a sort of homecoming...

After 9 months AWOL in the wilderness, it comes as no surprise that my return to the classroom at the beginning of January was a severe jolt to the mind and body. It's been very dark, very wet and the whole world seems very depressed. Woolies is also a distant memory. The winter monotony of waking up in darkness, returning home in darkness and never bothering to open your curtains is a stark contrast to 9 months of adventure and excitement. 'Credit crunch' is as common a topic of news amongst the kids in my class as the usual Old Firm nonsense. (As a lifelong Aberdeen fan, it'll always be a constant thorn). Thankfully, I have one faithful Partick Thistle supporter brightening the gloom amongst the faded greens and blues. And another of my kids has brilliantly rebranded the credit crisis as the 'MONEY MUNCH!' You gotta love that.

So what's new in education? Not much it seems. ACE is now CfE. GLOW is making slow but careful progress. The influx of new teachers of the Bebo generation in my school, who have decimated the average age of the staff, seem completely unphased by GLOW. Which is great. The email is rubbish, though.

And after weeks of feeling rusty as hell, lost at sea and about as effective in the classroom as a chocolate fireguard; I'm beginning to settle back into the normal way of things. Lucky to have a job. I know. Some of my pupils' parents have sadly been made unemployed; a sobering thought.
Still, it's impossible not to stop the mind sailing blissfully off to foreign shores at 3.05pm on another dreich Wednesday afternoon. Truth is, I'm not alone. After their third full day of wet breaks some of the children in my class were on pressure gauge setting, 'EXPLODE!' Friday nights are once again working their therapeutic magic through the twin turb0 combo of LOUD 80s/90s music and HOT curries. Nostalgia and spice in served equal measure.

We did have that one weekend of amazing powdered snow. Husker Du? At 9pm, on the Sunday night, a gang of us charged to Kelvingrove park armed only with Sainsbury's plastic bags. Skidding and charging our way down every hill of virgin snow we could claim, we met a lovely couple at the top of the largest hill armed with a classic wooden Rolls Royce of a sledge. The masked pair were well hidden under woolly hats and scarves. They were also kind and gracious enough to gie us a wee shottie on the demon machine. The voice of the man was really familiar. He was dead small too. After a couple of shots, the couple departed with full speed and grace down the hill. It was then that the voice and face clicked. The wee man was none other than Gordon Strachan! What a good guy. And he was a brilliant player for Aberdeen back in the day. Perhaps the Old Firm are not so bad after all.

Steady... that's maybe pushing my optimism a bit too far.

The Incredibles' jourrney...

It has been a while since I last posted. Been very busy. In 4 days time I will be setting of with my partner, Kathy, for a nine month life of grime traveling the globe. Very exciting. For those of you who want to follow our journey (staff and pupils) please surf to our travel blog, and keep us updated with any top tips and comments while we roam around. http://furry-boots.blogspot.com/

My P6 class have enjoyed experimenting with their own blog. We've had a great 3 terms together, and it's nice to look back at it as a sort of online yearbook. None of it would have been possible without all their creative ideas, enthusiasm and sense of fun. They are an incredible bunch of kids. It has been a joy.

I wonder what changes will take place in education while I'm away? It will be interesting to find out where Curriculum for Excellence and Glow will be nine months from now. My biggest gripe with Glow has always been the cost (£44 million I'm led to believe) and that it takes a while to get used to. But I can definitely see its huge potential and there are lots of very talented teachers who will make it a success despite this. And maybe I'm just used to getting things for free on the net. How much does a Gmail account or Facebook account cost in real terms? These people earn millions in advertising.

Most of all, I can't wait to take a rest from education. I spend so much of my time thinking about lessons, resources and individuals that right up to this point I am still running around trying to do a million things at once. Come Saturday, I can leave that behind and live life a little differently. This trip is something we have both been planning for some time. I have no idea what it is really going to be like but I can't wait to find out...

Mr M has left the building.

Glow...

... worms








... in the dark.

Attribution






... sticks








After leaving another twilight session to introduce Glow to the staff, I am very tempted to be cynical about Glow, but I am countering my urges by focusing of the benefits of online content for enhancing teaching and learning.
I have already covered some places I find useful for finding and editing photos here. In this post I would like to cover the topic of copyrighted images and possible ways for schools to avoid getting themselves in a pickle once staff and pupils start uploading loads of photos to their Glow groups. This was an issue that arose in the twilight session.

There are many options for using images and resources in education that would cost you money in the commercial sector.

Creative Commons is a global licensing project. The various licenses you can choose to label the resources you create are explained here.

If you click on the symbol beside each license then that links to a page where you can download html to add a badge to your web page or glow page. Probably the best option for schools is the 'Attribution Non Commercial Share Alike' license. Quite a tongue twister! Basically, it allows you share content with others as long as they acknowledge where it came from. They can also do what they want with the content as long as it is for non-commercial purposes. Perhaps where there are pictures of children it would be more suitable to choose a less flexible license.

If you use flickr, then flickr allows you to add Creative Common licenses to your photos. Here is an example of one of my photos with a Creative Commons license attached.

The Creative Commons search tool is a great way to find suitable pictures and videos that come under the correct license. You can choose various search engines from Google to flickr, and by selecting 'Search for works I can modify, adapt, or build upon', you are provided with a selection of resources it is safe to use in the classroom, or share on a Glow group.

I think that because we are using resources for educational purposes, then we can stretch the law a little bit, but it is better to be safe than sorry. Check if there are any copyright issues with resources, and if in doubt email the person to ask their permission.

VIDEO RESOURCES
Sites like youtube and blip.tv make it very easy to embed content directly onto your Glow site, therefore getting round problems of downloading and copyright. Teachertube and Schooltube are alternatives where filters block access to youtube. But I have found Teachertube to be quite slow. Hopefully, this will improve in the future because it is a great resource.

If you want to download video resources, then there lots of great resources available through the Creative Archive. The BBC led the way initially with a wonderful selection of clips to download and edit for educational purposes. I have them all! But since have pulled all the clips and seemed to have changed focus to streaming content such as this. Unfortunately, the Creative Archive seems to have lost its steam, but their are lots of downloadable clips available under the license from Teachers TV, the BFI, ITN Source (which allows you to download clips in Quicktime)pick n mix (channel 4) Channel 4 and the Open University.

You can access streamed clips through school computers of the BFI's extensive ScreenOnline resource. There are some excellent history packages for streaming to be found here. Scottish Screen are developing a similar resource for Scottish film clips in their archive.

You can use your school computer to access clips and download free clips (for educational purposes) from the British Pathe website. This is lots of fun for old fashioned newsreel soundbites!
The Internet Archive is an American project similar to the Creative Archive and full of goodies to use.
This NASA site has a fantastic collection of interesting, if sometimes very hazy, Apollo Lunar clips to download.

SOUND RESOURCES
This link for the Audio Network Library, if accessed at school, allows you to listen to and download its clips for free. Teachers (and pupils) can listen and browse the selection outside of school hours here.

Information about using copyrighted songs can be found here.

There are many other sites too, but I think this entry is already too long. I am too tired and I am writing this after watching the famous Aberdeen go down 4-1 to Dundee United. Gutted. Good night.