I've had an interesting couple of lessons with my January starters class, this week. We are still at the start of the radioactivity topic, thinking about isotopes and leading to the 3 kinds of radioactivity, alpha, beta and gamma.
I decided to try a different approach and after a discussion about what made isotopes different from each other, asked the students to imagine we were the ones making discoveries of new atoms and radioactivity. Going back in time and taking the place of Marie Curie, so to speak.
So I asked what properties we should investigate if we had a jar containing a new and unkown element in front of us. To be honest, I thought it might be asking too much of the students, but they coped surprisingly well. M, typically leapt in immediately, suggesting we should find the mass of the atom. This wasn't too surprising as we had been looking at the masses of atoms in the periodic table, but he then said that if the mass was small, we could assume that the number of protons and neutrons (constituent parts of an atom) would be equal as he had spotted that was the case with the smaller atoms.
Wow! That showed a depth to his thinking that I had not been aware of. The rest of the class joined in then and although M was by far the biggest contributor, with the best ideas, I was able to elicit a fair amount of conversation from the others as well. They all worked hard to consider the ideas and were engaged in the task throughout. We managed to revise earlier work on electrical charges as a bonus, during the discussion.
After this success, I tried to push my luck further by setting them individual tasks today. I asked each to do their own research, giving each a different type of radioactivity to find out about and report back to the group. As there are 4 students now and only 3 types of radioactivity to investigate, I gave the 4th student the task of investigating background radiation.
Time is short now and exams are looming, so we only had one lesson for this. The students were given just 20 minutes for their research so they chose to read their textbooks, instead of going to the computer suites or library. I'd given hints on the back of their instruction cards and directed them to find some specific properties, but not too many, I hope.
The tasks were done fairly well, with a few misunderstandings as expected. It did show me that they are still finding it hard to access a textbook written for English-speaking students and that I need to continue to support their vocabulary to a large extent. I asked them to write, on the IWB, the most important points (in their opinion), which we can compare with the information I want them to learn and remember in the next lesson!
I hope that these lessons will have helped them to take ownership of the topic and will make the 3 kinds of radioactivity more easily understood and remembered. Anything else is a bonus really, but I've certainly enjoyed this approach much more that the traditional delivery of facts by teacher to student.
Tuesday, 28 September 2010
Wednesday, 22 September 2010
Winners and losers
Term started this week, with 2 new classes and one returning class, who take their exams in November.
The returning class consist of 3 students - M, D and P. I had a fun lesson with them yesterday as we started the final topic about radioactivity. We were discussing atoms and I was trying to find out how much they remembered after the holidays or from previous work. At one point I asked what they thought we call atoms that have gained or lost one or more electrons (ions). M suggested "losers", to which D replied "what would you call those that have gained electrons then - winners?".
Apart from the obvious humour there, it was brilliant to hear the students bantering with each other so comfortably in English and having such confidence that they didn't hesitate to speak out. I'm not sure I can take too much credit for this, but the CLIL methods for teaching and my asking many more questions in class to lead students to answers instead of lecturing, certainly foster an environment where students feel able to take risks with the language. I would not have been able to hear this kind of discussion before, even if the students were capable of producing it.
The returning class consist of 3 students - M, D and P. I had a fun lesson with them yesterday as we started the final topic about radioactivity. We were discussing atoms and I was trying to find out how much they remembered after the holidays or from previous work. At one point I asked what they thought we call atoms that have gained or lost one or more electrons (ions). M suggested "losers", to which D replied "what would you call those that have gained electrons then - winners?".
Apart from the obvious humour there, it was brilliant to hear the students bantering with each other so comfortably in English and having such confidence that they didn't hesitate to speak out. I'm not sure I can take too much credit for this, but the CLIL methods for teaching and my asking many more questions in class to lead students to answers instead of lecturing, certainly foster an environment where students feel able to take risks with the language. I would not have been able to hear this kind of discussion before, even if the students were capable of producing it.
Sunday, 15 August 2010
James Bond!
James Bond has completed his mission! Or rather, I finished my James Bond story/lesson activity for my Moodle course. This has been a monster of a task, I had the idea for the activity almost a year ago, but it has taken me until now to distil my original ideas into a workable form and reach this stage.
I wanted to make an activity for my students to reinforce and deepen their understanding of energy, energy types, resources and transformations. I also wanted to make this a fun activity. A workbook I'd used for years had a "short story" about a secret agent and an evil Physics Professor, which involved energy transformations. I used to read this story to my students and have them shout out the energy types etc. However, I found that many students didn't understand what "secret agent" meant until I said "James Bond". Everyone knew about James Bond.
