Category: news

Sifting and reading through the bumph I picked up at BETT, I came across an article in this week’s TES (a bargain at 50p – although I admit I was more drawn by the potential of the bag in which it was packaged) with the above title.

In a speech this week at the Moving Young Minds conference in London, Lord Puttnam, who is chairman of Futurelab, said
“Technology savvy children are switching off and becoming ’emotional truants’ because schools are not relevant in a digital age”

He went on to add that “the education system seemed ‘out of sync’ with all that counted for young people……children were disengaging from formal education because it did not reflect their experience of digital interaction.”

The article concludes with some statistics about the use of technology by young people –

• nearly all children do some homework on the computer
• 77% use the Internet daily
• three out of five use social networking sites like Bebo, and even more played video games, used mobile phones or digital cameras

The final statement was particularly telling – ‘young people believed that understanding technology was almost as important in life as having a good teacher or a supportive family’.

Especially in the context of the comments by Jim Knight about Internet safety this week, it make sense to me that we use and embrace new technologies that children are already skilled in using and turn them to our purposes – for example, see this article about the use of Nintendo DS
If we allow children to use these tools in our lessons, we can guide them in using them responsibly and stop them from being taboo. And before we can use them in our teaching, we need to find out about them ourselves. That’s one reason I went to BETT and Teachmeet – to find out. But you don’t have to go to conferences. I bought a Nintendo DS after listening to Ewan McIntosh talk on this theme at Language World last year, and my 9 year old son has been having a marvellous time teaching me how to use it as have the pupils I teach at school. It’s led to several discussions about their favourite game sand several have gone away and had a go at Brain training in Spanish – there’s no greater incentive than beating the teacher’s score ;0)

I’m not saying anything new I know but if people keep saying it and doing it …..

Checking my Google reader I came across the latest post by Jeff Utecht on his blog, The Thinking Stick.
In it, he relates how he has spent today teaching 9th graders about blogging –

The classes were each 80 minutes long…plenty of time to setup a blog, write a short blog post, learn about posts vs. pages, walk through how to manage comments, change themes, update options, change password, and have a discussion on the use of the blog.

Wow! He goes on to explain how he related blogging to Facebook, comparing their new blogs to Facebook pages, and the sidebar widgits to all the Applications you can add to your Facebook page. The language of Facebook was familiar to the students so it made perfect sense to them! That was the first thing that struck me – making things relevant.

The second was the fact that the teacher was in the room, and learning at the same time. It’s a model I like – my best lessons have been when I’ve been learning with the kids – and particularly when they’ve been teaching me. I never tire of learning and hope my pupils are as eager to learn as me!

Jeff comments towards the end of his post-
‘This is the reason why I love blogs, they open up a whole world of opportunities.’

I’d just read Ewan McIntosh‘s article in The Guardian as well in which he concludes
‘The future (of using new technologies) is in teachers seeing for themselves what bounties await down this yellow brick road, before worrying about how they are going to bring Class 2C with them on Monday morning.’

I’m new to blogging and the like but I can see that the possibilities are endless. The kids need little persuading when I suggest using the latest tool I have discovered, and are learning without realising it much of the time.

For example, my 9 year old son had to do a topic on the Egyptians and decided to do half of it using Photostory3 – the quality and quantity of information he gave in his presentations was greater than he would normally have produced. And he learned how to use a new application – because he saw me doing it and it looked fun!

So, I’ll keep learning and taking the advice of John Hunter quoted in Ewan’s article –

My BBC Online daily e-mail informed me this morning that, according to a British Council survey, ‘UK children aged 11 to 16 have the lowest international awareness among their age group in 10 countries’.

The article reported that 4,170 children with Internet access were asked about language learning and international affairs and the results were scored on an index from 7 to 0 –

1. Nigeria 5.15
2. India 4.86
3. Brazil 4.53
4. Saudi Arabia 3.74
5. Spain 3.29
6. Germany 3.24
7. China 2.97
8. Czech Republic 2.51
9. USA 2.22
10. UK 2.19

When questioned, children in the UK were least likely to want to try and understand world affairs, and saw themselves as citizens of their country rather than the world. Young people in Brazil were among the most likely to agree with the statement “it is a good idea for schools in my country to have links or partnerships with schools in other countries” but the least likely to be in schools that had such links.

The article finishes with the comments of Martin Davidson, British Council chief executive
“Our school children cannot afford to fall behind the rest of the world. For the UK to compete in a global economy, it is vital that we encourage our young people to have an interest in and engagement with the world around them.”

Intercultural Understanding is a key strand of the KS2 Framework for MFL (although we’re supposed to use PLL (Primary Language Learning) to get away from the negative connotations that ‘foreign’ can have) As far as I’m concerned, opening the ‘window on the world’ is a vital part of learning languages. At Whitehouse Common, we’re taking this seriously and I’ve written raising international awareness and understanding into the SIP for PLL as a specific target.

Last year we made a start on this with an eTwinning project called Somos lo que Celebramos. Working with Colegio Público César Hurtado Delicado in Valverde de Leganés, near Badajoz in Spain, we compared and contrasted festivals and celebrations in the two countries. The project not only broadened the pupils’ knowledge of Spanish festivals and culture but also made them look at their own celebrations through new eyes. We won a Runners-up Prize in the National eTwinning Awards for the project too – I was very pleased – my head wanted to know why we hadn’t won!
(If you want to find out more about this, have a look at the presentation I prepared for The Isle of Wight Conference where I spoke about the project, and eTwinning in general – you’ll find it in my Box of Goodies. )

This year we’re on a roll and are pushing the boat out into deep waters! We achieved the Intermediate International Schools Award for last year’s efforts and this year, we’re hoping to achieve the Full Award (fingers crossed!)

We’re taking part in the Voices of the World project , have two Ted-E-Bears in North America and are about to become involved in a new Teddy based project with Silvia Tolisano. Our eTwinning project for this year is called Somos lo que comemos and hopefully will involve five countries comparing and contrasting food and healthy lifestyles in our countries (details being finalised at the mo!). Then there’s Hands around the World – 480 handprints to parcel up (and cut out!!) to be sent around the world to other classes as we compare ‘Holidays around the world’ and, later on in the year, a postcard exchange. I’m working on email links with South America and, following on from the success of this
year’s European Day of Languages, I’ll be starting planning for next year after Easter!

I’ll tell you more about these projects over the next few weeks but just wanted to respond to the article with some examples of how we might address this – hopefully in a few years’ time, children in the UK will be more globally aware and see themselves as ‘global citizens’, as they are encouraged to reflect on their own experiences as they appreciate those of others.

I was interested to read this- the headline story today in the Education section of my daily news e-mail from the BBC (thanks to Joe Dale for pointing me in that direction).

The Chair of the Commons education committee, Barry Sheerman is quoted as saying “Successful schools are creative schools” and he suggests that although many schools acknowledge that creativity is key, they are afraid to really embrace it due to the pressures of academic standards.

The report urges the Government to fund creativity and make it a key part of the Every Child Matters agenda, stating “Creativity should be at the heart of the very heart of teaching and learning.” Amen to that!!