Ollie has just finished uploading his presentation from the SAGT conference - 50 Ideas in 50 Minutes. There’s some really good stuff in it that doesn’t just relate to geography teachers so it’s an excellent resource. It’s over on google video and he’s even gone to the trouble of putting it on veotag with chapters. I really like the photo of himself he’s used at the start - it makes it look like he’s got the biggest feet in the world!
Today I’ve been made to ponder my online life, as it were. In my graphics class I’ve got a couple of kids who are having trouble installing ‘legit’ copies of software, thay’ve also been talking about various websites and asked if I had one. I said yes but I didn’t tell them the address despite really wanting to. The trouble being that this site is a mish-mash of lots of things - a vaguely personal site, a bit of an empty space, not terribly interesting to a 3rd year, alongside some stuff that perhaps with a little focus could be useful for them. The main reason I didn’t give them the address though is that there are 4 years (!) of archives dating back to when I had just left school myself. Now, I’m fairly sure there is nothing that I would object to them seeing, I leave them online after all, but there are probably things in there that I wouldn’t want to be quizzed on by pupils, and there’s a chance there are things in there that are possibly not appropriate for them.
It made me wonder how to take my blogging forward when I start teaching for real next August, at the moment I’m tending towards either a relaunch of foolfillment with a fresh start, or a fresh start at a new domain. Either way I’m not sure what the future is for this site in it’s current form. I’m tempted by stuartmeldrum.co.uk .
I had intended on writint a reflective piece about yesterday’s lesson, but having re-read over the feedback sheet I realise that there isn’t much to talk about - it all went about as well as it could have been.
The night before I had dreamt my way through the lesson about three times, each time it going wrong horribly in one way or another. I felt really nervous going into it and not as though I was prepared enough, there was a lot of places for the lesson to fall apart completely if I had forgotten any of the millions of resources I had up my sleeve. Once I got started though the 50 minutes just flew by, and at the end when they’d all left the tutor asked how I thought it went and my instant answer was that I had enjoyed it and had had fun. That’s just about the best feeling you can hope for I think after a lesson - as long as it’s been productive in some way.
I don’t want to sound like I’m boasting so I’ll try to sedate myself a bit but I was absolutely over the moon with the grade and still am. Now I just have to get my sleeves rolled up and make the most out of the last five days of teaching I have before I graduate and become the real thing.
I’ve been quiet here for a while, it’s mostly becuase I’ve been busy preparing for my (last ever) crit which was today, I was also away at the weekend with the caving club. It turns out that I’ve had good news about the two things that have kept me from blogging.
First of all I got an (until now unobtainable) A grade for the crit, and I’m delighted.
Secondly the potholing club, which has been classed as a ’start up’ club for the whole 4 years it has existed, today got told that we’ve been promoted to full club status at last!
More later, I’m having some time to relax.
