@SirSolo

Taken with Instagram

Sun, 02 Sep 2012 11:11:36 +0800

Quality assured

Fri, 23 Mar 2012 18:24:01 +0800

It has been a while since I have had any time to write on my blog. Here’s why:

The last 5 weeks have been THE most busiest of my life. What a statement, but so true. Our owners gave us 5 weeks notice that they will be visiting Shanghai to do a quality review of the school. 5 weeks sounded great, “we’ve got loads of time!” - the most uttered statement the first few days after being told.

That is the problem, any teacher knows that our jobs can literally consume whatever time we have and so for many of us at BISS, review preparations became a second full time job; outside of normal teaching hours. Having recently taken over the Humanities faculty that had been ‘headless’ for the first 6 months of the school year, we had some work to do. The faculty had been very supportive to my early requirements, preparing an overview of the years teaching, entering data into a centralised mark-book and attending regular meetings and participating in CPD exercises. But we didn’t have everything we needed in place, but I saw this as an opportunity to have that put right.

So, the school had arranged set meetings every Monday to prepare. We the time focus on creating consistent schemes of work, developing and sharing best practise through targeted CPD (specifically on AfL/formative assessment techniques), compiling all the necessary data and administration and producing ‘outstanding’ wall displays that would please any Ofsted inspector. We wrote IEPs, set up and implemented intervention strategies, documented all our communications to parents, got all our marking up to date and even re-branded our VLE pages to make them look more ‘premium’!

It was mental! Over the last couple of weeks, we were regularly doing 15 hour days in school, and who knows how many hours at home. The team and I managed to conduct a huge self-evaluation that was built on observations, learning walks, work and marking sampling and through discussions in my coaching sessions and with my team. Data was analysed; the figures actually looked pretty impressive for the exam classes and I felt like the Faculty was ready!

Before I took over the leadership, I was told our department was somewhat of a concern. The Head of Faculty had quit at the start of the year and had not been replaced, results were far from good; the team’s predictions had been quite off in some subjects (unfortunately, quite a bit higher than the actual grades). All this had sparked an internal ‘spotlight’ review at the start of the year, conducted by the Senior Leadership Team. After this initial internal spotlight review, I was asked to take over the leadership of Humanities Faculty. So, after the inspection was over and I had received our feedback about the team, I was absolutely delighted. We had massively impressed the reviewers. The lessons observed in Humanities had been graded as mostly ‘outstanding’, our displays were hailed as the best in the school and they were pleased to see such immense progress in our results. A complete transformation.

I remember being in the UK and receiving 24 hours notice of an Ofsted inspection. They were a crazy 24 hours, but there were only 24 of them. I honestly hope that the next inspection we are given is literally sprung upon us. I would prefer no time to prepare than too much. It really nearly killed me!

It feels great now it is over, though… what is particularly great is being outside of the school during day light hours, a real novelty. But what feels even better is that in such a short space of time, our faculty has really turned things around: Quality Assured.

Technological changes

Fri, 23 Mar 2012 17:28:31 +0800

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Via PGI
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shamsensei: What Is Leap Year? (by epipheo) RT @tucksoon #edsg...

Sun, 26 Feb 2012 08:23:50 +0800

shamsensei:

What Is Leap Year? (by epipheo) RT @tucksoon #edsg #edchat

goal #3 ... Ask a learner

Wed, 22 Feb 2012 00:53:00 +0800

For goal 3, ask a learner, I am adding a link to my year 9 tutor group’s blog. In a recent tutorial, the class were tasked with responding to two statements- Learning is…. and Learning should be…..

They were split into groups and had to respond to their designated statement using the ‘chalk talk’ technique. They could add comments, questions, answers, argue, draw or whatever they wanted, in response. After some time, they swapped statements and read the other groups’ efforts. They had some reflection time and they then began commenting on this new statement. This was all done in silence, hence the ‘chalk talk’ name. It was an awesome session and the results can be viewed in the two images provided in their blog post. Please visit their blog and take a look. Also, while you’re there, please leave them a comment, they’ll love it!

Shortlink: http://to.ly/ce3f
Their blog: www.what9see.edublogs.org

Murmurings from the Whiteboard: Stuck in a loop!

