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I have been involved for the last term with a range of classes who are tweeting as part of their everyday work. I have been also looking at ways of linking classes using it and have started thinking about ways exploiting chances in the run up to the Christmas break to join up new classes using Twitter.

One of the thoughts I have had is to get classes playing simple games between each other as a prelude to other opportunities such as collaborative writing, maths quests and joint web quests.

One possibility could be for classes to use a common hash tag such as #xmasgame or a unique hash tags for individual games eg game 1 and so on.

Looking very quickly games which classes could play might be:

Countdown One class could take the lead on this providing the first set of nine letters for another (or a group of classes. This could be used for the numbers game as well. In this game it would be important for the children to be of a similar age or ability for it to be most effective

Hangman Each class taking it in turns to set the word

Christmas I spy This again could be played between two or more classes.

Quiz show – classes could set each other quiz questions to research by the end of a set time. Classes in different parts of the world could set tasks to be replied to by the end of their day. This could simple questions.

Writing the next line – classes could write Christmas poems one line at a time swapping them using twitter, etherpad, google docs or a similar applications

A different 12 days of Christmas – classes could collaboratively write their own versions of the 12 days of Christmas one day at a time.

A twitpic 12 days of Christmas – children could use twitpic to share their drawings of the12 days of Christmas.

Again any further suggestions would be very gratefully accepted.

I found Seamonsters under recommendation from @digitalmaverick and bought both the Wii game and the DVD produced by National Geographic.

The DVD is typical of the quality one comes to expect from National Geographic with a mixed timeline of prehistoric marine dinosaurs and the different discoveries of their fossils by archeologists. The game allows the user to access the game as a marine dinosaur and perhaps doesn’t have the elegance of Endless Ocean but it is still an alluring game.

I have drawn up a curriculum map – this is deliberately not demarcated by UK National Curriculum subjects but I think that it will be easy to make the links.

I have made links that are slightly Anglo centric with a focus on Mary Anning (she of Mary Mary Quite Contrary fame) who was based on the Jurassic coast to the west of Poole. The DVD also places to investigate across the globe including Holland, the USA and Australia.
I have tried put in some web 2.0 opportunities including the use of voicethread, collaborative writing using google doc (although this could be one of many collaborative writing tools such as etherpad.)

This is hopefully a starting point and I would love to hear any comments which may inspire further developments.

Burglar Bill

I spent most of yesterday dressed as a burglar whilst videoconferencing with angry children! This was as  part of the wonderful Jolly Postman project in Rotherham. I have been supporting the two consultants who are leading on the project which involves twelve schools. Linda and Amy have  tirelessy driven the work which is brilliantly structured and creative.

They managed to persuade one colleague to be filmed as a newsreader telling the children that Burglar Bill had stolen the Jolly Postman’s sack and that without it the people of Storyville would not be able to receive their letters. Another colleague was filmed as the Jolly Postman himself telling the children how miserable he was and how he was worried that his friends would suffer as a result of not having their letters.
The project started this term and during the October and November children have been able to send letters and cards by post to characters in the book and also able to use an email address which diverts to the consultants’ inboxes. On some weeks they have been dealing with up to 50 emails which they have used to encourage and motivate the children and to give them ideas for writing.

The extension of this was to give the children the opportunity to hot seat Burglar Bill live to find out why he had done the terrible deed and what he was going to do about it.

It is clear that a huge amount of work has gone into the project and certainly the organisation for yesterday’s videoconference was incredibly impressive. Andrew Lickley from YHGfL worked with us at a local secondary school and co-ordinated the calls to 19 classes whilst we also popped out to one school to do session live in the school hall.

During the day we encountered a few issues in schools who were not regular users of VC or where specific pieces of kit struggled to cope but out of the 19 calls I would say that 15 were perfectly fine. I just had to pretend that I was an old burglar who was a bit deaf for a few of the calls.

I have posted a tiny amount of it onto youtube obviously being incredibly careful to avoid any clips with identifiable children on it.

In terms of the learning there were some very astute children who had really got to grips with the story and asked some impressive questions. Some classes (often the youngest) were most concerned about the Jolly Postman’s feelings and what Burglar Bill was going to do to make him feel better. In one VC with a Year 3 class we ventured into a line of questioning of why Burglar Bill had chosen a life of crime, why he hadn’t looked to get a job which didn’t upset people and what he was going to do when he left prison. I was impressed with their level of reasoning andunderstanding of the text.

