Comments for Fearghal Kelly's thoughts

Comment on Why we’re trying twitter by fearghal

fearghal — Sun, 05 Feb 2012 21:22:21 +0000

David Gilmour provides an interesting perspective of what’s been going on with all this from his visit to a class last week here:
http://justtryingtobebetter.wordpress.com/2012/01/29/the-scary-truth-of-the-walk-through/#comment-133

Comment on Why we’re trying twitter by fearghal

fearghal — Sat, 04 Feb 2012 07:40:23 +0000

Thanks Janet,

Yeah the glog embedding was straightforward…glogster gave me an embed code and I just went into the html in google sites and pasted it across.

Planning with Google Forms has been even better than I’d imagined. As well as going into my form, they get an email of their plan – which includes a link to edit it. This is brilliant. So as things naturally change, they can go back and edit their plan, which in turn edits their entry in my Spreadsheet! Amazing!

I see what you mean about twitter…have you tried edmodo? I’ve not used it but I heard a few folk raving about it recently…

Thanks for all your support with this, it has incredibly valuable!

Comment on Why we’re trying twitter by Janet Abercrombie

Janet Abercrombie — Sat, 04 Feb 2012 06:59:35 +0000

Wow! Super-elaborate planning and a great reflection. I learned that Glogster can embed into Google sites. Must explore.

You’re correct that some students easily plan steps and tasks. Others struggle. It’s such an important life skill – well worth the time we give guiding them. Good idea to have students’ plans feed into Google forms (assuming that’s what you did).

I’ve thought about using twitter with students but haven’t taken the plunge. Looking for some closed “chat”- type rooms where students can share – that is appropriate for 10 year-olds.

The next project will run more smoothly because you will have exemplars of excellent student work that you can use as a model.

This is a great planning model. Thanks for sharing!

Comment on “Good Practice” by fearghal

fearghal — Tue, 31 Jan 2012 21:31:16 +0000

Fair point Robert. I suppose this is different to the idea of “good practice” I’m alluding to here. That National holding up of what we should be aiming for.

In the case you’re describing here, as it’s local you are able to share and understand the context as well as the stepping stones and pitfalls…?

I’m still not sure of the need to append the word “good”. I like the idea of sharing practice, rather than sharing good practice and I think you put it beautifully when you say “sharing little things that are working for us in our classrooms”.

Comment on “Good Practice” by Robert Jones

Robert Jones — Tue, 31 Jan 2012 21:22:07 +0000

I think it’s okay to share good practice locally on a small scale. We have it as a regular item on our DM agenda and it now works well. It took a while for us to get into the habit, but we are all now comfortable sharing little things that are working for us in our classrooms.

Comment on Making Learning Real by fearghal

fearghal — Sat, 21 Jan 2012 11:27:38 +0000

Thanks for your feedback Owain,

I take your point, but we’re taking this one step at a time. All of this was very new to them (and me) and we’re all learning.

Comment on Making Learning Real by Owain

Owain — Sat, 21 Jan 2012 10:12:00 +0000

This is an interesting idea Fearghal. I think the next step would be to encourage academic honesty among your pupils: the last three body temperature groups have lifted their text directly from BBC Health, NHS choices and Yahoo answers, without referencing it.

Comment on Five Years of Blogging by fearghal

fearghal — Thu, 19 Jan 2012 18:47:39 +0000

Aw, shucks. Thanks OB

Comment on Five Years of Blogging by OllieBray

OllieBray — Thu, 19 Jan 2012 18:02:52 +0000

and here is to the next five years Fearghal – you keep writing and we will keep reading! OB

Comment on The uncomfortable truth about Curriculum for Excellence by David Didau (@LearningSpy)

David Didau (@LearningSpy) — Tue, 10 Jan 2012 20:56:58 +0000

The quote about inter disciplinary learning (or cross curricular learning as we call it down here) seems to miss the point in a quite spectacular way. Has anyone actually argued that “the logic of interdisciplinary learning is that I will make better progress in German if the teacher is not fluent in German but pretty good at French or Spanish”? This is clearly codswallop. The claim that’s made for this approach to learning is that it encourages to perceive links between different disciplines and to connect up their knowledge in a useful way. In the (poor) example cited the point of inter-disciplinary learning might be to see connections between French and German to better understand the features of each language.

Any fool can make fatuous interpretations for poorly chosen references. In English teaching we refer to this as D grade.