – that’s 64 races – that’s more than enough for 1 term.  This is an individual game so I’ll have to be careful about who’s getting to play.  The pupils will be able to choose which character, car and cup to race until all of the blanks in the posters are filled in.

Each time trial gives overall time and best lap data which will both be recorded.  The times are given in minutes, seconds and then decimal up to 1/1000 of a second.  This will set up learning outcomes about time beyond expectations of the course.  Extending easily into time calculations, we can also consider rounding, averages and further organisation skills.

So let the races begin!

Your feedback as always would be greatly appreciated.

I thought for long enough that if it’s on the Internet then it’s public and anyone can use it – this of course is naive and entirely wrong. Until the beginning of this year the internet was just a way to buy cheap music, keep in touch with friends and find funny jokes. It was a personal tool, not a professional one. Now I am responsible for a blog and a department webpage I’m starting to understand how I may feel if any of my work was used without my knowledge or permission. Now it is my knowledge that worries me most. Assuming that if I know about something that is used then I have probably offered my consent in some way. So actually it is acknowledgement that would concern me. Use my work but link it back to me.

As a teacher I want to share my ideas and practice. Sharing through blogging and social networking sites opens up my classroom to a wide audience of educational professionals. From these wonderful colleagues I receive praise, support and, most importantly, criticism and a guiding hand. My own reflections are challenged so that I consider alternative perspectives and think out of the box a little more often. Teaching can be a solitary profession even in a department where we have a program of regular self reflection and peer observation. Opening up my thoughts to a wider community helps to make me a better practitioner. The drawback is that there are unscrupulous people who will present ideas found online, in texts, in audio sources, etc as there own.

It is easy perhaps to hear or read an opinion or idea and it will come back to you as a flash of inspiration some months later when remembering the source is nigh on impossible – try hard to source the original, ask your pln, google as much as verbatim as you can. It is becoming easier with excellent bookmarking services such as delicious – I have begun to save these links with a note to remind me how I found the resource originally. Most websites offer a contact option. If you desperately cannot trace the source then admit that on your own work and attribute the work to an unknown source – eg “many thanks to the person who originally came up with this – my apologies for lack of memory – if you do stumble across this and you know who is responsible for the original please let me know so that I can properly reference the credit.”

Jenny Eather wrote a fantasitc website www.rainforestmaths.com which no longer offers public access because the website was plagerised somewhere in Asia where someone copied the code and tried to make profit from selling the program commercially. Now I have no idea how this travesty was discovered but the site was immediately locked from the public domain and is now only available through subscription and password.

The dedicated teacher who built www.teach-ict.com into a fantastic resource bank has become increadingsly frustrated by people replacing copyright notices on her work with their own and publishing it, or worse – submitting it back to her for inclusion on her own website. The running costs of hosting this site are over £3000 every year, much of which is met from the publishers own pocket, yet she has had to find time to reformat all of the documents in a bid to protect her work.

What a shame. As a resource for learning and teaching these sites are fantastic. I have shared them with many colleagues, indeed they came to me via recommendations from colleagues on my teacher training course.

We’re good at sharing provided the people accepting are using our labour to produce better learning and teaching practice. If you think an idea is good enough to make money from then get in touch and share right back.

So legally, what rights do we actually have. As if original copyright laws weren’t complicated enough the new Creative Commons Licensing is almost incomprehensible.

Highland Council, my employer states on their website (http://highlandschools-virtualib.org.uk/copyright/intro/intro.htm , 28th June 2009):

“Definition: Anything original that has been created and produced by someone else whether literary, dramatic, musical or artistic is protected by copyright legislation.”

and

“Generally anything produced by an employee as part of their work for the Council, or commissioned by the Council, or using Council facilities (e.g. using ICT equipment, getting office staff to word process the material, is Highland Council’s copyright.)”

They go on to offer the following good advice:

“Assume that everything not produced by yourself is someone else’s copyright”.

We are relying on other people taking a scrupulous approach to what they see online. When I use a book I wouldn’t dream of copying ideas, quotes or pictures without, in my own work, properly referencing the source. My attitiude has now been well and truly changed to catch up with the modern world of information. Using resources is completely different to claiming resources are your own. I very much like and agree with Highland Council’s advice and will bear it in mind as I try to make sense of copyright in the future.

Some useful resources:

• A creative commons search engine: http://search.creativecommons.org/
• The Creative Commons website: http://creativecommons.org/
• A Guide To Copyright Licensing in Schools: http://www.licensing-copyright.org/
• LTS Web Standards and Guidelines: http://www.ltscotland.org.uk/webstandards/ipr/index.asp
• Copyright4Learning – a collaborative wiki: http://copyright4learning.wetpaint.com/
• Copyright Guidelines for Highland Schools: http://highlandschools-virtualib.org.uk/copyright/intro/intro.htm