The experience has given me even more zeal about promoting the use of videoconferencing and it has also caused me to consider the opportunities that videoconference events will provide for undertaking Assessing Pupil Progress (APP) for Speaking and Listening. The materials will be shared with schools by QCDA early next year and I think that it is vital that the edtech community consider how ICT can be used to support it. There is already some work being done using podcasting and audio files to record evidence for Reading APP. The examples of Speaking and Listening which have been shown at conferences have some use of ICT but I think that it will be important for  us to support colleagues with developing other approaches to make accurate measurement of children’s progress and achievement. I think that the use of ICT will have a very important role in Assessment Focus 4 (Talking about Talk) which will focus on meta-cognition with children expected to consider the effectiveness of their performance as speakers and listeners. We ignore the opportunities this brings at our peril.

Reading with Wolves

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A very quick blog post about a lovely reading conference I had on Friday last week. The conference was with @2globalrams who are in Second Grade at the Mary Institute and Saint Louis Country Day School in St. Louis, Missouri and along with @globalrams have a strong twitter presence. The children are given plenty of opportunities to let other know what they are doing and have recently progressed to adding video clips using yfrog.

I met Jeff Horwitz, a teacher at the school through email after he responded to my blog post about Twitter. I have been following the classes and have been really encouraged by their apparent love of texts and their regular tweets about their favourite books.

Jeff and I discussed an idea I had developed initially with Martin Waller’s class @classroomtweets when I skyped with them as ‘The Book Man’ so that we could discuss Lost and Found by Oliver Jeffers. We decided that we would select a British book this time and that the children would recommend an American book to me next time.

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The text we chose was Wolves by Emily Gravett. I started reading to the children without allowing them to see any part of the book. Their faces betrayed a polite disappointment as they thought that my favourite book was a boring non fiction text about Wolves! Next we re-read the book with them reading the images which completely changed their reaction. The children immediately fell in love with the text and impressed me with their observation and prediction skills. For those who know the text we had a wonderful discussion about the trees which make up a wolf. One of the boys decided that the kite is the spit from the drooling wolf.

Jeff has posted a recording of the session on his blog which hopefully will convey the excitement of the children.

The session has posed some questions to me about the work we did together. Skype is not permitted in schools in England due to certain issues however there are other solutions which are easily accessed by schools. I wish that more schools would embrace the power and immediacy of video conference. I don’t understand why it is such an underused resource.

The key question is how we get schools to engage with it.

On Tuesday I was lucky enough to attend the #140 conference in London which was launched under the banner of Exploring the state of Now.
There have already been two excellent blog postings by Terry Freedman and Chris from BrainPop but I want to record some of my thoughts around the event.

I won my ticket after responding to a tweet by organiser Jeff Pulver @jeffpulver explaining why I wanted to attend. My hope was that I would see how people working in other businesses and areas of public sector are using twitter. This was to see if I could gain ideas for in-school work, my personal use of Twitter and also in my role working for the National Strategies.

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I arrived early at the O2 arena and made my way to Indigo not sure whether, other than @digitalmaverick, I would know anyone. Within minutes the power of twitter became clear as I found that @neiladam was actually sat two seats to my right and @terryfreedmanwas on the other side of the room with @billgibbon.

The day was launched by @jeffpulver who set the tone for the day with the key message for the day of “Listen connect share and engage”. The first hour was a very upbeat and touchy-feely presentation of presentation of the benefits of Twitter with ’twillionaire’ @stephenfry following later.

@jeffpulver started with a comparison of the present use of Twitter to the development of the ham radio community in the 70s and 80s – “There is no need to be lonely anymore.”

It is also, he opined, the future of communications enabling us to live in the state of now – this is the fact that there is so much more immediacy to the sharing of facts, news, information and opinion. He then introduced the issue of authenticity for the first time during the day arfuing that we could see the rise of consumer to consumer marketing (as people trust the views of a friend significantly more than those of a corporate). This did spark a thought in my mind as to whether there were any implications for education on a local scale from this comment.  He stressed how Twitter users recognise authentic and phoney users from politicians, multinationals etc. This is a theme which I will return to later in the post.

He talked about the opportunities provided to develop serendipity through developed engagement and also links. The example he gave was of the  fans and stars of a TV show being able to communicate without the control or interference of PR consultants.

