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RVHS Teach Meet Presentations and Resources

Please find below all the presentations and resources from our Teach Meet

Please trial one idea in your classroom and for more information or help then please ask the presenter, I am sure that they will be happy to help.

Camscanner app by Marius Vermaak


Class Charts presented by Shahidur Rahman  an excellent tool for preparing seating plans


Judith Bentley and Tara Preston present on the excellent Mind Mapping Skills promoted by Positively Mad.

Can be an extremely useful technique to help students revise for any subject.


Sharon Jenner presents on Why Blog ?blog

What is the purpose and how relevant is blogging to teaching and learning…..

Click on image below to view

Why Blog?

Matt Cocker on the story so far with Edmodo


Nicholla Chambers presented on effective feedback methods in MFL


Emilie Darabasz presents Tweachers!


Melanie Wright demonstrated how to create a literacy friendly learning environment


Karima Lasfer showed us how to inject zest into the classroom using Task Magic


Jackson Home and Tamie Kyriakou show us how to use Tarsia across the curriculum


Jon Quirk presented on using Google Play for education


Chris Bently demonstrated how to use the fantastic screencast-o-matic to provide feedback
Click on image below to view

Screencast-o-matic

Kumers Naidoo showed us five online web tools in 5 minutes

Click on image below to view

KNA - five web tools

Dee Sexton shared some differentiation strategies


Emilie Darabasz presents on…

Tweachers– Why teachers should be using twitter?twitter

What’s the point of Twitter? Why should educators get involved? What difference does using Twitter make? Well here are some ideas I wanted to share.

Twitter is like a virtual staffroom, we are at times too busy in school to sit down and share ideas and resources. Twitter helps you to do so. In the search tool bar Hash tag #  follow by what you would like to search for (#AFL) and in seconds you can access a stream of links, ideas, opinion and resources from global professionals.

Twitter is no string attached– you can step into it when suits you: on the train or waiting for the kettle to boil you do not need to be logged on all the time for Twitter to be beneficial to you.

Twitter helps teachers to reflect on their own practice in order to improve and develop ideas. Teachers on Twitter share reflections and both support and challenge each other. This is a free and very efficient CPD!

With Twitter you get instant feedback – Posting an idea or a resource on Twitter means you can gather a range of opinions and constructive criticism within minutes: which is a great help when planning a learning experience or writing a policy.

Twitter helps me to  stay up to date on news and current affairs, as well as on the latest developments in my areas of interest. By following leading individuals and organisations, Twitter users can stay at the bleeding edge of innovation and creativity. (Think about your own CPD )

So where do you start? Open an account for your personal CPD only. Think about the leading individuals in your subject area for instance Sue Cowley for behaviour – seach for their name and read their ‘Bio’ (The way they introduce themselves on the profile page). If you are interested follow them. Have a look at who they are following as well (as most of the time they will follow professionals in the same area if interest) and follow them too.

Do not forget chats and forum like @ukedchat: every Thursday night at 8pm on education ideas and issues, @BehaviourTeach: Monday night at 8pm chat on behaviour strategies in classroom or @STLchat on Sunday night at 8.30 pm (you do not need to be STL to follow this very interesting forum)

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Feedback on Edmodo to DAZ Group

Student feedback through Virtual Learning Environments

Having taken the challenge to revise my use of virtual learning environments over the last half term I thought it was about time for an update. Having used Edmodo as a space where students can be set homework or interactive classwork, it was surprising how quickly the students were able to adapt to using the new technology.
One of the main issues with the old VLE was that information really only went in one direction, from the teacher to the student, and was limited to chunks of text or links to websites. Edmodo allows the students far more opportunity to comment on the work they are set and for teachers to give feedback on completed assignments. Below is an example of students explaining what they thought the assessment was like and my comments and feedback to them: All helpfully shown on a single page.

MCO Edmodo Feedback DAZ

Edmodo has one other trick up its sleeve when it comes to student
feedback. The website allows teachers to simply annotate students work without
the need for printing the work off and handing it back. As can be seen the
students work can be annotated with tools which are at the top of the screen.

Although, some students are still finding their feet with this way of working it has provoked discussion and allowed students access to a range of resources that they would not otherwise have found. I am still a long way from using Edmodo with all my classes or even every week with classes. However, if we expect students to feel confident in a world where many jobs require social media skills it is necessary to challenge both ourselves and students to engage with their school work online, at home and at school.

Update on Edmodo to DAZ group

Matt Cocker

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Safer Internet Day 5th February 2013

Students participate in e-safety learning for safer internet use.

See below for presentation with advice and tips as shown to our students in a week of assemblies.

Prepared by Ken Joyce

Head of ICT and Business Studies


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Are Virtual Learning Environments a thing of the past?

In light of the publication of the Department for Education’s digital strategy in December 2012 it seemed fitting to reflect on my own use of digital media both inside and outside the classroom. Having trialled numerous different ways to get GCSE History students to engage with Roding Valley High School’s VLE with little success, it would be easy to blame student apathy or lack of ICT skills. However, the students in my GCSE groups are intelligent, hardworking and tech savvy. The students have no difficulties handwriting a tweet of 140 characters with appropriate hash tags for keywords and concepts. The students were also happy to email work to me and ask for questions or advice via my school email. So why were they failing to make the most out of the school’s dedicated VLE.

The answer came from the automatic email signatures attached to work emailed to me. Almost every email I received from students was signed “Sent from my iphone/ipad” or “Sent from Samsung Mobile”. The students were not using large stand alone computers or even laptops to produce their work or access the documents I sent to them. They were using small handheld devices with touch screens. The text in emails, Facebook and Twitter can easily be manipulated by these devices to clearly and legibly fit the screen. The school’s VLE on the other hand, with its small buttons and wide size, was both difficult and clumsy to use.

My new year’s resolution this year is to go back to basics with virtual learning environments and try some of the forums and spaces available online like Google Drive, Edmodo and Prezi to give students access to a host of resources and revision materials that will help bring history to life. The advantage of these websites is that they come with easy to download apps making them usable even on the smallest of screens and most importantly they are free for both the students and the school. With a whole host of free online services designed to make both virtual teaching and learning easier it is not just the Department for Education that needs to consider its digital strategies. I think we could all benefit from a fresh approach to virtual learning environments.

Written by Matt Cocker (expressing his personal view)

History teacher – Member of the DAZ group Zest via Media