Wed, 22 Feb 2012 00:00:30 +0800

Murmurings from the Whiteboard: Stuck in a loop!:

teachermurph:

In January Micheal Gove announced that he wanted there to be more elements of Computer Science within the ICT Curriculum. He even specifically mentioned the use of Scratch saying “we could have 11-year-olds able to write simple 2D computer animations”. This coincided with my department being…

#2 magical teaching moment

Mon, 13 Feb 2012 22:46:00 +0800

It has been an extremely busy couple of weeks in Shanghai, both personally and professionally…

On a personal note, my mum, dad and sister came to town to celebrate my mum’s 60th and my engagement to Jade! They came for 10 action packed days that coincided with Chinese New Year and that took us to Nanjing, saw us do a few nights in Puxi by the Bund and a few at our flat in Kangqiao. It was awesome but very tiring!

Professionally, we have been informed of an impending inspection by our owners, Nord Anglia. Inspections are never fun and can cause a lot of stress for many teachers, my team seem positive but there is definitely an element of “Great! More work” in the air.

More on that another time, the above are just excuses for not blogging about my magical teaching moment, Goal no. 2, until now!

Anyway, I have been thinking about my magical moment for some time and I keep coming back to something that happened before I was actually teaching. After traveling for a year, I mentored in a community college in Leicester before going on to teach there following my PGCE. I was hired as the inclusion mentor and focused on keeping the most ‘challenged’ students in school. It was a particularly tough school, so the challenged kids were, at times, totally ‘off the wall’. I worked with lots of great students who just needed a chance, and some completely bonkers kids, too! It was great fun but exhausting.

The moment in mind came a few years later than when the work was put in. A year 10 girl was school phobic and regularly skipped classes, ran out of school and generally did anything to avoid or disrupt learning. She wasn’t a bad kid but completely hated the school, her teachers and most of the other kids. I worked with her on her self-esteem and anger issues. I felt we made ground in my time working with her, she started turning up for school most days.

The following year, I left to do my PGCE and returned to the school on placement and was subsequently offered a teaching post for the following year. The girl had left by then without any GCSEs. I taught business studies and my prior career was in recruitment so I found myself involved with the careers team. I ended up running classes for the year 11’s on creating CV’s, letter writing, interview techniques and helped write some college applications and actual job applications. A younger relative of the girl was still at the school and she asked if I’d help the older girl again. She needed assistance with a job application. She actually came along to some of the after school sessions and I helped her apply for her first ever job. She had never dared apply to anything before and felt she had no chance because of her lack of qualifications.

A few years later, I received a Facebook message from the girl and it was amazing. I never added students to Facebook, and she knew that but basically it just said that she wanted to thank me personally for all my help over the years. It turned out that she got the job which I’d helped her with. It was with a high street retailer, and in her email, she said it was all down to me. She was extremely grateful and said that my mentoring had kept her in school and out of trouble and then later, that my time spent coaching her had got her the job that she still had to that day.

It was a great feeling and although it had been tough at times, it suddenly felt more than worth my efforts. I felt great that my input had actually made a difference to her. At that school, it often felt that we were banging our heads against the wall but that success was truly magical and helped inspire me to keep going, even when it didn’t feel like progress was being made.

30 goals, #1 me manifesto

Fri, 27 Jan 2012 13:05:00 +0800

Dorian (@dozmeista) sent me a tweet about the 30 goals project for educators, and asked if I was ‘up ferret’… I am!

So, the aim is to complete 1 to 2 goals a week for the year and then tweet or blog about it. The first requirement is to create a ‘me manifesto’ so here’s mine with a wordle to reflect the most common words to remind me of ‘what I am about’; or aspire to be.

1 my ‘me manifesto’

• personalise the learning
• inspire a desire to learn and a passion to achieve
• guide, motivate and lead
• encourage open lines of two-way communication
• listen and give students a voice
• be efficient, look for a better way
• do what I believe to be right
• always deliver with enthusiasm and passion
• be accountable and instill accountability and respect

“>

New Year, new role...building the team

Thu, 05 Jan 2012 00:23:45 +0800

Following our wonderful Christmas break in India, it was great to get back and see our colleagues at BISS; and especially the Humanities team, who I am excited to now be leading. Although, I cannot believe how cold Shanghai has become!