Before Stephen Fry came on we saw a discussion between Babs Rangaiah Vice President, Global Comms Planning, Unilever and his colleague Laura Klauberg Vice President, Global Media, Unilever comparing the attitude of a Twitter addict and someone who doesn’t necessarily see its point. It is very to be cynical but part of me wondered why two extremely highly paid executives would give up their time to speak for ten minutes at such a conference if there wasn’t some cross benefit for them. This jarred with the idea of authenticity of which Jeff Pulver had been talking so enthusiastically. Babs Rangaiah made some  pertinent points which may have implications for education. He accepted that Twitter would be transient and was not necessarily here to stay but “real time recording of the present is here to stay”  this is something which not enough  school leadership team see; too many remain caught up in previous approaches or ignoring new developments as they will simply be a phase.
He also commented that Unilever marketers are encouraged to live the space which again struck a chord with primary education in terms of understanding children’s use of technology.

Stephen Fry was then welcomed to the stage to talk about the the cult of the celebrity twitterer. A year ago virtually no-one knew about Twitter and shows the massive change that comes through the internet. He said that the the point which is missed by too many is the emotional relationship of users with their technology. Brands are in danger of forgetting they need to talk to people as people, not as a business. So again we returned to the authenticity argument. He was interesting when talking about the ‘deadwood press’ citing how journalists have changed their view of twitter a year ago – especially the commentating class of journalist. They have undertaken a complete volte face starting their own stream, having initially initially derided any fatuous celebrity who dared to have a twitter account.

In a period of discussion of the press (in particular trafigura and Charlie Brooker’s use of twitter to attack Jan

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Moir’s article about Stephen Gately) he warned of lazy journalists regularly quote participants of tweet streams as the pr

omoters of a thread and used twitter as their source of information.

I did like his analogy of Twitter as a city with churches, red light zones, slums, beautiful areas etc and is influenced by its citizens. These things are human shaped don’t deny the internet your voice.

Andrew Keen Author, Cult of The Amateur: How the Internet is Killing our Culture then took to the stage to give the dissenting voice. He was excellent in his attempt to politely pop the balloon of loveliness and potentially naivety.

Keen’s arguments were that the illusion of the state of now is that the world is flattened and we are rediscovering humanity whereas what we are actually rediscovering is power. The real word to discuss is authenticity – the human quality of being able to intimately engage. The more authentic one appears on Twitter the more power you have and the more you can connect. We are looking at a profound historical shift from the power of the press (based upon old structures) to a more authentic approach. The danger of this that we haven’t explored is what happens when someone who appears to be authentic is a charlatan. Stephen Fry has the power to rubbish papers, writers etc through his following.
As the world is one in economic crisis we have a state of now which could lead to catastrophe- this depends on who is peddling the truth as we have now done away with fact checkers, editors etc.

His analogy was that we now approach ‘digital vertigo’. Those of us in the know in the state of now cannot allow ourselves to be deluded that this is going to be a state of utopia.

We then moved into a more corporate section of the day started by event sponsor Kodak who had a stall advertising their new video camera the Zi8 which looks brilliant. He was introduced by Jeff Pulver who assured the delegates that we are disrupting the world by being real. @Jeffrey Hayzlett CMO, Kodak talked about the company’s social media approach.  He descrived this as the 4 Es of Kodak

• Engagement
• Educate
• Excite
• Evangelize

The key message I took from his session with implications for my role was that one third of people get Twitter right away, one third people get it eventually and one third won’t ever. He argued that this was the same for companies. The questions I posed myself were What would this be for Primary education? and What would this be for other applications around web 2.0?

I won’t repeat the detailed descriptions of the day repeated elsewhere especially as we then saw a range of speakers who showed how Twitter could be used to support their work. This included corporates looking at how they could exploit it – this seemed to run counter to the arugument that Twitter is an authentic medium. There seemed to be a great dichotomy between the first hour and then corporate nature of this part including the discussion of Twitter and music.  I also felt very old when Eminem (who first made it big in the US in 1999) was described coming from an age when…!

The Police who tweet session allowed senior police officers to describe how they use twitter to engage with the population and see it as business-critical for police. “Twitter is like a freight train – you either get on or get run over”
I was taken by the description of their policing of the EDL march in Birmingham and how they used Twitter to get information out on to the streets with great immediacy. One example was countering rumours spreading around one event.

