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Qatar may be 4326.9 miles away from me, however, this didn’t come in the way of me joining 66 pupils at The Qatar Academy with Tim Rylands and Sarah Neild this morning. I was lucky enough to be able to Skype into their learning and see the magic taking place. Sarah even took me on a walk around the classroom to meet some of the students and teachers.
I first realised something was wrong when my phone started to ligrepeats repeatedly during lessons this morning. I was knee deep in pupil progress meetings from lunchtime but did see a message flagging up the news that I had beeshorter listed for the Primary Education innovator category and to an even bigger shock the special achievement award
You only have to visit the voting page here
to see the names included. I don’t know everyone but there are some Heroes of mine included in that list. I can honestly say that I am honoured to be included in that list of names and encourage you to vote and help celebrate some cracking work in education.
Last week I launched Feb29th.net with the help from Peter Ford and John Sutton. After seeing first hand the power that an audience can have on pupils raising writing levels from 9% Level 5 to 60% Level 5 in 12 months. Not only that but impacting on progress, resulting in the last 2 Year 6 classes leaving Heathfield Primary School making on average 2 years progress each in their writing in just 12 months. I find myself on a mission to bring the power of audience to as many pupils as possible.
Feb29th.net is going to strip blogging down to a couple of clicks where anyone around the world can visit and blog within 2 minutes. As soon as the 29th February begins in Tonga, the blog will open and 48 hours later when February 29th finishes a few miles east it will close. The result will be documented in one place and will be a showcase of the power of audience.
This is a call for support… Can you help? If you have a blog, please feel free to display this little button on your blog somewhere:
The code for this button is here:
<a href=”http://feb29th.net/”><img src=”http://i667.photobucket.com/albums/vv33/baglet/Blog_feb29th.gif” border=”0″ alt=”Photobucket”></a>
Feb29th.net has a Facebook page that can be viewed here.
You can follow Feb29th.net on Twitter here.
Do you know someone who could help? If so, please tell them about this project. If it gets just one teacher allowing their pupils to write to an audience then it will be worth it!
“The child’s tray is a hospice for writing” Bill Lord (Consultant)
We owe them more than that!
Through Twitter, there has been lots of support for this project. One very interesting development has been through discussions with @_imaginaryme who wondered what some teachers and pupils might blog about. About 24 hours later I got an email with some code in it:
How great is this? Keep an eye on this as more ideas will be added to help those that may want to blog on 29th Feb have something to give them some inspiration.
Seeing as though there are loads of hashtags including the official #BETT_Show tag, Coveritlive seemed like the bast place to collate them all for me:
Links for the various presentations I am doing at The BETT Show:
The day the German Embassy popped in.
Year 4 link with a school in Australia
Project Blogs:
Well Done Blog A WONDERFUL place!!
Pandora Writing Blog – Inspired by Avatar
Kensuke’s Kingdom Writing Blog
The Island: 1 to 1 Tuition Writing Blog
Fern’s Blog: Fern decides to ‘use’ her audience
Abigail’s Blog: Recovering from a two brain tumours is a little easier says Abigail with a platform for her voice!
The ALL NEW Pandora Project Blog – Not finished as we are currently working on this!
Xander’s Blog – Using ONLY audio to inspire Alexander to write
Using Coveritlive in the classoom
Using Coveritlive outside the classroom!
Ask your audience who and where they are?
Voicethread to perform
Voicethread to peer assess
Voicethread to teacher asses – Teachers from all over the globe!
Using Audioboo to capture magic
Using Photopeach in Reception to engage parents
Binyameen’s writing being used by other teachers
Raja gets help from Guatamala with his Howler Monkey Project
Thomas puts his Art Portfolio online
My Year 6 pupils explain in their own words:
BBC Breakfast filmed live from Heathfield in 2011:
BBC Radio 5Live interviewed Thome, Miss Wiggans and Mr. Mitchell in 2011:
BBC NW filmed live from Heathfield in 2011 too:
A few people who were present at the Silverstone Blogging Masterclass at the back end of 2011 saw the look in my eyes as Peter Ford was showcasing Anthologize.
Now this little plugin has AWESOME potential. My eyes were dripping with ideas as Peter showed how simple it was to produce a pdf booklet of various posts from a blog. In my first attempt after installing the plugin, I wanted to create a pdf of all the post Binyameen made last year as a ‘Year of Blogging’ by Binyameen. It took all of 3 minutes and here is the document below:
Present this bound document with a QR Code of his ‘tag’ on the front and you have the perfect leaver’s gift for a Year 6 pupils who is leaving Heathfield.
