The Tree House

At work for the last few weeks, I have been using my extra time to set up a system within the school for recording and monitoring “Target Setting”.  As a school we recognised that this was an area where we could do a little more, and after a period of debating the issues, it was agreed to try out a web based system. 

We already use a web based system for our “behaviour management”, and over the last 5 years I have seen my skills in developing this kind of system grow to the point where I am now surprising myself with what I can do! 

Although its not the best web authoring tool, I use FrontPage with an Access (or two) database sitting in the background.  The reason for its use is largely historical, and a little bit financial! 

The big accomplishment with this new system is that it is more “web 2.0″ than anything I have done before.  About 4 months a go we changed the behaviour system to allow pupils to see what information we were entering into the system, both negative and praise loggings.  This was met with enthusiasm by the pupils and also by the staff! 

The new target setting system will allow both pupils and staff to enter targets.  We/I hope that it will encourage a bit more “conversation” on targets and target setting within the school community, and allow the documentation of this conversation via the web interface. 

Just realised, you guys now have that same glazed look my wife gets when I start talking geek-speak.  I apologise, I’m just pleased with how its worked out so far. 

I have been fighting it for a week or so, but tonight when I went to look at the comments on this blog there were 34 spam comments.  To be honest, I can see spam being the biggest real hurdle to overcome if we are going to get classroom teachers using the technology.  I have been aware for a week or so now about the spam reducing measures available with edublogs, and tonight I will be (with sadness) implementing them.  I’m sad because I can no longer trust the www with my blog. :-(  I also got the first bit of spam on the blog I am trying out with my chemistry class.  A sad day indeed.  Having taken several steps down the road to being a “champion” of web2.0 in the class, I am wondering if the hype can outweigh the time and hastle of dealing with the dross.

I therefore appologies if you want to make a comment on an old post.  As of tonight old posts will be closed to comments automatically.   

While reading blogs in bloglines, I learned of google trends.  The graph below is for blog and wiki.  It speaks volumes.

A while back I posted about setting up a wiki for my new SG chemistry class.  I chose not to give out the address for two reasons, (security of the kids who I hoped would use it - I wanted to see that they could use it responsibly, and secondly, because I wanted to see that it would work).  Very soon after setting it up I realised that it wasn’t going to work in the way that I had envisaged.  It has therefore been sidelined for the time being. (Sorry Ollie - I know you had been interested to see how it worked!)
 It occurred to me that what I needed was something more structured, and which I could “control” a little easier.  I had planned on using a blog with my higher class, but since the SG course had now started, I thought I might as well give it a go, but using a different model to that planned for the S5 class.
I have now been posting to the S3 Chemistry blog for over a month now.  Every day I have the class I write a post, saying what we did in class, linking to some of the resources that we used, and perhaps asking a few questions.  I am encouraging the pupils to comment on the posts, perhaps with answers to my questions, questions of their own, or perhaps commenting on their understanding of the days activities.
I have been encouraged by the way that the class have taken to it (at least some have).  Perhaps this is linked to me telling them that the more comments there are on the blog, the less written homework they will get!
At the “new technologies” course I was on in Stirling, there was talk about the “conversation” that web 2.0 facilitated.  The class blog appears to be delivering this.  One pupil posted a comment saying that she had not understood an aspect of that days work.  I picked up the comment that night, and was able to prepare work for the following day which hoped top help the young lady overcome the difficulties she was having.  Incidentally, I was going to be at an inservice that day so the cover work for the class was left on the blog itself, including the additional tutorial on endothermic and exothermic reactions!  The next post the student made was saying that the work had helped, a little! 
As if this wasn’t enough encouragement, I was sitting at lunch later that week, when another teacher opposite me said
“I want one of those blog things”
I was a little confused as I had kept the blog very quiet (again wanting to see its worth before sharing it with colleagues).  That was until it dawned on me that the teacher had a daughter in the chemistry class.  She had seen its value, not from a teachers perspective, but from a parents perspective.  She saw the benefit it was having with her daughter, and wanted set one up for her to use with her new S3 class.
Until last week, I have seen the potential with web 2.0 for education but with no real personal evidence for its benefits.  This has held me back from becoming a “champion” for the cause.  Now, I have the evidence!

Note, I am not going to post the address of the chemistry blog to this blog, as I want to allow the students a little more freedom, that they would not have if the school were identified.  Since my school can be identified from this blog…. No links.  If you are interested, feel free to ask, and I will send the link to your email address.

Life has been a little hectic the last wee while, and although I have been setting up a blog for use with my new chemistry class, I have been too busy (sorry) to fire up bloglines or even post here.  The only problem is, now that I am back, there is just far too much good stuff in my bloglines waiting to be read.  Is there room in an individuals life for a full time job, wife, kids, house, garden, excercise, and blogging?  and I even missed of the most important thing from the list. 

One aspect of my job is puting systems in place which will make the life of my fellow teachers easier.  Our biggest hit so far is the behaviour managenment system that allows us to log kids behaviour (good and not so good) via a webpage on our school intranet.  The staff like it, the managers like it, and we recently allowed the pupils to view their own loggings - they too love it, and behaviour accross the school appears to be getting better since!  This week the staff in the school have been discussing target setting with a view to formalise what we are already doing accross the school, and to move over to a database driven, web interface target setting application.  Time will tell, but I am hopefull that it will make things easier for staff in the long term and may even allow us to do away with formal reports to parents…. 

Anyway, next week I will start developing it.  The point of this rant however is that technology should make our lives easier, and free up our time to spend interacting with people, with friends and family, and the students we teach.  Im sitting here blogging with my back to the TV, (and my wife), when really I should be spending the evening with her.  I guess therefore that this post should really conclude with something “relationship building”.  I was interested to learn that Oly was into kayaking.  As someone who lives near some great kayaking country/seascape, I feel it only fair to issue an invitation to any kayakers up this neck of the woods to came and visit (stay if you are house trained), and we can paddle, and ponder the wonders of web 2.0, and if I crank up the gain on my wireless connection, even blog from a canoe in the bay in front of the house with my iPac.

Im off to spend some quality time with the wife in front of friday night’s TV best.