I’ll do it later
Comments (0) “If you want to make an easy job seem mighty hard, just keep putting it off.” – Olin Miller
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It didn’t work
“I have not failed. I’ve just found 10,000 ways that won’t work.” – Thomas Alva Edison
Where’s the General?
“An army of a thousand is easy to find, but, ah, how difficult to find a general.” – Chinese proverb
Hurry Up, Hurry Up
“Getting things done is not always what is most important. There is value in allowing others to learn, even if the task is not accomplished as quickly, efficiently or effectively.” – R. D. Clyde
Lighting a Fire
“Education is not the filling of a bucket, but the lighting of a fire.” – W. B. Yeats
Tech Support
Now, so that everyone can become an expert at tech support, the following flowchart is provided – feel free to print it out.
Source: xkcd.com
Classroom Management
But seriously, the following quote came from @Aaron_Eyler via Twitter #edchat hashtag.
The best indicator of classroom management might even be what the kids do the days you AREN’T in school.
I know I love it when I return to my class to find reports that they’ve been wonderful and got through everything I planned for them.
What do you think? Is it an accurate measure of your classroom management?
So Simple
What a way to keep your desk clean and tidy….and stop losing those cords behind the desk.
Twitter for Home/School Communication
I’ve been on Twitter for a little while now (well, since 10th August 2009 actually) but hadn’t really used it well or much – quite simply I didn’t know what to do.
However, during these holidays I followed the #acec2010 hashtag using TweetDeck. The hashtag was used for the Australian Computers in Education Conference, held in Melbourne. I saw how useful Twitter can be. Even though I wasn’t able to attend the conference, I was able to pick up some points via other people’s tweets. (More about those later)
I have been following the #edchat hashtag for much longer and have picked up some useful comments via that also. One of the recent topics has been about Parent & Teacher Communication and how to foster that. There were ideas for class blogs (something I’d like to try – intended doing that a few years back, but then received a sudden transfer so lost the opportunity 
), twitter accounts, facebook pages and the more traditional email or telephone calls. They have a wiki set up which collects all the tweets together, so is worth a look over.
Another topic was about how to use Twitter to foster communication, with a list started over at PrimaryPad. Here’s what they’ve listed so far:
- Celebrating children’s work, with links to examples of work online.
- Asking for feedback… so followers can add comments and share valuable feedback with the pupils. Tweet a sentence from a ‘Big Write’ and get instant feedback for the pupil.
- Posting school news
- Posting live updates about school events (e.g. sports matches)
- Post updates from an educational visit (e.g. residential)
- Reporting school closure information
- send reminders about events in school or homework I’m sure there’s a way you can set it up to automatically post a tweet when a reminder email is sent from Google Calendar
- Use to pose questions for children to debate/answer
- All we do with Wilsden’s is aggregate from an RSS feed (School Blog) – auto, quick and simple. 0 Maintenance ftw.
- Ask your PLN questions to use within lessons – gather data for Numeracy, places for Geography, punctuation puzzles in Literacy
- Display community notices – e.g. parenting groups,
- Play games in lessons using PLN – #VCOPsaid, #VCOPwent, #VCOPadverb, get children to think of as many alternative words for ‘said’, went, or and adverb. Display the hashtag feed through www.visibletweets.com and children get 1 point for each they manage to match. Worked a treat in Year 6. (Maybe more suited to personal account not schools?)
- Report on progress/activities on school trips. A residential trip – our trip to London next week.
- Ask questions of people across the world – A Malawian in Japan, whe we were lookin at Malawi.
- Talk topic questions or for P4C questions
- Easy to embed twitter widget onto school website – easy for all to update remotely with school news etc
- Set up an account for a fictional or historical character – I have previously had children tweeting the story of the Gunpowder Plot using Hootsuite to schedule tweets – (@lcs_rcatesby)
- Use alongside Twitterfall to create a vidiprinter of sports results (as an independent school – every weds we have about 15 teams playing home and away – results get tweeted)
What are some other ways to help develop Home/School communication?? Doesn’t necessarily have to be just with twitter either – leave your ideas in the comments.
Image Source: Twitter via Flickr
Leadership is
“A good objective of leadership is to help those who are doing poorly to do well, and to help those who are doing well to do even better.” – Jim Rohn
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