Had a blast putting together this brief intro to GPS for my first year IGCSE ICT class. Feel free to use & share!
Lesson resource: how GPS works
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Reading: How We Learn – Benedict Carey
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Good teaching is about filling gaps
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I’ve been reading Julie Dirksen’s Design for How People Learn and really enjoying it. Here’s a little sketchnote based on the first chapter.
Thinking deep: beyond the specification
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Students often struggle with higher level thinking skills when introduced to them for the first time. In this post I talk about exceeding the expectations of exam boards by going beyond an A* through embedding deep, critical thinking throughout the curriculum.
Long-term learning: embracing the Cornell method
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For as long as I’ve been teaching content that requires more than a handful of notes, I have encouraged my students to use the Cornell method for note taking. Copying by rote doesn't work beyond remembering things. For comprehension & understanding we need a different approach - one I think is encouraged by this method.
Moving south. Way south.
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I'm pretty sure the majority of people following this blog or my Twitter feed will know that I have a new job on the tiny island of St Helena in the south Atlantic. I've been employed as an Advisory Teacher of ICT, with responsibility for some curriculum development across the 11-18 secondary school and its feeder primaries, as well as doing my usual stuff in the classroom. [...]
Re: The myth of the extraordinary teacher
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Ever felt like teaching was an uphill struggle? So does everyone else, but impossible it's not - we just need to consider carefully our definitions of the word success. People who say it's impossible to be an extraordinary teacher are part of that uphill struggle, making goals seem more difficult to achieve, but it is possible.
What ICT can be
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As part of a presentation at an SSAT seminar entitled 'How to make ICT the most popular subject in your school', here is my presentation - pushing ICT lessons beyond their original definition as we look at the history of war, from an ICT perspective.
ICT as the Muses’ birdcage
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In the 4th century BC the Ptolemies of Alexandria began throwing money at the arts. They did not make the same distinctions between fields of study as we do today, and housed scholars from all disciplines together in the "Muses' birdcage," blurring the lines between otherwise disparate disciplines. I think this should be the role of ICT in the modern curriculum.
Assessing Pupil Progress
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Assessing Pupil Progress was introduced in 2010 to supplement the level descriptors for ICT, and I like it. I'd never, ever print out A3 copies of the assessment criteria and give them to the kids, but as a tool for planning out a curriculum, APP is great.