Some Monday night inspiration...

This evening I have been watching a number of Ted Talks, and I just had to choose this one to share in this blog. I have always believed that keeping goals to myself helps them become a lot more achievable, and I am delighted to have found some actual research to support it!

I never told anyone I wanted to go to university, I just worked hard and applied. I never told anyone I planned on teaching, I just applied. This has always seemed to work for me. I'm a private person anyway, and I find it extremely frustrating when someone asks me a personal question. I always knew that I wanted to study a postgraduate teaching course, but I felt that this was no business of other people. For example, people would always ask "What are your plans when you graduate?". Some were genuinely interested, but others were just trying to get their noses into my life, so I would always reply with "I'm going to see how it goes and just focus on getting through my degree, for now." People would seem disappointed with this response. I was so terrified of failing and not being accepted onto my teaching course that I just couldn't tell anyone about it. Perhaps if I had, I wouldn't have succeeded, according to this talk!


Relating this to the law of attraction, I completely understand that telling someone about your goals can make you feel as though they are already accomplished. Just as believing you already have something attracts that thing into your life, telling someone your goals can have a similar effect. I know that a lot of people will disagree with it for various reasons, and it's all about personal opinions, but for me, I think it works in certain cases, however sometimes it's not possible to hide goals. It's definitely not possible for me to hide that my goal for this blog is to apply ICT to teaching!

Back to the point, I am considering showing talks such as this to my Welsh Baccalaureate students, particularly during their Personal Effectiveness skills work. They would benefit from some inspiration and definitely need a few lessons on positive thinking! So here is the talk, which is a delightful 3 minutes and 15 seconds!



What do you think?

Learning with Videos!

In my recent teaching practice, I have been using a number of videos from YouTube to aid teaching and learning. Students seem to really enjoy watching videos, and I find that it really breaks up lessons that are heavy in information. They can be useful for starters and plenaries, as it is often difficult to grasp students' attention! During the ICT module I completed recently at University, we looked at making videos to assist teaching. Making the videos was really fun, editing photos and adding music. However, I couldn't help thinking how time-consuming it would be to make videos, when there are thousands online showing the same topics. Despite this, I would definitely use Photo Story if there was a certain topic that I could not find a video on. Here is the video I made, it's nothing educational, just a few pictures from graduation day, to work out how to use Photostory!

I really like Photostory and I will use it in the future for topics that rely heavily on information, to make them seem more interesting! For now, I find loads of educational videos on YouTube to show my students. For example, in a recent Psychology lesson with year 13, I showed them the following video of the strange situation study, for them to gain an insight into the study's methodology, and it worked well because students could directly see what happened, rather than simply reading it from a textbook.

Videos in lessons are definitely helpful, in my opinion, and from personal experience. I try to include at least one video in every lesson, because I think it definitely aids understanding!

Learning with games and quizzes!

In this post I'm going to discuss some interesting apps for making games and quizzes! Before we get into this, my Prezi went well on Wednesday! The students seemed to like it and followed it well! So a thumbs up for Prezi from me and my students! The first app I want to blog about is Hot Potatoes. Although I think the name is ridiculous, it's actually really cool! The features of this download are JCloze, JQuiz, JCross, JMatch and JMix (these names are also ridiculous). JQuiz is really good for making quizzes and the questions can be multiple-choice or short answer, which is ideal for a good variety of questions. JCloze can be used to create blank-filling exercises, which I think would be great for Psychology because there are a lot of key words and terms to learn and these can easily be confused. JCross is for creating crosswords, JMatch is to create a matching exercise and JMix is a jumbled sentence exercise. I have had a play around with this software and overall I think it's fantastic! My only issue with using it is the lack of computers in the classrooms that I normally teach in! If I was to use it, I would have to book a computer room, but I think this would be worth it if students could complete these exercises, I am definitely considering it as an end-of-term treat! My next victim of discussion is Socrative. This, I love! It allows for live activity so it's really easy to monitor students' progress to see if any individuals are having any difficulties. And although it's difficult for me to get computers, Socrative also allows you to create quizzes and print them, so I could actually use it without having to book computers! Students love worksheets so these quizzes will be very beneficial to my teaching. I think this is my favourite software for creating quizzes! Finally, Kahoot! I don't like it. It looks quite childish and I think my students would feel like they're back at primary school if I asked them to use it. The entire design is just unsuitable for further education, in my opinion. I much prefer Socrative because it's much easier to use and a lot more age-appropriate. I would not use Kahoot in my teaching due to its appearance and mainly because I prefer Socrative for a number of reasons! So after looking through them and having a play around, I am going to plan a lesson of activities for my lovely students at the end of term using Hot Potatoes and Socrative! I think they'll love it, plus it'll be a great way for me to see if they've actually learned anything from my lessons!