Our first day back was a training day and was well structured and enjoyable; following a warm welcome back from Sir Terry, the secondary and primary staff split to follow separate training schedules. Our day (secondary) was focused on Formative Assessment and was extremely interactive and practical.

We were all provided with some departmental time and I chose to use it to officially get to together as a team for the first time. I wanted to share my objectives, set a short ranking task for the teachers and explore what each individual values in order to deliver effective teaching and learning. We also took the time to discuss our development plan, which I hold as our single most important tool. Reflecting on our department’s recent ‘spotlight’ (inspection) I had categorised everything we do into 3 clear and specific areas -

Academic Attainment
Planning - further split into developmental/strategic and curriculum
CPD

To help raise achievement and improve teaching and learning, my focus for the Humanities Faculty is to ensure that everything we do fits into these specific areas. A clear focus on Attainment is underpinned by clear development planning, specific curriculum plans with built in assessments and continuous professional development. Although we have quite clear outcomes, there are many small steps that need to be taken in order to raise our performance. My first goal is to establish some team cohesion and build our identity and set some clear standards and rudimentary processes. We will now be meeting weekly (which is new for the team) and every session will focus on all of the 3 key areas.

Each official meeting will be rotated with a different teacher hosting and also delivering one aspect of good practice in a short, practical manner that will hopefully continue to enhance our teaching and keep everybody thinking and focused on development. I am happy with the early feedback and positive comments regarding my plans and am looking forward to meeting every one again tomorrow, whereby we have a short briefing in which I am going to deliver a short session on effective feedback lessons following our very recent mock exams.

Having analysed the results, my year 11 Business students will be assigned to groups based on areas of weakness and will be given a question they performed poorly on. They will create and deliver a 15 minute three part lesson to teach the group the knowledge, how to apply it and produce a model answer. They must include an interactive starter, main learning activities and a plenary to test the learning. I will be modelling an example and they will have the remainder of the lesson and homework time to plan their lesson. This way of feeding back is so much more effective than simply going through the paper with the class. It utilises diagnostic planning, is student led and personalised. I am doing this lesson period 1 so it will be good to run through the task with the team and get their feedback.

A new toy (I mean tool) for a New Year

Mon, 02 Jan 2012 00:34:00 +0800

Whilst on our Christmas holidays in India, I tried my best to switch off from all things technology (Jade’s request). Although, the iPad did come in handy a few times, particularly with Twitter where we received some good advice on India from a few people in my PLN. @Liz_Halina, who teaches in Delhi, gave us a few great tips on where to go and we almost managed to meet up for chai, but sadly couldn’t quite meet.

Whilst browsing Twitter, I learned of the new Educreations tool which allows you create your own screen casts and lessons to share. You can create straight from your iPad or online. At first viewing, it looks awesome. A simple interface lets you record what you type or write (my stylus will now get some usage), and you can add photos, record your voice and add extra slides etc. I have been creating screen casts for a while now using Explain Everything, but have found it a little unstable and slow when saving projects. I am excited to give the new tool a go and hope to be able to create some fun lessons for my students.

The site lets you create lessons using your interactive whiteboard too. I have a colleague (Matt Prince) who teaches maths and uses the whiteboard incredibly; he records most of his lessons for his students to access later. He hits record when writing key points or formulas and then pauses again. All his lessons are then available in short snippets for his kids to review at home. I have been doing similar things and Educreations will be great to enhance this.

Also, having experimented with ‘flipping the classroom’ of late, I was looking for a better screen cast tool…This is hopefully it. I will see how it goes using it both to record lessons so students can revisit them later (or can see the lesson if absent) and also to provide pre-instruction as a homework activity when flipping. I look forward to getting involved…

Getting (re)organised...

