Great Pirate Treasure Challenge

Every now and again in Maths I like to set my Year 4 class a puzzle / investigation / challenge in order to give them an opportunity to discuss their mathematical understanding with their classmates.

Today I set them the Great Pirate Treasure Challenge. I gave them a sheet with tables such as the example below

They were told that the first row indicates the amount of gold in the treasure chest and the second row shows how many pirates were in the group. They had to then work out how many gold pieces each pirate would receive. To add to the challenge they were told that the pirates had to have exactly the same amount of gold otherwise they would get upset and angry. I told the children that they were the pirate’s slave and that they would receive any gold left over. Therefore if there were 20 gold pieces in the treasure the children would want to be a pirate slave for a group of 7 pirates because each pirate would only recieve 2 pieces and they would receive 6. They went on to investigate what would happen if there was more treasure in the chest.

It was great to hear the children actually discussing the maths and helping each other – the team that was most successful were three girls who all earned themselves Commendations.

Learning Without Frontiers Awards

A few weeks ago I was completely taken aback to receive an email from a fellow teacher who I greatly respect and admire informing me that they had nominated me for a prestigious Learning Without Frontiers Award. I was even more taken aback today to discover that I had made the final shortlist of three in the Primary & Pre-School Innovator category, especially when I saw the names of the two people I was up against. Ian Addison and David Mitchell are two people who have had a huge influence on my career and have helped me develop professionally. It is because of the support and inspiration that people such as David and Ian have given me that I find myself in the position where I am nominated for such an award.

I have been fortunate enough to meet David and Ian on a few occasions and I feel very proud to be in the same category as both of them.

To vote for David, Ian or myself visit - http://www.learningwithoutfrontiers.com/lwf12/awards/the-finalists/

 

Rethinking ICT Conference #rethinkingICT

The provisional date for this conference is Friday 13th July and will be held here at Winchester House School.

The plan for the day is that it will start with a Teachmeet event in which attendees can share what they think ICT should be like followed by an afternoon in which we could split into groups and sit round a table discussing ideas.

What I am keen to address is the ICT vs Computer Science debate that seems to have arisen since Gove’s speech. Lots of reports were saying Computer Science should replace ICT whereas I strongly they are both important and we need to find a way of combining them.

I would also like part of the day to be devoted to the idea of setting up an informal network of ICT specialists who will offer support to schools who may not have anyone in school who would regard themselves as an ICT specialist.

I am still open to any ideas, suggestions and help with trying to organise this day. I have had quite a positive response so far and think that it could be a really exciting, and inspirational day.

If you would be, in principle, interested in attending the day please add your name to this Google Doc.

p.s. the logo at the top of this post was created using http://logotypemaker.com/ 

Rethinking ICT

As many of you know I have been spending the past few months rethinking our ICT curriculum – dividing it into four strands: Digital Literacy, Digital Creativity, Digital Technology and Digital Society. The reason for this was to try and address some of the issues that people had with ICT in its current form. As I have been working on my plans I became aware of others doing something similar and it became clear we were all reaching similar conclusions and we began to share ideas via Twitter, blogs and email. This is all very well but what I really wanted to do was to be able to get together with these people, sit down and actually discuss these ideas and this is where the idea of a one-day conference was born.

Yesterday I was given the go ahead by my Headteacher to organise a conference in July to discuss ICT which seems even more important following Michael Gove’s “It’s all over to you” speech yesterday. I envisage a day in which anyone interested in teaching ICT from primary, secondary, independent schools can get together and brainstorm ideas on what the ICT curriculum should look like. This could be based around a Teachmeet model in which people share some of the things they are currently doing, followed by workshops and brainstorming sessions where we sit round a table and a big piece of paper and just write down ideas.

I also think that following Gove’s speech there will be even more need to support schools who are already struggling with their ICT. ICT in primary is quite often praised for being more innovative and engaging but there are many primary schools who do not have a specialist ICT co-ordinator – many having someone with that role simply because they have to have one. How do we support those schools? My suggestion would be an informal network of ICT teachers willing to go and offer training, support, INSET sessions in other schools. This list of people could be available online for others to see and request help.

These are only the initial thoughts but ones I really hope to develop. Gove has given us a huge opportunity to make a difference and we need to grab it while we can.

 

 

Tweet, Tweet, Who’s There?

For some reason ideas always seem to hit me as I am doing the washing up. Tonight’s idea will use Twitter to set my year 7 class an Internet research challenge. Basically I want people to tweet a set of clues about a person – the children will then research the information in order to identify the person.