The final session of great interest to me was the education session which was chaired by @daveowhite who admitted that he was not used to being at event with such lack of cynicism around technology. The discussion group was made up of @digitalmaverick, @jamesclay, @shirleyearley and (@Dr_Black) It was an iInteresting discussion about the use of twitter in education which James Clay sought to mix it up by arguing that it was inaccessble to schools and that Twitter is going to die within a year. Whilst amusing and thought provoking his assertion that 99.999999% of all schools blocked twitter was being quoted as truth by some twitterers by the end of the evening as a result of multiple retweets! (The retweeter didn’t consider that this mean that there would only be one school in the whole of England able to use it)
Ultimately James Clay is correct in arguing that too many institutions were blocking social media and that twitter was the present favourite toy but I also felt that was missing the point that in education the medium is often irrelevant – those schools which are using Twitter will not stick it with ad infinitum but the change in  their practice is what will remain and what is more significant.  The examples I think of are classes like @globalrams, @classroomtweets and @giraffeclass who are communicating with each other and other classes. They are also infant classes which are using the immediacy as a motivational tool for encouraging children to apply their phonic knowledge. The teachers are tackling the thorny issue of e-safety sensilby rather than over-emotively or through a paranoid lens. They will move on from Twitter maybe to applications we haven’t thought of or to something which other classes are using but the experience will change the way that those teachers operate.

So to echo other blog posts – was attending #140conf worthwhile?
Yes, definitely because it allowed me to do what I had stated in my original tweet to Jeff Pulver. I had a day considering how educationalists could develop their use of social media. I have revisited my thoughts on the use of Thomas Guskey’s model of evaluation of CPD (See previous blog post) and have started building models around the implementation of twitter and other applications.
There were some other benefits in meeting people who I had ‘met’ on Twitter and also to meet people from other walks of like. Any time for pondering and musing grabbed whenever and whereever is useful but it was enhanced by discussions with @neiladam, @billgibbon, @terryfreedman, @davidowhite and @digitalmaverick

I have been participating in a forum on the Educator’s PLN under the title of ‘How can we motivate teachers to see the benefits of adapting and changing to meet the needs of today’s students?’ This question was posed by Steve Johnson who has posted the varied responses on a google shared document.

I posted some views last night and have decided to expand my thoughts in this blog post.

I considered some of the approaches we took at my previous school when we sought move all of the staff forward together. This was in a school which hosted Head teachers as part of SLICT and which had some real pioneers.

We took two main appeoaches which may be different from those often seen in schools.
1) We designated barometer teachers (at first unofficially and then more openly) These were the barometers of where we were as a school in the use of ICT. They were chosen by virtue of being the firs teachers to tell me why they didn’t like ICT (“I had the internet drop on me in an observed lesson 8 years ago and I’ve never trusted it since” and other such comments). In order to move forward these (and other teachers) were given support through coaching and mentoring from teachers and classroom assistants. We also gave children the role of ICT mentors to support lessons, teachers or groups of children – the mentors could only do it in one application and we sought to have a gender balance in those selected. As we moved into a new academic year we tried to ensure that each year group team had a balance of confident and developing usrs of technology and as the member of Senior Management with responsibility for Curriculum Development and ICT I supported the medium and short term planning to ensure that there was a progression in the use of ICT. There was some frustration from the pioneers who wanted to chase the latest development in tools and applications but we moved forward massively together as a school and staff. My proudest moment was after two years when one of the barometer teachers chose to have ICt development as her personal target in her Performance management and used VC and podcasting to great effect.
2) The second strategy was that of JDI – (Just Do IT) – we stressed that there was a moral and professional responsibility to teach what was in the plans even if the teachers didn’t like ICT – It is important to stress that ensured that we were seen to do this in other curriculum areas and approaches such as Art and Drama. We didn’t accept excuses but instead sought to fill the gaps with support through coaching and mentoring. This sounds quite harsh in a four line description but was very much in the context of providing colleagues with the support needed to move forwards.

In the light of recent work undertaken in my present role I would recommend the use the lesson study model of Collaborative support so that the support was not as hierarchical. The main reason for this is that some of the teachers who were pioneers could have learned a great deal about effective pedagogies from those they were supporting but were concentrating on the ICT skills whereas lesson study would focus on the pedagogy (guided work, modelling etc) and then look at how ICT could support it. Many Local Authorities are exploring and funding the use of lesson study in schools mainly with an emphasis on core subject areas. I strongly believe that there is huge potential for its use to support pedagogy in ICT.

