This term’s Global Messenger is based on the theme of Earth Hour (29/3/8) and Earth Day (22/4/8) . Did you know that an average person uses 57 acres of natural resources per year, but the Earth’s biological capacity is only 41 acres per person.
Multimedia Resources All the videos below can also be saved as file downloads from communICTy videos.
Download Title Earth Hour – Turn your lights off for 1 hour on 29/3/8 global warming ad1 – So what if the affects of global warming will be irreversable in 30 years global warming ad2 – What is the biggest threat we face in the world today Global Wombat, All is One – Everything you need to know about how to get along on earth for the next million years.
Going Green.ppt – A presentation on green statistics and how to do your bit to save the planet.
[slideshare id=149923&doc=going-green-1193737361217716-3&w=425]
Notre Dame Sites Going Green – an elanguages project with links to resources, forums and a poster activity. ND Sheffield Environmental Site – Live webcams and weather station data
Global Dates
29/03/08 – Earth Hour. People and organisations around the world are going to switch off their lights at 8pm local time. A great activity for your students to try at home. Also see video
22/04/08 – Earth Day. Some good teaching resources and Earth Day TV
On Friday I’m giving my first ever presentations at the BETT Show. I’m on the Policy in Practice stand and Stephen Heppell’s stand in the afternoon. This should make for a busy day!
The Pale Blue Dot is a photograph of planet Earth made by Voyager 1 from a record distance, showing it against the vastness of space. It is also the title of a 1994 book by astronomer Carl Sagan that was inspired by the photo. In 2001, it was selected by space.com as one of the top ten space science photos.
‘Raise the bar, narrow the gap’. This buzz phrase during the 4th iNet International Conference in Beijing had particular resonance in the city preparing itself for the next Olympics. For me, the main focus of the conference was sharing new ways to help all our students achieve their personal best.
Wherever the speakers came from in the world, the message was the same. If we want our school to perform better the main priority is not concentrating on what we teach, but who we are teaching it to. James O’Neil, Principal of Carmel RC Technology College summed this up really well. He explained that analysing student data is often like seeing the terracotta army. It is only when you view each soldier individually that you realise that every one is unique. At his school they have a consistent tracking system to build up a more detailed picture of each student’s progress in every subject. Students also have focussed conversations with their learning mentor to make better sense of their data and set targets for future progress.
One of the most important Olympic ideals is the need for team work to succeed. The students of Greenford High School are a shining example of this. Like all schools they have a Senior Leadership Team, but they also have a Junior Leadership Team comprising of students. Each member of the SLT has a JLT buddy and they have a wide variety of responsibilities including observing lessons and interviewing job applicants. New initiatives such as moving to a three year KS4 are also discussed with the JLT. In this way the student population not only have a voice, but are able to have an impact on the the whole school community to work together as a team.
At the opening ceremony of the Olympic games the athletes will march in as separate nations, each with their own flag. The closing ceremony brings all the participants together to unite under one flag. The iNet Conference promoted a similar message. Schools should not innovate in isolation. They need to reach out and become global enterprises. If schools are to become a model of how the world should be, it is vital that enable teachers and students to share ideas with their peers in other countries. It was therefore very encouraging to see the enthusiasm of delegates to seize the potential of the internet and websites such as www.elanguages.org to bring this about.
The motto of the Beijing Olympics is ‘One World, One Dream’. The iNet conference showed how different education systems and individual schools can come together to improve learning for all. It is now up to the returning delegates to make the dream a reality.
My presentation at the conference: iNet07 – A powerpoint presentation that I gave iNet07_handout – A handout of quotes and website links to go with the presentation
My Resources Update
[slideshare id=149923&doc=going-green-1193737361217716-3&w=425] Going Green.ppt is a presentation I’ve made with some useful global statistics and ways for students to act for change. Good as an assembly and/or wall display. My School Life is a set of lesson plans for students to make a presentation about their emotions in different school situations. It has a series of blog posts that students can contribute moderated comments to. So far children in the UK, USA, India and Serbia have taken part.
