I’ve been using Twitter for a few years now, using it to connect with other teachers and share ideas / resources with them. Lots of schools are now using Twitter too, as a way of communicating with parents and their communities, as well as posting updates about school events.

Image – Twitter website screenshot

As I recently set up a Twitter account for my own school, I asked for suggestions from other teachers about ways of using it. These were shared with PrimaryPad. Here are some of the ideas:

• Celebrating children’s work, with links to examples of work online.
• Asking for feedback… so followers can add comments and share valuable feedback with the pupils. Tweet a sentence from a ‘Big Write’ and get instant feedback for the pupil,
• Posting school news,
• Posting live updates about school events (e.g. sports matches),
• Post updates from an educational visit (e.g. residential),
• Reporting school closure information,
• Send reminders about events in school or homework,
• Use to pose questions for children to debate/answer.

There are many more ideas on the PrimaryPad document, along with a list of schools who have their own Twitter account. There is also a Twitter list of tweeting schools at http://twitter.com/SchoolDuggery/uk-schools.

Do you use Twitter at school? Feel free to add a comment to share your experiences, or add your thoughts to the PrimaryPad.

Support Your School is a new recycling scheme whereby schools across the UK can raise funds for their school by recycling used inkjet cartridges and unwanted mobile phones. The scheme is completely free for schools to join and participate in, and at a time of under funding for lots of organisations, gives schools a new, ethical way to fundraise.

www.supportyourschool.co.uk

The scheme also helps teachers and schools supporters with a fully integrated website where you can download support materials and manage your accounts in as easy and transparent way as possible. They have a special platform for 6-11 year olds called the RecyKids Area, where young people can learn about recycling and take part in activities that help educate them about the importance of being eco friendly.

A conference, aimed at helping to ease the transition between primary and secondary schools has been organised for 25th February in Manchester. The event aims to give practical ideas of how to ease transition, disseminate findings from a three year project and help staff to share experiences.

More details can be found in the PDF embedded below.

For further information, visit www.dep.org.uk.

oceps.co.uk is a ENORMOUS collection of links for primary schools to use. There are links for teachers, teaching assistants, management, governors, caretakers and parents. The links are organised clearly using the bar along the top… just find your job role and then browse through the site.

Down the left side of the page, there are also links related to particular curriculum areas with a large number of wonderful resources for educators to try.

The BBC is today reporting on the results of the Cambridge Primary Review. One of the suggestions of the report is that children should not start formal learning until they are six. At the moment, most children in England start school aged four.

Our ‘Early Years Foundation Stage’ is a play-based curriculum including some early literacy and numeracy goals. The report suggests continuing this informal but structured learning for a year or so, bringing education in England in line with many European countries, where school starts at six or even seven, and standards are often higher.

What do you think? Should our children start formal learning later? How will it have an impact on the children and their learning?

Image – Extra Credit

The Art Classroom is a wonderful blog about art and design in secondary schools. It is run by David Dunlop and shows the day to day workings of an art classroom.

There are lots of examples of student work, as well as unit plans and ideas for other schools to try. Take a look and leave some comments about the work that is shared.

According to this article from Guardian Education, David Tennant (actor and current star of BBC Show Doctor Who) is the ideal headteacher.

Image from www.bbc.co.uk/doctorwho

Primary school children were asked to vote for the person they would most like to be in charge of their school. Some of the other choices included Barrack Obama, JK Rowling, David Beckham and Cheryl Cole. Lots of celebrities were chosen by the children ’because they were fun’.

The survey also indicated that most children felt that their own headteachers made them feel happy at school. 88% of children also believed that their headteacher wanted the best for their school. Read more results in the article.

Who would be YOUR dream headteacher? Let us know in the comments…

Many people use the ‘Bookmarks’ or ‘Favorites’ feature of their web browser to save links to their favourite sites. Did you know that you can also save your bookmarks online, using sites like Delicious?

This has a number of benefits:

• You can access your bookmarks online, from any computer that has an internet connection. So, you can save bookmarks from a home computer and access them at school, and vice versa.
• You can save huge numbers of bookmarks… adding lots of bookmarks to your browser’s collection can mean that things get cluttered and disorganised. Online bookmarking sites usually use ‘tags’ to help you sort and search through your bookmarks, meaning that you can save hundreds / thousands of them without things getting jumbled.
• Online bookmarking allows you to share new and useful sites. For me, this is the biggest benefit. By connecting with other teachers, I can see the sites that they are bookmarking, and they can see my bookmarks too. I often browse through the bookmarks of people in my ‘network’ and discover lots of interesting web sites.

If you’re not using it already, sign up with Delicious and follow my bookmarks… you can find them at www.delicious.com/markjwarner. We also have a delicious account for our school’s bookmarks, which allow us to share useful sites with staff, children and parents. Have you tried online bookmarking yet?

WOW! The response to my ‘Amazing Ideas for Inspiring Writing’ presentation has been fantastic. Over the last three days, the number of ideas has risen from five to twenty-four, and I still have lots of new contributions to add.

Thank you to everyone who has blogged, tweeted or retweeted about the presentation, in order to help spread the word. Thank you also to the many kind contributors who have shared their own amazing ideas via email, Twitter or blog comments.

Because of the success of this presentation, I’ve made a separate site where you can access it more easily (rather than relying on the horrible address allocated by Google Docs!). So, you can now visit www.ideastoinspire.co.uk to see the presentation.

As implied on the site, I’m hoping to make some more of these presentations. I’m planning some Maths and Science ones, but if you have suggestions for other subjects / topics, get in touch. All of the new presentations will also be at ideastoinspire.co.uk, so it should be pretty easy to find them.

If you have any ideas for the Writing / Maths / Science presentations, please feel free to email or tweet at me! Thanks.

UPDATE - Tom Barrett has kindly given me permission to put his ‘Interesting Ways‘ presentations on the site too, so you can find them easily there. Thanks Tom!