It is the best of times, it is the worst of times…

Posted on 09/03/2012 by jameswilding

to quote the first dozen words of Charles Dickens’ great novel, A Tale of Two Cities, though moved to the present rather than the past. The actual paragraph reads:

It was the best of times, it was the worst of times, it was the age of wisdom, it was the age of foolishness, it was the epoch of belief, it was the epoch of incredulity, it was the season of Light, it was the season of Darkness, it was the spring of hope, it was the winter of despair, we had everything before us, we had nothing before us, we were all going direct to heaven, we were all going direct the other way – in short, the period was so far like the present period, that some of its noisiest authorities insisted on its being received, for good or for evil, in the superlative degree of comparison only.

Whether your are in the early 1800s or 200 years later in the early 21st Century, his description of the paradox that is life is absolutely spot on.  Despite many of us feeling the pinch in 2012, we can smile because we are not in Athens, where the minimum wage has just been cut and the unemployment rate in UK equivalence terms has just spiked through 7 million!  And much the same is true in Education; yesterday saw the publication of interim grades in GCSE and A level modules; personally for most of our students here, the delights was plain to see on their faces – hard work being rewarded by good results.  At the same time, lots of other results of educational activities in schools and outside are being published, and the picture is totally different. I’ll return to Dickens shortly, but I must say I am enjoying the discomfort many modern pedagogues must be feeling at the moment, as their adjustment of what is taught in schools to bring examination advantage at the expense of actual education is shown up to be the folly it always was, by published research.  For example, OfSTED have just pointed out the main problem with national music lessons is that there just isn’t enough music in them! A recent survey by Opinion research highlights that secondary school pupils are so scared of looking stupid in maths lessons they will not tell their teachers if they do not understand. And it’s not just about progress in schools in Maths – the pressure group ‘National Numeracy’ quotes from research suggesting weak maths skills are linked with an array of poor life outcomes such as prison, unemployment, exclusion from school, poverty and long-term illness.  The National Trust has also reported that children are being denied the enjoyment of the outdoors and nature with obvious consequences for their health, yet few primary schools it seems genuinely give 2 hours over to sport.

I say enjoy because in my own school we really come to work each day to teach the whole child, academically, socially, spiritually, morally, athletically, culturally and then some. This last seven days or so have seen us involved in ‘world everything days’, from Maths, Books, Science, Blogging, Doodling and then some. Our sailors came third in the national two boat sailing championships, (and the second best school behind Magdalen College Oxford), our Under 16s won the national ISA Under 16 7s title up in Leamington Spa, our Year 7s have been romping in the fields with the Sheep and their Lambs and so it goes on.  Today (Friday) we are building our BBC school report activities for next Thursday by interviewing the Home Secretary, Theresa May at the senior boys school.  Apparently we are informal this year in our approach to TM; a ‘conversation with’ rather than ‘stilted questions’ of!

And to see the support of our parent teacher association at work this week has been the highlight – it is all about play with their outdoor castle installation at Ridgeway, both a physical construction that provides for new play space, but also with effective use of shape and colour, allowance for the child’s imagination to run riot. When schools get it right, the whole community is enhanced; children have their wildest dreams realised, teachers have their dedication rewarded by outstanding learning and parents have their own concerns for the present and future supported by the most amazing network of like-minded individuals – a Dickens story of success without the dark side!

So back to Dickens; what he was amazing at was creating an atmosphere that felt real in a story that gripped from beginning to end.  As one critic writes “Dickens’s novels combine brutality with fairy-tale fantasy; sharp, realistic, concrete detail with romance, farce, and melodrama.; the ordinary with the strange. They range through the comic, tender, dramatic, sentimental, grotesque, melodramatic, horrible, eccentric, mysterious, violent, romantic, and morally earnest”. Now Dickens was all about writing for money, he was the most famous author in the world of his time, and he benefited too from touring the States as well as the UK.  But he also write for moral purpose, to critique current policy and through his moral tales show his adoring public how the best could be achieved, even by the dissolute. The Tale of Two cities ends when the dubious Sydney Carton sacrifices himself for the honourable Charles Darnay, and ends his life on the guillotine with the words “It is a far, far better thing that I do, than I have ever done; it is a far, far better rest that I go to than I have ever known.“

Posted in Uncategorized | Tagged , , , , | Leave a comment

Berlin 2012 – building for the future.

