Staff
One of the things I have learned from my research is that autonomous networks can be effective if their objective is simple and everyone feels like an equal participant. A specific area in my school that would be improved by such a network is sharing good practise through observations and shared resources. This is something that never gets off the ground because it requires a co-ordination of timetables and resources. It inevitably gets ignored between November and June due to other pressures. Next year I will be a lead teacher for the implementation of Fronter – the schools virtual learning environment. I will use this new technology to empower staff to share good practice in an informal, non-hierarchical way
- I will set up a virtual room on Fronter for sharing resources and good practice and populate it with a selection of resources from teachers across a range of departments.
- Although staff have received basic training on Fronter, I will need to ensure they have specific skills required to access our virtual sharing space – I will create two resources: a video tutorial and a step by step printed guide with screen grabs.
- I could liaise with teachers with specific learning responsibilities (independent learning coordinator, gifted and talented coordinator, literacy coordinator) and ask them to upload any useful resources they already have.
- Staff will upload lessons or tasks they have taught successfully with an explanation of how they could be adapted for different subjects.
- Staff can comment on resources that have been useful and post up adapted lessons.
The reality is that this is unlikely to be an entirely inclusive project – the most likely participants will be younger and newer teachers. The most important factor would be the education and skills development of less experienced users of technology. To succeed I will need to (like Hope Not Hate) combine traditional and digital technologies – perhaps creating a paper digest of the resources available (along with the instructions for accessing and contributing to the site) to all staff at regular intervals. With the support of the senior leadership team this strategy could improve the sharing of good practice in our school.
Students
My students develop excellent technical skills throughout their A level course and have access to high-tech equipment and facilities, but they do not always understand the power that these technological tools give them to communicate their ideas and get feedback from their peers. Throughout my research I have identified some important issues: having the ability to use technologies is not the same as having the motivation to use them, and education is key. With this in mind I will work towards improving my students’ use of social media in their own research but also evaluating the effectiveness of these methods in comparison to more traditional analogue methods.
At A2, our students create a music video – throughout the production process they are required to get audience feedback. Currently that means showing it to another media class and asking them what they think. This is an area that could be improved – they need to do more widespread and meaningful audience research. They all have blogs and Facebook accounts and plenty of friends but so far it has been a struggle motivating them to effectively use these tools to their advantage. I will use my research from this unit to encourage them and educate them to explore different ways of communicating with an audience. As an educational model, we will start a campaign as a class on a straightforward debate of their choosing (something simple like Macs Vs PCs or Rebecca Black Vs Justin Bieber) and ask them to pick sides. As a class we will start a blog which will include video, audio and text posts and polls; a twitter account and hashtag trend for our debate and a Facebook group and try and get as many followers as possible and as many comments and opinions as possible. They could also try and get opinions through more traditional methods such as a paper poll among the teachers. Then we will analyse which methods provided the most useful data, which will help them plan a strategy for audience feedback and participation with their music video project. My hope would also be that this method of garnering opinion and sharing information may be used by the students as a revision tool or for promoting an issue or event that affects them.
