foolfillment: the blog

I’ve been quiet here for a while (how many times have I started a blog post like that?) but it’s now the end of the October break and I’m ready to get back to school.

I thought I’d write a little about things that I’ve been thinking about over the last few weeks. In my last post I linked to a few things that I was going to try with my S4 Graphics class, the lesson itself went fine but a few things happened as a result of using some social web tools that surprised and disappointed me. My over-riding feeling to came out of it and other related events was that at Ross High we aren’t doing enough to prepare our pupils for the world where everyone has an audience, everyone is a contributor, and everyone leaves a trail.

I really wanted to get along to the Internet Safety training event at Musselburgh Grammar School that Ollie Bray ran. While I didn’t manage to make it Neil Winton thankfully did. He wrote about the evening and has since also flagged up a few things I’d like to take into school tomorrow and talk to people about. I know that there are Ross parents hoping for a similar evening to be run for them.

This morning I made the time to watch Ewan McIntosh’s keynote from the ULearn07 conference. Once again there was lots to think over, but this time it was the idea of fear of failure, and over-planning. I’m going in to school tomorrow with a renewed enthusiasm to try some new things without the fear that I think I’ve been trapped by in the first part of this term (if I can’t try some new things when I’m on 0.7 will I find the time when I get a 1FTE contract) and I’m going to try and show off a few ideas to other teachers in the department to see if they can take them somewhere further.

I don’t want to make a habit of these short posts so I’ll try to make this the last.
I found out my school today - Ross High in Tranent. I’ll not say any more than that for now, I’m hoping to manage a visit on Monday and after that I’ll maybe have a firmer idea of what I’ll be teaching next year and how much blogging I’ll be able to get in. Afterwards I’m planning to make it along to the next edubuzz open meeting.

On an unrelated note I was at uni today for a session on Inspiring Creativity and Design with 3D Modelling, I’m going to try to write up some of the presentations here soon but it’s looking like I’ll be bust for the next wee while. I will really have to nag Eddie Mack (one of my lecturers and the organiser of today’s event) to get around to putting his presentation online using youTube and technobuzz.