Education Matters

ActivSharing , an interactive technology best practice event, comes to South East London

Last week, the first ActivSharing event took place in England. Hosted in London at Lewisham CLC, teachers from several London boroughs attended and we even had two teachers representing France and Germany.

An afternoon of interactive workshops

Both primary and secondary practitioners were able to enjoy an afternoon of interactive workshops led by teachers. The sessions covered topics such

as translating shapes, algebra and money, to using sound to create imaginative stories with young learners. The CLC was extremely accommodating, giving us access to four of their ICT suites, which ensured attendees were involved in 3 out of the 4 workshops to maximise their afternoon.

This event presented a great opportunity for teachers to share their experiences, exchange tips and tricks, as well demonstrating some lesson ideas and examples that they had created themselves. Each attendee was then able to take the resources away with them to practice.

Feedback

Promethean’s latest interactive software, ActivInspire was also demonstrated to showing some of the exciting opportunities within the learning arena. Teachers w:re then asked to feedback their thoughts on the afternoon using ActivExpression learner response devices, with over 95% stating that they would attend a similar Promethean event!

The teachers’ presentations are now available to download from Planet:

• ActivShare on my Promethean Board by Claire Webb
• Independent Work for Literacy Lessons by Jackie Sippitt
• Children Using Activprimary by Karen Hamilton
• Indian Musical Instruments by Sophie Mount.

Do you ever wonder who actually gets the grants you take so much time to fill out an application to receive? If you apply for them and are not one of the lucky few who receive them, then you probably don’t know who did (unless there is a website to go to for that information). Well, don’t give up on writing them!

I know how it feels to get the letter telling you that your grant wasn’t approved. I also know what it feels like to actually receive one. I taught for twelve years before coming to Promethean and had the amazing opportunity to receive a Promethean ActivClassroom the last two years I taught. I must say that those were the best years I had as a teacher, and (IF I ever had to go back) I don’t know that I could go back into the classroom without having those pieces of technology.

Applying for grant funds

The way I was fortunate enough to receive my complete ActivClassroom was through a grant. Several districts in my state received money from CISCO and our school district was one of the lucky few. We received a three-year grant to help provide technology in the classrooms. Well, how do you determine what to buy and who gets it with that type of grant? The way our technology department decided to go about this was to allow teachers to write a grant to the district, and then they would decide who would receive the technology purchased with the overall grant funds.

Purchasing Promethean

The decision had been made to purchase Promethean ActivClassrooms (board, slate, votes/expressions, tablet, projector) with the money provided from CISCO. We (meaning teachers) really didn’t know much about what we were getting (we rarely ever went to any large technology conferences due to budgets), but we were all very excited when we found out we had been chosen.

There were a lot of teachers who didn’t bother writing the grant because they thought the actual products would be something else they would have to learn how to use and it would take too much time.

Over the course of the next year, many teachers wished they had taken the time to write that grant, and after seeing the teachers using the equipment in the classroom and hearing about the improvements in student grades…..well, let me just say that the number of applications the second year tripled! The technology department went from having about 35 applicants to over 100. Everyone wanted the technology after they saw what it did in the classroom!

Take your time and do your research

Did it take a lot of extra time that those hesitant teachers thought it would take? Yes, it took time to learn and time to prepare, but it was all worth it! Those teachers who were reluctant to try it even saw its potential and decided it might be worth the risk.

I wrote all of this to say – Take the time to write the grant. Don’t shrug off the idea of something new just because you may not be technology savvy and think it might take too much time to learn. Everything takes some time to learn, but you never know what you can do with it until you try using it!

Over the next coming weeks the Planet team are going to be blogging about some of the aspects of the new Planet (referred to here as Planet 2.0) that will make your life in the classroom a whole lot easier.

Our whole ethos here at the Planet is amount minimising lesson preparation time, whilst helping you to connect with other teachers, access quality resources and best practice advice, to help make YOUR lessons go that extra ActivMile.

Skimmed navigation, straight to the point

Let’s face it, we want to take you straight to what you’re looking for so we’ve reduced the amount of navigation it takes to find Resources, Teacher Features & Themes.

We’ve brought more of these functions to the top layer and put links to some of the most requested information, straight at your finger tips.

Faster, faster, faster!

We’ve listened to your comments and responded with a major investment in new technology behind the scenes, such as a new Content Management System, to make your Planet 2.0 experience faster for both browsing and downloading.

Planet 2.0 uses .Net based applications which serve out requested information much quicker. As well as this, there’s an amazing new Community system coming to the new Planet, which is fully Web 2.0 compliant.

Like a premium coffee, we’ve refined for a smoother taste!

To make the user experience even more easier, we’ve looked at the way that teachers use the site and refined the ‘journey’. Take for example our resources section – a simple search can now be done from any page and all relevant resources will be grouped by new curriculum areas (more on that in another blog entry).

To summarise…

• We’ve made the user experience easier
• We’ve enhanced the technology to make the site quicker
• We’ve reduced the layers to get straight to what you need

Join us next week as we blog more about Planet 2.0 and talk about what’s new with the Resources section!

I recently finished a great book called Purple Cow, by Seth Godin. The thing is, this wasn’t a book about education, it was a book about marketing.  Why is marketing relevant to education? Because marketers spend billions of dollars every year to get our attention! Remind you of the millions of hours teachers spend to get student’s attention?

In short, the Purple Cow is something new and interesting that your students have not seen before.   The story goes: the author was driving along the French countryside and was in awe at the storybooklike cows grazing in the green pastures alongside the road.  It was amazing to him and his family. However, after 20 minutes they found themselves saying “Oh, another cow”

The point is, something that may seem incredibly novel and intriguing will eventually lose its power over time.  What would be interesting after fields of black and white cows?  A purple cow of course!  As educators, our job is to keep finding that purple cow! We know that even a field of purple cows would get stale after 20 minutes so the lesson is:

Keep them guessing what you’ll do next.  Don’t always rely on your old bag of tricks.  Don’t use the same reveal methods every time.  Keep structure and routine to your pages, but give them enough variety to to engage your students. remember when you first showed your student the ActivBoard? It didn’t matter what you used it for, they were engaged. Now you need to change things up a bit. If something is “cool” to students on the first day of school, it’s bound to be ancient by the last day of school. So go find your Purple Cow!

Aside from the traditional reveal techniques, you may want to download and install this “Hiding Things” resource pack to get some ideas.