Skip to main content

Consultancy and me

Tomorrow I am working with a group of teachers at Murton Primary School, Co. Durham, who are coming to learn about engaging through technology. It's a big leap for me as I've never really done any sort of teacher training before.
The usual questions leap to mind. Will I be any good? Will they get anything out of it? That sort of thing. I also think of the cost of getting me here, accomodation, day rates, supply cover for the teachers attending. It starts to make me nervous. Am I really able to provide good value for money?
In my worrying, I turn to the content of my day's work: I'm introducing Twitter as a way of creating additional communication for students in the classroom and also for teachers to expand their professional learning network.
I'm looking at PrimaryPad and the impact it can have when used correctly.
After that, I'm talking about storybird & voicethread. Two fantastic tools that can be used in creative and effective ways - and that can be linked in seamlessly to existing plans.
I'm also talking about our learning logs. The homework that revolutionalised parental & child attitudes towards home learning.
Finally I end with blogging. What we've done, why it's worked and how they can make it work in their schools.
All in all, when I reflect on the content, I know I'll deliver the goods. It just worries me that I won't be able to do it perfectly. Still, as Aristotle said, "We are what we repeatedly do. Excellence, then, is not an act, but a habit." Let's hope I have the chance to turn my act of consultancy into a habit.

Comments

Popular posts from this blog

100WCGU wk #20

The prompt this week is to use at least one of these for inspiration. …the powers that be  /  the apple of his eye  /   the writing on the wall… It was early in the Autumn When she took herself away. The trees in our orchard cried leaves for her; She was the apple of their eye , their Mistress. She said it was, "Inevitable". Powers that be had deemed it so and so it was Fruitless to pursue it. Her one way trip. The marks of her passing are writ large on the cold orchard wall s. They are writ larger, though, in me.

100 WCGU wk 21

This week's challenge is a picture prompt. I quite like picture prompts, they allow so many tangents. Our classrooms are windows. Children's views are shaped by the pictures we paint, the opportunities they envisage. We are responsible for the window's upkeep: treat it with consistent care and attention and it will open seamlessly to worlds that are beyond their wildest dreams; leave it untouched and those worlds will remain forever out of reach.  The window is open to the world to view, some outsiders simply point out what is missing from times they spent inside. Others like to castigate and deride. Most smile knowingly, remembering with fondness the people who opened windows for them. People like us.

Independent Learning

This evening on #ukedchat, the discussion was about 'independent learning' or 'IL' and it's importance in the curriculum. In my opinion IL is an umbrella title, one so multi-faceted that we probably need to invest a lot of time determining the rationale behind it. One point that came across was from Miles Berry that Independent Learning is something innate, present from birth as a survival mechanism so teaching it is contradictory. This is something that I agree with and yet we are in a system that has institutionalised our lives to the point where children are taught out of this. They become so reliant on being told what, when and how to do things, that they forget what they are genetically programmed to do. And there's my mistake. I'm talking about these children in the third person. The point is that we have all fallen into the habit of providing knowledge as teachers. There is no blame associated with this, we are as caught up in the status quo as