Mon, 12 Dec 2011 23:18:08 +0800

http://flic.kr/p/6eLKNh

Following the unfortunate and untimely death of my hard drive (it was the back up to my other hard drive that died), I have finally decided to reorganise myself. I have chosen to look at this loss as a new beginning and an opportunity to streamline the way I work. I think that the process might actually end up being a cathartic experience and will, eventually see me becoming more productive. This also comes as I am about to begin my new role as the Head of Humanities… so fresh beginnings makes sense.

To begin with, I have taken the opportunity to reconnect with some old colleagues to try and get back some of the work I had left at my previous school and I have also engaged my PLN to try and plug a few of the gaps. They have been great, so I am hoping to get a few emails and additions to my box.com account later this week to get back the ‘essentials’ for my teaching.

But the most significant decision I have made is to reorganise the way I work. To me, being organised is about being efficient, getting the job done to the best of your ability and not burning yourself out. Just lately, I have to admit that have felt that I may have been working a little harder than maybe I should be. After a long day, to home, eat and then carry on working late in to the night is just not healthy. So I have decided that now is as good a time as any to get things in order.

Too much and too many

I think one of my biggest problems has been both taking on too much, agreeing to new tasks that I should really say ‘no’ to. Recently, I have started to consciously try to say no, (politely, of course) when I feel a request is either too much or if I simply do not have time to do it. So far, so good. I am focusing more on my priorities and am trying to empower my team of tutors to take on more of the duties I used to perform for them.

A significant time consumer was the way I was using the internet, software and applications to assist me. I have tried to limit the amount of web tools I am actually using. Over the last couple of years, I have truly gone web tool and app cray. It meant that many tools were not being used effectively and often, I could not find whatever it was I was looking for. Some docs were in my Dropbox, others in Sugar Sync, or were they in my Evernote account? I had ReadItLater saving some bookmarks, Diigo looking after others, the new Reminders app listing some tasks while Notes, Awesome Note or even Pages had other. Google Reader picking up most of my feeds, but then visiting the Tweeted Times, Flipboard and Evri to check, what was often, the same Tweets, updates or Feeds. It was getting out of hand, I was downloading new tools daily, trying them and then forgetting about them; and often, the work they contained.

So now, I have decided to streamline everything. I love Evernote and Dropbox and could never give them up. I am going to try and reorganise my Evernote tags and get the folder system sorted out in Dropbox. Maybe I’ll have a little clear out of all my files, too. I will continue with Google Docs, particularly now we can access them at school. I am also going to try and apply the Email Ninja skills, put together by Leo Babauta to clean up my messy inboxes.

I am going to use my 50gig Box.com space (free for signing up with an iPad - it might still be available?!) for my teaching and work related resources. China currently allows access so it is a great space to work in and keep docs synced.

My newest find that I will actually maintain is Work Flowy. I saw a few Tweets raving about it and decided to give it a go. I love it and it has instantly become my new planning tool. I am now only using it, I keep it open on my iPad and at my work station and am constantly adding and crossing off tasks as they arise. It is great and I do feel much more in control with it.

I am also going to start to adapt the way I plan. I do feel my role as a Year Leader has been extremely reactive, but now, as I move into the HOD role, I can see myself being more productive with a weekly plan rather than a daily plan that expected, if not allowed, interruptions. My new office is gong to be quieter, with less foot traffic!

I am still, with the help of my team, constructing our Departmental Development Plan with a 2 to 5 year view. I hope to be able to place all of my productive time into working towards achieving the goals we set. The weekly plans I create will be fed into from this and my days will hopefully have clearer outcomes.

So, there it is, I have committed my plans to writing. I am now bound to them! Or was this post just another opportunity for me to procrastinate some more…?

shamsensei: The Social Media World Before Twitter And Facebook…...

