mrcolley.com

Ideas for teaching learning, thinking and using new technologies across the curriculum.

4 Steps To A Positive Professional Online Presence

Don't cross the streams!

If you’ve found yourself reading some of my previous posts then, as well as probably putting off that pile of marking sat slowly composting on your desk, you may have picked up that I quite like social networking. In fact, I think it’s brilliant for CPD, and I’m not the only one as this great infographic made by @teamtait shows:

However, when you start off cultivating a professional online presence it can be a bit intimidating, and a lot of teachers and schools are concerned about potential fallout from publishing your thoughts online for all to see. However, with a bit of common sense and a few simple steps you can start to build a really powerful and positive digital presence.

Anyway, onto the tips.

1. Professional or Personal? Decide early

Is your Facebook/Twitter account for you and your friends or you as a teacher? If it’s personal, then lock it down. If you don’t know how to lock it down, find out. Here’s a Facebook guide. Twitter is slightly different, but you can still protect your tweets. It’s your responsibility, but if you leave your personal account wide open, then don’t be surprised if people look at it! For more details about using Twitter, see my twitter for teachers post.

Another obvious tip is to control who you’re friends with. The term ‘frolleagues’ refers to workmates who you invite as friends on social networks. If you cross the streams of personal & professional and add your boss on Facebook then post about your planned sick day then you only have yourself to blame. It’s also important to know that your Tweets can be read by anyone, follower or not unless you protect them. This does have the downside of not making your contributions to online discussions like #ukedchat visible to everyone.

If you want a very quick summary about how to behave when using Facebook, then basically don’t do this.

2. Best foot forward

Your professional digital footprint can be immensely useful, but only if you behave in a professional manner. I’m not trying to say that you have to be buttoned up and super serious at all times but remember you’re in a public arena. It’s easy to vent frustrations online in a couple of clicks, but be mindful of how your comments could be interpreted even if they’re meant in a completely different context. To be a powerful, positive presence online, follow Seth Godin’s guidelines:

  • Be interested
  • Be interesting
  • Be positive
  • Be generous

3. Consider a ‘faceless account’

If you or your school is nervous about digital identities, try a generic school or department account. Tell your line manager about it and let them have the password. This sort of account is useful for pupils to follow, I’ve seen PE departments use them brilliantly for fixture and team updates. I use our ICT department one to link to relevant ICT news articles for my GCSE students. However, I discourage my pupils from following my @MrAColley teacher account as I use that to discuss teaching & learning with other educators. I usually just explain how boring I would be to follow, that normally does the trick! If not, a quick chat usually persuades them to unfollow

4 Know when you’re mentioned online

Google alerts were designed to monitor the web for interesting new content, but they can also be used to trawl for mentions of your Twitter username or your school.

Social networking can be a tricky ocean to navigate for schools and teachers alike, but if you always present your best side and stay positive, you can have a massive impact on your own professional development and that of others. As an extra bonus, you’re modelling exemplary online behaviour for your students.

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The Friday List

"Your name will also go on the list." "Oooh! Lovely"

I’ve been doing something new since Christmas.

It’s nothing revolutionary, but it’s having really positive effects on my relationships with my pupils and how I feel at the end of a week.

All week, I have a Word doc open on my laptop.  If I have a pupil who has a really good week, I add their name to the list. It’s usually 2 to 3 names per week.

Immediately after work on Friday, I grab the phone numbers from SIMS and make a quick surprise call home. It takes about 20 minutes tops.

Parents have been initially wary because it’s school calling but then the surprise kicks in. I’ve even been told that I’ve made somebody’s weekend!

It’s really easy to criticise and point out problems. I’m just trying to balance that out a bit.  The added bonus is that it makes me feel good too.

Imagine if every teacher made a couple of positive calls a week.

Go on, spread a bit of Friday love.

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#ICT500 – Digital Citizens & Safer Internet Day 2012

Image from http://www.flickr.com/photos/will-lion/3974469907/in/photostreamAs tomorrow is Safer Internet Day 2012, I though I’d take the chance to share some of my favourite resources for educating pupils, staff and parents.  This post is split into two sections – the rationale for teaching e-safety (and other aspects of ICT) and the resources.

 

The Rationale

I always approach this topic with the attitude that an online presence is almost inevitable for our learners, and that we need to teach them the competencies to leave a positive digital footprint rather than a negative one.  I believe that first steps in online collaboration & communication should be positive, structured experiences.  I wouldn’t teach my daughter to cross a road by parking her on the side of the motorway and letting her figure it out for herself.

A lot of the public reaction to Mr Gove’s speech at BETT was centered around the opinion that ‘kids already know how to use computers’.  I would argue that whilst that may be true, it doesn’t mean that they are yet able to use them skilfully. Look at the Wiki copied & pasted, eye wateringly backgrounded, poor quality copyright imaged presentations of learners who have simply been told to ‘make a presentation’ without guidance as to what actually makes an effective one to see what I mean.  I still teach a presenting information topic, and the difference between the start of the unit and the end is marked.  I’ve based it around @jessedee‘s wonderful ‘You suck at PowerPoint‘ work.

