Comments for teaching.mrstacey.org.uk

Comment on Spellcheck bad? Spellcheck good? by Clare Bay

Clare Bay — Tue, 11 May 2010 13:24:47 +0000

I agree, often I find the same words are repeatedly underlined in Red, the new method you tried sounds good, i’ll have to look into that!

Comment on Writing Doug a job description! by 4 quotations that will guide me next academic year at dougbelshaw.com

4 quotations that will guide me next academic year at dougbelshaw.com — Sun, 03 Aug 2008 20:54:40 +0000

[...] came across this marvellous proverb thanks to Dave Stacey in his helpful post Write Doug a job description! In terms of my role next year, focusing on the task at hand could prove rather difficult. I can see [...]

Comment on What’s the difference? by Doug Belshaw

Doug Belshaw — Sun, 29 Jun 2008 08:03:35 +0000

What a great idea! Very encouraging to see spontaneous things like this happening in your school, Dave.

May I suggest that you put a border around the blog to make it easier to navigate?

Comment on Writing Doug a job description! by An Enchanted Place, Part I | Triangle Tutors

An Enchanted Place, Part I | Triangle Tutors — Wed, 18 Jun 2008 21:36:13 +0000

[...] Dave Staceys last blog post..Writing Doug a job description! [...]

Comment on Writing Doug a job description! by Dave Stacey

Dave Stacey — Wed, 04 Jun 2008 21:14:57 +0000

@ Daniel – Sorry about the delay in your comment appearing, Spam Karma appears to be on the fritz again!

I think the issue with choice is that for people who don’t know what’s available it can all seem a little bit overwhelming. And the one thing teachers don’t have is time. They want to be shown it and then (if it catches) they want to be able to get on with it. If you’ve got lots of time available, then the Social Object based, conversation led ‘what do you want to do and I’ll help you to do it with the best tool’ approach may be fine. But with over 100 staff and no ‘official’ time to do it (so far) that hasn’t really worked.

I think why people are stopping me now is in large part because they’re being told by SLT they need to ‘do’ e-learning, but by hanging everything on moodle people have just got one barrier to overcome. From there we can hopefully build up both a ‘have a go’ attitude that is needed if this is ever going to take off, and more of a community to support those coming up in the next wave.

The idea we’re running with is to create some moodle course to support the learning of moodle. Once I’ve put them together I’ll publish the link in case there’s anything there that will be of some use.

Comment on Writing Doug a job description! by Dave Stacey

Dave Stacey — Wed, 04 Jun 2008 18:47:07 +0000

What’s my official role? My official role is annoying geeky bloke who won’t take no for an answer. Or to be more accurate, never asked the question that no could be an answer to!

The ‘we’ I keep referring to is generally me and Nick Francis who is the school’s ICT coordinator. Recently, the school has formed an ‘ICT Strategic group’ consisting of us, the head of ICT, one of the Assistant Head teachers, one of the school governors and the school Bursar. We are due to be joined next meeting by a representative from the school council. It looks as though, through that group, Nick and I will be given time in next years timetable to provide the training and support I mentioned above, although that will be in addition to my ‘real’ job of teacher / SMART coordinator.

If you’re thinking about a course, I’d urge you to think about who’s going to take it, and perhaps offer more than one. Unless there is some kind of external motivation for staff to complete one (perhaps by making it part of the school PMF process) I suspect many will simply never find the time to complete it. Don’t want to sound overly negative, but I’ve ploughed hours into resources that were never used, and I’d hate for others to do the same!

Comment on More changes by Dave Stacey

Dave Stacey — Wed, 04 Jun 2008 18:38:42 +0000

Cheers Clay. I keep finding stuff I’m not too keen on (just found a box encouraging me to add some adverts. That’s for the chop straight away), but on the whole I like that there seems to be plenty of space, and everything else is just a hack away! Thanks for dropping by

Comment on Writing Doug a job description! by Daniel

Daniel — Wed, 04 Jun 2008 17:33:18 +0000

You’ve given me lots of ideas but I wanted to ask about the rabbits as I’m planning on creating a whole warren next year. Should it not be choosing the best tool for the job or for the teacher? Some departments or teachers may want to just stick notes on Moodle. Some may want to use collaborative features on moodle. Some may not want to use moodle and use a different rabbit, maybe a google app document, think dot com community, eportfolio, animoto or voki?
Am I being too unrealistic or optimistic?
Would love to hear more of your rabbit experiences so I don’t make the same mistakes!

Comment on Writing Doug a job description! by Doug Belshaw

Doug Belshaw — Wed, 04 Jun 2008 16:45:44 +0000

Dave,

Thanks for this excellent, lengthy and considered reply! I love the quotation you share: “If you chase two rabbits, you will lose both.” That’s going with my list of memorable quotations.

You keep saying ‘we’ in this post. Could you flesh out a bit more who that ‘we’ actually consists of? Have you got a dedicated working group for educational technology issues? What’s your official role in all this?

I’m realising that I really need something to hang everything on. Part of that will be the incoming VLE, but I think I need some type of course – ideally modular – that teachers can work towards. Success breeds success.

I can feel another blog post coming on…

Comment on More changes by Clay Burell

Clay Burell — Wed, 04 Jun 2008 00:10:49 +0000

Hey, get yer grubby hands off my theme

I’ve been putting off hacking the CSS and headers to make my theme more me, to riff off Doug. That’s for the summer.

The sky blue links don’t do it for me. Too “web 2.0, man.” But otherwise I really like it.

Happy blogging.