Sat, 10 Dec 2011 15:02:41 +0800

shamsensei:

The Social Media World Before Twitter And Facebook… @Bit Rebels #edsg #edtech #twttr

New role for the New Year

Tue, 06 Dec 2011 21:43:00 +0800

As of January, I will officially become the Head of the Humanities Faculty here at BISS and handover my Head of Year duties to the wonderful Jade. Safe hands to pass on to! However, as the year comes to a close it is inevitable that I want to get to grips with the new role and have been frantically trying to develop our plan, assign roles and generally get things ready for the start date (without my recently lost data that I had obtained over the years and from my prior HOD experiences). All this whilst running my year group. Tough and tiring… On Monday, I attended my first HOD meeting with the rest of the subject leaders and SLT. It was an good experience and the content was very interesting. The focus was on meeting structure and ensuring that departmental meeting time was used effectively. We looked at the key areas that must be covered this year in our meetings, assigning them to Teaching and Learning, Information and Other, although most things, even though placed elsewhere came under Teaching and Learning. It was particularly useful, especially as we have 3 meetings coming up straight after the New Year. We set agendas and talked through how best to conduct our meetings to ensure they are not administrative processes and focus predominantly on CPD and Teaching and Learning. A good experience that has added to my excitement about beginning my new role (officially) in January.

Technology...switch it off

Mon, 05 Dec 2011 00:01:58 +0800

I generally love technology and everything that goes with it. I love how it can help speed things up, it can help you connect and make both work and leisure more fun.

This week has been different. I think I have had more frustrations than ever from my beloved gadgets, and the internet. In some sense, I hope this blog post is going to be a cathartic exercise that enables me to get over them on this Sunday evening. I really hate moaning, but it has been so damn annoying!

It all began last week when my VPN became the latest victim of the GFoC. This meant that I have not had the chance to connect with my PLN and feel like I have ‘missed out’ on the happenings of Twitter, Facebook and have even had mega interruptions using Dropbox and Evernote. Nightmare.

Without a VPN, it is nearly impossible to get on to a VPN website to buy a new one! So most of the free time this week was dedicated to this pursuit, totally unsuccessfully.

Next, Shanghai became real cold! I’m told it is still lovely, but after two years in hot and sticky Saigon, this is freeeeezing. Anyway, we were told our A/C units have a heat function. I’m sure it is easy to flip it over to heat function, if you can read Chinese characters! Jade and I don’t. What a horrible couple of days. Still, the photo I took in and emailed to the admin staff won a point back for the tech in my life.

Next, the biggie! A few weeks ago my laptop died. I lost all the data on it, but no stress, I’m all backed up. Well, a couple of weeks ago, back up one became corrupted. Scary stuff, and with our busy schedule, we’d planned to go and buy a couple of new hard drives. We put it off, not good. Last week I accidentally dropped the HDD with the only copy of everything I have left. It died, I nearly cried…6 years of teaching resources, my music, my personal docs and data, and worst of all, my photos! All dead, well maybe. I got them straight to the shop for the guy to quote me an extortionate price, to which I agreed after some pathetic negotiation attempts. He could clearly see my grief. He said the best we could hope for, when he called me during my lesson the next day, was 50% of the data back. “Come Tech-Guy, you can do better than that!”

Don’t get me wrong, the most important stuff is all in the cloud, box.com and Dropbox are awesome, but I wish I had spent the time to move across my most precious data. Still, we’ll see how much, if any, is recovered.

Next was the online booking fiasco. We are flying to India for Christmas, and in line with our laid-back nature, we haven’t booked anything yet in the way of accommodation or internal flights. So tonight we spent hours trying to find rooms available, in our price race, that we both like. All would have been much easier with the VPN, so I tried to install a new one. I tested a recommended provider and thought it to be safe, fast and worth the fee. I bought it, installed it (hard work in itself) and now it doesn’t work. Funny that, so we didn’t get to book anything either.

Right, I am hoping that all the frustrations will remain in last week and that this week will bring some good news: preferably, in the form of the data (just a good slice of it will do) being recovered; and we manage to actually book our flights and hotels. I am not normally a moaner but it actually feels good! Cathartic indeed, I can get back to loving technology now. I want to play with my new 35rmb stylus for the iPad that I picked up at the fake market.

Funny comment

Sun, 04 Dec 2011 23:46:00 +0800

During a year 10 business lesson discussing the public and private sectors, I asked about things that we have done for us that we’d probably not want to pay for directly. I got on to the subject of waste, and I was referring to rubbish, or trash as my American contingent call it. I asked who would like to pay for their waste to be taken away. It was all in context of tax payers’ money etc. One girl, who shall remain nameless, bless her said “eeer, I just flush my waste!”