I’ve been thinking about the whole topic of Twitter for some time. It’s a strange place, don’t get me wrong, Twitter has changed me on a professional level. Many of you will know that 3 years ago, I was trying to leave the profession but Heathfield and Twitter together changed me.
So… Twitter
Some boring facts for you:
I have about 5000 followers, I would guess roughly 3000 are UK teachers. In the UK there are 610,000 teachers, so as a result, roughly speaking, approximately 0.5% of UK teachers follow my predictable ramblings about audience, blogs and engagement.
For me, Twitter is a wonderful place where, for me, like-minded people collaborate, discuss and celebrate. There is indeed a lot of love out there, however, even more valuable than that, good honest feedback. Occasionally there are even highly entertaining heated discussions where disrupters test the quality of new /old ideas.
I do however feel that I need a reality check every now and then. 0.5% of teachers who on the whole have similar values to me is not a true reflection of what is out there. I received a phone call this week from a local school who had seen my name in Chris Quigley’s ‘Dangerous Curriculum’ and a reference to blogging. They phoned me up to ask me what on earth my name was doing in the back of this book and basically wanted to know ‘what on earth is this blogging thing?’ This illustrated to me that in the UK 99.5% of teachers or schools have NO IDEA what I or even you do. Are we the group of geeks who manage to find each other in this bubble just like new High School pupils tend to find there own in the first few weeks of High School? In our world of 0.5% we have influence, we have a voice and we have positive reinforcement. We rarely get challenge or challenging feedback!
When I decided not to go for the Headship at Heathfield, so many lovely people asked why, told me I’d be great at it and that I should reconsider. I found that really touching but equally interesting. There are a few of my followers that know what I am like as a leader. Many people on Twitter will rely on what I say about my leadership style but won’t have any other evidence to make a judgement from, this judgement will be formed from what I tweet or blog about.
I have been REALLY lucky! People like: Tony Parkin, Dughall McCormick, Jack Sloan, Tim Rylands, John Sutton, Andy Black, Paul Hynes, Julian Wood, John Bidder and Dianne Spencer plus MANY more have played pivotal parts in my development. Press attention for me, has been about being in the right place at the right time and my reputation has benefited massively from these fantastic moments – but I have been lucky!
My decision to not go for the Headship at Heathfield and Headship in general has been carefully considered. I have an uncontrollable desire to spread the power of an audience. As far as I can see, 99.5% of teachers have no idea about this incredible power. If that equates to 99.5% of pupils globally, then this is a feast for my soul!
There is so much work to do, for all of us… beware of the hype!
Picture: By Stallio
Most of you reading this know what I’m about – Exposing pupils to global audience about sums me up. I’m pretty predictable, annoy many people with predictable tweets and speak exclusively about this subject at conferences. I’m convincing myself that I am a one trick pony here but to tell you the truth, I don’t care! I’m just going to keep on spouting the same words that GIVING YOUR PUPILS A GLOBAL AUDIENCE WORKS! It would have worked for me when I was at school and I have not met one pupil who doesn’t feel completely normal sharing their learning with the world.
Meet Alexander… Some of you will know Alexander from his class blog here or even from the well done blog here. Alex is a sensational talker, I love it when he comes and talks to me. He communicates above his years and his general knowledge is WAY above his years! When I audioboo’d Alexander on the well done blog, his eyes lit up, he knew who he was speaking to in a way that was different to when he was writing on the blog. With this in mind, I’m trying something out with Alexander (Xander to his friends and family.)
My cunning plan (which I’m sharing as I’d like you to see how it develops realtime) is to give Xander a platform for his voice – literally! This is not anything new, any teacher worth their salt knows how important talking in relation to writing is. I’m just trying the digital version incorporating my usual schpeel about audience. I’ve set him up a new blog called Xander’s World. This is his space where he will be challenging his audience to challenge him to speak about a subject – It can be absolutely anything. Xander will read the comments, choose which challenge to take up, head off and do some research and the outcome will be an informal Audioboo in Xander’s style. Eventually, Xander’s thoughts and ideas will stretch beyond this one dimensional approach, he’ll want to share ideas, diagrams, pictures and yes… eventually his writing.
I can’t wait to see how this develops. He’s a superstar – Follow Xander’s World and find out for yourself and see an oasis of wonderful learning unfold before your eyes!
My pupils came up with this last year but I didn’t get around to posting it.