Oxfam Website Relaunched
The new Oxfam Education website is here! With a fresh new look and new search options, it’s now even easier to find what you need to take a global approach across the curriculum. Oxfam Education offers a huge range of free teaching ideas, lesson plans and online resources, including all of your favourite Cool Planet resources – plus a funky new look for our children’s website. It’s the essential destination for Global Citizenship teaching!
School Partnership Toolkits
Oxfam’s Building Successful School Partnerships helps you build equal, effective partnerships that have real educational value. New eTwinning Handbook a great way to learn how to get started in an eTwinning project and to find out about some of the top projects from the 2005-2006 school year. Partners in Learning draws on the practise of schools around the world and Development Education Centres in the UK . With an emphasis on global citizenship, it answers the big questions and practical issues for any school considering or already involved in a sustainable learning partnership.
VSO Global Educators’ Register
VSO’s Global Educators Register has over 156 people trained to support teachers in embedding a global dimension in the curriculum. All Educators are VSO returned volunteers, have lived in a developing country for two years, received full training in Global Education activities, and have knowledge of a range of resources. This is a free resource, which can help a partnership develop or make the most of an existing one.
Teaching Resources
Save the Children’s Welcome to My World pack explores the lives of children from Peru, India, Ethiopia and Vietnam. Real life stories are told through four short films and are used as the basis for activities for Key Stage 2 geography and citizenship.
Events
04/12/07 -The East of England Development Education Network are holding a FREE one-day event in Cambridge for teachers, advisers, ITE tutors, NGO workers and all global educators. To get informed of and inspired by the global dimension work happening across the region and to get involved in the plans for the next five years! For more info email claire.bennett@harambeecentre.org.uk 12/11/07-British Council National Conference, Involvement for All will give you the opportunity to share best practice and investigate new ways to bring a global dimension to the classroom.
I’m always on the look out for ways to bring more relevant themes into ICT. I’m also keen to bridge the gap between the ways students use computers in school and at home.
A project that my school is doing on SEAL (social, emotional aspects of learning) provided the ideal opportunity to update our first unit in Year 7. They used to create presentations about their family and hobbies, but this was rather dull and the content of what the students produced did not teach them anything new. Instead we used an emotions tree diagram with people showing a variety of different emotions and asked the students to create presentations showing which five characters best summed up their own personality.
I needed to find a way to enable my pupils to share their ideas and use the best language to describe their emotions. The solution came in the form of edublogs.org. This free, educational blog site allowed me to quickly put up an idea on the web and then invite my students to contribute comments (see examples). This is a safe and easy way to use web2.0 as there is no need to generate accounts and the comments are moderated by the teacher before they go live on the Internet.
To add a global dimension to our research, I created a project page on elanguages.org. This DfES funded website enables teachers around the world to link up and collaborate ideas and resources. I soon had a response from Apeejay School in New Delhi. You can imagine the cries of excitement when my students were reading their comments and found phrases written by Nikita, Dhruv, Eashan and their classmates in India! They were also surprised to find out how similar they felt about school life in both countries.
Here are some examples of what the students wrote to describe the person who is scared to climb higher up the tree: I feel like this person when I am in a class that I am not so good at, so I must cling on to hope that I will still get a good result! Krissi, UK I feel like this image when I am feeling low, because then I feel helpless and alone in this world. Kavisha, India
Here are some examples of what the students wrote to describe the person at the top of the tree: I feel like this person when I do well at lessons and get it right because I have tried really hard. Zak, UK I feel like this person when I’ve overcome all the obstacles in my work and I feel on the top of the world. Ujval, India
There has been a marked difference in the engagement of my students in creating presentations about their emotions towards school life rather than their families and hobbies. I have also been surprised at how personalised their phrases are. I have realised that SEAL is an interesting theme to explore with my students. It also teaches them valuable lessons about positive attitudes towards learning and the need to understand themselves better.
Often in ICT, we concentrate more on how to create a product rather than the message that it is trying to communicate. However, I am convinced that allowing students appropriate time to generate quality content on a theme that is relevant to their own lives leads them into producing a better end product and consequently better progress.
CommunICTy Blog has moved to edublogs!