I’m fortunate. I got to learn my childhood lessons without 8 megapixel evidence posted online for everyone to see.  Imagine your teenage diaries blown up large and posted on every advertising board in town! This generation will leave a digital trail, so helping them to leave a good one is vital.  If you’re not sure what I mean, do a Twitter search for #ihatemyboss.  You will see how easy it is to forget that you’re posting in a public arena that is backed up, instantly available and where a post made in anger and haste will be with you forever.  Digital citizenship is a topic that has been widely debated in the Twitter discussions that I follow and occasionally contribute something to (especially @sharland‘s #digitalstudies topic) and completely ignored by Mr. Gove’s ‘programming will save us all’ soundbite.

The web doesn’t lend itself well to changing your mind. Our learners have access to technology that allows them to broadcast ideas, views and media that will be available long after the reality has changed and they have abandoned some and refined others.  I wouldn’t want to be judged at a job interview on the basis of my worldview when I was 13 (I’m a little less keen on grunge for a start). I don’t often use bible quotes, but this one seemed appropriate:

“When I was a child, I spake as a child, I understood as a child, I thought as a child: but when I became a man, I put away childish things.” 1 Corinthians 13:11 (KJV)

If you found this site by searching for ‘Mr. Colley’, then you’ve come across my online professional presence (and I hope that it shows my best side).  I’ve got a personal one too, but I try to ensure that it is well locked down.

I use this as an example with my pupils, also pointing out that the third result when you search my name is for a different Mr. Colley, who probably doesn’t know that there is a Bebo site devoted to him!

The people who set up that site have probably long since forgotten the password, grown up and moved on. Yet there it sits like a message in a bottle bobbing around online.

Of course, common sense dictates that we should know how to behave online.  however, it also applies that we should know to check for cars before crossing the road, or that smoking is horrendously harmful and expensive.  The ‘I wouldn’t do that if I were you’ bit of the brain is the last to develop and teenagers will take risks. Digital citizenship is about making sure that they make informed choices.

The Resources

Real life examples are very powerful in this topic.  For older learners, the following two videos are very good but need watching through first to see if they are suitable:

What your grocery list says about your sex life

I know what you did five minutes ago


I use this video with my Y7 groups.

Can I be your friend?

Commoncraft also have some great ‘beginners’ videos that cover everything from explaining what Facebook & Twitter are to setting secure passwords.

The great folk at #ictcurric (especially @largerama and @dwsm) have put together a fantastic scheme of work aimed at Y7.

Thinkuknow is an amazing resource with sections for different age groups, teachers and parents.

@tombarrett has also curated a collection of ideas called ‘Interesting Ways to Teach E-safety‘. Please add your own on the end. The rest of the Interesting Ways series is well worth a look too.

These resources are my main starting points for digital citizenship and e-safety.  Please comment with more, and happy SID 2012!

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A Useful Christmas Lesson?

As an ICT teacher I always have problems getting learners to appreciate the way technology has changed the way we do things. They’ve always been able to text, email and tweet on the move, so why should it be any different.

This year, I’ve focused my ‘Christmas Lesson’ around this concept. I’ve been inspired by this brilliant video:

My classes have been rewriting the nativity story to show how it would have been different with modern technology. To add to the challenge, I’ve asked them to use ToonDoo, an online comic strip creator. This has forced them to analyse the story, select the key stages and then reimagine them. It’s proved an opportunity for some really creative and high level thinking along the lines of Tony Ryan’s ‘different uses’ thinkers key. Here’s an example of the work produced in the last lesson of a really long term:

the son of god high tec

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Low Energy – High Impact

This post is inspired by something that happened during a recent #ukedchat discussion on Twitter abMy classes' response to 'What do you expect of Mr Colley?'out effective teaching & learning strategies.

I posted the following suggestion:

“What Went Well & Even Better If (WWW & EBI) for feedback.”

@jamieportman commented that the strategy was:

“Low energy & high impact”.

I really like that phrase, and it made me remember some of the fantastic, simple T&L strategies that I’ve observed or been told about when running INSET.  So here they are:

1. WWW & EBI

The only golden rule is that there must be more WWWs than EBIs (I try to use a 3:1 ratio).  Infinitely flexible. Use it to diagnostically mark. Get learners peer assessing. Focus it on criteria (levels, aesthetics, user friendliness, spelling and grammar).  If you’re feeling brave, use it for learners to evaluate your lesson – you get great customer feedback and they think about learning, delivery and format, win!

2. Wait Time

I knew that wait time was important, but then this research landed in my inbox via @thatiangilbert.  Some of the more startling points made are:

  • The average wait-time teachers allow after posing a question is one second or less.
  • Students whom teachers perceive as slow or poor learners are given less wait-time than those teachers view as more capable.
  • There seems to be no wait-time threshold for higher cognitive questions; students seem to become more and more engaged and perform better and better the longer the teacher is willing to wait.