Posted on 04/03/2012 by jameswilding

If things in Education work, they are likely to be repeated, and thus the CCS History department returned once again with a group of Year 11 students over the February half-term.  I have left a week or so before writing about our experiences this year, partly of course because you can read my thoughts already from 2011 – http://goo.gl/ZP3wF and – http://goo.gl/93sG9, and partly because a little bit of distance helps consolidate the lessons learned.  Firstly, you can see the video of the 2012 trip here – http://youtu.be/OU_o30IGwH0 and I’ll post as and when some extra voice-overs have been added.

More importantly, a trip such as this offers so much, apart from the History enrichment that is so obviously the point of the visit.   I ask you the reader to watch the video and make your own mind up.  Clearly the life skills of working so hard, travelling from one side of Berlin to the other, time-travelling across the decades and dictatorships, and staying balanced on the roller-coaster of emotions generated by stories of the holocaust, cold war and 2 major European conflicts too are worthy of note.  My ‘best bit’ without doubt are the unexpected developments improving the experience, for example the upgrading of the ‘Topography of Terror‘ site from a line of wall boards in central Berlin against the foundations of a ruined building to a full blown research space and Museum gallery indoors.  The way the underground (like ours in the UK) actually does regenerate over the years; no longer the graffiti filled old crates of yesteryear (which looking  at the rest of Berlin is not a habit yet kicked by the populace) but modern, utility trains that do the job in sensible manner.

And that’s the point of visiting Berlin; built to be a world metropolis in the 19th century, with sewers and blown-air messaging systems to beat the world at their own game, it then suffered more than any other city from the ravages of 2 world wars and a hostile occupation by the Russian military (OK, the allies were there too), and it took the fall of the wall 23 years ago to build the confidence of Western Germany in the city’s population to provoke the changes and developments now visible.  Visiting Berlin is one of the important ways we can show young students that hope can spring eternal; whatever the desperate position the fragility of  world economy now places us all in, for jobs, for prosperity and for hope in the future, there’s no doubt that the physical renewal in Berlin can inspire us all.

That’s the point too of making films that capture the moments, however amateurishly that might be.  Younger boys and girls in the school do look to the future, are optimistic about their life chances and the way ahead, and express that clearly to us, their teachers in no small measure.  “I can’t wait until I get to go to Berlin” was the chorus that met us during last week, after they had caught up with the ‘broadcast’ on the ‘hub‘.  It is a key difference between our educational experience here for our pupils and elsewhere – over the next two weeks, our Art, History and Geography departments are back out on tour, at the great museums in London and elsewhere too, at farms seeing some happy outcomes of the lambing season as well as further afield on a residential weekend looking at environmental issues at Margham Park.

My lasting impressions from Berlin 2012 are of the optimism of the Berliners, despite the cold and ice winds from Siberia, there is a great sense of optimism amongst its residents and its ambassadors working with us.  As our guide through the Bunkers said, speaking of the current Euro crisis; “We’ve been though so much over the last 60 years, to have created one currency is part of the great project to feel ‘European’ rather than’German’, and we are not going to let a little local difficulty with the Greek economy get in the way.” Well, I do admire their optimism, which is probably helped by the evening pilgrimage we pay to the Blue Man group, in their purpose built theatre in Potsdammer Platz, and we usually coincide with the Berlin Film festival, so the area feels even more glamorous than usual.  Anyway, if you don’t know what the Blue Man group do, then sit back and enjoy this little sample from their act – I can feel the anticipation already, and that’s certainly a way to build for the future, by putting a smile on your face.

 

Posted in Uncategorized | Tagged , , | 1 Comment

“This is the time to show them everything – make sure they remember you!”