The latest update of edublogs has a number of new features that has motivated me to move my blog over to communicty.edublogs.org . I’m particularly pleased with their new selection of presentation themes which enable you to upload and crop your own header. ICTnet East Conference
I’m organising a conference for ICT teachers, trainees, NQTs and trainers with Ian Noble from Tendring College, Essex. The theme is ‘Moving cutting edge ICT into sustainable practice’. We will be demonstrating ways of teaching with VLEs, blogs, wikis, online surveys, audacity, movie maker and flashmeeting.
The conference will take place at the Eastern Leadership Centre in Cambridge on Thursday 15th November and will cost £50. You can make a booking to attend the conference online by visiting this page on the SSAT Website.
KS3 ICT Resources
QCA have now launched their new Secondary Curriculum. It is great to see that themes such as global learning, personalised learning, creativity and collaboration have been included. Luckily, our adapted KS3 ICT units seem to relate really well to the changes. I’ve moved our online resources homepage to http://communicty.wikispaces.com/ks3ict .
I’ve updated some of our units and am in the process of creating some new ones. MyTree – This unit will provide a new theme for unit 7.1. Instead of students describing their families and pets, they will create a presentation about their emotions in different school situations. They will share their ideas by contributing comments to blog posts.
7.3 Leaflet – Instead of creating a leaflet about their school, students research the global right to education and share their opinions by contributing comments to a blog post on how they learn better and what makes a good teacher.
Peace One Day - This unit is a good way to start the year with a new class. Students research the theme of the International Day of Peace (21st Sept) and create posters to put around the school to promote the day.
8.6 Film Reviews – This unit enables students to explore a variety of different applications whilst researching their favourite films. They contribute moderated comments to blog posts, complete an online survey, analyse the data in a database, create a text based film review and finally an audio podcast review. Pirates of the caribbean 2
9.2 Online Survey – This unit enables students to compare the lives of young people in the UK and USA. We are hoping to involve students in other countries too this year for a global survey. Students then analyse the data using pivot charts and write a report to explain what the data proves.
My Recent Articles Global Messenger – a 3 monthly enewsletter I write on putting a global dimension into the curriculum. email global@notredamehigh.norfolk.sch.uk if you would like to subscribe. Giving ICT a Global Dimension – Ideas on how to use blog posts flashmeeting and leaflets to communicate with students in other countries. Personalising Data – How to generate and analyse real data
Who cares how you get to school?!! Having to create a survey and analyse the results can be quite a tricky and time consuming business. Therefore, students are often given data sets of ready made, often fictitious, answers. Also the same old themes seem to be used over and over again. To be frank, very few students are interested in how children travel to school!
Real Data
Online surveys are a great way to enable students to generate and analyse real information from people that actually exist anywhere in the world. They can also empower students to research issues that they are actually interested in.
There are now a number of quick and easy to use sites that enable teachers and/or students to create a survey and then collate the data into a file for analysis. One of the best free sites I have found to do this is surveymonkey.com. It enables the user to create a 10 question survey for up to 100 responses. For the last three years I have been using SurveyAtSchool. There is a small charge, but it gives the user more control and features to use.
KS3 Resources KS3 ICT unit 7.5 introduces students to generating and analysing survey data. Our Dept. has adapted the QCA sample resources to make it a project on ways to save energy. By analysing the data students can then suggest ways to reduce our energy consumption.
Another unit that we have adapted from the KS3 ICT strategy is 9.2b Online Surveys. After creating a project plan our students record their assumptions about how the lives of young people in the UK and USA differ. From these initial ideas they create hypotheses and then questions to prove/disprove them. We then compile the questions into one global survey and invite our link schools to participate. This year 1238 students took part!
The survey data is compiled and saved as a .csv file (comma seperated value). This can then be imported into a spreadsheet to be filtered and analysed. This year we taught the students how to create pivot tables. To view an example of how we analysed the data click here.
It is interesting to note that a number of our students’ stereotypical impressions of life in the USA were proved to be wrong. For example, on average, UK students ate chips more regularly and more of them had their own website than students in the USA.
As the students had thought of the themes and questions themselves they were much more motivated to analyse the data in detail and produce reports on what they discovered.
GCSE Resources
Our Y10/11 students also use online surveys as part of their AiDA course. This is an effective way for them to gather research from a large number of people. Our Y10 students are currently gathering information on whether parents are concerned about their children’s use of screen based media. To view their surveys and help them in their research click here. We’ve come up with a great formula to help count results when using filters. To view an example exercise in how to do this click here.