Read the whole article, it’s fascinating.

3. Post It/Sticky Notes

My room is normally covered in them.  Ask a question and get 30, 40, 50, 60 answers instead of one.  Use them for rank/prioritise exercises, sequencing, mini plenary learning summaries (‘three key learning points form the last 20 minutes’…..).  Ideas are malleable, opinions can be changed without crossing out and learning is transferrable, colour coded (if you’re cunning), and interactive.

I even nicked a great idea from @jamieportman again and used them for ‘what do you expect of Mr Colley?’ as an introduction to lesson one and our classroom conduct agreement.  Here’s what I got back!

4. Get Up, Stand Up

Instead of hands up, get your learners to stand up and move to one side of the room or another depending on what they think the answer to a question is.  Fact or opinion? Past or present tense? Masculine or feminine? etc etc. For questions that require deeper thinking, allow answers along a confidence line from certain to uncertain.

The confidence line works well to assess learners’ convictions about their own learning too – try it with your lesson objectives at the beginning, middle & end of a lesson to get a visual indicator of perceived progress. It makes learners feel good too!

5. The Four Bs

Or, how to solve problems and build self reliance at the same time.  When working on a project, if you get stuck:

First – use your Brain? Have I been in similar situations before? How did I get unstuck? Is there a way I can brak down the problem to give me a foothold?

Second – use a Book, helpsheet, video tutorial, set of notes, manual, help facility etc etc to try and help.

Third – Can your Buddy help? No, not the one on the other side of the room to whom you have to shout.  The people around you. Remember, I said ‘help’, not ‘do it for you’!

Fourth – Still stuck? Ask the Boss.  That’s me in this case, a little alliterative ego boost definitely, but forgive me.  When you do get asked, use wait time to really stretch the learning.

Off the top of my head, those are the most effective ‘low effort’ (if you can ever call teaching that) T&L strategies I use. I’d love to know yours.

 

 

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How to work better

This alarmingly useful list is spray painted on a wall behind the scenes at the Tate Modern, London.  It’s there for their employees but is now stuck on my board too.

1. Do one thing at a time

2. Know the problem.

3. Learn to listen.

4. Learn to ask questions.

5. Distinguish sense from nonsense

6. Accept change as inevitable

7. Admit mistakes

8. Say it simple.

9. Be calm.

10. Smile

That’s it. End of post.

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That Difficult Second Album

Half of all teachers quit after their first five years.

Behaviour, red tape and pressure are often cited as the main causes of this, but what if there’s another, underlying cause.  What if it’s because we stop learning?

My first few years were filled with learning about pedagogy, the learning brain, honing my subject knowledge, course specs, how to mark and feedback effectively. The curve was steep and there was always something new to try, an exciting new technique to experiment with.

Eight years in, I’m an AST, I’m supposed to be the expert, outstanding five lessons a day.  Course specs have changed, exam boards have come and gone just as I’ve got my resources and planning together and I have to start again.  That’s difficult to do and easy to get worn down by.

I’ve found out that I have to actively seek out new learning experiences and ideas to stop myself becoming entrenched.  I have to see past the pressure and keep innovating.  A lot of teachers five or so years in have taken on extra responsibility that may distract from the reason they came into teaching in the first place.

The best stimulus I’ve found for this is Twitter, which is by far the best CPD tool I’ve ever come across.  I follow some truly outstanding educators who share and collaborate despite having no reason or reward for doing so.  It’s the best and biggest staffroom you could imagine and far more than a way of simply stalking celebrities.  Here’s why:

1. People share ideas, all the time – some of the points on this list have been lovingly borrowed from resources found through Twitter (and credited accordingly)

2. You can contribute as little or as much as you like.  If you want to, you can be part of the dialogue, or you can just follow a few interesting people and cherry pick from what they share.

3. Networking.  Twitter uses things called hashtags to group people’s messages by topic. Searching for a relevant hashtag can lead you to lots of other people interested in discussing similar issues.  Here’s a list of educational hashtags to check out (thanks to

4. It’s constantly challenging.  The people that I follow make me rethink my planning, use of technology and my beliefs about the whole education system.

5. It’s a supportive community.  I’ve asked for and received help with planning, INSET and implementation of new classroom technology from people I’ve never even met.  I have also shared ideas and resources with others, which made me put an extra ‘shine’ on the things I contributed.

Twitter takes me out of my comfort zone on a daily basis, it reminds me a bit of what it’s like to be an NQT again.  It makes me think, rethink and has supported me when I’ve asked for advice about things.  Most of all, it keeps me learning, stops me getting into a rut and helps me to stay interested and enthusiastic.  Thousands of other teachers are discovering the same, try using Twitterfall to search for the weekly #ukedchat discussions one Thursday evening between 8 and 9 pm.

If you’re thinking of getting started, try checking out the ‘Ultimate Twitter Guidebook For Teachers‘

Oh, and I’m on as @mracolley, try following a few of the people I follow, they’re brilliant!

EDIT – On the same day I published this post, this article appeared in the paper!

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