Jonathan's BlogJonathan's developments, thoughts and ideas on teaching, technology and learning.Role Play and its place in the Primary Curriculum- February 27, 2008 It never ceases to amaze me how important Role Play is in engaging pupils in understanding and performing tasks to the best of their ability. I remember quite early on in my teaching career when I was working with friends from Ultralab on an eTui research project. The afternoon involved my pupils playing with toys, a radio controlled car, a programmable toy and an eTui (a meta-level learning toy.) We asked my pupils to complete a questionnaire about what they understand about how each toy...http://www.jonathansblog.net/role_play_pupils_primary_school_researchers_key_stage_1_2 School Council present at the Meeting of the Governing Body- February 27, 2008 Last night, the School Council at Rettendon Primary School attended the Meeting of the Governing Body to present their view of the school and its activities over the last term. They had put together an excellent PowerPoint presentation with photographs and images to support what they were saying. The School Council comprises of representatives from each year group, and despite being faced with the challenge of presenting to a room of adults, spoke with confidence and conviction. I was...http://www.jonathansblog.net/school_council_governor_meetings_involvement Painless Drupal v6.0 Upgrade- February 25, 2008 As every software developer knows, especially ones like me who obey the 'hack it and run' rule, it's quite unusual for software to 'just work' out of the box. Tonight was a surprising exception as I took the brave decision to upgrade the Drupal software which powers this blog site. Some people might ask why Well, for a whole heap of reasons really. I was receiving an increasing number of spam messages which were somehow getting past the CAPTCHA mechanism that I have in place. I suspect...http://www.jonathansblog.net/drupal_v6.0_software_upgrade_update_painless_cms What If and Shift Happens- February 24, 2008 My Headteacher recently handed me a disc and said that I should watch both 'What If...' and 'Shift Happens'. My Head had recently attended a course and two presentations were shown to provoke minds into thinking about the future of education, teaching and learning. I found them hugely powerful and thought-provoking, and wanted to share them with you here. What If looks back on statements that people in a variety of educational roles have made over the past few centuries, and some comments.http://www.jonathansblog.net/reflection_learning_technology_past_future Learners as colleagues and masters of their own destiny...- February 22, 2008 I was delighted to read Patrick's latest blog entry this evening about how he had visited Horohoro School school in Rotoroa, New Zealand and observed teachers working with young children. Patrick's reflections of his visit made a really interesting read. I was warmed by this extract: "It occurred to me that treating children as colleagues and masters of their own destiny helped them to become masters of their own learning, and as a result they were forming ideas about the reason for their..http://www.jonathansblog.net/empowering_learners_school_new_zealand_rotorua_horohoro_schoo... Google Blogger Content Label Specific RSS feeds- February 22, 2008 I use the Blogger.com engine to run my mobile blog site which I then later edit to add additional text and content labels. Labelling content not only helps the user find articles with specific terms, it also helps the user share specific items from one site with another. I quite often blog photographs and text from Scout evenings to my mobile blog and wanted to find a way of making these available from the Orion Online scout website. This evening I've been developing the Orion Online...http://www.jonathansblog.net/drupal_6_google_blogger_rss_content_label_specific_feeds A Geeky Week: from Tiger to Leopard (server) in 48 hours and the rest...- February 22, 2008 I'm a geek and proud of it, although sometimes there never seems to be enough time to 'play' as much as I would like. This past week, well, it's been almost two weeks, (but who's counting) has been pretty much full of geekiness. I love tinkering around 'under the hood' and rolling up my sleeves. I'm quite enjoy being the mechanic or the oily rag and I suppose on reflection, it's the challenge of working through technical problems and learning about the solutions that I seem to revel in...http://www.jonathansblog.net/tiger_leopard_server_mac_os_x_migration_gd_library_php More Moblie Blogging sites and a sense of community- February 20, 2008 Having just written about mobile blogging and two online software solutions that I've been using successfully, here's another one, Twitxr.com. I saw this published on Tom Smith's blog, and thought I'd have a play too. Jonathan's Moblog on Twitxr From Tom's site, this then led me towards another moblogging site. This one slightly (!) more funky than any of the others I've seen so far. I really love the immediate sense of community and audience that my blog posts now have. The community...http://www.jonathansblog.net/moblogging_mobile_blog_twitxr_home_of_muppets Served me well, the Mac Mini story- February 16, 2008 I've been nothing short of impressed by the little Apple Mac Mini that I've used to host my websites over the past two years. In that time, it's been 100% reliable and apart from the occasional software update, has not needed a restart. The Mac Mini, Barney, has been co-located at a hosting company in Brighton called Freedom255, who do an awesome job ensuring optimal uptime for all their servers. Barney's spec is reasonably modest, a 1.42GHz G4 processor, 1Gb memory and an 80Gb hard disk. It...http://www.jonathansblog.net/apple_mac_mini_webserver_freedom255_server_host_colocation Online Learning Communities for pupils, parents and teachers- February 16, 2008 One of my next initiatives at Kings Road Primary School is to begin to construct an online community for pupils, staff and parents to support learning inside and outside school in a safe, closed environment. These tools are often referred to as Virtual Learning Environments (VLEs) or Learning Platform. The Government's e-strategy states that by spring 2008 every pupil should have access to a personalised online learning space with the potential to support an e-portfolio. Everyone can see the...http://www.jonathansblog.net/online_learning_community_software_schools_vle_facebook_solut... |