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Guest Speaker 3- Steve Gulluck

2012-01-25T07:14:00.000-08:00

Steve Gulluck is our third guest speaker of the term for our what is education? module. In this lecture we were taught all about Governors within a school. Before going into full detail about what are governors and what is their role and son, Steve explained all the background knowledge we needed to know. For example,he firstly explained how schools in England and Wales are different and expanded on this. Following on from this, he then went on to tell us about what does being a governor involve and who does it include. I learnt that only those who have a relation to the school are allowed to be governors, such as parents, teachers/staff and those who live in the community. Also those who attend schools in England, Years 11-13 are able to become school governors. How to become a governor? was another question that was raised. Steve Gulluck went into great detail on how the process of becoming a governor works. I was quite shocked how much time and effort it takes in order for a person to become a governor. I was also unaware about the length of time a person is classed as a governor of the school which is 4years, which was of great benefit to me to know this information. I found this session very interesting and beneficial in the way that i was unaware of what is involved etc to become a governor. Wanting to per-sue a teaching career i found knowing this information will benefit me in the long run. I look forward to our next session on this particular topic to have wider knowledge and understanding of this.

Guest Speaker 2- Dr Russell Grigg

2012-01-16T11:53:00.000-08:00

Dr Russel Grigg taught us all about the Estyn report. To start the session, he started off by explaining to us what estyn is and where it takes place. Some examples he gave us were places like Primary and secondary schools, adult community learning etc. He further explained what estyn does? which is to provide advice to the Welsh assembly Government and to inspect quality and standards in education. Towards the end of the lecture he described a typical inspection and what it en holds. So we came across things like what is an inspection like, who is involved and the importance of the data from the inspection. Dr Russel Grigg then also gave us two websites for us to look at in the future which were..estyn.gov.uk and ofsted.gov.uk

Guest Speaker- Ken Jones

2012-01-16T11:47:00.000-08:00

Our first guest speaker was Ken Jones. He taught us all about the background to education that we needed. For example, the first question he asked us was who is the current minister for education in wales? However no-one knew who this was which was quite worrying as we are doing an education degree. Anyways that got covered and by the end of the lecture we knew who it was..Leighton Andrews. He also introduced us to a policy called PISA starting from the year of 2006-2010.
I found the lecture very interesting as i felt it was of great advantage to what he taught us as almost everyone in the lecture theater did not know this very important information about the education system.

Graffiti Art

2012-01-16T05:20:00.000-08:00

In today's lesson we were shown a variaty of ways in which words can be used to create a picture. There were two programmes available called text-image.com and grafittiicreator.net.The programe i chose to do, i found on delicious.com and clicked on the link grafitti art. I created a grafitti art of my name which can be seen below.

Silent Movie!

2012-01-11T12:37:00.000-08:00

In my first ICT lesson back from Christmas. Our task was to create a silent movie. We were put into groups of 4 or 5 people and had to choose i theme. The theme we chose was people. We then had to go around the uni with a camera device and film all different kinds of people. Once we gathered our information we then installed our clips onto the computer, and onto a program called windows movie maker. We had a few problems with this as it kept crashing, however we got there in the in end. To make the movie more interesting we speed ed up some of the clips and put voices on top of another. We are due to present our silent movie to the class in our next session :)

Placement Week

2012-01-10T06:12:00.000-08:00

The week before chiristmas i carried out a weeks work experinece at Hirwaun Primary school. Before leaving for placement we were given a placement handbook with a number of tasks for us to do. On my first day od placement i got introduced to the head teacher, where she futher asked me which age group i would like to experience. The age group i chose was a year one class. My first day was pretty much getting to know the children and their teacher. At this time period i found the classroom was very hectic and not much work was being done, apart from activities relating to christmas.
My tasks for the week were to observe how the teacher and children interact, help children with their work. For exmaple, i helped children make christmas and folders for them to keep their work neatly. Also the children were practicing for their christmas concert so this was their main focus. The two main tasks i thought were useful to my learning was listsening to a handful of pupils reading; and taking them down to the computer room where i had to teach them to copy and paste festival pictures from google, in order to produce a festival poster. Things i found interesting was each day children had what they called "news time". This gave the children to discuss with each other and with the teacher what they are doing for the weekend or what they did the previous day. I thoughily enjoyed my placement week and look forward to my next placement :)

Nativity

2011-12-13T10:07:00.000-08:00

In today's lesson we were to create the story of the birth of Jesus in our own individual ways. We were firstly put into pairs and then chose what area of study we were going to do. The list consisted of things like, text messes age, a rap, sports commentary, animation, and many more. Firstly, we chose to do an animation about the nativity, however we found this quite difficult so Mandy introduced us to something called voki. We were very interested in this so decided to use this for our piece of work. We came up with the idea of telling the nativity story in the future from Mary's point of view which worked out well.
Once everybody had finished their work, each group had to present their work on the interactive white board to the class to show how different learning techniques are put into place.

