Mrs A's Blog

Apologies for such a long time between posts.  2014 took off with such a cracking pace that its the Easter holidays already… This year has seen the introduction of Windows 8 and Office 2013 at work.  When Windows 7 came along everyone was excited to see a new operating system that just seemed easy to […]

Social Media and Facebook in particular are becoming more and more prevalent in day to day life. What I find interesting is that people forget that it is public.  Some of the things that they share I’m sure they (adults and children alike) would be embarrassed about.  After yet another conversation about private vs public online with […]

I’ve recently been thinking about real life compared to school… This was spurred on by a YouTube clip about learning through games.   The tipping point for me was the statement made by James Paul Gee that we trust learning through games more than we trust learning through school.  This was explained by the example […]

Well…  I made it… JUST… to the end of the school year… 2013 has been yet another busy and satisfying year. However my question is how do you avoid the end of year exhaustion?   I know I should sleep more and probably not cram so much in…  Would love to hear how others avoid […]

Teaching 4th Grade how to solve the world problems we created… World Peace Game

I recently started a Coursera course entitled Foundations of Teaching for Learning.  I have to admit that I signed up because I was interested in unit 3, 6 and 8 of the course (I’ve only just started unit 2) and felt that I’d struggle with those units if I didn’t complete the other 5.  I […]

Gamification  is an interesting concept that if implemented well can chanage the way your classroom works.  Below is the resources I have put together for my presentation at #ELHst13. At a time when we are all trying to provide individualized and differentiated courses for our students finding ways to engage and give our students choices […]

Managing Multiple devices is not an easy process and on last count I have a crazy 6 mobile devices (iPad 1, iPad 2, iConia A700, iConia A500, Nexus 7 and an iPhone) I use them all every day because they all have a different purpose for me. So how do I manage them. I choose […]

I didn’t realise until the last few weeks just how hard it is to be a kid in High School. I know as an adult I would love to redo high school and with all the knowledge I have now.  Life would have been very different I am sure.  My 13 year old was ill […]

I’ve been doing a lot of thinking about assessment in the classroom lately. And I’m trying to get my head around how much especially in the Senior Years (11 and 12) we bombard kids with formal assessment.    I’m talking about the assessment that we give at the end of a topic or unit.  The […]