So, it seemed to make sense to try to make up a story about James Bond and put this into my Study Smart (Moodle) course. I'd already made one "lesson" as a revision exercise and though it was a long process to make the activity, it worked well and students enjoyed it.
In my story, the young (Junior) James Bond has just failed his IGCSE Physics Mock exam. "M" sends his to revise on a remote Island, where the evil Professor Heinz Stein captures James. In order to escape, James, helped by my students, has to answer many past exam questions about energy.
I've tried to make the story fun and personal to my students by including quips about the College as well as poking a little fun at myself as "Q", who is more interested in a football match on TV than in helping James. I've tried to make it a challenge to read as well as in answering the Physics questions, so that they are helped with some English as well as the Physics and I've included some language that crops up in exams and which often confuses students. I hope that I've been true to the ideals of CLIL by including language in this content lesson. At least I tried, very deliberately, to do so. I'm sure this activity is better for the attempt and just shows, once again, how much I've gained from my reading this year.
I hope the students enjoy the lesson, I've reached the stage where I need to try it out with them, ask for feedback and then reflect and act on that to improve it.
I wanted to make an activity for my students to reinforce and deepen their understanding of energy, energy types, resources and transformations. I also wanted to make this a fun activity. A workbook I'd used for years had a "short story" about a secret agent and an evil Physics Professor, which involved energy transformations. I used to read this story to my students and have them shout out the energy types etc. However, I found that many students didn't understand what "secret agent" meant until I said "James Bond". Everyone knew about James Bond.
So, it seemed to make sense to try to make up a story about James Bond and put this into my Study Smart (Moodle) course. I'd already made one "lesson" as a revision exercise and though it was a long process to make the activity, it worked well and students enjoyed it.
In my story, the young (Junior) James Bond has just failed his IGCSE Physics Mock exam. "M" sends his to revise on a remote Island, where the evil Professor Heinz Stein captures James. In order to escape, James, helped by my students, has to answer many past exam questions about energy.
I've tried to make the story fun and personal to my students by including quips about the College as well as poking a little fun at myself as "Q", who is more interested in a football match on TV than in helping James. I've tried to make it a challenge to read as well as in answering the Physics questions, so that they are helped with some English as well as the Physics and I've included some language that crops up in exams and which often confuses students. I hope that I've been true to the ideals of CLIL by including language in this content lesson. At least I tried, very deliberately, to do so. I'm sure this activity is better for the attempt and just shows, once again, how much I've gained from my reading this year.
I hope the students enjoy the lesson, I've reached the stage where I need to try it out with them, ask for feedback and then reflect and act on that to improve it.
Friday, 23 July 2010
Enlightenment
I finally finished teaching for this term. At last I may have some time to think about my lessons, the IWB material, other material and projects for my Study Smart (Moodle) course and catch up with some reading. I'm trying to read 4 books at once, probably not such a great idea, but hey, why do things the easy way?
Also not easy working with my dratted computer which seems to be on a mission to annoy me tonight. If it gets any slower, I swear it is going to end up going through the window. I hate it when it sits there for several minutes at a time, with a blank white screen except for a message at the bottom which says "done". It is NOT done, it's done **** all, how dare it tell me it's done?
Ok, now I have that rant out of the way, I think I can maybe start to think again about how "Uncovering CLIL" has helped me.
There is a huge amount of advice in the book, some of which I found useful, much of which I found thought-provoking and also a great deal of which I didn't feel applied to me or to the college I work at.
The book does focus a lot of attention, naturally enough, on schools where the students are primarily taught in their first language but with the CLIL course taught as an extra. In our college, all students are International, they have all come to England from their home countries and all lessons take place in English.
Nevertheless, I did find the book useful for generating ideas to try out in my classes and it did make me reflect on my teaching in a way I hadn't for a long time. I started to think about the use of language in my lessons, how to help students acquire the necessary language to understand and be able to articulate their knowledge, how to provide the support and repetition they would need.
There are many ideas I've yet to try out, but intend to do so next term. One idea I'm keen to try is a precis exercise for students to do, maybe in groups at first as I think this is one they might find really challenging. I need to find a suitable piece of text to base the exercise on, perhaps I can find a report on the Chernobyl disaster to use in the radioactivity topic?