Placement week

2011-12-13T10:00:00.000-08:00

Placement week took place starting on the 5th of Decemeber and finishing on the 10th of Decemebr. I carried out my placement in Hirwaun Primary school and was in a year one classroom.
We were given 3 tasks to carry out throughout our placement and they where to keep a log, observation and task 3 was to chose 2 pupils and see how well or not so well they coped with a particular task. After placement I created a folder showing all the evidence and experiences i gained from the placement.
I really enjoyed this week and found myself not wanting leave and realised this is definitely the career path I want to take

Guess the animation?

2011-11-22T12:19:00.000-08:00

Today we started the lesson with reviewing and presenting our wiki page that we made the previous week. In our group we presented our wiki page by discussing with the class what each topic was about.
Following on from this, we then created our own accounts on a website callled delicious.com in order to save websites we often use.
As an ending to the lesson we used a programe called 2simple2animate where we created our very own animation. We then shared our ideas as a class and had to guess what each animation was.

Creating a Wiki

2011-11-15T06:51:00.001-08:00

Creating a wkiki page was just one of the many tasks we had to carry out over research week. We were put into groups of four and given a subject title, our subject title was "education of today". Within the subject title, there were six sub-titles in which we had to research individually. I researched about what children learn? After gathering all the information we found together, a folder was made by one group member, and then each one of us had to contribute to this folder by putting our information that we found into this folder.I bullet-pointed what children learn throughout their schooling and added a few pictures to make the page look more attractive.

Research Week

2011-11-10T07:46:00.000-08:00

For research week, we were given a number of tasks by our lectures to be done by the time we come back. We were given a sample assignment tittle by Sian which we had to treat as a real assignment, in order for us to practice and to get the feel of writing a proper assignment. We also got given our assignment tittle by Andy which is what is education? He advised us to make a start on this as its due in December 2nd which is not to long away.
Ive also been thinking about what to do for my I.C.T and contexts of thinking and learning projects throughout the week, so ive been jotting a few ideas down.
Overall so far its been a busy week ...Hope your all enjoying your time off!

2011-11-07T06:24:00.001-08:00

Hope you all enjoyed bonfire night!!

Reflection Bubble

2011-11-01T07:21:00.000-07:00

In my previous I.C.T lesson we created a breif spider diagram or "bubble" in small groups and later as a class, that included our thoughts and ideas on what we thought reflective learning was about? We used a program called bubbl.us where we were able to create our spider diagrams. I found this website very useful and easy to use. I would most definetly use it again in the future and would also recommend it to anyone wanting to produce an affective diagram which puts their ideas across clearly.
Following on from this, we then had to research on the internet different education blogs and chose two or three that we personally thought were good examples.

Evaluating the website!

2011-10-18T07:38:00.000-07:00

In my ICT class, i worked in a group of four and had to chose a topic and website to reaserch. The topic we chose to discuss was obesity in children and the website was called emedicine.com. After deciding what topic to reserarch we all individually reareched different websites about childhood obesity, and then came together at the end discussing what ideas/facts we found and came to a decision in what website we were going to choose. After chosing the website we thought about what was good and bad about the website and why we chose it?
We had to further present out website to the class firstly saying what topic we chose to study and why? Then we went on the discuss the advantages and disadvantages of the site. At the end of the presentation the class asked a series of questions about how relaible the site was, and how did we know this? when was it last updated? who made the website etc.

All about me!

2011-10-18T07:09:00.000-07:00

I'm a first year university student, and study at swansea metropolitan univeristy studying an educational studies degree. The reaosn i chose to do this course is because since the age of 11, ive been interested in becoming a primary school teacher. The experiences i have undertaken have also increased my passion and want to work within a school enviroment. I chose to study at Swansea beacuse it not too far from home and i prefered this univeristy out of my other choices.