Author Archive

I’ve been working with 8-10 year olds trying out the new Primary Framework literacy/narrative/film strand. The suggested and provided film resource “The Piano” http://tinyurl.com/66r4n2 is a powerful narrative animation to an evocative piano accompaniment.

We have immersed ourselves in this over three weeks and it has been a rich experience. We captured a set of images and first used Voicethreads to explore initial thoughts, then emotions associated with the different parts of the story. We moved on to annotate the images in PowerPoint and then used PhotoStory 3 to recreate their own versions of the narrative. (We have found that many of the children are quite shy doing voice recordings so we are planning to focus more on this after half term.)

We realised that the power of the images in this narrative setting was that the emotional context provided by the images and sound allowed the children to create their own narrative in quite a complex but original way. A common writing task based on a class book for example might use the plot as a starting point, drawing on their own experiences. With six images they were able to build and elaborate their versions, playing with the plot, with time and with characterisation. This is still work in progress but a couple of the children did blog about it, see http://leia.shepeaustow.net/2008/05/06/the-piano/ and http://connor.shepeaustow.net/2008/05/08/the-piano/.

I have been mulling over what quality might mean when applied to a digital image and have come to the conclusion that it is not an especially useful concept!

Appropriate, yes!

How good an image is can be defined in how well it meets its purpose and this could conceivably be a blurry, poorly lit and composed image taken by a child in a role play area of the classroom that totally encapsulated what was going on for a particular child.

Did you read Presentation Zen (http://www.presentationzen.com/)? Garr Reynolds argues persuasively for the use of professional images in our presentations- getting the right image is important and adds enormously to a professional presentation (presumably the cost of acquiring fantastic images from iStockphoto.com is peanuts compared with the fees that he gets for presenting!- actually I loved the book and will never do bulleted PowerPoints ever again).

Lovely images can take your breath away but we are not just looking to wow our classes.

These images (among others), used as stimulus, were found last week by children in a class who were investigating the dangers of electricity. They provided an excellent introduction and discussion point.

and this one promoted a lot of discussion about insulators and conductors in real life. These are ordinary pictures but they did prove powerful in a particular context and did promote lively discussion.

How do images add value to learning? I’m going for the personal experience rather than theoretical stance; I know there is lots written about learning style preferences: what I take from it is that we all learn in many different ways and that these are not fixed. My personal, classroom and parenting experience tells me that images are powerful when linked to ideas, can be very memorable and can engage one quickly at a fairly deep level. Everything I have ever read about page design, the ways we look at printed material and the power of advertising points to the link between images and learning. Is it too simplistic to say that John Lewis spent £6.2m on their Christmas 2007 advertising campaign because it was the most effective way to teach/influence consumers to buy their products?

How did the marketers design the campaign? Images of the products arranged to cast a shadow of the person for whom the product would make a great gift: images, ideas about quality and plenty to actively engage the viewer in how it might apply to them.

How should teachers choose images? Well much depends on purpose but when we consider actively engaging children then a stunning image that raises relevant questions would be a good starting point- and the £6.2m just reinforces the point!

It is funny how the skills that we were teaching teachers (and still are) now need to be taught to children so that they can assume control- not in all cases though because teachers need to present their images too. Most of the 9-11 children I come across seem to use Google image searches and the local firewall forces a safe search. This does return a lot of rubbish though and there are copyright issues. I feel that teachers probably need a couple of one stop shops for photos because there just isn’t time to spend hours trawling. Most of the image banks designed for schools and RBC collections still seem too small to return a reliable result. At the moment my advice is still to use a Flickr advanced search with a Creative Commons filter and I am waiting for an easy to use tool that will capture the image credit seamlessly.

Has anyone got a good alternative to using Flickr?

Inappropriate content is always an issue and I think that safe search options, together with corporate filtering are worthwhile using but all children either have or will be exposed to something inappropriate, often at home. Many schools that I visit have no working policy for internet safety and this is something that I am keen to pursue in local schools; the Byron Review (http://www.dfes.gov.uk/byronreview/) has done a sensible job of putting the wheels in motion with a refreshingly measured response to the issue.

I have worked on the outside of the education system for 8 years now. When I left full time teaching I started working with schools providing courses and advice about their use of ICT in subject teaching.

Providing professional development for teachers in this area is much needed- there is much to do and schools move only slowly, a few teachers in the fast stream with many preferring to teach in ways that they know and feel comfortable with.

In the UK schools are organised into county areas and education services, together with professional development, are often provided by the local authority. The independent provider has to work with and around the local authority services and sometimes it can be tough to get work.

So, if teaching was what you did, and now you provide services to schools and teachers, you have to learn new skills and marketing gets to be an important issue. Learning to market one’s services is where I am now at. Getting into gear is what I have to do.