I attended a CPD session today with Tim Rylands as part of a Leeds Literacy Project and below are the results of an attempt to blog live whilst I was taking part.
Tim is working with teachers from a range of schools who will be looking to use Games Based Learning in their literacy teaching. My role will be to support the schools during the project with the intention of ensuring its sustainability.

I apologise for the poor grammar and writing but I tried to get everything and then posted as quickly as possible.

Notes from the day

Initial attack on powerpointlessness of too many presentations – the day will be based around single words / phrases and images

Introduction of Myst games with a disclaimer that it is not necessarily about being a gamer. The beauty of the images is brought to the fore.
Myst III and Myst IV – games recommended for new users.

“It’s about inspiring children to become writers.”

“Writing floats on a sea of speaking and listening”

Teachers bring their experience of the world into their description  of the initial screen.

Discusses giving a sign to the children that the teacher will listen (non verbal language)

Teachers absolutely mesmerised by the use of the background music and the positive messages permeating through each section
Suddenly we have moved into discussion of writing and the modelling of oral rehearsal.

Paragraphing indicated by a new experience in the game.
Tim demonstrated vocabulary collection through meeting different aspects of the game.
There is a  strong message around maximising the impact of small amounts of game playing rather than relentlessly marching through the game. This is about taking time and allowing the speaking and listening to come to the fore. There are links between the use of time in film literacy with Games Based Learning.
More awe and wonder than shock and thunder – this ties in with previously discussed work on using boy friendly approaches with girl friendly texts. The gaming is as girl friendly as boy friendly.
Atrus’ book shown to the delegates and the importance of it being a quality text stressed to the delegates.
Writing journals recommended – hoping that teachers see links to current agendas with LA training.

• Speaking and listening
• Writing journals
• Fiction thieving / Magpieing ideas
• Scribbling (writing constantly)

Film shared of the children playing the game and reading their writing

• Wind chimes were singing their song
• …there were unfinished books lying on the floor
• It looked nothing I had seen before

Recommended cue prompter to support reading on film or in assemblies.
Quicktime VR library at panoramas

Examples from Special Schools
Sarah and Tim shared examples of work with pupils in Special Schools with description of the game’s impact on the children.

Moving back to images of children writing – “It is about children perceiving them as writers” – this is something that we have been battling with for many years (editor)
The work shown covered a huge range of forms of writing from postcards, writing their own worlds, explanations, persuasive writing to justify the use of computer games in the literacy lesson.

End of first session
What do you think you will take back to work? Thoughts from my table (editor) Emphasis on speaking and listening, time to think, time to rehearse, emphasis on quality of teaching of text structure and pupils taking control of the production of work.
Quote of the morning “There’s no point in doing a day like this, if it doesn’t have an impact on what is happening in your classroom.”

Session Two
The delegates launched into playing the game for this session
This means that I have had time to think through the implications of the morning’s input and I have come up with the conclusion that the morning has been about the breaking down of silos.
What I mean by this is that too many teachers in our country are confronted with an approach to CPD which can be sumarised by the beloved Jesse on the fast show.

How many teachers hit a different CPD focus every week? The net result of this is often that we often see the Primary curriculum in silos or blocks. This is also true for simply the teaching of literacy where teachers try to orchestrate the use of film literacy, speaking and listening, reading comprehension, boy’s writing strategies, use of gaming, multiliteracies, visual literacy and so the list goes on. The morning has really reinforced the message that this is not about engaging with blocks of experience or silos of pedagogy rather that it is all about blending these into a clearly thought out approach. This is intuitive to many but it is still a vital message to give that the use of games or films will invigorate children to talk at length if the teacher plans for it and models it to the children. It will be key for the success of this project that teachers give themselves and, more importantly , the children time to develop talk around their experiences before moving into any writing.

Afternoon session
Tim and Sarah talked the delegates through a range of applications to be used in the classroom to support the teaching of writing. I am aware that some people reading this blog will know each of these applications but many won’t so I will add some details when I get home.
wordle – a brilliant site which creates a word cloud based upon the frequency of words in an extract pasted into the programme
word sift – similar to wordle (although with less eye catching visuals) which allows the user to research the meaning of specific within the word cloud
dabbleboard – an online collaboration tool
etherpad - collaborative writing tool which includes the ability to review the writing process upon completion using a time slider which replays the authoring as a movie.
Tag galaxy – after entering an initial tag the site creates a tag galaxy with terms related to it. When the user selects a tag it creates a tag planet populated with flickr images associated with the selected tags.
Voicethread – a web based application which allows pupils to post work or images and then comment upon it in writing, using video or audio.
Rich chart – a we based data programme which produces flash files of your data.
Gadwin – a really cool alternative to using print screen