How much does it cost to feed a penguin? Creating a budget for a zoo is how many schools teach students to create and use a spreadsheet. It is an easy way to demonstrate how formulae can be used to calculate totals and work out how to make a profit. However, why study a place that does not exist and data that is probably made up?
According to 2020 Vision Gilbert Review and research produced by EPPI Centre ‘pupils are more likely to be engaged with the curriculum they are offered if they believe it is relevant and if they are given opportunities to take ownership of their learning.’ To make the vision a reality, teachers need to shift their focus from what they teach, to learning more about who they teach it to.
Achieving the vision with ICT In fact, many students are already personalising their learning. ‘By the age of 21 the average person will have spent 15,000 hours in formal education, 20,000 hours in front of the TV and 50,000 hours in front of a computer screen’ (Futures of learning Seminars, Future Learning Practice; seminar report June 2005). Young people are using technology informally to learn about real issues that interest them. The challenge for schools is whether they can catch up with their students!
Using real data
Instead of creating a model for an imaginary zoo, our students research all the ways they use water during an average day and calculate how much they actually use (see water unit). We then tell them that the water budget for a child at our link school in Malawi is only 20 litres. They then interrogate the model to find out ways to reduce their water budget. This really engages the students, as they are keen to find out how much water they use and the importance of using less.
We used to teach correlations by showing how to make scatter charts plotting height against shoe size of 100 children that did not actually exist. Trying to make sense of the data also led to rather embarressing questions such as what else can relate to your shoe size?! Instead, our students now use web sites such as the World Factbook to access a wide range of up to date national statistics. They explore the data independently to look for possible correlations such as life expectancy and GDP, or literacy rates and GDP etc. (see national statistics worksheet).
A good way of generating real data is by using an online survey tool such as SurveyMonkey or SurveyAtSchool. Our students create their own surveys on energy use at home. They analyse the data, then suggest ways to use less energy. They also create a survey to compare the lives of young people in the UK and USA. This year we had 1298 children in both countries complete the survey (see blog post).
Our KS3 students learn about confusion marketing in mobile phone contracts (see modelling unit). They are able to create models and use online databases to work out the best deal for the number of minutes they use. At KS4 we go on to teach students about personal finance using software called Adding Up To A Lifetime. Activities such as how to understand interest rates and compare bank accounts have also proved useful, not only for students but their teachers too!
Making the 2020 Vision a reality It is clear that technology has a significant role to play to inspire and motivate our learners. WWW stands for World Wide Web, however, many schools have yet to realise its true potential for bringing the real world into the classroom.
Global Footprint Quiz
Wherever the speakers came from in the world, the message was the same. If we want our school to perform better the main priority is not concentrating on what we teach, but who we are teaching it to. James O’Neil, Principal of Carmel RC Technology College summed this up really well. He explained that analysing student data is often like seeing the terracotta army. It is only when you view each soldier individually that you realise that every one is unique. At his school they have a consistent tracking system to build up a more detailed picture of each student’s progress in every subject. Students also have focussed conversations with their learning mentor to make better sense of their data and set targets for future progress.
At the opening ceremony of the Olympic games the athletes will march in as separate nations, each with their own flag. The closing ceremony brings all the participants together to unite under one flag. The iNet Conference promoted a similar message. Schools should not innovate in isolation. They need to reach out and become global enterprises. If schools are to become a model of how the world should be, it is vital that enable teachers and students to share ideas with their peers in other countries. It was therefore very encouraging to see the enthusiasm of delegates to seize the potential of the internet and websites such as 
Oxfam Website Relaunched
VSO Global Educators’ Register 
Here are some examples of what the students wrote to describe the person who is scared to climb higher up the tree:
Often in ICT, we concentrate more on how to create a product rather than the message that it is trying to communicate. However, I am convinced that allowing students appropriate time to generate quality content on a theme that is relevant to their own lives leads them into producing a better end product and consequently better progress.
CommunICTy Blog has moved to edublogs!
Our KS3 students learn about confusion marketing in mobile phone contracts (see 