a quick idea of what we might cover

1. Using the Internet Effectively: A Technology Teacher's Perspective Tips and Tools for using the Internet to make Technological Education come alive for you and your pupils. Robert Clements, David Killin, Stuart Meldrum, Krysia Smyth These slides and additional supporting material are available from: technobuzz.co.uk/tess

2. audience 1 collaboration 2 sharing 3 keeping track of it all 4 Their world is changing, why isn’t yours? 5 Using the Internet Effectively: A Technology Teacher's Perspective Contents:

3. Audience Kids love an audience. Parents love seeing what their children are doing. Use the internet to let this happen. Podcasts: they make a podcast showing how to cut a mortice? You make a podcast where you talk about aspects of design with a couple of pupils. Blogs – school blogs, dept blogs, class blogs, scribe blogs, individual pupil learning blogs, transition blogs, trips blogs. Law Primary, N Berwick, something like 500 comments in 5 weeks. Huge interest in their posts about their trip to Loch Earn.

4. Collaboration Give pupil a space to work together in school or at home, or on a trip. Use a wiki in your department/school for documents/lesson resources… Let your kids work with kids in other schools, other countries, work with adults, talk to designers, let your pupils do stuff with outsiders that wouldn’t have been possible before. Use Glow groups/discussions tools.

5. Sharing Technobuzz or any other blogging software to share thoughts on practice, lesson plans, lesson resources. Now able to be more social (and productive) than ever. Use other means to share – slideshare, flickr, youTube, twitter. Podcasts. Make resources available to your pupils, make note that fit onto iPods. Blog your homework tasks. Social bookmarks. – link to the delicious network that David has set up… This could be a whole section in itself actually, what say you?

6. Keeping track of it all Find a feed reader software, or personalised homepage. Drop in feeds from all the sites you want to keep in touch with. Subscribe to almost anything – blog posts, wiki changes, delicious links, flickr tags, News websites, comments you’ve left.

7. Their world is changing, why isn’t yours? Link to the shift happens presentation Kids use all this technology already, some of them don’t know how to use it safely, some do but abuse it, use it yourself and understand what on earth they are doing when they spend 2 hours a night on the net Why not set up a bebo page for your department? Don’t ban things, turn them to your (and their) advantage. Use mobiles in class don’t turn them off!!! Class homework – find a bridge and take a photo of it. All photos can be sent to a teacher’s phone and all collated for discussion on what type they all are and why they were built the way they are. Use their phone’s calendar to set reminders about tests!