Why did the Chickenman cross the road?

Now you all know I love a person who dresses up in animal suits, so I was really excited to hear from Justin this week who was telling me about a great project he was involved in and yes he also wears a Panda suit!

It is called ‘The Panda made me do it’

What is The Panda Made Me Do it?

The Panda Made Me Do It is all about you. The natural world is in trouble – we all know that – climate change and our runaway demand for natural resources are taking their toll on the planet. But if we are all are prepared to take action we can make a difference. The Panda Made Me Do It is about collecting, sharing and celebrating things that people are doing
for our planet. Here you can find inspiration from others and suggestions of things you can do with WWF to play your own part.
It’s your future. Tell us what you’re going to do.

Why is it so important?

The world we live in is incredible, but it’s in trouble, and it needs you. Our growing demand on natural resources is putting the natural world under pressure. Around the world, nearly a quarter of all mammal species and a third of amphibians are threatened with extinction. Globally, we are using around 25% more natural resources than the planet can replace. And in the UK, we’re consuming three times our fair share of the planet’s natural resources. There is something each and every one of us can do to show we care, and to make a difference.

Want to join in?

Join the environmental movement that says it’s not all hopeless, you can make a difference. It’s not all doom and gloom, it’s about fun runs, forest picnics, fundraising and taking control of the future of the planet.

Shout about it

If you care about the future of the planet, we want your friends to care too. The Panda Made Me Do It is about collecting, sharing and celebrating things that people are doing for our planet.

What could you do?

They need primary schools to take part in the WWF and BT Green Ambassador scheme, which aims to encourage a new generation of sustainability champions. The Green Ambassadors scheme is helping pupils to make their green ideas a reality, building a more sustainable future for their local community. For example:
● At Alphington Primary in Devon, BT education volunteer Clare works with her daughter Amelia and her school friends to help them be more aware of the need to protect the planet, and do their bit to reduce their impact on it

● So far, through the scheme, they’ve created their own plastic bottle recycling point, made a nature pond, built a story-telling hut from mud and recycled wood, and conducted surveys to show each class its energy consumption and find ways to minimise waste.

● As Amelia says, having the colourful Green Ambassador graphics around “helps me remember to do things to help the school and the world.”

What can you do?

If you’d like more children to learn about green issues and sustainability by taking action in their primary schools, make sure your local school knows about the Green Ambassadors scheme. Teachers can register now and a school kit will
be sent within 28 days: http://register.education.co.uk/greenambassadors

This week with a group of Year 7 students I have started working on the .COMmunity project inspired by Saltash.net teachers James Edwards and Jen Dunkey.

What is it?

“This project has been set up to empower the students to take control of their learning and promote independent learning as well as peer to peer collaboration. The students will be deciding on what the content will be and therefore shaping how this project develops.

As teachers we hope to link students and their communities from around the world. It is our hope that this project will help show the similarities and diversity of the different cultures and communities in our world.”

The idea is that students and schools to collaborate with each other via the projects website http://dotcommunity2012.wordpress.com/  to allow them to build and establish their own communities. Showing what they
value as individuals as well as the importance of the different roles we all play within our communities in the places where we live.

I spent an hour with some Year 7 students talking about what community meant to them and then collaboratively creating a PowerPoint to produce some background information on them and the school to upload to the website.

http://www.slideshare.net/chickensaltash/international-school-dot-community-project

Check out my recent article in the TEs all about Pecha Kucha

http://www.tes.co.uk/article.aspx?storycode=6204429

Special congratulations to Katie Boothman this morning as last night at Microsoft’s European Innovative Education Forum in Lisbon @boothmank won the award for her project called the H.I.T squad.

This is fantastic news for Katie, her students and the school she joins a long list of UK, European and Worldwide winners from Saltash.net over the last years working with the Partners in Learning programme.

Katie is in her second year of teaching and already a leading figure in the innovative use of technology across the school which is saying something considering the national and international recognition that Saltash.net has as a specialist school in ICT and new technologies. As an NQT Katie from day 1 has strived to engage and inspire all the students she has taught to use new technologies to enhance their learning. After just one term into her NQT year she was leading a workshop for other teachers across the South West as part of a regional training event for the Specialist Schools and Academies Trust, modelling good practice from her classroom.

The H.I.T squad is underpinned by utilizing student’s passions for ICT and history to fully created their own resources which can be used as a teaching resource within lessons in addition to resources used to within partner primary schools. She saw how much students loved using new technologies and she wanted to embrace that so she created this project. The objectives were to: to use ICT to increase knowledge of and enthusiasm for History; to facilitate pupil led teaching and learning within peer groups; to develop links within the broader community using ICT and to encourage students to read, write, and peer assess one another’s work through the use of new technologies.

You can see some of the HIT squad in action on their site:

http://wwwhitsquad101.edublogs.org/

You can read more about the project from this newspaper article here:

http://www.thisisplymouth.co.uk/Teacher-Katie-wins-prize-innovation/story-14258802-detail/story.html

Congratulations Katie we are all very proud of your achievements!

