Fizzics

There’s a new site tracking edubloggers across the globe, it’s called International Edublogger Directory and it’s run by Patricia Donaghy, ICT co-ordinator at Inchicore College of Further Education in Dublin, Ireland. I like this idea because, apart from ScotEdublogs, I wasn’t aware of anyone collating a directory of bloggers from an eductaion background (note to self: get this site added to ScotEdublogs).

It looks like 38 people applied for a directory listing before I got my act together.

I read that Stewart Mader is starting a series targetted at people currently without a wiki. He’s calling the initiative 21 Days of Wiki Adoption and each day of the event will see a new video added to the series.

I’m going to pay attention to what he says. I should have had a wiki by now. I entered the Rolls-Royce Science Prize last year – read my entry here rolls-royce-science-prize.pdf. My idea was to build a wiki resource with S2 pupils to use in Science class, a wiki written by pupils for other pupils and using audio and video to aid accessibility and promote collaboration among lower ability class sets. Unfortunately, the panel of judges didn’t find sufficient merit in my plan and I had to make do with a small shiny plaque for the school library wall.

I bumped into one of the competition manages at the Scottish Learning Festival in September and he told me that the judges felt there was too much ICT and not enough Science in my submission. There I was thinking that the whole point of the exercise was to improve Science teaching, not do more Science. But what do I know? In the meantime, here I am.

A year has passed and the bottom ability S2 Science set feature on my timetable once more. The course is still not meeting their needs and I am still having to drag them kicking and screaming (them and me both) up to the page in the notes that will feature in their exam at the end of this month.

John Johnston and Tom Barrett show no signs of difficult second album syndrome in the second EdTechRoundup show. The show begins with brief introductions from the hosts, followed by the ICT buffet, where Tom and John chat about tools they use in their classrooms, focusing on Voices of the World, Tumblr and the Many Voices project on Twitter.

John and Tom share the main slot. John tells us about his use of still digital cameras for video recording and blogging, while Tom discusses the learning opportunities available through the sharing of Google documents such as spreadsheets.

There is a beautifully informal feel about this show and I laughed at the cheek in Tom’s voice when he posed the question “Monkeys?” – you’ll understand when you listen