So, Day 1 of the comment challenge was to audit one’s own commenting behaviour. This is relatively straightforward for me because I have not been at all active in the field. The challenge is:

• How often do you comment on other blogs during a typical week?
• Do you track your blog comments? How? What do you do with your tracking?
• Do you tend to comment at the same blogs or do you try to comment on at least one new blog per week?

Pre Day 1, I could honestly say that I had never commented, therefore never tracked comments. On Day 1 I signed up for CoComment (but still don’t know how to use it and don’t seem to be able to connect to the site either). I have also made a few comments, but more of the “how do I do this?” type of thing.

Because I thought my blog could get a visitor for the first time I rediscovered how to ftp to it, upgraded it and started the search for a new theme. I seem to have been busy with a little teaching and trying to find some paid work, so haven’t had that much time…but I have to say that I am pleased to have signed up and will try to hang on in there, even if it is only just.

Just completed the blog upgrade to WordPress v2.5.1. I am mightily relieved because there were so many files and many possibilities for going wrong! However it is quite a big upgrade (from 2.1)- I had been wondering why there was not a tags facility. I blame all this on the Comment Challenge because I needed to tag the posts with Comment08 and just couldn’t see how. Now I have a lovely little box made for the purpose. So whole new vistas are opening up for me…but the priority has to be to find a theme I am happy with. Something plain and simple will do nicely.

OK, so I said I would take part in the 31 day comment challenge.

So I need to do something about this blog. I have thought it was a sort of information point for my work with schools, but I think that this blog could carry the information but be a whole lot more interesting in terms of the home page content. I read that in writing interesting posts one needs to write then post only the best of a selection of attempts. However, I don’t think I can work like that because I am busy and the writing is not my main activity.

So, my main focus is work with Primary schools and I am currently working a lot (and unpaid!) with my local school because I have spare time. I have been promoting a multiuser WordPress blog there (shepeaustow.net) and each class have one plus 7 of the more able 8-11 year olds. Although they have been selected for flair with their writing in the past they are not doing great with their blogs- this has caused me to reflect a lot on what children want to write about…it’s a big subject! I think there is a big difference between the 13 yr old and the 9 yr old in terms of what they want to write about, their audience etc…and I am still grappling with this.

The other thing that I am really wanting to do is revamp this whole site which has had nil attention since it was set up.

So, if anyone does find their way here to comment, what do you think about all this?!

So, just read about this challenge…so should I do it? This blog has been sitting around for ages not doing much and I feel seriously embarrassed by the lack of attention …so it might encourage me to get it together. Then I am really wanting to promote the children with their own blogs at shepeaustow.net …but maybe it would rub off on my work with them. Oh dear…will see how I feel later!

The Lincolnshire fens have been my home for the last 25 years though even our children born in the house where we live have not really earned the prize of being local. If you do not know the area imagine a landscape as flat as can be, with some trees, but not many; not a place of small and interesting corners or little fields but one of big spaces and skies and few meandering footpaths.

It is two miles to the local primary school, or rather 2.2 miles, the 0.2 being significant in local free transport arrangements when the children (all four of them) were small. But in the school’s 125 year history the right to free transport is a modern invention. For the generations of children brought up in our cottage the way to school was via the Willow Way. This rare thing hereabouts, this public path, connects us to the school and by its arrow like direction shaves a little more than 0.2 from the passage to school. If you walk this path today (and if you do you will only have me for company) you will not pass any willows but in its length a single elder and a fugitive hawthorn.

Our elderly neighbour used to tell of the journey to school, the mishaps on the way, the dawdlings, the soakings, the wild flowers and yes, the willows. The school log books, fortunately preserved from 1876 when the school opened, tell of the absent Postland children, as our area is known. For when there was snow or rain or harvests or a local fair or one of the many measles outbreaks then the Postland children stayed at home. From the tone of the school board records and the frustrations of the headmaster I think the Postland children must have been a rowdy and headstrong lot, at least I like to think so.

I think a lot of those children as I walk the nearly two miles between our cottage and the school each day. The dog is nose into rabbit holes the whole length, unless distracted by a pheasant or partridge. The grasses come waist high and must surely have soaked the five year olds trailing along after the others all those years ago.

Those big skies must still have been there and the wind too, though maybe the willows and hedges gave them shelter from that. The barn owl that seems to track our progress along the path on a winter afternoon, the odd rat surprised to meet us and the hare already travelling fast away as we approach, surely all these featured in the lives of those children.

There is now only one school age child in Postland, ours having long since passed through the system. His journey to school Land Cruiser style misses the Willow Way by 0.2 miles and a good measure of this local being. The Willow Way though does not mourn the passing of the young feet. It is just there, without my fanciful feelings, ready and waiting to share its riches with who ever would like to sample them.

(The Willow Way runs between Shepeau Stow and Queens Bank in South Lincolnshire, UK. The photographs were taken yesterday morning).