Jonesieblog

Since moving ScotEduBlogs to its new server, I’ve changed how the graphs are generated on the statistics page.  I’m now using Open Flash Chart, and have taken the opportunity to add a few more graphs - posts per month, posts by day-of-the-week and total posts for each authority.  East Lothian seems to be the most prolific by far.

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Two things brought this post into being - a conversation with my son, and a mandolin lesson.

The conversation with my son began with his declaration that he really likes art. I expressed my delight, especially since he had been much less enthusiastic at the start of the year. Through talking to him it became apparent to me that the change of heart is largely attributable to his teacher, Sheila Calder. My son used to be very anxious about getting art work “right”, but she has really helped him to relax and enjoy the process. My son said “You know how some teachers say ‘this is the way you have to do it’? Mrs Calder says that one of the things she likes about art is that it can be any way you want it to be.”

Thank you Sheila

My mandolin teacher is Andrew Brown. Tonight’s lesson was the first for over a month, as we have been away and prior to that my son had been pinching my lessons to do guitar with Andrew.

Andrew is hugely enthusiastic about music, and his enthusiasm is highly infectious. Before the lesson began I was considering letting my son take the lesson again, because I was feeling rather flat about my progress on the mandolin. By the end of the lesson I was feeling both positive about how much I have learned and fired up about the next steps.

Thank you Andrew

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My feeling is that the Eee PC needs a touch screen to be the perfect 1-1 device. The chat online is that this is coming soon, for very little extra money, so I’ve been exploring how we migh use it, with the help of my wee Volito graphics tablet.

I installed the excellent open source xournal and plugged in the tablet. The Eee recognised the tablet immediately, and I rattled off a quick quadratic equation. Xournal can export to pdf, so you can see that here or just look at the screenshot (click on the screenshot for full size image):

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I just found this study (pdf) from Insight.

It reports positive quantitative impacts from the use of ICT in education.

I’m rather hoping someone else might read it all and blog about it!  Otherwise I’ll say something about it next week

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Every once in a while, a lesson just comes together beautifully.  I had such a lesson today.  The learning intentions were that we master multiplying and dividing by powers of 10.

The S2 class has only been together for a week, and is quite mixed in ability.  We started the lesson with 10 quick questions, and this showed that about half the class could already do these problems pretty accurately.

At this point, I threw caution to the wind and said “In 10 minutes from now, we’ll do another set of 10 - work together however you want until then to see if we can all get at least 7 out of 10.  If anyone doesn’t manage, we share responsibility - especially those people who did well the first time!”  I didn’t give them any resources, or specify how they should work.  To my delight, they organized themselves into groups around folk who were confident and spent 10 minutes trying to explain to each other the methods.

The next 10 quick questions were answered much more accurately, but we still had a few folk that needed more help.  This presented a challenge for the “experts” as well as those who needed help.  Some “experts” came up to the whiteboard and tried some more explanation, and those needing help gave them some honest feedback about how helpful they had been!  The onus was on the “experts” to explain clearly - those needing help were in the driving seat.

In the end, we got everyone through the last sets of 10 questions with at least 7 out of 10, and one of those needing help got a spontaneous round of applause for a 9 out of 10.

It was a real feelgood lesson that built the sense of community in the class.  I think I’ll being using the idea of a shared responsibility for the success of everyone a lot more in future.

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