learning - i see teach

Email reply creates Comment in Google Docs

May 1, 2012 - 19:41 | elearning, Google, learning

Okay. This is pretty cool functionality… It starts like this: Google Text Doc. You highlight some text and insert a comment which appears down the side. Nothing happens. The comment sits there and that’s about that really. But, when someone replies to your comment. It triggers an email to the original commenter. You can see the original comment I made: *this is a bit vague* If you reply to that email the message body becomes the next response in the GDoc comment thread. Simple and awesome. After I tweeted this, Mark Allen replied with a similar feature: Mark Allen ‏ @EdintheClouds @daibarnes Students share Docs comment-only with teacher. Teacher’s interventions and student’s response visible in revision history. #awesome Google Apps for Education … Continue reading →

Maths and Nature explained

November 5, 2011 - 15:36 | learning

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Have your pupils ever asked you to explain how Maths is relevant to real life? There are many responses to this but this one was so compelling I felt I had to share it here. Maths explained by Nature – or vice versa The explanation of all this mesmerising content is mathematically explained here. Enjoy!

Teacher Intangibles – you can’t touch this!

September 21, 2011 - 19:02 | ICT, learning

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The things a teacher does that you cannot count. Each summer, NFL teams draft players from colleges around America. Losing teams get first pick of the best players. There was much debate about how high in the draft Tim Tebow would come. My stepson showed me a video of Tebow’s intangibles (will link when I find it); the things (leadership?) Tebow does that adds value to the performance of his team that cannot be measured in metres and points. The smile. The right word at the right time. The energy you muster in the pupils before you. The belief you breathe into young spirit. How to strike the balance between firm boundaries that instill self-discipline and inspiration to fuel the … Continue reading →

Teaching and Learning survey

June 28, 2010 - 18:19 | Google, learning

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At my school we decided some kind of benchmark was needed to measure pupil satisfaction with their education. I set about writing a teaching and learning survey. Not as easy as it first appeared. I decided on Google Forms because they are so simple to construct and deliver. This is finished now (at least for this year). The aim is to take a measurement that can be used for comparison in a years time, hopefully enabling some assessment of the impact of new ICT practices across the curriculum as they are implemented. Not a perfect model but you need to start somewhere and measure impact somehow. Any ideas on how to do this differently would be appreciated. In the meantime, … Continue reading →

Spreeder: speed reading

April 6, 2010 - 09:02 | learning

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This post is from a couple of years ago but I still use this tool when I’m feeling tired but I want to get through some reading. It is really good for long blogposts and the 75 reports I’ve just finished had my eyes turning away from my screen. This freshened the whole thing up – if you’ve not tried it I recommend you pick an article, copy the text and paste it in here. What’s to lose? I came across SPREEDER via @Documentally on twitter. It strikes me as an excellent tool to get pupils reading large quantities as well as helping them to learn to speed read it may well be great for learning. People often complain reading … Continue reading →