Month: November 2009

#tomsassembly

TwitterPublished on8 Comments on #tomsassembly

Today I took my second full Key Stage 2 assembly of the week. Yesterday I spoke to the 240 junior children about my trip to Qatar, it was great to have an opportunity to talk with them as some of the topics of WISE were itching away in my mind.

In Monday’s assembly I showed some of the national flags of people I had met, and we talked about the meaning of some of the designs. Today we connected even further with people in my Twitter network. Before the assembly I asked:

3773905213_f05ccf7d43_o_normaltombarrett For #tomsassembly 10.30am GMT pls answer Qs: Location? Weather? What food represents your country/region? pls RT

I set the question before I left for school at around 7.30am and was delighted at the massive reaction from so many of you. With all of the responses I wasn’t going to be able to include all of them in the 15 minutes, so we talked about the weather in various parts of the world and then I set some challenges. (Thinking about it, World Cuisine would be a great curriculum topic to do – connecting to other classrooms, trying food, learning about different countries, Cooking Mama…)

I asked each class to find out more about a range of different foods that were tweeted my way.

  • Y3 – Musselburgh Steak Pie (Scotland)
  • Y3 – Maple Syrup (Canada)
  • Y4 – Nasi Lemak (Malaysia)
  • Y4 – Cockles and Jellied Eels (Essex, England)
  • Y5 – Melton Mowbray Pie (Nottinghamshire, England)
  • Y5 – Haggis, Neaps and Tatties (Scotland)
  • Y6 – Dim Sum (Hong Kong)
  • Y6 – Henderson’s Relish (Yorkshire, England)

A BIG thankyou to all of those who took a minute to send me a reply, the responses about food created a Twitter Smörgåsbord and it was so much fun seeing all of the different foods mentioned. I am looking forward to seeing what the kids find out when they report back.

The title of this blog post is the hashtag I used for the responses, it allowed me to quickly get to just the replies I needed and in fact some people just tweeted without sending it to me, I was still able to pick them up with the hashtag. Great tip to keep track of conversations etc.

I have archived the hashtag using Twapper Keeper but it is not appearing yet, you can also access all of the responses in this Google Doc. I have deleted the retweets so you are just left with the information on location, weather and food. I thought it may be a useful little source of information for others too.

In the past when I have used Twitter for a classroom activity or assembly other people have found it useful when I write about where their 140 character contributions fitted into the bigger picture. The combined effort of small contributions can have a big impact.

Once again a big thanks for helping with my assembly today if you did, the children were excited and keen to learn more about the different foods and there was even a round of applause at the end.

After we had finished I spent another 5 minutes talking to at least 10 children who wanted to tell me about their personal links with different parts of the world. I think the assembly got them thinking beyond our cultural boundaries and that’s what I was aiming for.

WISE Qatar – Doha Diaries 4 – Wordle of Participants

WISEPublished onUpdated on4 Comments on WISE Qatar – Doha Diaries 4 – Wordle of Participants

The broad cross section of participants at WISE 2009 fascinated me. I have never shared a face to face event with such a global register.

During a quieter moment in the conference I made a Wordle of the job titles of all of the delegates.

WISE09 Participant Job Titles

I think it makes for an interesting observation of what groups, organisations and countries that were represented. Not all stakeholders were present, so not all of the views needed for such a wide debate on education were contributed.

In my opinion WISE 2010 needs to have a clear involvement of administration, parents and most of all students of every age group. We need to see the word “pupil” leaping out strongly from the next Wordle I do.

My First Mashup

TechnologyPublished onUpdated on2 Comments on My First Mashup

I wonder how long we have been creating mashups for? It seems to be hardwired into our creativity code to take separate things and create something new from them. I suppose this is the very essence of invention.

I have always believed it to be important to see beyond the obvious uses for things and to stretch them, push them and innovate. Innovation does not come from acceptance, it is sparked by challenge.

Lion Mask Dinosaur Mashup

My son made this before his bedtime – I wonder what the first mashup was that I made?

WISE Qatar – Doha Diaries 3 – A Call to Action?

