I have been sent to Coventry! Will I ever escape?

Well all the women in my life have finally had enough of me and I have been sent to Coventry this week, quite literally. I am with BECTA for the next two days looking at E-Maturity. So what is that I hear you ask? Good question I am still getting my head round it! Today we listened to presentations on the purpose for the E-Learner Journey by Andy Tyerman and then Explaining ‘The Model’ for digital literacy with Janice Staines both from BECTA.  I think in a nut shell e-maturity is basically the journey a learner makes to develop their knowledge, skills and attributes to be an effective 21^st century learner. (I think!)

The rest of the day we discussed and shared ideas of examples of enquiry based learning, I wanted to share just some of them:

1)      Superclubs – http://www.superclubsplus.com/i/tour01 Primary social networking that you can get your won prizes and awards as in level of ICT ability/skills then take it to Secondary school and show what you can do. Can create your own webpages etc. Teacher subscriptions are free and you can set up a 6 week FREE TRIAL for your class to assess the potential. Subscriptions are £4.50 plus VAT per child per year.

2)      Every child has a PSP to use the video capture function on the psp students sign in their first language e.g. for doing their homework and teachers then watch them back. It has also a big impact in motivating fathers to get involved in their children’s learning. This is happening with Alison Carter at Longwill School for Deaf in Birmingham http://www.longwill.bham.sch.uk/school.htm

3)      Pupil voice explored through the tragic story of Bradley and Stacy in Eastenders delivered in the early year’s curriculum – http://www.pleasurereaders.blogspot.com/ using a blog to influence and inspire students in reading. This is by Dan Lea from Gearies Infants school in Redbridge – http://www.gearies-inf.redbridge.sch.uk/

4)      Digital blooms taxonomy – I have spoken about this before but have a look at the great picture below from the following website: http://digigogy.blogspot.com/2009/02/digital-blooms-visual.html  

5)      Using wiki’s to teach poetry, getting students to defend their own poems – you can see this as a case study on Teachers TV as a hard to teach English topic. You can watch the video here: http://www.teachers.tv/video/34475

(Sorry some of these links I can’t seem to get to work maybe not enough daylight or perhaps I ate after midnight! You may just need to copy and paste the url)

6)      Uses of enquiry based learning – Chris Mason from Salendine Nook High School in Huddersfield – www.snhs.kirklees.sch.uk/ You can see an example of this type of work by watching the video on Teachers TV  http://www.teachers.tv/video/34483

2)      Using ICT to promote creativity and focus on success criteria – you can see a video case study of an enquiry based learning project based on success criteria in a French lesson: http://www.languages-ict.org.uk/action/video_studies/truro.htm

3)      Have you got a backup plan for swine flu? If the school is closed due to something like swine flu – do you have some back up extended projects? John Cabot Academy in Bristol have set some up such as individual ones for each subject – this can be stored on the VLE for any emergencies or when students are say in isolation. What work will you set if the school is closed due to snow?

Tabetha Newman then spoke about the Digital Literacy guidance framework and document.

Digital Literacy = technology competence + critical thinking and social awareness. The main findings in the review found that students were taught with high guidance until say A level and then expected to become true independent learners; society assumes students are ‘digital natives’ because they are ICT confident although often can’t use this critically and often questions are asked that are based around recounting which just promotes plagiarism.

More to come tomorrow!