The Power of Presenting!

The use of presentations to assist teaching and learning have become increasingly popular in recent years. The most obvious application of choice for making a presentation is Microsoft PowerPoint. Personally I don't think I've ever seen a presentation during lessons that was not made on this app. Naturally, it's what I would go to first, and it was how I taught my first few lessons on my placement. Here is the presentation I used to teach my very first A Level Psychology class!






The lesson went really well, but I couldn't help thinking how I would have managed to get all of that information across without using PowerPoint? The following week, I was introduced to two new presentation apps, Prezi and Nearpod. Prezi seemed to make presentations much more exciting! The quick movements and the mass of different templates made me think about how boring PowerPoint presentations can be! I went on to create a fabulous Prezi for another A Level Psychology class, that I will be teaching on Wednesday (I will blog about how Prezi worked for me). I am going to use this Prezi for a lesson plenary, to recap what was covered in the lesson. I'm also going to ask the students what they think of it. I definitely intend to use Prezi in my teaching, however I have some concerns that presentations might be a bit too "busy" and distracting, but I also think it's a welcome change from PowerPoint. Here is the Prezi I will be using!




I think Prezi is much more fun and exciting to use, and more visually stimulating! Another concern, however, is that within the subjects I teach, large amounts of information are required to be transferred, therefore the small circles and limited space suggest that Prezi will only be useful for things like starters, plenaries and small amounts of information. This isn't necessarily a bad thing because I think a lot of students will be willing to have a quick change from PowerPoint now and again! As for Nearpod, I found this great as I was learning about it, but thinking in practical terms led me to conclude that I don't think I would use it within my teaching, mainly because I teach in classrooms where only one computer is present. However, I would consider booking a computer room in the future (maybe when I become an actual proper teacher!), to use Nearpod and to see if it benefits learning. All in all, I still think PowerPoint is the best for presentations because it's so easy to use, but I have also discovered a love for Prezi and its exciting presentation style!

My personal experiences of technology and learning

I honestly don't remember using much technology within my education to date, particularly in the earlier years. My primary school only had computers when I was around year 4 or 5, and in secondary school we mainly learned from textbooks or teacher talk. I never found ICT lessons enjoyable. This is rather surprising because my father is a computer whizz and works with them every day. I'm not sure if it was the way the lessons were delivered, or if I just had a genuine lack of interest. We'll go with the latter. ICT is the only subject that gave me a C grade at GCSE, ruining my clean run of A's and the occasional B's from other subjects. I just didn't enjoy the whole "do this and take a screenshot to put in a file" thing. At university, technology was widely used as a learning aid within my lectures. Unfortunately, this was indeed "death by PowerPoint". Every lecture was the same. We'd all file in, the lecturer would read off the slides, and then put the presentation on Blackboard for everyone who didn't bother attending. Not the best teaching strategy, in my opinion. Despite this, Blackboard did come in rather handy. Very similar to Moodle, Blackboard is a virtual learning environment used to share files between lecturers and students, and also to submit assignments. I also used the internet as a learning aid throughout my degree, using journal databases such as Google Scholar for essays, and I found this extremely helpful. I still feel that the world of technology for teaching is only just beginning, and it's exciting, however I still fear that technology might attempt to replace the invaluable student-teacher relationship, and I hope that it does not take over the point of what it means to be a "teacher". Teachers teach students, they do not put a video on and allow that to teach students, or make a presentation and allow that to teach students. They should just merely be aids, and not replace the true intent of the transfer of information from teachers to students.

Mighty Microsoft

Pretty much my entire collection of technology experiences involve Microsoft. Without its software, I definitely would not have been able to complete my GCSE's, A Levels, or my degree. Microsoft Word, in particular, has been an incredible aid to my education. Every assignment, every document, every piece of written work has been completed using Word, and it is the only Microsoft application that I am completely confident with. PowerPoint is another one of my favourites, especially for teaching. Making a presentation is simple and can be made to look professional and interesting easily, which is why I love PowerPoint. Excel, on the other hand, I actively dislike. My poor father has spent hours showing me how it works and what it's good for, but I just don't like it. Yes, it can do wonderful things, but I just find it over-complicated and boring. I'm more than happy to try though, so if anyone can show me a good use for Excel, go ahead! The same can be said for Publisher. I don't even know what it's supposed to do! I don't use Microsoft for emails either, I wouldn't know how. If I get a chance over the next few weeks, I intend to have a go at some Microsoft applications and I'll write about what I think of them and what I have learned, if anything. I'm hoping to gain some confidence with these apps, particularly Excel, because I suppose it's an essential app to understand and use, and I think if I understood how, I could use it within teaching, for marking and similar tasks. As it stands at the moment, Word and PowerPoint are definitely my favourite Microsoft apps and the only ones that I find useful! As always, this may change!