Posted on 02/03/2012 by jameswilding

These words spoken by Haymitch Abernathy, the mentor of Peeta Mellark and Katniss Everdeen, and is the tribute winner of the 50th Hunger Games in the land of Panem, as written in the Hunger by american writer, Suzanne Collins.

Ok, not one of the major works of fiction it must be said, nor indeed the quote perhaps.  But when Mike Hudson introduced World Book day to the Claires Court Boys yesterday (2 March 2012) you could have fooled them. Couple an excerpt of the new film based on the book with the words of Will Smith (see those here), plus a strong dose of what the teachers like to read, and some very strong images of the Welsh Rugby team (well it was Saint David’s Day) and you have pupil engagement.  Watching boys of all ilks just ‘pop’ into the library and take out a book, and get their head into some real excitement was simply gratifying all round.  You can see Mr Hudson’s assembly presentation here – http://goo.gl/nLzZw.

And sadly, I wasn’t at the assembly, working the junior girls in similar manner 2 miles up the road. And that’s what is so fantastic now with the resources available through the ‘web’ and the ‘hub‘.  Yep, anyone can go surf the internet, but what our closed walled garden is allowing us to do is collaborate together, share ideas and mix world class work with our own brew to suit the needs of the audience we have.  As one of the 6th Formers said to me as he was waiting for his bus at the end of the day “The thing about the Hub sir is that it is amazing!”  Well good on you all, I say, now you have the tools and the imaginations to run riot, do so “This is the time to show them everything – make sure they remember you!”

Posted in Uncategorized | Tagged , , , , , , | Leave a comment

Blogging the Leap Year!

Posted on 29/02/2012 by jameswilding

What to do with a Leap Year?

Of course, that’s a silly title; for 365 days, this year’s like any other, the days may differ but the total is the same. What makes this year special is today, Wednesday 29th February, so let’s make it matter.

15 Chromebooks arrived late yesterday afternoon from the ISAG4L project I am running (here’s a sliderocket of my presentation to BETT 2012 about that, with many thanks to Dave Orchard of Canbury School for the work!) with Google support to bolster the Claires Court junior pupils efforts to grow the Weblogs and take our reputation for hands-on-learning that next step. That means we have across the organisation up to 250 machines available to go to the ‘Hub’ at any one time, some using Windows, others using Ubuntu, still more using Chromebooks, most using Chrome browser and all going to the Cloud through the Hub.

So here’s the challenge for One and All; make this day really different and Blog Feb 29th. It’s important, and for some of our pupils, the first time they will have a world audience!

What is Feb29.net?  The aim of the project is simple – Stripped down blogging to its simplest form to record one special day in time across the globe. As soon as the first country’s time zone enters Feb29th.net the blog will be open to posts. It’s simple, by filling out the form here – http://http://feb29th.net/, you will be creating a blog post on the Feb29th blog.

So go Blog the Leap Year! If you need some help, here’s some tips from the site – http://goo.gl/uEMws.  On the site, you may see I have already posted, but hopefully you won’t, because of the sheer volume of engagement across the Globe, from Tonga in the East to Alaska in the West.

‘So what’s the benefit of Blogging’ I hear you ask? For most, writing for public readership (authoring, journalism or blogging) is all about the audience, attracting their attention, engaging them to their story, even encouraging them to write back! As David Mitchell, Deputy headteacher at Heathfield Primary School in Bolton, founder of this amazing Feb29th project, writes “Blogging is all about the audience. Having a real global audience makes a huge difference to learners of any age. How many times must teachers say “Consider your audience!” expecting their pupils to do something extra special for them? Give a child access to a blog and their audience becomes real”.

Here’s what the Independent Newspaper has to say about @DeputyMitchell and his work – http://goo.gl/B3BVa

Now witnesses to the Claires Court Schools website will have noticed for years our Boys have been blogging, and we’d agree with Mr Mitchell; show boys or girls an audience and they’ll step up to the mark and take to the stage, be that metaphorically as writers or as performers ‘strutting their stuff’. Claires Court’s got talent – but that’s another story -read it here – http://goo.gl/jJtyB!