Reflections
So as we near the end of the day was this about games based learning, Myst, speaking and listening, writing or engagement?
Being simplistic it was about all of them – sure enough Tim is in the position where people will expect to see work based around Myst but the use of the game is almost incidental to the main message. I am sure Tim won’t me mind saying that he could have used almost any different game and put over the same message. There were many messages given today which were identical to those given on training for development of oral rehearsal or Talk for Writing. There was plenty of advice about new opportunities in ICT, drama, talk and moving towards a piece of quality piece of writing.

So what was the day about? On two levels (pupils and teachers) it was about creating a motivating and engaging approach to the teaching of literacy.
More importantly it was about breaking down the different silos of approaches for teachers so that they don’t see each of the areas as being distinct and different.

So at the end of the day what did the delegates feel?
At the end of a very long day covering a myriad of opportunities and examples the teachers were fired up and incredibly keen to get to the school on the 2nd day to work not only with Tim but also with children.

A great day – I will keep you updated with the progress of the project over the next year.

I have now returned home and tidied the blog up. Tim’s blog has some interesting photos of the day (you may spot me on one!) the comments from the delegates are impressive but what is important is the impact on practice and children’s work is what ultimately matters.

Wordle of this posting

I am on holiday with my family and my parents in the beautiful Pembrokeshire village of Broad Haven.
The cottage is 100 metres from the beach and we are spending the majority of the time walking the dog on the sand and then relaxing reading and watching my children play a range of Nintendo DS and Wii games.
We all brought a huge amount of books with us and it is fascinating to see how the children appear to have the attitude this week that downtime is electronic and reading is for bed. I realise that two children are hardly representative of the population (particularly two who have access to a large number of books at home) but it did make me think about the recent survey of parents about their children’s gaming and reading preferences.

At the same time I have been doing a small amount of homework before breakfast each morning for some forthcoming Literacy Subject Leader conferences looking at books to fire children up in the Primary phase.
I have been asked to draw up a list of ten books of which every Subject Leader should be aware. It has taken me a long time to come up with a final list which, to be honest, could have been a top fifty. Ultimately I decided to go for books which seem to stand out at a time when, in the United Kingdom, we are in the middle of a golden period of children’s books.
The rules I gave myself for this were that the books had to be published in the last six years, they were not necessarily aimed at being taught in a sequence but will fire children up as readers and were books which would be as enjoyable for adults as children.

The authors who nearly made it into the list were Dav Pilkey, Mini Grey, Diana Wynne-Jones, Angie Sage, Eoin Colfer and Philip Pullman.

The books which made the list, in no particular order, are:
Hugo Cabret – David Selznick: One of the most original books I have seen recently with this historical novel told through image, photos and texts. The book references Georges Melies, Buster Keaton, Harold Lloyd and the world of automata. A captivating book for 9+

Morris the Mankiest Monster – Giles Andrae and Sarah McIntyre: From the well known wordsmith and a fairly new illustrator on the block this tale of a charmingly foul young monster who takes time each morning to squeeze his boils and has grown potatoes in his pants will charm and amuse children of all ages. It needs little more description other than a recommendation to buy.

The Arrival – Shaun Tan: Tan’s fantasy tale of immigration has many images which will remind the adult reader of the arrival of migrants to 1930’s New York. Indeed there are many links which could be made to When Jessie travelled across the Sea. The story revolves around the central character, a father and husband, who travels ahead of his family to set up home and raise the finances to create a new life for them all in the new country. Surrounded by fantastic animals and scene he takes the reader through the bewilderment and fear felt by many migrants. Again, like so many Shaun Tan books the reader could spend a significant amount of time reader the end papers before entering the book.

Wolves – Emily Gravett: I could have chosen any of five books by Emily Gravett particularly the Rabbit Problem (which explores the Fibonacci theory). Wolves is a magical book which can be read out aloud to children as a non fiction text without sharing the pages whilst once the images are read the whole meaning changes. Whilst often given to infant aged children this book could appeal to older readers.

The London Eye Mystery – Siobhan Dowd: This novel narrated by Ted an autistic teenager who, with this older sister, tackles the puzzle of the apparently impossible disappearance of his cousin from a pod on the London Eye. A warmly told story which tries to explore the thought process of a teenager with a disorder without ridiculing or patronising.