WISEPublished on19 Comments on WISE Qatar – Doha Diaries 3 – A Call to Action?

WISE 2009 has drawn to a close and I have hardly had a moment to sit and reflect on the some of the amazing sessions and ideas that have been discussed. I intend to spend some time writing up my notes beyond the live Tweeting I did.

The event closed with a final gathering of the 1000 participants and Dr Abdullah the Chairman of the Qatar Foundation offered not only some final sentiments but a set of declarations.

Throughout the series of plenary and breakout sessions, we have been listening very closely to the contributions and the key concerns of the participants with a firm commitment to move from debate to concrete outcomes. The identification of 10 strategic priorities is a milestone as it represents a convergence among global educational leaders on the key issues that will affect and shape education in the 21st century.

WISE Logo

The 10 strategic priorities declared at the Summit were:

  1. Access to ‘quality’ education
  2. A fully integrated approach
  3. Global citizenship
  4. Education embedded in the local community
  5. Protecting education and educators
  6. Reconciliation
  7. ‘WISE pioneers’ to monitor progress
  8. Innovating new ways to learn
  9. Pursuing sustainable development
  10. A future built on multi-stakeholder partnership

WISE also refined how it will contribute to drive educational changes in the future.

  • WISE will be an agenda-setting forum which will define areas requiring actions across all sectors of education and will seek involvement of appropriate partners.
  • WISE will promote innovative practices, methodologies and partnerships, making best use of modern technology.
  • WISE will seek to build on the momentum of the inaugural summit to inform public opinion and put education as a priority on the political, social and economic agenda.

The identification of these 10 priorities is a first step. They are fairly predictable and I will be expanding on some of them in the coming weeks in some further blog posts about my experiences. The challenge of changing the face of education worldwide is sometimes too big an issue for me to grapple with. But I think grass roots efforts need to be listened to, amplified and supported. I hope that WISE can help amplify the story of my classroom of the innovation in your classroom or school. It is action we want not just more declarations and talk.

This information is not currently in a form to discuss and comment online, so here is our chance – have your say!

What are your reactions to the 10 declarations? Which is the most important to your setting? And what do you make of the role WISE has outlined to drive future educational changes? What measure of impact would you like to see from the WISE group that is relevant and real to you and your institution?

WISE Qatar – Doha Diaries 2 – Turning a Page

WISEPublished on2 Comments on WISE Qatar – Doha Diaries 2 – Turning a Page

WISE has begun in earnest and the unprecedented nature of the scale of this education conference was very clear to me. It is a gathering of so many people who could make a difference to world education, it is truly inspiring.

It was a rousing opening speech from Her Highness Sheikha Mozah Bint Nasser Al-Missned, who said that world education is almost comatose and that we all need to sound the alarm for change and the right to education. Her Highness challenged the summit to set out an innovative road map that reflects our common convictions.

Dr Irina Bokova the newly appointed Director General of UNESCO explained in her opening that 75 million children worldwide are not in any form of education. This is further compounded by the fact that 800 million adults lack a basic education. She explained that teaching is a top priority for UNESCO and that we must all do our utmost to protect education from the current economic crisis, unfortunately I think that schools in the UK will still feel the financial pinch in the coming months.

The Chairman of the Qatar Foundation, Dr Abdulla bin Ali Al-Thani set out further challenges for the summit. That the participants were the driving force for WISE and that we need to turn our words into endurable deeds. He explained that WISE was the beginning of a long term commitment to education innovation on a global scale.

Conference opening

The opening remarks were strong from all of the speakers. As a classroom teacher it helped me remember the very reason why we do our work. Even in the opening session the size of this event is abundantly clear, I hope that the nettle is grasped and as a collective something concrete is achieved in the next few days. How will my class be effected by this summit back home?

As the different speakers took to the stage the colour accent of the room changed, it is not going to be so easy to change global education, to align our common convictions. However the opening remarks helped remind us all why we try and why we need to continue to strive to improve.

As Irina Bokova put it, ” we must build peace in the minds of humans.” I will certainly take that back with me to my school.