Here are some of the interesting education-related things that I’ve found during my summer break so far:
Google Teacher Academy UK
The first Google Teacher Academy UK event took place this week and it sounded like an amazing experience for those who were able to attend. Even if you couldn’t make it, lots of people have been sharing what happened via their blogs and Twitter accounts. Here are some ways to follow the event it you couldn’t go:
- About the Google Teacher Academy (from Google’s site)
- GTA Posterous Blog – A special blog was set up allowing the attendees to write about what happened. This is a very interesting and useful resource.
- ICTSteps – Kevin McLaughlin has been writing blog posts about his experiences.
- Ian Addison has also describe his feelings about the event on his blog.
- Tom Barrett has created a collection of all of the blog posts about GTAUK which you can subscribe to if you use Google Reader.
- You can also follow the #gtauk hashtag on Twitter.
PGCE Tips:
Tom Henzley is aiming to create a free e-book containing tips for students starting a PGCE course. The book will contain contributions from people who post messages on Twitter using the hashtag #pgcetips. Here are some of the contributions so far:
- Be organised. Listen to and observe everything. Keep all bits of paper! (from @adambutterworth)
- Listen to advice, offer to help, don’t expect to be perfect – your mentor won’t expect you to be! (from @zaragozalass)
- Innovate… learn from school placements and write out your idea of what makes a good teacher… pick the best bits from others (from @dan_bowen)
Take a look at the other contributions by searching Twitter for #pgcetips and add some ideas of your own too. Lots of the ideas will be useful for practising teachers… not just PGCE students!
Other useful sites I’ve found:
- 20 websites no teacher should start the year without – A collection of sites which should be very useful for teachers (suggested by @colport).
- Fuzzwich – A simple online tool which lets you build animations. Shared by Mark Fox.
- Educational Jargon Generator – Create your own educational jargon which this clever site! Shared by @russeltarr.
- Secure Passwords Video – Here’s another fantastic video from Commoncraft which explains why it’s important to have strong passwords. Very useful for ICT / esafety lessons. Suggested by Lee Kolbert.
- Phil Bagge has updated his ICT videos with some new tutorials about using Google Docs for collaborative work.
Have you discovered any useful news / resources during the past few weeks?
Image – Underneath a Star