Check out an article in the TES this week featuring Microsoft’s Songsmith by me:

Science – Sing a song of study – http://www.tes.co.uk/article.aspx?storycode=6191829

Let me know what you think?

Check out an article in the TES this week featuring Microsoft’s Songsmith by me:

Science – Sing a song of study – http://www.tes.co.uk/article.aspx?storycode=6191829

Let me know what you think?

What is it all about?

“Apps for Good is an award-winning course where young people learn to create imaginative mobile apps that change their world. Our students create apps that make a difference and solve real life issues that matter to them and their community, giving them a launchpad in social enterprise and the exciting world of technology, design and innovation.

Participants work together in teams to find out what issues they want to tackle and how best to solve them with mobile and web applications. With a focus on solving real-life issues that matter to young people and/or the communities they live in, students learn about the full software product development process in a very practical way. Apps that are successfully designed and prototyped may be selected for professional build via our annual Apps for Good National Competition.”

To learn more about it check out the video below:

As a school we have been working with Apps for good for this academic year and the students are really enjoying it.

If you want to get your school involved in next year then follow the link below and register your interest:

http://appsforgood.org/course/apply/

I am so excited to finally have the much awaited guest blog post by my brilliant collegue Ben Rowe @itsmerowey. Ben is an amazing teacher who normally teaches French, Learning to Learn and Integrated Learning at Saltash.net on rare occasions he even teaches Science but only when he lets me teach French, we have it all on video maybe one day we will share it. You can read what Ben gets up to on his blog:

“I have been teaching Year 7 Integrating Learning all year. It is fantastic. We deliver the subject 6 times a week and it is largely skill based, drawing on subject matter from across the whole curriculum.

For their current project the students are designing a Business Enterprise idea with an ethically sound element to it.

As part of their project I asked them to make a video using Talking Tom & Ben News for iPad By Out Fit 7 Ltd. You can find it here http://itunes.apple.com/gb/app/talking-tom-ben-news-for-ipad/id444947784?mt=8

If you click on the video you can see a dialogue between two cartoon characters talking about their project. They chose to do it as a news report. What I really liked about this particular app was the ability to record sound and video separately. The pupils were limited with recording time because I only have the free version but there was a pleasing side-effect. The students had to edit what they were going to say so that it was succinct.

All in all the students had a great deal of fun producing a short presentation on their project. I can thoroughly recommend giving it a go!!!! You can see the kids video below:

Better than some TV news

If you haven’t been to the O2 Learn site for a while, you might not know that their awards are back and they are awarding £2,000 every week!  They are continuing to help everyone connect to great teaching by creating Britain’s Biggest Classroom via teacher-created content.

See my blog from last year here: http://whydidthechickencrosstheroad.org.uk/2010/11/05/how-do-you-fancy-winning-50k-for-yourself-100k-for-your-school/

This year, they are thanking every UK teacher who uploads a video lesson to O2 Learn with a free mobile broadband pack. They’re also introducing a weekly Best Lesson award, giving you the chance to win £2000 for you and your school department every week .

To date, O2 Learn has over 1,000 lessons available. All of which are curriculum focused and checked by their “Learning Champions”.

They have also recently introduced ‘Related Video’ functionality to make it even easier to find the lessons that are useful to you.

The competition works like this in 2012:

1. Secondary teachers upload a short video of their favourite lesson to O2 Learn and receive a free mobile broadband pack
2. Thousands of students across the country watch and rate the lessons that are useful to them
3. O2 Learn award prizes to the best lessons every week.

I think it is definitely worth a look!

It is with great sadness that I have resigned from my post as Deputy Headteacher at Saltash.net, I have loved every single minute of the last five years at the school, the children, staff and community are simply amazing and they have always shown me great support and encouragement in everything I have done both professionally and personally.

After five years at the school I feel that it is the right time for me to move on especially with being offered such a fantastic opportunity for my career and my family. A new adventure lies ahead in a slightly more exotic, tropical coop than Cornwall and as a family we are extremely excited at the prospect of it.

As of Easter I begin my new role as the Senior Education Consultant for Imagine Education in their Asia Pacific office. I am incredibly excited and honoured to be joining someone like Imagine education and I will now have the amazing opportunity to work on some of their educational transformation projects in that region. There will be updates on this on the Imagine site over the next few weeks: http://www.imagineeducation.net/ 

Feel free to leave nice comments about how much you will miss me

Anyway back to business, one of the things I have to do is find a good replacement, so the advert is now out or will be very soon on the Guardian and TES websites but if you want a sneak preview then see the link on our website: http://bit.ly/zhqITn

So if you fancy relocating to a beautiful part of the UK and working in an amazing school leading on the innovative use of ICT/new technologies then apply, feel free to get in touch to have an informal chat about it.

The final thing I would like to say is a huge thank you to all of you who are reading this blog and who I connect and collaborate through here or on things like Twitter. You have been a great support to me over the years and an inspiration to my work. I will still be here in one way or another and would like to continue to connect, however perhaps as the artist formerly known as @chickensaltash.