End of Year

It has been a while since I've posted - partly due to a bereavement and also to the ever present pressure of work.

But I thought that it would be good to review the past academic year. Which has been great [if a bit of a whirlwind a times]. Removing reliance on paper was a little bit scary to start with, but having made this leap, there is no way that I would go back to paper-based sessions - using other techniques is just too much fun for both me and my learners. No, I haven't found a way to remove all paper from the classroom [and I don't think that that would be a good idea at all - paper is a useful tool] but I no longer rely on it.

I've loved using models, and I'm using the holiday to review my teaching and to find out where else I can use them. One or two learners thought that using models was a little bit odd or immature, but the vast majority took part in the exercises and benefited from them [and it gives me a chance to play]

I'm also going to carry on using the e-learning techniques I've used this year and to build on them. I've got plans for pod casts, forums, wikis and anything else that I can think of.... I like the versatility of e-learning, I've had some learners who were unable to attend sessions [because of health or family problems] who have found these resources really useful and who have manged to hand in good quality work by using them from home.

I'm trying to design power point presentations which are even more interactive [I'm trying too keep away from boring stuff]. So far its gone well; an activity involving flash cards lasted twice as long as I had allowed.

I know that I [and everyone else in the teaching profession] am going to spend a significant amount of time working on the next academic year while recovering from this one, but the planning is so much more exciting and appealing now that I'm using different methods.

While I think about it, the New Scientist book "How to Fossilise Your Hamster" has some great experiments for the armchair scientist and I plan to try and incorporate some of these ideas next year. Well worth reading.

There are some people who have not liked what I've been doing, although the reasons that they have given are a tad vague. At the risk of causing offence, I actually don't care that much. What I do, I do because I think that it is beneficial for my learners. It also makes my job more challenging, more interesting and therefore more rewarding and what on earth is wrong with that?

Model Making

One of the things that I've tried to do is avoid the whole chalk-and-talk thing, which seems to be an easy trap to fall into when using ICT in teaching; I've read on other blogs, and its a point that I've taken on board, that ICT can be as boring as any other technique if used badly.

So.

I've tried model making. It should be mentioned here that I'm about as artistic as a brick but I thought that I'd give it a go. A major plus here is that there is such an amazing range of craft materials available these days (as well as the whole Blue Peter cardboard roll thing). When I was a child we had pipe cleaners to play with, but today they have these wonderful chenille straws (straws to My mind are plastic but these are fur covered bits of wire) in some lovely neon colours.

I mention these because I used them to represent chromosomes in cell division. It seemed to work really well (certainly the learners seemed to retain the information and enjoyed the exercise, although one or two were a bit puzzled by the whole thing). Normal cell division is easy enough to understand, but gamete production, with its mixing of paternal and maternal DNA can be a worry for learners, and the models provided a nice way of showing the mixing and how the final cell was produced; it was visual with its bright colours and kinesthetic as they had to pull the straws apart in order to create the cells. I think its a technique I shall employ again.

Paperless.

I'm trying to remember when I first became interested in integrating ICT into the classroom. It seemed to be such a logical way to go.

This year, however, I've tried to take it one stage further and go paperless.

The big thing for me has been time. Ok, it takes a while to get everything into an electronic format, but having done that, updating them is easy. We have a great intranet site at college and putting things onto that is simple enough. I think that just by e-mailing information out to my learners, I probably halved my photocopy bill and of course, I don't spend hours of my life waiting for a free photocopier (the downside is that I never get to see anyone now and miss out on all the gossip).

I've been looking at other ways of getting the learners to make sense of the learning and used a lot of Geoff Petty's ideas for that.

I'm now experimenting using forums, with Easter coming I thought that it would be a good way for learners to communicate while they're away, and that way collaborative projects don't suffer because of the hols.

Paperless Learning.

I'm working in further education and I'm currently reserching paperless learning.

If anyone has tried this and has any feedback for me, I would be really greatful to see it!