Light travels faster than sound

Excellent resources from TwigOnGlow for use in the weather topic. Hurricane Sandy all over the news so a good chance to explore real life scenarios with the p4-7 class today.

So, today I was in class about to do some French with the big ‘uns and I thought I’d just quickly login to my Google Docs account to get access to my lesson plans and some weblinks that I’d saved. Imagine my surprise:

Though, to be fair, I guess surprise should have been the last thing to cross my mind. Given the prominence GLOW has been/is being given it should barely have raised an eyebrow. Of course I should be storing all my information on GLOW. Only it doesn’t always work. Sometimes - last week in French for example (J’ai l’impression un modèle ici*) - it just asks me to login all the time. I appreciate this may be the fault (blame culture? Moi?) of our recent ICT re-fresh - you have to say it like that; it’s not a refresh, okay? - but by golly is it ever frustrating.

I’m rambling, I realise. This isn’t the first time this sort of web-policing has been a problem for me. At home my own children make use of the excellent BBC Bitesize website - through choice I might add, probably because it’s so engaging and really good fun. I’ve used it in class too and with pupils with whom I’ve worked on a learning support basis. It’s brilliant. Really well thought out resources which promote genuine learning, enquiry and discussion. This [Bitesize], you’ll gather is clearly something I see as “a good thing.”

So imagine my surp…oh, you’re way ahead of me.

Not “denied” per se but more inaccessible or unusable due to the limitations of our reeeeefreshed laptops. “You do not have the required media player to use this content.” No problem. I’ll just click on this wee link…oh. “You do not have sufficient priveleges to install this application.”

Trust me - I should be allowed to do this kind of thing. Technically I’m capable of it and professionally even the Scottish Government tells me it’s the sort of thing we teachers should be taking responsibility for:

Curriculum for Excellence allows for both professional autonomy and responsibility when planning and delivering the curriculum

http://www.scotland.gov.uk/Resource/Doc/226155/0061245.pdf

So why, then, won’t my own local authority permit me to act like an adult and make the choices which - from my perspective - will best meet the needs of the learners in my care?

I’ll not mention the fact that the valuable links, strategies and ideas I get from my VPLNoT (Virtual Personal Learning Network on Twitter, see what I did there?) are forbidden me or that I can’t join the - irony of ironies - GLOW Facebook group in school because you probably wouldn’t believe me…

Aujourd’hui, nous allons principalement utiliser les ressources du Conseil des Highlands MLPS Glow Group …

Learning points from today? Always have a backup plan! The picture above will be a familiar scenario to any teacher who’s ever planned a lesson involving the use of a computer but, in this day and age (said he sounding a hundred and ninety-five!) surely the technology should be reliable enough that we shouldn’t need to plan an analogue-backup-lesson?

I’d found loads of great materials on GLOW Science but, as is often the way, GLOW didn’t want to play ball…more detail isn’t required suffice to say the afternoon could quickly have gone to pot had I not been able to think on my feet and incorporate my science outcomes into my PE lesson! Flexible? You bet…