Time to start Anew and Afresh

Well it's been some time time since I've posted on Twitter let alone this blog. A few things have changed since last blogging.

Where to start?

3 years ago on my last post I was teaching at a independent, all boys school on the Northern Beaches in Sydney. The school was well off. I had lots of technology resources at my finger tips and so did the students. The students were from middle to high socio-economic areas. I was in a team teaching environment. I had a classroom with desks and chairs that could be easily changed around and moved depending on the lesson.

Today, I am down in the Shoalhaven teaching at a school which can be considered the opposite of where I have been teaching for the past 10 years. I've come into a school where a few things are alien to me. One being, instead of windows based laptops I have I-pads. I'm one person that has avoid Macs as I'm not a fan. This itself has put me back as I have/had a negative mind-set towards them and this has led to me avoiding them or not using them to their full potential.

Another aspect I'm struggling with is sharing about 18 I-pads with 27 students and sharing these I-pads across 6 classes. The great news is that this is changing very soon.

I know I have lost my technology drive and motivation within the class. It's my fault and I want to get back on top of and feel like an expert. I want my students to create work in ways they previously didn't know possible. I want them to be more confident using technology create. I have to re-skill using the I-pad. I have to become an I-pad 'Genius'. I have to connect with people who can help with this.

It's now to to start again anew, afresh. I know this may seem like rambling but I needed to get it off my chest.

The New Classroom

                  
Last year I threw myself into technology and as a result I went on many Professional Development (PD) courses. Some of these PD courses happened to be at schools where technology played a major part in the curriculum. Looking around the schools I gained an insight into how they set up, run and manage a classroom. What I took out of this was the way the classroom was set up and the colours used. This is where the inspiration hit me to try and change the look and feel of my classroom.

My classroom was what I would call very bland. The walls were half yellow and half pale yellow. The desks, while useful as they had storage compartment in them for the student’s books, were over 15 years old and showing their age. The classroom had very little storage in it. There were shelves to store items, thought they were very narrow and half of them had a computer desk over them making them very hard to access easily.

I got talking to my grade partner, Liz, about what I had seen at other schools and she had the same opinion as me, the primary classrooms were in a bad need of a make over. So we took it upon ourselves to see what was out there and where schools got the furniture from. We went to the stock standard school furniture companies that have bland desks and chairs which don’t make anyone want to feel proud of them. We then scoured the internet and came across and few sites with different furniture. The one that caught our eye was Biz Furniture (www.bizfurn.com, yes I know it’s a shameless plug). One look at what they had and we were sold. The desks they had were not standard or bland. They had a curve to them and could be coloured. In fact most of the furniture you can get from them can be coloured to your liking, teacher desks, cupboards, tubs and ottomans.  Looking at the furniture I thought this would make a classroom more personable and a place where a student would want to spend their time and feel comfortable.

One of the major features of the furniture we were looking for was that it had to be easy to move and adjustable. The reason why the furniture needs to be easy to move is that Liz and I were looking at having an open classroom for lessons. We had found out over time that we were covering the same lessons and the same topic at pretty much the same time. Often we walk into each other classrooms and were able to help the students without having to ask what it is that they are doing. So throughout last year we would swap classes or pop into each others class (when we didn’t have our own class) and help out. Having an open classroom just made sense.

We put our idea to the Executive Committee of the school before we jumped into the whole process. Their response was to get 3 quotes and they’ll go from there. It wasn’t hard getting the 3 quotes and it turned out the Biz Furniture was the cheapest. We got a partial approval and had to get a final costing on everything we wanted to do.

We had many meetings between some of the Executive Teachers and our fellow grade partners to plan out what we wanted and the best way to achieve it. Liz and I took full control of everything and sourced the furniture we wanted, colour of the classrooms, all the while trying to keep it all under a reasonable budget that would be accepted by the Executive Committee and the school’s Principal. After much negotiating with the Executive and Biz Furniture we got the furniture we wanted and at a price that was acceptable to the Principal.

The order was placed before school broke up for the Christmas Holidays and the furniture was delivered and classroom painted before the students came back at the beginning of this year. It was amazing to see the difference new furniture and a lick of paint can make to a classroom. The classroom now feels like a place where I’m enthused to teach and a space that students would be comfortable in. The best response I got about the new classroom was from the parents whose son started at the school this year. The parents were in awe of the classroom and I even heard one say that ‘the teacher’s desk seems less threatening, and is a place where students would want to come a work’. Another great reaction was from two former students, now in Grade 10. When they entered the class their jaws just about dropped to the floor. They couldn’t believe the classroom, and were quite upset that they don’t have something as calming, inspiring and comfortable as what we now have.

During the first term of this year we didn’t open the classrooms that much as we had to get use to a group of new students that came from about 11 different schools. When we did open the classrooms the boys got a little bit silly. Though looking back it was nothing bad as they too were getting use to this new concept. One of the advantages of having only a few openings is that we got to see how the boys would react and what we had to do to make opening the classrooms effective and worthwhile.

During Term 2 of the year, and after a lot of planning, Liz and I opened up the classrooms a lot more. The boys got the advantage of having 2 teachers at the disposal. It didn’t bother them in the slightest that there is now 2 different teaching techniques and they are working with a larger cohort of students. They in fact quite like this are only have positive feedback on what we have done so far.