I did try out an exercise where I made some cards which had electric circuit diagrams on, gave one to each student and had them describe the circuit to another student, without using certain key words, such as "battery", "lamp", "voltmeter", "ammeter". The student who was listening had to draw the circuit as described. I hoped this would make the students think more about the function of these components when describing the circuits to each other. The exercise was partially successful, though they did become frustrated with each other at times and it was hard for me to watch and to force myself not to intervene or to give advice too readily. I will definitely use that one again, though I need to think a little more about how I present the exercise in the first place. There were some interesting non-scientific descriptions of circuit symbols which did not help the understanding of the Physics at all!
I might have continued in this way, making small changes here and there, trying a few ideas and making slow but steady progress, I might even have lost interest again in the book, if time had become an issue again, were it not for one one quotation which stunned me. It was in Chapter 5 on Opening windows for personal achievement and under the heading "Fostering creative and critical thinking". That section started with a story about Albert Einstein, so my attention had been grabbed, then continued with a discussion on Bloom's taxonomy of higher and lower thinking skills. Hmm, yeah, ok fine...............so.....? Then
On page 154, set in a box and entitled "A word to the wise", is the following:
"Of the approximately 80 000 questions asked on average annually by teachers, 80 per cent are at the lowest level of thinking - factual knowledge" (Gall 1984, Watson & Young 1986, as cited by Echevarria et al, 2000)
Isn't this shocking? 80% of all questions asked by all teachers? Was I guilty of this too?
As I thought about it, the answer to that last question had to be a resounding YES. How many times do I ask if a student can remember something? Or if they understand what I've just said, even if I phrase the question in a slightly different way?
This had to change. From that moment on, my lessons, my approach to lessons, my preparation and IWB slides have changed. That one single fact, above all else I have read, persuaded me to change my style of teaching.
Also not easy working with my dratted computer which seems to be on a mission to annoy me tonight. If it gets any slower, I swear it is going to end up going through the window. I hate it when it sits there for several minutes at a time, with a blank white screen except for a message at the bottom which says "done". It is NOT done, it's done **** all, how dare it tell me it's done?
Ok, now I have that rant out of the way, I think I can maybe start to think again about how "Uncovering CLIL" has helped me.
There is a huge amount of advice in the book, some of which I found useful, much of which I found thought-provoking and also a great deal of which I didn't feel applied to me or to the college I work at.
The book does focus a lot of attention, naturally enough, on schools where the students are primarily taught in their first language but with the CLIL course taught as an extra. In our college, all students are International, they have all come to England from their home countries and all lessons take place in English.
Nevertheless, I did find the book useful for generating ideas to try out in my classes and it did make me reflect on my teaching in a way I hadn't for a long time. I started to think about the use of language in my lessons, how to help students acquire the necessary language to understand and be able to articulate their knowledge, how to provide the support and repetition they would need.
There are many ideas I've yet to try out, but intend to do so next term. One idea I'm keen to try is a precis exercise for students to do, maybe in groups at first as I think this is one they might find really challenging. I need to find a suitable piece of text to base the exercise on, perhaps I can find a report on the Chernobyl disaster to use in the radioactivity topic?
I did try out an exercise where I made some cards which had electric circuit diagrams on, gave one to each student and had them describe the circuit to another student, without using certain key words, such as "battery", "lamp", "voltmeter", "ammeter". The student who was listening had to draw the circuit as described. I hoped this would make the students think more about the function of these components when describing the circuits to each other. The exercise was partially successful, though they did become frustrated with each other at times and it was hard for me to watch and to force myself not to intervene or to give advice too readily. I will definitely use that one again, though I need to think a little more about how I present the exercise in the first place. There were some interesting non-scientific descriptions of circuit symbols which did not help the understanding of the Physics at all!
I might have continued in this way, making small changes here and there, trying a few ideas and making slow but steady progress, I might even have lost interest again in the book, if time had become an issue again, were it not for one one quotation which stunned me. It was in Chapter 5 on Opening windows for personal achievement and under the heading "Fostering creative and critical thinking". That section started with a story about Albert Einstein, so my attention had been grabbed, then continued with a discussion on Bloom's taxonomy of higher and lower thinking skills. Hmm, yeah, ok fine...............so.....? Then
On page 154, set in a box and entitled "A word to the wise", is the following:
"Of the approximately 80 000 questions asked on average annually by teachers, 80 per cent are at the lowest level of thinking - factual knowledge" (Gall 1984, Watson & Young 1986, as cited by Echevarria et al, 2000)
Isn't this shocking? 80% of all questions asked by all teachers? Was I guilty of this too?
