Archive for the ‘Education’ Category
Personalised “flipped” revision
I’m fortunate enough to tutor a few learners in GCSE Science - fortunate as it allows me to spend more than 2 or 3 minutes actually diagnosing learning “blocks” and it gives me the ...
The startling link between FSM and Average Points Score (KS4)
I’m a data nut – I love numbers and visualising the relationship between often seemingly disparate sets of measurements. When the Welsh Government published MyLocalSchool the intention was for interested ...
Does TV make you stupid?
As with other posts on this subject, the data is real but my conclusions are tongue in cheek
Over the past 3 years I’ve had the privilege to teach a number of ...
Polish Science translations
I’ve been curating all my resources from 10+ years of teaching – partially in preparation to start a 2 year secondment away from the classroom, but also to make scene of the ...
Is the Cult of Water interrupting your lessons?
Upfront, this is a lighthearted look at behaviour in classes – specifically in Science classes over a 1 week period, 14-18 January 2013. It is in no way comprehensive, statistically ...
Going paperless – buy a duplex scanner
As I gear up to starting my two year secondment for the Welsh Assembly as the “secondary content advisor” for their innovative “All Wales” #HWB initiative, I realise that I ...
Data analysis for teachers (free copy of my book)
Nearly 2 years ago I started to write a book to vent my frustrations over how we analyse data in schools. Or should I say “how we don’t analyse data, ...
Project based Science SOW (2 years)
Over the past 6 years we have progressively rolled out a fully project based KS3 Science curriculum. Over the past 4 years, this has also been condensed into 2 years.
We learned ...
Inbox Zero achieved – a splendiferous day
Today I achieved a personal goal for 2013 – the mythical Inbox Zero.
I’ve always had a staff email account, but only recently has it become almost unbearable to look at. ...
What if teaching was like Halo?
This year Santa brought number 1 son a shiny XBOX-360 and the latest games (Hal0-4 and Fifa13). As a 40 something gamer myself, who cut his teeth on Elite and ...
Making a mobile web site – setting data free
As a teacher I’ve been fascinated with the world of mobile apps and web sites since the first days of the AppStore. The idea that a (humble) teacher could take ...
Santa Graphs – seasonal pseudo context
That time of year again and I just can’t watch Elf – no really I can’t.
So I created this bit of pseudo context.
Santa is charting the growth g in numbers ...
Experimentation at KS5 – not just one variable at a time
I’ve blogged in the past about my attempts to challenge the widely held belief that for experiments to be “fair” you must control ALL the variables you can and ONLY ...
Web 2.0 Site I wish I’d written ;-(
When I set my son up with a web site (Earn your pocket money), the intention was that:
He’d be interested with all things web – (HTML, WordPress, blogging, etc) – ...
Scientific ilLiteracy
Having been off school for the past week I’ve engaged in a fair amount of navel gazing and ponderings of all things related to my role as an educator.
Plus, I’ve been reading ...
Excel graph paper – version 1.1
I hadn’t intended to create a new version so soon, but the feedback from the first release caused some bug fixes, a tidy of the macro code and the inclusion ...
Why we moved from project based learning back to conceptual topics
In 2005 we started to consider moving from a conceptual Science curriculum (based on the QCA model) to a project driven contextual curriculum. As school results will testify to – it was ...
Education meta lists – #1 The iPad
I tweet and follow a few education hashtags – #ukedchat, #addcym and #asechat to name to places I hang out the most. One of my Twitter observations is how things ...
How much do your learners “value” what you do?
We (Newport High School) raised over £650 for Children in Need on Friday. How did we do it you might ask. Organised activities? Sponsored eating baked beans? Movember shave off?
No, ...
Falling in love with Excel (again) – BTEC ICT
Friday is BTEC L2 ICT and today we will mostly be using Excel to create custom functions.
As a Science teacher we use Excel to process data and product graphs – ...
