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Leadership Lesson – Strong Positions, Weekly Held

Strong Positions, Weakly Held 2 min read Starting a new job as Vice Principal at a new school, doing my NPQH, reading profusely and collating 9 years of blog posts into this one site have made me realise how my views on education have changed over recent years. Without blowing my own trumpet this post struck…

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Diagnostic questioning #Computing style

Back in September I was keen to get the Computing teaching community to work together to write a bank of high quality multiple choice questions. In fact, rather poorly, it was the last thing I wrote on this blog! Head back to see why I think that good quality MCQs can be an invaluable part…

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5 minute lesson plan – iPad Edition

5 Minute Lesson Plan – iPad Edition I love the 5 Minute Lesson Plan, the wonderful TeacherToolkit should be very proud of it. It’s all but superseded our school lesson plan proforma for most staff and I can understand why. The best medium I’ve found to date for using it is the good old fashioned…

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Fizz Buzz Scratch

The title sounds like a nasty affliction – but I actually want to describe a great lesson! I was looking for a nice challenge for my Year 9 Computing class to continue developing their understanding of variables, if statements and loops – ideally moving on to nested statements and loops. As ever Twitter came to…

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Mobile, Personalised Learning – The Essa Academy

These are my notes from a fascinating day at the Essa Academy, courtesy of Apple. We were treated to a tour and talks by a number of staff including the Principal – Showk Badat, Abdul Chohan & Jeff Ellis. I was fascinated by not just the integration of mobile technologies (they are famous for giving every…

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IT Provision in Secondary Schools in 2011

Another what’s the best way forward? blog post where I try and dissect my own thinking on what IT provision should look like in a Secondary School in 2011.  Continue the current mix of laptop trolleys and IT suites or move towards a 1 to 1 environment of tablets or laptops? Financial Planning This year so far…

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#LWF11 Dawn Hallybone – Games Based Learning in Primary

Disclaimer: I would consider Dawn a friend, thanks to many interactions via Twitter & Teachmeets etc even though we’ve only met a handful of times..  I won’t go into great detail about the work she has done as her blog has details of it all. LWF Bio. Dawn discussed using Nintendo DS & Wii with the pupils are so engaged…

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Slumdog Pythagoras – Minimally Invasive Education

Inspired by Sugata Mitra at the SSAT National Conference I decided to try and ape his ‘minimally invasive education‘ within my own Maths classroom. In a really tough December week this two hours shone out as a great teaching and learning experience. Before going any further, please head over to my previous post to read about the inspiration…

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SSAT #NC10 – Sugata Mitra

Bio Sugata Mitra is currently Professor of Educational Technology at the School of Education, Communication and Language Sciences at Newcastle University.  He has spent many years in a huge number of research posts.  With regards to education he is most famous for his Hole In The Wall Experiment whereby he put an Internet enabled PC in…

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SSAT #NC10 – Dylan Wiliam – Formative Assessment

The first of a series of notes / reflections on sessions at the 2010 SSAT National Conference. Bio Dylan Wiliam has the grand title of ‘Emeritus Professor of Educational Assessment‘ at the Institute of Education in London.  He is a former Maths teacher and co-author of the book “Inside the Black Box“.  He is a world renowned expert…