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Teachable had a bit of fun at the ASE Conference in Liverpool this year, with help from our new friend Tigger.

There was a good turnout at the event, especially from the many Norwegian and Dutch teachers who made the trip over.

If we didn’t see you there, or you lost your special show voucher, please do email us as we would be happy to send you another £10 free trial voucher for Teachable.

Great to see an open debate about ‘examiner feedback’ seminars prompted by the Telegraph expose today.

I’ve spoken to one Chief Examiner, not mentioned in the Telegraph report, who actually runs a private consultancy business on the side training teachers in how to maximise ‘exam technique’. His employer is happy for his to supplement his income giving special advice to certain groups of teachers away from any official channel.

He may not go as far as revealing which questions to study, but it is tricky to see how he cannot give away some non-public information.
The result is an advantage to schools which prioritise budget to send teachers on these courses:

“I’d be very worried if I was a teacher not taking one of these training sessions… it’s very much like a closed club, a cartel, for those that were there.” (Geoff Lucas, former CEO of QCA)

We are not in favour of removing all competition from exam boards, but their pricing power has meant UK schools now spend more money on exam fees than books and quality teaching resources to teach the courses.

Students would be much better served if schools were rewarded for teaching interesting lessons, such as those found on Teachable, rather than obsessing about exam pass rates.

I’m a big fan of Lucy Kellaway’s column in the Financial Times, and last week’s was particularly pithy about the wonders of copying.
The fact is that that almost all decisions are based on copying what other people do, as set out in ‘I’ll have what she’s having’ by a group of academics

“As life gets more complicated, with more people and more choices, everyone does more copying.”

While we all strive to be original, the reality is that many of our best ideas come from elsewhere and are repurposed. At Teachable I’m happy to admit that we borrowed the resource list design from iTunes, the subscription options page from Highrise and the contributor rewards from Teachit – to name a few.
We are all led to believe that copying is like cheating in exams – something to be ashamed of – but the reality is that copying keeps us up-to-date with the freshesh ideas rather than getting stuck in a rut.

“As we are ashamed of copying we give it fancy names such as best practice and benchmarking, but I’m not fooled.”

So let’s all celebrate the copying of great lessons on Teachable (as long as the contributor who put in the effort benefits).  Taking a shortcut to inspiration really isn’t cheating.

Teachable has pledged its support to help reduce stress and raise standards in the classroom. This radical online social enterprise is allowing teachers to earn extra income from their best lessons – thus providing a financial stress buster in the recession.

Commenting on ‘Raising Ambition and Tackling Failure’ – The Annual Report of Her Majesty’s Chief Inspector of Education, Children’s Services and Skills 2010/11, Managing director Edward Upton said:

“After parents and carers, children spend the majority of their time in the company of teachers – almost three quarters of the child’s school day. Teachers are amongst the most influential people in society and the effect they can have on our children’s lives is enormous. We need to lessen the everyday stresses that teachers face.

When teachers aren’t busy teaching and managing the class, they are busy planning lessons. Often, these lesson plans can only be recycled once a year or they are just discarded.  One radical answer, we believe, is Teachable.”

Schools Minister Nick Gibb today also welcomed the broad findings of the report but warned that it highlighted significant areas of concern in the school system and said the Government’s reform programme, White Paper and Education Act 2011 would address them.

Nick Gibb states (DfE,2011):

“It’s common sense that where teaching doesn’t engage pupils they can lose attention and disrupt the class. That is why we are raising teaching standards and making sure the new inspection regime focuses explicitly on schools where children switch off because classes are not good enough.

“Effective teaching is central to determining whether or not a pupil succeeds at school. The new streamlined inspection regime will focus far more time on classroom observation and assessing teaching quality, instead of inspectors having to look at too wide range of issues.”

Mr Upton believes this is where Teachable steps in with its way of sharing high quality lesson plans both for the primary and secondary sector, all of which are thoroughly checked by teaching specialists.

The Department for Education plans to raise teaching quality across the board through a recruitment drive of the ‘brightest and best’ by offering bursaries up to £20,000 to attract top-class science, maths and languages graduates.  It has also strengthened entry requirements – only funding training places for graduates with a 2:2 or better and are stopping unlimited re-sits of basic numeracy and literacy tests.

by Stephanie Anderson BEd (Hons)

On Tuesday night – 5 July 2011 – we were very fortunate to be able to let TeacherMeetup members see behind the doors of Winchester College. The evening was a chance to hear how Winchester College has been engaging their boys with Poetry, IT, Art, and new technologies.

