Well it is Monday - there are always many things to blog about on a Monday. I have been investigating various web platforms for most of the morning to see if I can make my subject (Drama) more interesting, enticing, engaging....etc etc... My searches have been relatively fruitful - I enjoyed investigating Pinterest, something I have not connected with before. (Why? You ask? Well sometimes if I'm not completely grabbed by something straight off - then I find it very difficult to motivate myself to figure out how it works) I was trying to solve a problem for a colleague and then started scheming ways in which I could incorporate the investigation of Pinterest I was doing into my own teaching and development. Before this I had been on PicMonkey for the morning, if you haven't tried this out yet then do! Warning - it will not tickle your creative side if you speak 'photoshop' fluently - but for those like me that find Microsoft created documents very uninspiring - it allows you to work with text and image in a very simple way and it looks really cool at the same time (Well I think so anyway).
So as my brain is on hyper investigation mode - as I started to write this post I decided I wanted to embed the video of the song that entered my head as I thought of the title. I successfully inserted the link, but I am not sure how successful the embedding process is (as I am hoping, rather pessimistically, that it will embed as I publish the post). If all that you can see is weird characters then we can all come to the conclusion that I have not been successful with this endeavor.
Monday Monday - Mamas and Papas
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Professional learning and investigation is a huge part of this profession. As is developing oneself with enough skills to function in this ever changing digital world. Ask any teacher and you will find a mere few who can articulate that they have the confidence to function in the digital world as easily as the young people we teach do. Most of us feel a slight sense of panic when yet another digital/internet based/electronic app/site/programme is marketed to us as something that will revolutionize our teaching. Heck (am I allowed to say that word on here) - it makes me feel a little sick when I think about using something in the classroom that I am not fully sure how to use myself, and yet, I cannot get a handle on all of these 'tools' fast enough to keep up with the students and their own curiosity for such things. And so I return to my trusty white board markers - the only updates they need are to be thrown in the bin when they no longer work.
Something makes me think that I am just running and hiding from a couple of really simple, really effective tools. So I am having a stern word with myself to stop running and face something new - what is the worst that can happen. If it goes flop in the classroom, I am already assuring myself that that would be a result of so many factors, and to try again to see what happens. Again I have come to the conclusion that as teachers we need to practice what we preach. Watch this space - hopefully I can align all the (web-based) planets.
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