Posted in Uncategorized | Tagged , , , | 1 Comment

What lovely people do… pimping my presentations

Posted on 09/02/2012 by jameswilding

Now I have a number of followers of my digital engagemet project, the ISANet – 450+ to be almost precise.

On of them, Dave Orchard at Canbury School, decided my presentations from the Google Stand at BETT 2012 needed pimping a little – so here it is in full slideshare glory – http://portal.sliderocket.com/BBRKY/ISAGrid-for-L3arning

Posted in Uncategorized | Leave a comment

Normalising the Extraordinary…

Posted on 09/02/2012 by jameswilding

So this is my end of first Half of Lent Term presentation to the Senior Boys School.
Robert, Ben, Michael, Ben are all former students of the school, and proud to be part of our heritage.
Stuff happens in our place, we normalize the extraordinary, we build on our best selves, we fight so strongly to support those of all abilities and with a need for a big friend like us.

The Kids in Sport Video was made by past pupil, Toby Hefferman, assistant director on Clash of the Titans, Pirates, stuff…
… in memory of another old boy of ours Julian Budd, who died tragically of a rare throat infection aged 33.

Anyway here’s the link…http://goo.gl/lVuyf

Posted in Uncategorized | Tagged , , | 1 Comment

Once a British Citizen, always a Brit, despite failing the test.

Posted on 29/01/2012 by jameswilding

As my school knows, I really enjoy preparing a good assembly. On Thursday last week, we were saying goodbye to Oskar, a bright and engaging German who has spent the last 5 months in our Year 11, improving his English and on occasion showing his English peers a clean pair of heels when it comes to quality writing!

The stage was set at the start of the day, with my assembly focussing more generally on the arrival of Citizenship with the Romans – one of those ‘What did they ever do for us’ moments. Our Year 11 Public Speaking team had won the local Rotary speaking competition in Henley last Monday, so it seemed sensible to bring them into focus, and Mr Hogg, their trainer, gave them a good write-up and they were re-presented with their cups and medals.

Just as they thought they were going to sit down, I established that they, together with Mr Hogg and the Head of History, were going to represent the UK in a live ‘British Citizenship’ test against 5 of the school’s finest foreigners. Step up 4 staff and Oskar (much to his surprise). Live on the big screen, question after question was shown to the 2 groups, who could confer for 30 seconds before being pressed to give their answers. We only had time for 6 questions, and the home team slunk in 2 points to 1, a narrow win for England!

Now when I sat the full practice test last Wednesday, I genuinely gave of my best, but I simply did not know some of the mindlessly silly facts our ‘aspiring’ UK citizen is forced to learn – scoring a healthy 73%, I really did not expect to find this was not good enough, and it meant I did not qualify!  Woe was me.

You can see the Assembly presentation I created for the event here – http://prezi.com/_9zvxwpi-__q/citizenship-from-ancient-rome-to-the-present-day/.  The live bit was of course when the link to the UK Citizenship test link appears, and you can click on that in the Prezi as well as here – http://www.ukcitizenshiptest.co.uk/.   Fortunately for me, despite suffering this terrible humiliation, Border Control Agency Guards have not appeared at my house or at school to take me away, nor indeed did school feel I should be deported either.  That’s probably because they were just as ‘snookered’ as I by the sheer range of useless facts it appears we need to know as Brits.

Oskar was presented with all sorts of CCS goodies, including one of our anniversary pin badges and a signed ‘Malo Mori’ card from all his year.  As a citizen of Europe, he has the right always to return to the UK, and if he does, it’s fair to say our country will be the richer for it.  I wonder how many of our Year 11 will think about popping overseas for a month or two this coming summer after their GCSEs; in the past, our keen linguists took the opportunity, but these days I am afraid such impetuous behaviour is rarely seen.

My worst answers in the Quiz were to the following:

How many parliamentary constituencies are there?

In which year did married women get the right to divorce their husband?