The calibre of the presentations heard was first class and we hope our members took some great examples home with them. Thank you again to our speakers for taking the time to attend and present.

If you missed out on the evening here’s your chance to see what happened

We have video footage of the night which you can view below,

Teacher Meetup Winchester July 2011 from Edward Upton on Vimeo.

We enjoyed a selection of presentations from Winchester college tutors, and teaching professionals from the Winchester area including a presentation of engaging classes with the use of Flip videos to record assessments (which is what our recordings for the evening were made from). Gideon Williams and Laurence Guymer also gave some wonderful presentations which were not just of benefit to our teaching professionals. I learnt a few things too!

We also have uploaded a selection of the presentations for you to take and use. See below.
If you wish to have them sent to you, or need further information please email me at allyson@teachable.co.uk.

Please do register on our Teacher Meetup page to keep abreast of new events taking place after the summer breaks, or for any information/resources/examples that is being passed between members.

Enjoy your summer holidays and see you at a TeacherMeetup in the Autumn term,

Allyson

If you wish to receive updates on any of our forthcoming TeacherMeetups please email me at allyson@teachable.co.uk.

TIM CAWSE – GEORGE_MacBETH_OWL
LAURENCE Guymer_-_presentation_for_Teacher_Meetup_5_July_2011
GIDEON WILLIAMS – web2
A_Savory_student_assessment

After a very successful Teacher Meetup at Magdalen College, we are again organising another meeting in July!

Teacher Meetup @ Winchester College
Time: 5:00 – 7:30pm
Date: Tuesday 5 July 2011
Venue: Winchester College, College Street, Winchester, SO23 9NA
The Cost: FREE

TeacherMeetup’s are the new way of helping share examples of inspirational learning and classroom practice spreading across the country. The aim of the TeacherMeetup events (like a TeachMeet) is to learn through example, provide access to inspirational educators and provide an informal setting to network. By providing a relaxed environment you can discover new technologies without disruption to your school day. Learn something you never knew before, never thought you could do, or never thought possible in your school.

The focus of the TeacherMeetup @ Winchester College will (loosely) be about upper primary school learning, but like all TeacherMeetups there are sure to be usable examples presented on the night that can be used across all age groups and disciplines.

Come along and see how the college works, with examples on the evening from a few college presenters and a selection of other like-minded Teachers from around Hampshire sharing their success stories. No pressurised learning, no pushy sales people. This is an informal gathering of Teaching professionals that have an interest in keeping their classroom activities fresh and innovative.
Would you like to get involved? If you have an example that you want to share on something that works well in your school then we would love to invite you to make a presentation. You don’t have to be an ICT guru to present. Just tell us if you would like a 2 or 7 minute presentation slot and the subject of your presentation/talk/ demonstration and you can share your success story to help fellow teaching professionals.

Please register at: WWW.MEETUP.COM/TEACHER-MEETUP or email us to register or present at the event – allyson@teachable.co.uk.

Have you seen the Teaching News website? This site has the potential to save hours trawling the web for lesson resources and online tools as it highlights some of the best teaching resources out there, bringing them together in one place. This week, get stuck into teaching resources around the Royal Wedding theme and contribute to the NQT survival guide.

Teaching News

Back in June we speculated on what radical spending cuts would mean for the various public bodies funded by the Department for Education. A new list leaked to the BBC today shows exactly where the thinking is currently at. However, there is still room for some last minute petitioning ahead of next month’s spending review

Safe (but with substantial reform)

• Ofsted
• Ofqual
• School Teachers’ Review Body
• School Food Trust (changed to an independent charity)

Not Safe

• The Office of the Children’s Commissioner
• National College for Leadership of Schools and Children’s Services
• Partnership for Schools Children’s Workforce Development Council
• Training and Development Agency for Schools (TDA)
• Children and Family Court Advisory and Support Service
• Young People’s Learning Agency

Abolished

• QCDA
• BECTA
• Teachers TV Board
• General Teaching Council for England
• Independent Advisory Group on Teenage Pregnancy
• School Support Staff Negotiating Body