As I thought about it, the answer to that last question had to be a resounding YES. How many times do I ask if a student can remember something? Or if they understand what I've just said, even if I phrase the question in a slightly different way?
This had to change. From that moment on, my lessons, my approach to lessons, my preparation and IWB slides have changed. That one single fact, above all else I have read, persuaded me to change my style of teaching.
Wednesday, 14 July 2010
All about today
I finally used the safety IWB lesson today. It worked really well, the students enjoyed the lesson and chatted so much! They remembered the bit we had covered yesterday, including the differences between mains electricity and that from a battery, wiring of plugs, overloading plugs, damp conditions and a few other hazards. Today, we worked through fuses, circuit breakers and RCDs. P talked more in this lesson than he has throughout the rest of the year, I think! The 3 students worked well together today, nominating each other to answer questions and complete the activities. P seems to have the role of completing gap-fill exercises, whilst D and M took turns at a hotspots activity and answering past exam questions.
They correctly worked out for themselves that a fuse should be chosen with a slightly higher rating than the normal current as well as deciding why that should be. I was impressed with their reasoning abilities and was able to give directed praise as a result, something else I've learned from the CLIL book. Being able to ask a student how he had come to a correct conclusion really does show how much their work is valued and as such is so much better than a bland "well done". I can see the effect on their faces, it does mean so much more to them.
These new lessons are sooooooooooooooo much better and much more enjoyable for all.
I had an added bonus today, after teaching a Foundation class. Since I've only taught them for 4 weeks, I've not been able to devote a great deal of time to the IWB for them, though I did at least type out what I wanted to present and tried to add questions, diagrams and pictures throughout. One student lingered at the end of the lesson and asked if I would show her how to use the IWB as she thought it looked intriguing. She then said that she thought it all looked so easy and natural in my lessons and made the lessons flow so well. She even said how good the lessons looked, that everything looked slick and professional.
Wow! Doesn't this show the power of the IWB in class? As well as showing the value of spending just a little time in preparation. I can't imagine ever wanting to walk into a class without an IWB again or ever thinking that I don't want to bother preparing a lesson beforehand. We have an amazing tool at our disposal to help us to motivate and inspire these young people. It doesn't always have to be complicated linked pages or animated objects, though these are fun to prepare. Some of the simplest ideas can still impress and more importantly, they can help students to think for themselves and gain so much more from a lesson.
That's all I have time for tonight. CLIL thoughts, ideas and my own learning will have to wait for another day.
They correctly worked out for themselves that a fuse should be chosen with a slightly higher rating than the normal current as well as deciding why that should be. I was impressed with their reasoning abilities and was able to give directed praise as a result, something else I've learned from the CLIL book. Being able to ask a student how he had come to a correct conclusion really does show how much their work is valued and as such is so much better than a bland "well done". I can see the effect on their faces, it does mean so much more to them.
These new lessons are sooooooooooooooo much better and much more enjoyable for all.
I had an added bonus today, after teaching a Foundation class. Since I've only taught them for 4 weeks, I've not been able to devote a great deal of time to the IWB for them, though I did at least type out what I wanted to present and tried to add questions, diagrams and pictures throughout. One student lingered at the end of the lesson and asked if I would show her how to use the IWB as she thought it looked intriguing. She then said that she thought it all looked so easy and natural in my lessons and made the lessons flow so well. She even said how good the lessons looked, that everything looked slick and professional.
Wow! Doesn't this show the power of the IWB in class? As well as showing the value of spending just a little time in preparation. I can't imagine ever wanting to walk into a class without an IWB again or ever thinking that I don't want to bother preparing a lesson beforehand. We have an amazing tool at our disposal to help us to motivate and inspire these young people. It doesn't always have to be complicated linked pages or animated objects, though these are fun to prepare. Some of the simplest ideas can still impress and more importantly, they can help students to think for themselves and gain so much more from a lesson.
That's all I have time for tonight. CLIL thoughts, ideas and my own learning will have to wait for another day.
Tuesday, 13 July 2010
Return to CLIL
Well the IWB lesson on diodes and a.c. rectification went really well. Maybe the fact that I had not spent too long on this one meant that I had not over-prepared for it, something I am apt to do on occassion. Keeping it simple, asking lots of questions and helping the students to work things out for themselves really does make a huge difference to my lessons now.
