Mr. Mitchell's Blog

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 [...]

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 [...]

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 [...]

Do we have a video expert on the staff at Heathfield? Well, no we don’t. However, Miss Hirani recently let slip that her sister was studying film production at University. About 2 days later the other Miss Hirani was in school filming a short film inspired by the pupils about Blogging @ HeathfieldCPS:

It was not in my plan to give pupils a blog each neither give pupils responsibility for a blog but something happened last week that made me change my mind! The pupils forced this upon me! Some pupils had inquired about having their own blog but I had explained that I ideally wanted content in [...]

Blogging is: Reflective, thought provoking, stimulating, real, open, discussion, relevant, engaging, sharing, enriching, risky, collaborative and fun. I asked my PLN on Twitter to describe blogging in one word and here are some of the words offered: Addictive, audience, expression, communicating, hard, engagement, empowering, refreshing, thoughtful, inspiring, challenging, necessary, globalising, In all the time I [...]

You can keep referring back to this blog post for links I’ll be using in the #boltonict presentation. 1. Raja’s Post 2. Ask your audience to say a little about them! 3. Show through pictures what learning has taken place in Reception. 4. Display a MFL song in Year 3. 5. Use Photopeach to display [...]

I just love writing with children. I don’t seem to be too bad at it either which is a good job because there are plenty of areas of my teaching I really wish to improve. My attitude to writing is – Just write! It doesn’t matter what about, it doesn’t matter how good it is, [...]

I led an INSET training session with staff at my school on Blogging today. My plan was to: 1. Explain what blogging was 2. Try to convey how important it is from the children’s point of view 3. Show some examples relevant to each year group 4. Allow time for staff to look in detail [...]

And now they can fly! I don’t think I have ever been as proud in my professional career as I am now. Year 6 have only been blogging since the last week in December and after teaching them the basics and after watching me making a fool of myself at the front of the classroom [...]

We had quite a bit of interest from schools, the LA and the Press about our online learning classes this week. The Bolton News sent photographers to on of my pupil’s house and my house to take pictures of these classes taking place and here is the article written on their website (minus pictures.) Bolton [...]

After my recent thoughts on 2009, my thoughts turn to 2010. None of us know what 2010 will bring so I just thought I might share some personal and professional predictions and thoughts. I hope to see the school blogging site go from strength to strength and by the end of the year each class [...]

As the year is drawing to a close I record my reflections on this last year. If someone had told me that I was going to be a very happy, very hard working Deputy Headteacher back in January, I would have said they had the wrong man. This time last year, I was teaching Year [...]