The number of children and young people up to the age of 19 in the UK is?

The percentage of people in the UK in 2001 who said they were Muslims was?

Anyway, I don’t need answers on a postcard, because the practice test helpfully allows you to run through the Feedback to see what went wrong.  This meant that when I took the test again, I got a whopping 100% – but that’s cheating!  I have recommended to Year 10 that they have a go, and let’s see quite how well CC is educating them as Citizens of the UK.  I suspect not quite as badly as their boss did, partly because being an on-line test, they’ll pop open another window and use Mr Google to provide some help!  After all, with 45 minutes to take the test, there’s bags of time to complete the test and reach Angry Birds level 6 – sadly another life skill currently not yet achieved by yours truly!

 

 

Posted in Uncategorized | Tagged , , | 1 Comment

Digital Learning Day – as if every day isn’t?

Posted on 29/01/2012 by jameswilding

The onward march of 2012 is relentless – one month gone, and it is less than 5 months of teaching days before the Academic year as at an end. And in that time, we are going to celebrate a Diamond Jubilee, educate and examine our children, plan for the future and hopefully have a lot of fun along the way.  Wednesday 1 February is Digital Learning Day – and on Wednesday 450+ members of the ISANet digital community will (I hope) take part in a Schools use of Social Media Survey – I’ll report back later!

Schools are rapidly adopting a more professional approach to the use of Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn and YouTube to protect and ‘build’ their brand. ISANet’s technical officer Ian Nairn has produced this report on a major broadcast in the states on the use of Social Media in Schools – http://goo.gl/uatnF

Notwithstanding the Google things I am up to my ears in (see here for the latest courses we are running to end June 2012) , I am researching ‘whither science, computers and schools’? The whole Brian Cox thing, sexing up Physics, bringing on a new generation enthused with the idea of studying the ‘stars’ for a degree is real, not imagined. Today’s celebration of 70 years of Desert Island Discs has arguably the world’s most famous naturalist, and Frozen Planet didn’t t just attract 6.8 million viewers for fun. Science is back with a Big Bang.

That’s why I am highlighting the arrival this year in the UK of the Google Science Fair,
Here’s the link – http://www.google.com/events/sciencefair/
Here’s the link for teachers to plan – http://www.google.com/events/sciencefair/educators.html
Here’s help – http://www.google.com/events/sciencefair/site.html

As well as Natural Science, Computer Science is in our face too – recent reports have trashed what we are currently doing, and here’s the underpinning thoughts for a new curriculum from start to finish – http://goo.gl/8GJ1K, endorsed by BCS, Microsoft and Google. And here’s a fun site for Computer Science – no that’s not an Oxymoron – seriously, get your school back to the future by engaging the Geeks! Oh, and if you are really all in the dark about what Computer Science is all about, here’s some easy stuff from the folk at Bristol University.

“The countdown is on… Stay tuned for updates from the world’s biggest blogging project that will see blogging stripped down to just 2 clicks! Feb29th.net is a global blogging project that will cross all age groups and continents. As soon as Feb 29th 2012 begins in Tonga, the Feb29th.net will open up for posts for one day only. This blog will capture posts from all over our planet on this rare day until midnight in the Western Pacific. The result will not only be a celebration of technology, but a celebration of audience and purpose, who will be the youngest author? Who will be the oldest? Which country will top the most posts? Will there be any marriage proposals?
The aim is to allow any visitor on 29th Feb to post; these will be moderated on the day, as this will also be open to pupils in educational establishments across the globe. Please add your email address in the box below to subscribe to this site. Also feel free to spread the word using the Twitter and Facebook icons below.
Together, we will prove that blogging is safe and there really is POWER in the audience!”

Here’s the link: http://feb29th.net/

So many junior schools are raising their pupils’ literacy in great leaps and bounds through blogging and tweeting, you ought to have a look!

