After only a short hiatus as a house coach Heather has got a new job. She’s joined the exciting new world of new nu meja for a new job as new project manager… well they’ll all be new projects to begin with. So from now on she’s doing fun and funky stuff down with the guys at Team Rubber.
Knowing that they have a people working on city wide wireless coverage makes me glad I’ve moved to Bristol.
St Werburghs ‘joins’ the backbone.
It is all the little things going on like this that makes Bristol seem so exciting. It has a great mix of creativity, bunches of people with tech know-how and a crusty/hacker/maker ethic underlying it all. And the BW folks live just down the road in the community centre. Pity I can’t seem to get on to this node though.
Update: Oops, it’s just the backbone there. So not likely to get on that. Still, I can see you’re WCC node down the road, just can’t get on 
Piers has just posted some nice rules for working the classroom.
There are 3 golden rules:
- Move around
As you move around the classroom, you spread your influence and it’s easier to stop children switching off. Moving your questions around, i.e. not always asking the same children, keeps everyone involved.
- Vary your delivery
Whispers, sharp yelps, different visual cues all keep children on their toes and focused on what’s coming next.
- Balance criticism and praise
If you have to reprimand a child make sure you come back to them later, and find something good to say about what they’ve said, how they’re behaving. It stops children making a virtue of being naughty.
As he says they are gold dust… the condensed tacit learning from a lifetime in teaching. I have to admit that the moving around and variation of delivery are things that are heavily on my mind at the moment.
As part of my “Academic Development” I just had a session where I had to lecture to peers and get feedback. One interesting point that came out of that and out of everyone’s microteachs was about movement. From the beginning I’ve been trying to move around a lot so I don’t end up as some kind of human speaking pole behind a laptop. Recently though I am moving less and not cycling back and forth across the room… it feels a bit more natural I think to not move too much.
The interesting thing I noticed whilst critically watching 9 other people teach in a short space of time was how the obviously confident ones didn’t move… but also the really uncomfortable ones didn’t either. And apparently I prowl around a bit to begin with and then settle down.
Although maybe a lot of energy can be built up by movement it is distracting and the biggest indicators of excitement do seem to be in tone of voice and body language. Probably the most exciting of our short lectures I saw was on Gerbils, and the lady giving it mostly just leaned against the podium. But most importantly the excitement showed through. Which is exactly what Piers said his humble mentor missed out.