We have so far opened our classrooms up for Literacy, where we break the boys up into 4 ability groups with each doing a task. 2 groups are always working with a teacher. We also opened up for Science and HSIE. In Science we got the boys to do experiments together working with a boy from the other class. In HSIE, one teacher would present to the boys, much like a lecturer, then the boys would go off and complete tasks using a combination of De Bono and Gardner’s 6 Hats strategies.

The boys are loving the open classrooms as they like the expertise of 2 teachers and working with students from other classrooms. It’s got to the point that when teaching other subjects the boys are asking if the classrooms were going to open.

It’s been a great experience of designing a new classroom that the students enjoy and are eager to learn/participate in activities to the best of their abilities. What’s even more pleasing is that the parents are on board and happy with their decision to send their sons my school. So far I have only received positive feedback from the parents about what is going on in the class.

This is just the beginning of me getting my hands dirty, challenging my students and making the way I teach more effective and enjoyable for the students.

                                                                               The Old

                                                                   

The New

Because of Liam....

This post is dedicated to Liam Dunphy (@liamdunphy) who has done so much for me and my teaching pedagogy this year. He does so much and gets little in return, so here is my tribute to one person who has been one of the biggest influences on my teaching.


Because of Liam, I’m using technology more in the classroom.

Because of Liam, I want to use more technology in my classroom

Because of Liam, I’ve enjoyed teaching using technology.

Because of Liam, I’m on twitter.

Because of Liam, I longer no just follow Ashton Kutcher on Twitter.

Because of Liam, I have a twitter addiction.

Because of Liam, Liz & I are trying to out do each other on twitter.

Because of Liam, I’m now connected with other educators around the world.

Because of Liam, I’ve got my class to interact with other classes around the world.

Because of Liam, my class connected with Van Meter Iowa.

Because of Liam, my class has created an advert for Australia that was viewed in Iowa and around the world.

Because of Liam, I participated in #ccGlobal.

Because of Liam, my class swapped Christmas greetings with other classes around the world.

Because of Liam, my class was mentioned in the Sydney Morning Herald for the work we have been doing with schools in other countries.

Because of Liam, I’ve lost the amount of educational websites I’ve now joined.

Because of Liam, Liz and I have changed the way we teach and view technology.

Because of Liam, Liz and I have sort out new furniture the primary at our school through Bizfurn.

Because of Liam, I can’t wait to teach next year in the new classroom.

Because of Liam, I go to Teachmeet and am looking at hosting one next year.

Because of Liam, I now want a tablet or other fancy IT device.

Because of Liam, I’ve checked twitter numerous times whilst writing this.

Because of Liam, each statement starts with a conjunction.

Because of Liam, you are reading this.

Because of Liam, my teaching pedagogy has completely changed.

THANK S LIAM.

If anyone else has a because of Liam please comment and I’ll post it after mine.

ccGlobal Christmas Message

Welcome to my Blog. I'm new at this so please bear with me.

A little about me first, then I'll go into a project I've been working on in school with my class.

My Name is Andrew Allmark. I'm a Yr 5 teacher at St Augustine's College. I'm jumping into technology and loving what it can do for me as a teacher. I'm always (like we all are) looking for new ideas and ways to teach kids in the classroom. I'm into my sports (AFL, Cricket)  and music (Foo Fighters), big time, and I'm slowly taking up photography (need plenty of help here). Follow me on twitter @andallm.

What I've noticed this year is that the world, and teaching world, is becoming a smaller place and social media sites such as Facebook, Twitter and Skype have played a big part in this. This has made it easier for teachers to collaborate around the world.

It's great to see that there are so many teachers all over the world looking to collaborate with one another and also do some lessons and activities together. My grade partner Liz (@lizarmenio twitter name) and I have being working closely with a school in Iowa, VanMeter. We have created an advert on encouraging people to come to Australia for them to view and comment on, and have also got the classes in different countries to write a Xmas book together using My Ebook (http://www.myebook.com)/

By doing this we have seen a new engagement and focus in the boys and an excitement in them doing their work that we just haven't seen before.

Liam Dunphy (@liamdunphy twitter name) decided to take the whole global classroom phenomenon one step further and created ccGlobal (http://ccglobal.ning.com/?xg_source=msg_mes_network). For December he and other teachers came up with the idea of getting students to send Christmas/holiday messages to each other using qr codes.

I took up on this idea with no idea what a qr code was or how to make one. After watching Liz go through the process and creating a great message with her class, it only inspired me further. I talked it over with the boys in my class and we decided to read to the world 'An Aussie Night Before Christmas' adapted by Yvonne Morrison.

The boys relished participating in this project and all thoroughly enjoyed themselves. All boys participated and wanted to be involved. They only had about 2 lines each but they practiced reading them, adding expression to the voice and making sure they made no errors.

My next task was to upload the video somewhere and create the qr code. Creating the qr code was easy, just go to http://www.qrstuff.com/. Uploading the video was the hard part. First, I tried Voice Thread but had trouble trying to view it with the qr reader. I then went to glogster (http://www.glogster.com/) and couldn't believe how simple it was to create a poster/blog. One other thing is that it turned out much more visually appealing than I could have ever imagined. Great results and will definitely use it again and introduce the students to it.

A big thanks to Liam and Liz for all there help.

Here's a link to the ccGlobal Message http://mrallmark.edu.glogster.com/5accglobalxmas and the QR code. Have a look and comment.

Oh and Merry Xmas to all and a Safe and enjoyable New Year.