James Wilding
jtw@clairescourt.com
@james_wilding
jameswilding.wordpress.com

Posted in Uncategorized | Tagged , , , | Leave a comment

#AskGove An invitation I can’t resist

Posted on 24/01/2012 by jameswilding
I love having Mr Gove as our Secretary of State for Education; he’s such good value, a man who always has something to say, irrespective about context and occasion.  In the blizzard of stuff emanating de Le Gove, I admire his ‘Give the Queen  a Yacht’ (Gove the Royalist), I condemn his approach to the efforts of Downhills primary school to stay in local Authority control (Gove the Bully), and I worry about his ‘A King James Bible for every School’ (Gove the  Spendthrift).  But you know, if he really wants to gain friends and influence people in the education community (aka Teachers) he ought to think a little more carefully about his attack on the profession, suggesting that making it easier for employers to sack teachers would improve our ‘focus’, and in aiming for longer school days and shorter holidays, he states ‘If teachers love their jobs they shouldn’t object”, (Gove the Teacher’s friend)

With such manic activity, it’s quite clear that there are indeed pearls to find in the verbiage; the Secretary of State’s word count must top all in Government, and he has certainly become a major character in this Coalition, but how can you stop him throwing out the baby with the bathwater?  Well that must be the Commons education committee in Parliament’s worry too, as they have enlisted public support to provide a raft of challenging questions for Mr Gove.  And they have enlisted the support of Twitter – to suggest a question for Mr Gove, all you have to do is tweet that with the hashtag #AskGove.  Now you don’t have to have a Twitter account to watch the Public Storm in return – go to TwitterFall, type #AskGove into the Search button and watch the TwitterFall happen.  My best question at the time of writing was ‘why did you slap an injunction of the Daily Telegraph revealing your immoral 2nd home expenses fiddle?

Now TwitterFall is one of those great headline readers that lend themselves to all sorts of teaching opportunities – your ideas to James please if you are already playing.

  • On the broader picture of Education on-line this week, I spotted this great piece of work on Digital Citizenship on the edorigami.wikispace (I know, it’s amouthfull!) in which is identified the 6 tenets of Digital Citizenship and a nice hierarchy for primary and secondary schools to include –

Senior Students                       Middle School Students         Junior School Students

Respect yourself                     Looking after yourself                        Looking after me

Protect yourself

Respect others                         Looking after others               Looking after others

Protect others

Respect Intellectual Property  Looking after property            Looking after stuff

Protect Intellectual Property

Please have a look at the intellectual stuff behind; if nothing else you’ll find the broader work this site highlights in the world of digital education.

  • Staying with the Citizenship scene, I also found the work ‘Digital Demons Code of Conduct’ down-under in Victoria, highlighting how youngsportsmen could develop appropriate behaviour online, and assisting them to use social media tools such as Twitter and Facebook safely and responsibly.

And for Teachers working as 21st Century educators, the Twitterforeducation wiki has hugely valuable resources for those thinking about introducing ICT on-line for their children – nice link here to the 5 things children understand about online searching before starting middle school

And finally; back to Mr Gove and that stuff he said at BETT about Programming.  Have read  of this not totally hostile view of the current world debate about Learning Code.

Footnotes:

I am working up a piece for next Week on how Schools can join the Google crusade to encourage Great Science  – the prize being $50,000 plus great trip across the pond.

  1. Well done to the 8 GAPPs delegates at the Dixie Grammar School on Saturday, beginning their quest to discover about the 6 tools for Education.
  2. •February Google Training Courses – there are 15 people already booked on the Halliford Course (4th Feb); 4 people booked on the Claires Court course (15th Feb), no people booked on the Red House Course (28th Feb); 3 people on the Bridgewater Course (3rd March) and 3 people on the Heathfield course (14th March).  You can find all the links on the ISANet site and here.
  3. And for Teaching Professionals seeking to attend the 2012 Google Teacher Academy in London, the deadline for applications is the 9th February, more info here http://www.google.com/educators/gta.html

Have a great week and enjoy the ‘new model’ winter – it’s like living on Cyprus here in the Thames Valley, warm, balmy and dry.

?Follow me on Twitter? @james_wilding

Posted in Uncategorized | Leave a comment