Show My Homework is a simple online homework calendar. Teachers can post homework questions, display homework in a simple calendar with deadlines, and assess it online. The site was originally set up for Henry Compton School and its community, but has now become popular among teachers across the world. Find out more in the video below:

Visitors to Teaching Ideas and readers of Teaching News can now get a free 30 day trial and a 50% discount. Read about the other features of Show My Homework and take advantage of this special offer by signing up at http://homeworkdiaryonline.com/teachingideas.html

Here are links to a selection of education-related news articles:

• The National Audit Office has warned that the rapid expansion of England’s academies programme risks being poor value for money. Michael Gove responded with this comment.
• The former chairman of the Accounts Commission in Scotland has said that education authorities there should be merged in order to avoid duplication of services and so that classrooms may be spared the worst of spending cuts.
• Teachers in Scotland spend 60% of their working hours in the classroom, which is higher than other teachers anywhere in the western world. What proportion of your working time is spent in your classroom?

Image – Information Systems

• Michael Gove has announced a review of vocational education in England which he says ‘lost its way’ under Labour. He has also given details of the first 16 ‘free schools’ to be set up under the coalition government.
• Another announcement from Michael Gove claims that parents should create their own school league tables from exam results and extra data soon to be published online.
• A primary school in London is using call centre-style staff in India to lead maths lessons for their 11 year olds.
• The Council for Industry and Higher Education has produced a report which says that creative digital technologies must be a ‘national priority’ in UK universities.
• The BBC have written a feature which asks why British pupils are giving up studying French in increasing numbers.
• The NUT and NAHT are planning to ballot their members on a second boycott of primary school SATs.
• Do pupils in your classroom have to put up their hands? This article reports on different teaching strategies, including the banning of putting up hands to answer questions.

Image – Pick Me! Pick Me!

• The BBC has been showing a special series of programmes focusing on education, as part of their School Season.
• This list of the 20 most popular homework excuses has been published, many of which are linked to problems with technology.

Show My Homework is a new tool which makes it easy for teachers to post homework questions, attach worksheets and set deadlines. For students, they get to see all their homework on one page. For Parents, they can keep track of all their child’s homework.

www.showmyhomework.co.uk

Show My Homework can also send you a morning email reminder to let you know you have homework to collect for each of your classes. You can watch a video showing how easy it is to add a homework activity below:

The majority of parents frequently struggle to support their child’s learning outside the classroom according to a new report commissioned by Becta – the Government’s agency for technology in education.

The study of 2000 parents and 2000 nine to 13 year olds, found that:

• There is a desire from parents to become more involved in their child’s education with the majority (81%) calling for more guidance and advice on how best to support their children’s learning outside of the classroom
• 84% of parents revealed that currently their child’s school offered little or no resource to help support their child’s out of school learning.
• Nearly a quarter (22%) of parents admitted they frequently feel unable to support their child with their education at home.
• The core subjects of Maths and Science top the list as the most difficult for parents, according to 37% and 27% of parents respectively.
• More than one in three (37%) children admitted they were sometimes unable to complete their homework because there was no one to help them
• If they can’t complete their homework, 36% of children feel frustrated and want to give up completely, 29% feel embarrassed and 27% say it makes them feel like they are no good at the subject

Anson Primary School in Brent was recently awarded an ICT Excellence award for the pioneering work it has done to extend learning beyond the classroom. Headmaster Jeff Smith, comments: “Parents want to take an active role in their children’s education and the school works hard to make the most of this valuable relationship. However, it is essential that there is a consistency in teaching styles and techniques. Anson offers training sessions for parents on subjects such as Maths so that they can be informed of the ways that we teach different processes. Each parent is then empowered to support their child at home.”

“Our learning platform provides links, materials and tutorials for the child and parent to work through together. There is no doubt that helping parents to support their children has had a significant impact upon learning outcomes as well as developing even stronger links between the school, parent and child.”