My secret war diary – Marcia Williams: It is almost impossible to describe the wonder of this diary. It is of such quality that it really could be the true diary of Flossie Albright recounting her war years, as the daughter of a soldier fighting in France, whilst she lives on a large estate encountering rationing, evacuees, land girls and other key elements of World War 2. With photographs, captions, diagrams and illustrations the book is as powerful a non fiction tool for study of the period as an enchanting read.

Silverfin The graphic Novel – Charlie Higson and Kev Walker: The graphic novel version of the first book in the Young Bond series combines Higson’s excellent writing with the illustrations of Kev Walker who has made his name drawing for 2000AD and Warhammer comics. This book is one of a growing number of high quality graphic novel translations of well loved texts – Artemis Fowl, Alex Ryder – and should not be considered purely as a boy friendly text.

The Flower – John Light: I have referred to this book previously in this blog suggesting links with the Delivery and Varmints. It tells the story of one person going against the system to produce something of beauty. In this story Brigg is not immediately aware of what he is dealing with but the messages of acting on your instincts and not giving into apathy are strong no matter what the age of the reader.

Lost and Found – Oliver Jeffers: When a penguin turns at a boy’s door he takes him to the lost and found office but no-one is missing a penguin. The boy then rows with the penguin to the South Pole to take him home but the story does not end there. A beautiful and witty book from one of my favourite picture book authors of the moment.

Cloud Busting – Malorie Blackman: The oldest of the books in the list this book is told entirely in verse. It covers suspicion, bullying, friendship, jealousy and growing up. It provoked a huge amount of discussion, engagement, laughter and even tears with a class of Year 5 I recently taught.

Obviously I could have chosen many other books and would love to hear your top ten.

With my interest in using ICT to support the teaching of literacy I have looked at the use of blogs, wikis and Twitter in classes with interest over several years. I approached this term with the intention of working with a range of classes in developing the use of these tying them into recent developments to support teachers in the teaching of writing in England released through the National Strategies – Support for Writing, Talk for Writing and APP.

Nationally it is estimated that more than 75% of Primary schools have Improving Standards in Writing as a priority on their Development Plan. In many cases this is specifically the standards of writing for Boys or the gap between reading and writing.

It does mean that there are many approaches which are being presented to schools to support them in tackling writing issues – some of these are developed by Local Authorities, some by national organisations and others by commercial providers. In each of these cases the common denominator is that CPD is required to develop the subject knowledge of the practitioner. In many of these cases it is about a new approach to writing or making changes to classroom practice. In some these significant changes are required whilst in some classes teachers actually need to have the confidence to embed present practice and develop intelligent and creative approaches to audience and purpose.

I am working with teachers who are introducing the use of Twitter as a writing tool in Key Stage One classes. It is far too early to be able to report on the impact of the projects but the work is already posing some questions which I have been considering this week.
The use of Twitter seemed to be a sensible addition to a teacher’s toolkit rather than a total re-equipping of it. It is important to say that the classes are not ones where the use of technology has had a great prominence so there is a interest for me in how ‘real world’ technologies can add to the ICT practice in the class as well as developing the profile of writing.

I am working most closely with the Giraffes www.twitter.com/@giraffeclass who have attempted to tweet every day as part of their morning routine. The Year 1 children are adapting to life out of the Foundation Stage and the teacher is trying to create a learning environment in which writing is valued and meaningful.

The use of twitter has been tied in tightly to the application of phonic knowledge – this is an area which has been identified in Year 1 where children are not given sufficient opportunities to practice and apply the phonic skills they have learnt.

Early tweet about Guided Reading

The teacher and teaching assistant ensure that the class tweet daily with the “star of the day” choosing a writing buddy to join them and the TA in developing the tweet through oral rehearsal and then typing. The teaching assistant ensures that the children orally practice the spelling of each word considering the different options they have learned but she does not correct or change what has been typed.

Tweet as part of Toys topic

The class have now started adding twitpics to develop their use and to show what they have (on an e-safety note this has meant that the children have learned that when they take photographs they have to ensure that no children are in the shot so that they may be published.)

The teacher reports that she believes that they have passed the tipping point in terms of pupil acceptance and use – when it gets to 11.30am the children know that it is ‘twitter time’ and start thinking about what they want to tell their audience about and who is going to write it. The class are also now receiving questions through Twitter from some of their followers which the children love. This provides the real world link which develops their understanding of why they are tweeting.