Picture: Richard Marti
It’s about time I wrote something about the recent difficult personal decisions I have had to make at school in the last 6 months. Believe it or not about 3 years ago, I was going to leave teaching. I had fallen out of love with it and was lacking enthusiasm and direction. I came to a decision to go for a change and have a stab at a Deputy Headship and see if the challenge was indeed what I needed. I was delighted to get the Deputy Headship at Heathfield and enjoy so much driving improvement and leading by example. In June 2011, I was told that my Head teacher was going to be leaving and heading back into the classroom. As Deputy Head teacher, it was my duty to act up Acting Head teacher for at least 4 months until January 2012 or April 2012. The Governors were happy to give me a chance to fall in love with the position giving me time to complete my NPQH and apply in the spring term 2012. At first, I was up for it and could really see myself in role, however, during the summer, I was involved in the Cloudlearn project (Heppell.net) which I found refreshing and very much time to reflect over the power blogging has had on my development. I consequently had quite a bit of time to think things through and prioritise what I wanted out of my career over the next few years.
I had decided that my desire to spread the word about the value of blogging with pupils was a burning passion and being a Head teacher would not be the right move. However, I was looking forward to the position of Acting Head teacher but I was clear about something. I didn’t want school supporting me by waiting for me to get myself in a position to apply. Back in September 2011, Heathfield began the process of finding the right person to lead the school forward from January 2012. I wasn’t involved in this process and was 100% confident that the Governors would find the ideal person. This they most certainly did! Heathfield will be welcoming our new Head teacher Jo Lindon from January 1st 2012.
Everyone that knows me understands the transformation that has taken place in me over the last 2 years. I now find myself with an uncontrollable burning desire to spread the power of blogging, more importantly the power of an audience. I am blessed with a fantastic following on Twitter and a growing reputation that seems to be reaching beyond Twitter. I want to use this to reach teachers that may currently be in the position that I was in 3 years ago. If a teacher like me can be changed like I have been over the last 2 years, resulting in a positive impact on many pupils and teachers, then I can’t help trying to put myself in a position where I can impact more teachers and more importantly many more pupils too.
So, here I am…
Two weeks left of my Acting Headship. I have loved many aspects of the job but even though I have tried to keep connected via the Well Done Blog and QuadBlogging, elements of the role have been very challenging. Anything that has involved the pupils – I have loved. The staff are great and very hard working and our parents are brilliant too. The corporate responsibility is to be honest a big jump and that’s the hard reality that occasionally keeps me awake at night. Asbestos, Health and Safety, Legionella, Water Flushing, Water Temperatures, Extractor Fan Cleaning, Service Level Agreements. These things are so essential but lead you away from the pupils. Some people must thrive on getting all this done and are able to quickly assign people in the right place to deal with all these things but as an Acting Head teacher, the learning curve is so steep.
I have made my choice, it’s not a shock to people that know me. You’ll keep reading on Twitter about ‘My Mission’ – Getting as many teachers and pupils involved in writing to a global audience for a true purpose is my mission. Doing this from the position of Deputy Head teacher at a school with an International reputation for exactly that seems like a good place to be to me! In addition to this, we still have so much to do at Heathfield, embedding blogging further is just one small part of the bigger picture!
On Wednesday 7th December I presented at the fantastic Silverstone Blogging Masterclass. It was great to be amongst so many enthusiastic bloggers and people thining of starting to blog with their pupils. Although this presentation was for my benefit as a prompt for my delivery – here it is just in case it is of use:
Do visit the Silverstone link as you will be able to read some fantastic feedback from the event.
I have been working on a blogging policy which was part of the Cloudlearn research project. I have been given permission to share it. Obviously policies are intended for individual settings so of course, you will want to edit it. All I ask is that you make reference to David Mitchell and Cloudlearn.net on the document.
I was stunned to find out that I was not only nominated but shortlisted for an EduBlog Award for ‘Best Tweeter’ this morning. This comes a shock as my use of Twitter is mainly for sharing links to learning that my pupils have been involved in and also spreading QuadBlogging news. I see many fantastic conversations going on each day by people all over the globe using words I have to look up to even begin to think about engaging in. I can’t tell from the information on the EduBlogs Awards page who nominated me, but thank you – whoever you are!
The following links show examples of parental engagement through the use of blogs:
1. Abigail’s blog keep her extended family up to date on her health
2. Simple weekly slideshows keep parents up to dat and boy don’t they LOVE it?
3. Renee’s Mum pops in to say a simple ‘Well done’!
4. A ‘Well Done Blog’ that captures those magical moments in school.
6. Parents will even tell you when you have done something well!
The Prezi used for the presentation is featured below:
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