So I am asking for people to tweet some clues about anybody to do with the following topic – ICT Pioneers.

For example if I was thinking of Bill Gates I might tweet:

I was born on October 28th 1955 and I am best known for the company I founded with Paul Allen. #twittwho

Please join in and I am intrigued to find out who you would consider to be an ICT Pioneer. Please remember to include the hashtag #twittwho and could you also schedule your tweet to arrive sometime between 9.10 am and 9.50 am on Friday morning. I would also appreciate it if you would tweet me separately to let me know you have contributed some clues. If I don’t get enough contributions I may have to abort the plan.

Thanks in advance

Oh and could you also schedule the answer to arrive between 9.50 and 10 am

If you are not sure how to schedule tweets (and Tweetdeck’s scheduling seems to be playing up) just tweet me the clue and I’ll sort it out. Thanks

Blogging INSET

Today we returned to school for the first of three days of INSET before the children return on Thursday. I had the opportunity to speak for half an hour about blogging with the aim of inspiring and encouraging other teachers at school to start blogging as well. I started off by showing my ICT blog and explained that I use it to share the work the children have done and also to promote my subject by demonstrating my interest and enthusiasm for the subject. I talked about the fact that the children seem to respond better to the fact that there work is being seen ‘beyond the school walls’ and how this motivates them to correct mistakes and ensure their work is as good as it can be. I then showed some examples of departmental blogs from other schools to show how it can be used beyond the ICT department.

I then talked about how children can also be bloggers and shared some of the fantastic work from @DeputyMitchell’s school. This led on to the use of Audioboo as a way of given children who may not be keen writers a voice online. I shared  my tutees’ Rugby radio reports and explained that it was produced completely independently – i simply gave them the technology, showed them how to use it and then sent them off to talk. I also showed the #BooHumbug project which involved several children and adults from around the world all collaborating to create an online audio book of A Christmas Carol.

I then talked about my use of Twitter and how I have found it an invaluable tool and demonstrated how I can use a hashtag such as #whsdino to ask for and collate ideas and suggestions. I then went on to talk about some of the projects I have run using Twitter such as the #1066election and Gunpowder, Tweeting and Plot.

By the end of the day I had been asked by the English, Geography, Art and Music departments to set them up with a blog – as well as Year 3, Reception and a blog for the boarders. So over the next few days I will be setting up several new blogs and showing the relevant teachers how to post.

All the links I shared can be found on http://www.3x3links.com/whsblogging

2012: Looking Ahead

Here are brief outlines of some of the projects I hope to run this year.

TweetTheDickens
To mark the 200th aniversary of Charles Dickens’ birth I hope to get several school’s involved in a blogging / Twitter / Audioboo project based around his novels. Children could blog or tweet as characters from the stories and I hope to repeat the #BooHumbug project by getting children from various schools to create an online collaborative audiobook of another of his novels.

OlympicChallenges
As it is the year of the London Olympics I will be marking the occasion with my Olympic Challenges – basically a series of challenges based around different Olympic events that will get children thinking creatively.

Turing Year
To mark Turing Year we are going to transform one of our mobile classrooms into a Bletchley Park codebreakers hut. A team of children will work as codebreakers trying to decipher some encoded tweets and then retweet them. Children in other schools could join in as well.

D-Day Tweets
Children will research the events of D-Day and will tweet from the point of view of people involved in that historic day. These tweets will be scheduled to be delivered ‘live’ on the 6th June.

Titanic100
A blogging / Twitter project to mark the centenary of the Titanic sinking in which children will blog or tweet as passengers or members of the crew.

Please get in touch if you would like to take part or want anymore information about any of these projects.

Boo Humbug

Over the past week I set myself the challenge of trying to create a collaborative online audio book of Dickens’ A Christmas Carol using Audioboo. Thanks to contributions from children in years 2, 4, 6, 7 and 8 here as well as children from other schools (many thanks to @teachesict and @mattfothergill) we managed to complete Stave I yesterday.

I am now hoping that I can encourage enough of my Twitter network to record a paragraph in order to complete the rest of the book by Christmas.

Digital Studies

Quick Question…

Should ICT be renamed Digital Studies, stay the same, or be called something else?

12 Days of Christmaths

This morning I gave my y4 maths set the song words of the 12 Days of Christmas and the following information…

Partridge – £2
Pear Tree – £3
Turtle Dove – £4
French Hen – £5
Calling Bird – £4
Gold Ring – £10
Goose – £6
Swan – £8
Maid – £9
Lady – £15
Lord – £20
Piper – £9
Drummer – £11

They were challenged to then find out how much it cost to buy all the gifts.