P, a quiet member of the class, managed to offer more by way of discussion today, though I did have to ask M to stop talking for a while to give the other 2 a chance to speak. I must try to find a better way to handle this. If I do nothing, M dominates all discussion as his English is much better than that of the others, but giving him more responsibility, having his act as "teacher" sometimes, just goes to his head and he starts to be ultra-critical of the others. I need to think harder about this problem and to try other tactics to see if anything else will work. I should probably speak to his other teachers too, to see if they have any suggestions.
Anyway, I'd like to return now to where I left off, in my journey from barely using an IWB to where I am now, via Barbara's book on CLIL. For some months, I'd been too busy preparing IWB lessons, trying to keep just ahead of my September starters GCSE class, to be able to read any of the book at all. Then one horrible day, the unthinkable happened. Barbara asked for the book to be returned.
To be fair, she did ask if I could lend it back to her, briefly, for her to use and then return it to me. Fortunately for me, she found another copy and didn't need "my" copy back, but the near miss gave me the jolt I needed to pick up the book again and start reading it again.
Naturally, I'd forgotten all that I'd read the first time around, so started again, though I did skim through the early chapters. I started making notes whenever I came across something I thought particularly useful and found myself trying more than ever to incorporate some new ideas into my teaching.
Some recurring themes struck me most forcibly. I should involve the students more in lessons. I should stop talking so much and ask the students to talk more. Much more. How, when their level of English was so poor? Answer - provide the language they need. Help them. Involve them. Help them to take more responsibility for their own learning. Let them set goals. Stop talking so much.
How to stop talking so much? I started taking mental note of how much talking I did in class and was, if not surprised, then definitely concerned. I talked far too much. For too long and too often. I wasn't teaching, I was lecturing. I was tempted to tell myself that it was due to my enthusiasm for Physics, but if I was to gain anything from this book and this whole exercise, then I had to be brutally honest with myself and not make excuses. I had to change the way I teach. Sure, I am enthusiastic about Physics and I had to retain that, but I had to go about my teaching in a different way.
As I read on, through sections on active learning, scaffolding, chunking and repackaging as well as a host of other sections, I began to pick up ideas to use in lessons. I reflected much more about my lessons and made myself think about my delivery before each lesson to see if there was a way to cut down on my talking time and to increase the students' talking time. At this point, I had begun to teach a new class, my current January starters GCSE class of just 3 students. They would be the ideal class on which to try out new ideas. If this didn't work, I'd plenty of time to change back, but if it did, I'd plenty of time to observe any effects. I could learn along with my students.
This was going to be fun.
P, a quiet member of the class, managed to offer more by way of discussion today, though I did have to ask M to stop talking for a while to give the other 2 a chance to speak. I must try to find a better way to handle this. If I do nothing, M dominates all discussion as his English is much better than that of the others, but giving him more responsibility, having his act as "teacher" sometimes, just goes to his head and he starts to be ultra-critical of the others. I need to think harder about this problem and to try other tactics to see if anything else will work. I should probably speak to his other teachers too, to see if they have any suggestions.
Anyway, I'd like to return now to where I left off, in my journey from barely using an IWB to where I am now, via Barbara's book on CLIL. For some months, I'd been too busy preparing IWB lessons, trying to keep just ahead of my September starters GCSE class, to be able to read any of the book at all. Then one horrible day, the unthinkable happened. Barbara asked for the book to be returned.
To be fair, she did ask if I could lend it back to her, briefly, for her to use and then return it to me. Fortunately for me, she found another copy and didn't need "my" copy back, but the near miss gave me the jolt I needed to pick up the book again and start reading it again.
Naturally, I'd forgotten all that I'd read the first time around, so started again, though I did skim through the early chapters. I started making notes whenever I came across something I thought particularly useful and found myself trying more than ever to incorporate some new ideas into my teaching.
Some recurring themes struck me most forcibly. I should involve the students more in lessons. I should stop talking so much and ask the students to talk more. Much more. How, when their level of English was so poor? Answer - provide the language they need. Help them. Involve them. Help them to take more responsibility for their own learning. Let them set goals. Stop talking so much.
How to stop talking so much? I started taking mental note of how much talking I did in class and was, if not surprised, then definitely concerned. I talked far too much. For too long and too often. I wasn't teaching, I was lecturing. I was tempted to tell myself that it was due to my enthusiasm for Physics, but if I was to gain anything from this book and this whole exercise, then I had to be brutally honest with myself and not make excuses. I had to change the way I teach. Sure, I am enthusiastic about Physics and I had to retain that, but I had to go about my teaching in a different way.