Holy Mo-ly…

Thu, 24 Nov 2011 07:42:47 +0800

Holy Mo-ly…

shamsensei: All about twttr (Taken with instagram)

Tue, 22 Nov 2011 22:35:07 +0800

shamsensei:

All about twttr (Taken with instagram)

Cutting ties...

Mon, 21 Nov 2011 22:31:00 +0800

I was recently contacted by my previous employer, an International School in Vietnam, who politely asked me to close down the Edmodo groups I had set up whilst at the school. In particular they wanted me to close a group I had set up named ‘Social Connections’ that was created to allow students (and staff) to remain in touch after moving on…as so often happens on the international circuit. They stated that new school policy dictated that any contact with students must cease when you leave.

The group set up meant that teachers didn’t have those awkward moments when saying goodbye to tearful students whereby they would normally be forced to say: “sorry no, you can’t be my Facebook friend or have my email”. Instead they’d simply say, “Keep in touch, see you on Edmodo!” The communications we exchanged about their reasons for me closing the group were all valid and I fully agreed but it did get me thinking about some interesting questions and ethical dilemmas teachers could find themselves in…

The world is changing fast and I now use social media with all my classes; PCs, laptops, smart phones and iPads are an essential ingredient in many of my lessons. Often, not using these tools could be somewhat of a disservice to the learners. I encourage my classes to engage in positive online connections, to collaborate and communicate with like-minded people across the globe and to begin establishing their PLNs. My own PLN is growing (relatively) fast and I see it as an enormous virtual staff room that provides me with the answers I need, material to watch, tools to use, people to collaborate with, to share with and help in return; all to enhance both my teaching practice and that of others. I am connected to many teachers, administrators and principals at a whole host of schools across the planet through different mediums, many of whom I will never meet or even speak to in person. But in essence, it reflects the direction in which education is moving.

So this leads me to thinking about some of the problems that could arise when staff move on, particularly in terms of the ethical dilemmas concerning communication between professionals, ex-students and privacy; and of course what led the school to feel the need to ask me to shut down my groups. I am not talking about the obvious, more serious and inappropriate issues between adults and young people, but the more hazy, professional divide where boundaries become blurred. On discussing the issue with my Principal, he reflected on his own experiences early in his career whereby he took over from a teacher who had been popular. He felt put out and somewhat undermined when the class revealed they still asked the teacher for comments on their work to the point that he told them he wouldn’t assess work that had been assisted by this teacher. Rightly so…

The thing is, it has never been easier to connect with anyone whose name you know. With professional social sites (LinkedIn), school websites and the traditional social media platforms, anyone who has a ‘digital footprint’ can be found and contacted if someone so desired. So is just closing the group enough? Those kids can and have made contact through my email. I personally see no harm, in fact only last night, I enjoyed reading a few Tweets from @edusum as she facilitated some excellent support for a student she’d never met via Twitter and a Google Doc. This helped the student, and I for one, would be delighted as her class teacher that she was able to utilise her technology and communication skills and to enlist someone so capable to assist her. As things change and progress, so must the social rules we follow. But who writes them? Apparently, my previous employer.

The question is… what level of communication should you maintain and what is an acceptable role for teachers who move on? When you are no longer someone’s teacher, do you become just an interested professional who provides advice or does that undermine their new teacher?

Time to reflect...appropriately!

Mon, 21 Nov 2011 00:40:51 +0800

Having established a number of blogs with students over the years and having created a couple of personal travel blogs, which I barely use, I have decided to start a proper one to help me on a number of levels:

1 - I can reflect on what I learn and will have an official place to ‘store’ my thinking and reflection in terms of my professional development…I mean who collects all the paper you get at training sessions?

2 - Reduced feelings of hypocrisy. Asking my classes to blog away when I am not fully committed is just wrong.

3 - A place to voice my thinking and thoughts on education, teaching and the like… I have had a few ideas lately that (I think) are quite interesting but didn’t have anywhere to share them. I ended up ranting to Jade, or at Adriaan and Kev at work. At least now I can commit them here and they’re off my chest with only interested peeps bothering to hear/read them and comment, saving loved ones and friends from having to…