Niel McLean, Executive Director of Becta, said; “Becta believes that when used effectively both in schools and at home, technology can be extremely beneficial to a child’s education. Schools benefit from proactive involvement from parents and if children feel they are getting the right support from the schools and families, this has a positive effect on their grades.”

“Many schools are already using technology in innovative yet practical ways to advise parents on how best to support children’s education at home and are reaping the rewards as children’s performance improves at school.”

How does your school support parents with homework and learning at home?

Last week, the Guardian published an article about a Canadian couple who launched and won a court case to exempt their children from completing homework ‘after successfully arguing there is no clear evidence it improves academic performance’.

The article explains that ”Sherri and Tom Milley, two lawyers from Calgary, Alberta, launched their highly unusual case after years of struggling to make their three reluctant children do school work out of the classroom.

After waging a long war with their eldest son, Jay, now 18, over his homework, they decided to do things differently with their youngest two, Spencer, 11, and Brittany, 10. And being lawyers, they decided to make it official.

It took two years to negotiate the Milleys’ Differentiated Homework Plan, which ensures their youngest two children will never have to do homework again at their current school. The two-page plan, signed by the children, parents and teachers, stipulates that “homework will not be used as a form of evaluation for the children”. In return, the pupils promise to get their work done in class, to come to school prepared, and to revise for tests. They must also read daily and practise their musical instruments at home.”

How do you feel about homework? Do all of your children complete it? What benefits does it have?

In my experience, lots of children return homework but there are always some who don’t return it and it takes lots of time to chase them up and then organise the next set of differentiated work to go home. I would love to hear your opinions in the comments below…

Image – introspection

One Million Giraffes is an online project in which one person is hoping to collect 1 million giraffes by 2011. People are sending pictures of their giraffes (which can’t be created on a computer) and at the time of writing, the collection has reached over 250,000!

Could your class get involved?

• Ask each child to draw one giraffe… or maybe more! This could be as part of an Art activity or set as homework.
• Think of creative ways of making giraffes… they don’t have to be hand-drawn but they cannot be made using a computer.
• Explore the giraffe images on the site… how were they made? Could your pupils create their own giraffes using similar techniques?

Get your pupils involved and have one of their giraffes as part of the million!

Phew.. what a week! Over the past seven days, I’ve been busy with an Ofsted inspection at school, our summer fair, and a visit to (including a short presentation at) the Kent ICT conference 2009.

The conference was a chance to learn new ideas from the many speakers and talk to suppliers of educational / ICT resources. I was also asked to provide a brief presentation about the Myst work that we’ve been doing at my school.

Highlights from the day included:

• A presentation by John Davitt – John shared a range of tools and ideas, including his Learning Event Generator. There is also a Homework Generator, which sounds useful. As I’ve been using Edmodo to distribute homework recently, I’ve needed to find more generic homework activities (because of copyright issues), so this will give a handy selection of ideas.

• Animations from psycho65… Matt showed a Prezi presentation (watch it here) which included a number of his pupils’ wonderful stop-motion animation.
• Presentations by Tim Rylands… Tim came back to Kent to share lots of new sites that I’d never heard of before. Some of these included Fighting Malaria (an incredible site with interactive photos and sounds which transport you to some amazing locations), Wordsift (which ‘sifts’ through your passages of text, finding definitions, images, synonyms and more) and Switcheroozoo (a wonderful site which lets you create your own creatures). Tim also recommended the Wii game ‘Wild Earth – African Safari’ which inspired me to make a new ‘Games to Enhance Learning’ presentation on Ideas to Inspire.
• Tim also asked a few Kent teachers (including myself) to share some of the work that they had been doing with Myst since his presentation at the last Kent conference. It was really interesting to see the amazing work that other schools have been doing, and it was also nice to be able to share some of my own children’s achievements. You can view the Prezi that I used here.

Find out more about the Kent ICT conference on the Kent ICT blog and Tim Rylands’ blog.