As I read on, through sections on active learning, scaffolding, chunking and repackaging as well as a host of other sections, I began to pick up ideas to use in lessons. I reflected much more about my lessons and made myself think about my delivery before each lesson to see if there was a way to cut down on my talking time and to increase the students' talking time. At this point, I had begun to teach a new class, my current January starters GCSE class of just 3 students. They would be the ideal class on which to try out new ideas. If this didn't work, I'd plenty of time to change back, but if it did, I'd plenty of time to observe any effects. I could learn along with my students.
This was going to be fun.
Monday, 12 July 2010
another hiatus
I shall be glad when this week is over and I can finally take a breather from trying to keep my IWB lessons up to date and just in time for my class. Another teacher takes over my classes next week, which will seem wierd as I will still be at work, just not teaching. I'm hoping to use the time to prepare more lessons. Time is my biggest enemy.
Even the second time around takes time to prepare each lesson. Now that I am using a different technique for teaching (more of that later) I am finding that each lesson I had prepared for the September starters, is no longer suitable for the January starter class. Aargh! Why am I putting myself through these agonies? I've still to finish a lesson on electrical safety, though it is not far from completion now. I have just finished preparing a short lesson on using diodes to rectify a.c. to d.c. which I will use tomorrow. As I've prepared this one at the last minute, it isn't particularly exciting, no activities, though we will be using an oscilloscope in class, so I'm hoping that be enough to keep the students interested for now. They do enjoy practical work.
Another enemy of mine, well problem at least, is my ancient desk-top computer. I still have trouble accepting that computers are old after a few years - machines should last a good ten or so years. At least! (My washing machine is still going after nearly 20 years................... ) Until I can replace said creaky pc, I live in fear of losing all my work in one of the increasingly frequent crashes, so I have developed a habit of saving every IWB lesson in several places - at work, at home and on USB sticks - a different colour stick for each topic to make it quicker and easier to locate. I also tie the sticks to different larger objects too - keyrings, a tape rule and assorted ribbons for hanging around my neck or wrist. Most of these were freebies from the BETT exhibition - a great place to pick up all sorts of useful items as well as ideas. My USB sticks have to be tied to something highly visible, otherwise they are way too easy to lose inside a bag of books, homework, sandwiches etc.
Even so, I am going to have to develop a better way of organising the increasing number of lessons I have. I have folders with "old stuff" i.e. highly embarrassing early efforts at using the IWB; "modified stuff" - mostly not great but material I'm not yet ready to ditch "just in case";"ok stuff" - lessons I used last year but am not entirely happy with now and which need modifying; "good stuff" - the smallest category of all - the lessons I am presently happy with.
I hope to return to the tale of my journey soon, if grumpy old pc behaves long enough to allow coherent thought to take place!
Even the second time around takes time to prepare each lesson. Now that I am using a different technique for teaching (more of that later) I am finding that each lesson I had prepared for the September starters, is no longer suitable for the January starter class. Aargh! Why am I putting myself through these agonies? I've still to finish a lesson on electrical safety, though it is not far from completion now. I have just finished preparing a short lesson on using diodes to rectify a.c. to d.c. which I will use tomorrow. As I've prepared this one at the last minute, it isn't particularly exciting, no activities, though we will be using an oscilloscope in class, so I'm hoping that be enough to keep the students interested for now. They do enjoy practical work.
Another enemy of mine, well problem at least, is my ancient desk-top computer. I still have trouble accepting that computers are old after a few years - machines should last a good ten or so years. At least! (My washing machine is still going after nearly 20 years................... ) Until I can replace said creaky pc, I live in fear of losing all my work in one of the increasingly frequent crashes, so I have developed a habit of saving every IWB lesson in several places - at work, at home and on USB sticks - a different colour stick for each topic to make it quicker and easier to locate. I also tie the sticks to different larger objects too - keyrings, a tape rule and assorted ribbons for hanging around my neck or wrist. Most of these were freebies from the BETT exhibition - a great place to pick up all sorts of useful items as well as ideas. My USB sticks have to be tied to something highly visible, otherwise they are way too easy to lose inside a bag of books, homework, sandwiches etc.
Even so, I am going to have to develop a better way of organising the increasing number of lessons I have. I have folders with "old stuff" i.e. highly embarrassing early efforts at using the IWB; "modified stuff" - mostly not great but material I'm not yet ready to ditch "just in case";"ok stuff" - lessons I used last year but am not entirely happy with now and which need modifying; "good stuff" - the smallest category of all - the lessons I am presently happy with.
I hope to return to the tale of my journey soon, if grumpy old pc behaves long enough to allow coherent thought to take place!
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