Advanced Teacher Institute Conference 2016

Screen Shot 2016-02-24 at 13.59.42Great EdTech CPD opportunity coming up in April – the Advanced Teacher Institute (ATI) Conference 2016 is about pushing the boundaries of technology in education. Taking place over the 14th and 15th of April, it will deliver some of the best CPD available. Check it all on on the conference website here.

Screen Shot 2016-02-24 at 14.01.35ATI2016 takes place over 2 days at Malvern College in Worcestershire, England. One-day tickets are also available. There are discounts available for groups and great options for those travelling from further afield, like free accommodation on the 13th… If one day is all you can make then there is a one day ticket available too.

I’ll be leading workshops on Designing and Delivering Creative Learning Experiences, Apps for Animation, and Creating Engaging Learning Environments – all with iPad. There are lots of other workshops led by amazing educators on Learning through Game Design, Lego Digital Storytelling, Showbie (not just for assessment), iOS Film Techniques and Augmented Reality – to name a few!

Book directly on the website hereRead more...

Mindshift – Great Professional Learning

Mindshift LogoI love the website MindShift. “MindShift explores the future of learning in all its dimensions. We examine how learning is being impacted by technology, discoveries about how the brain works, poverty and inequities, social and emotional practices, assessments, digital games, design thinking and music, among many other topics.”

MindShift is a wonderful resource for professional learning. If you’ve not found MineShift yet make it one of your goals to visit and explore in 2016! Follow MindShift on Twitter (@MindShiftKQED) or subscribe via email and you will find new articles and resources from their wealth of brilliant writers and commentators. By reading an article or two each week and taking time to think about and explore the topic in more detail you will expand your knowledge of contemporary educational issues and grow as an educator, no matter if you’ve been doing it for 3 weeks or 30 years!

Sometimes it’s an article that articulates just what you’ve been thinking, or something that provokes you to think deeper about an issue. They are easy to share with colleagues and will ensure that you keep learning about learning!

Bay CuriousInteresting Find! – MindShift works in collaboration with KQED, Public Media for … Read more...

Exploring Explore.org

Exploring Explore.org

I can’t remember how I got to it, but at some point this summer I discovered explore.org. Explore is a website (and App) jam packed full of webcams about animals and nature, films, photos and information on a huge range of topics.

“Explore is for everyone who enjoys learning new things and understands that education is a lifelong pursuit. To that end, explore provides a variety of educational resources — from articles to films and photographs to interactive maps — to encourage everyone to “never stop learning.” We like to think of ourselves as Sesame Street for adults.”

The first webcam I saw was trained on a place called Brooks Falls in Alaska where brown bears come to fish. It still doesn’t stop being amazing that we were able to watch bears roam freely from nearly 4000 miles away! (Probably a good distance to keep…) Then we clicked on lots of other webcams and were inspired by all of the wildlife we could see from all over the world and also domestic rescue animals we saw being looked after.

Beluga Whale watchingOne evening I was also lucky enough to click in at the right time and be … Read more...

International Space Station Resources

International Space Station Resources

Since watching the beautiful and moving timelapse video put together with images from the International Space Station, I’ve become curious about everything Space Station! There are a number of different resources I’ve been using to find out about life on board the Space Station and also the support that it requires to function.

Twitter
Space Station Twitter Pic
@Space_Station This is the Space Station’s Twitter account and my main source of info for all things Space Station. This account also retweets tweets from the astronauts on board so it’s a great place to start finding out about who is up there, what it looks like and the sorts of experiments and work they are doing right now.

Websites
NASA Space Station website Lots of info here on what’s going on “Off the Earth, For the Earth” including links to ‘Space Station for Students’ where you can take part in experiments and look at cool resources from the Space Station, and the related ‘Space Station for Educators’.

The European Space Agency has information on the International Space Station and the parts of the Space Station that the ESA has responsibility for.

Where is the Space Station right now? This website shows … Read more...