Posts about education, teaching, learning etc.
Ofsted in their infinite wisdom have deemed that half of Maths teaching in England is not up to scratch. The focus appears to be ‘teaching to the test’, now who’d of thought schools might reort to such a thing when the other option is to be labled as failing? I hope that this is a…
Richard Taylor from www.tutpup.com passed his new site on to me in a recent comment on the blog: We have just beta released a new free maths games website which is starting to get quite a bit of traction in the UK. It’s free, has no ads, and allows kids to compete head to head…
The new KS3 Framework has a renewed focus on using and applying Maths along with developing the Personal, learning and thinking skills and the Cross-curricular dimensions introduced with the new National Curriculum. On reflection the content which we need to deliver has changed little and so with some tweaking our previous scheme of work will…
I have finally started one of my classes blogging. I decided to use a wiki from the excellent Wikispaces for this purpose rather than a blog. I took inspiration from Kristian Still’s excellent wiki at his previous school (which seems to have dissapeared now Kristian has moved schools?). I also made the choice as I’m…
The £60m 2-year DCSF project has kicked off at our school. For the uninitiated this is a government funded scheme to put laptops into some of the most disadvantaged homes in the country. To quote: Computers for Pupils Computers for Pupils is a £60 million, two-year programme (2006–2008) aimed at helping some of the most…
Well my eeePCs have finally arrived at school and I have to say I’m more than impressed. They may be diminutive in stature but they are feature packed and surprisingly well made for the price (ours were roughly £170 each). Thanks to Ewan Macintosh for the image. So yes, the screen and trackpad are a…
I have introduced a fantastic resource into both of my recent schools over the last 2 years. It continues to impress me to this day and it’s about time I wrote a glowing review of it! MyMaths.co.uk has been around for a couple of years now and continues to grow. When I originally bought it…
DownloadSquad reports that Google has finally released it’s new version of Jotspot as the rebranded and updated Google Sites, all part of the Google Apps suite. More to come when I’ve had a play around with it. could be a real contender for the educational wiki crown which currently sits with the excellent Wikispaces in…
I came across the excellent Scratch programming tool via an interesting discussion on Classroom2.0. I’m planning on investigating it a little more in the near future, there are a wealth of mathematical possibilities for it from algebra, logic, geometry, probability etc etc etc. However I’ve been thinking of a quick way in to it for…
The Guardian has an article today discussing the rapid adoption of eeePCs in schools, apparently with Ministerial support. I’m still impatiently waiting for my 6 to arrive, they won’t be ordered until the school’s trial of Wi-Fi is underway and as with all things in school that is taking longer than expected 🙁 Jonesieboy’s trials…