The twitpics from the class show what they were working with such as this photo of the toys they had all brought in for curator’s activity.

Curator's activity

The extension of this is twitpics of their work celebrating their achievements and sharing them with an increasing number of followers – these now include parents and other relatives.
The teacher is excited by the prospect of sharing of more work from the class and is now planning to include work from all areas of the curriculum.

Writing chosen to be placed on twitpic

The teacher is also exploring the potential for using Twitter to support Assessment for Learning. This includes developing the children’s self assessment with them choosing to submit a piece of work, of which they are proud, to be posted using twitpic. In addition, she is keeping a record of who has posted each day to aid the collation of evidence of writing for APP.

There is no assumption that the use of twitter is necessarily cutting edge technology but I think that there have already been some key points of interest in this half term of work with the Giraffes.

It strikes me that Twitter is perfectly designed for supporting writing in Key Stage One as it is one of the few mediums which requires the child to be brief and gains an immediate response.
It is also is gaining interest from parents some of whom had never heard of Twitter and the teacher is hoping that they will be soon commenting on the work their child is doing.

The sustainability of a project like this is absolutely about embedding the use of twitter in daily practice – other users appear to be more inconsistent in their use of twitter and as a result they do not appear to have reached the same tipping point with children seeing it as part of their regular practice.

I suspect that it is easier to organise groups to tweet in the slightly less congested or siloed Key Stage One curriculum than in Key Stage Two. This does not preclude its successful use in older classes but I suspect that this will be more around note making, writing summaries, using twitpics to show work, seeking advice or opinions and making links across the globe.

So where will the Giraffes go from here?
They are preparing for their Virtual Ballon Race in which they are hoping to make links with classes all around the globe by email or tweet. This will then inform their weekly geography researching and talking about the countries they have heard from.
They have located some classes across the globe but are very keen to find new partners who are happy to swap emails or tweets.
If you are interested in making links with them please contact me (blord05@googlemail.com)

Vital CPD delivered a keynote at Naace AMAC last week on the launch of their CPD offer for teachers. This joint venture between Open University and e-skills UK has developed a £5.6 million scheme to help teachers to bring technology even more effectively into the classroom with the launch in January 2010.
Gareth Davies has written about it in his blog ‘Never mind the technology, where’s the learning?’ including a blog this month having seen their presentation to Naace. He stated that Vital will be  ‘offering a range of blended learning opportunities with different mixtures and at appropriate venues, such as schools, ICT Centres.’

I remember speaking at the Worcestershire LA Primary ICT conference several years ago and asking the packed room how many people felt that they would pass the QTS test for Literacy in order to qualify as a teacher training student. Across the room there was a sea of hands, likewise for the same question about mathematics and then came the question about ICT! There was much laughter in the room as half of the hands dropped in the room.
Not long after this event I went back into teaching working in a school where ICT is at the heart of the curriculum. The school invested in a full time technician and sought to embed ICT in everyday practice. It is obvious that there was a wide range of experience, confidence and competence in the staff but staff were prepared to use ICT. This operated at the lowest level because it was an  expectation whilst most staff could actually see the impact on learning,  standards and motivation.
However, I have worked and come across other schools where there is an accepted lack of willingness to use ICT within everyday practice. Children continue to go through a rollercoaster of learning in ICT as they progress through their Primary years and what they experience is sometimes down to the coin toss of which teachers they have.

How many times do we hear colleagues justify their lack of use of ICT with an ill fated observed lesson four years earlier when the projector didn’t work?
Would this be as acceptable if we substituted open questions or calculation skills for ICT?
This is about leadership of schools setting expectations of ICT use in their schools and teachers are equipped to meet them. Where there is a rollercoaster of opportunity in a school there would be  potential for collaborative classroom based CPD or even lesson study where teachers work together on a common element of pedagogy using ICT, however the potential needs to be translated into action.
I am struck by Stephen Heppell’s comments about Peter Pan schools when I think about schools who continue to abdicate responsibility for using technology to make a difference.

So will Vital work? Whilst Gareth Davies argues that Vital may have their work cut out because ‘of the competition, free or otherwise that this market presents at the end of the 1st decade of the 21st century.’
I would agree with his point but also add that all of this isn’t worth a hill of beans unless there are  more leadership teams who consider the bottom line and share this with their staff.