Peter Rafferty of Green Park School fame sent me a YouTube link to Dave Kirby’s poem ‘A Tale of Two Kensingtons’ that he wanted to include on his class blog. Even as an Everton supporter, I recognise that this is a great resource for getting boys interested in poetry, particularly if you are teaching on Merseyside. The problem is that if you click through to the video on YouTube, you are forced to read comments that are profane and unsuitable for his Year 1 audience. At the top of KS2 (10/11 year-olds) I would happily grasp the nettle and discuss the appropriateness of the commenting...

I’m going to undertake a full evaluation and investigation of YouTube with my children and students to canvass their ideas and views. [kml_flashembed movie="http://youtube.com/v/hMLX68MHVtw" width="425" height="350" wmode="transparent" /] This short video was uploaded directly from my mobile phone. What fantastic opportunities… and I managed to do it without happy-slapping anyone!

Will Richardson has been on the road this year and wonders: …. why we aren’t inviting kids to these conferences or workshops as a way to keep the presenters (myself included) honest, number one, but also to help teachers understand the realities of their worlds. I think this is an important issue for conference and training organisers to at least consider. Students and teachers learning together and from each other – there’s a novel idea. Surely, it must be possible to come up with a construction that could work… Communicate06 gave a glimpse of the potential of engaging...

What dynamic is at work when schools or LEA’s take unilateral decisions to ban sites like YouTube without even consulting students (or teachers for that matter)? Toss out a few negative soundbytes based on unbalanced media coverage and harp on about ‘duty of care’ and the decision is soon justified. Often though, there is not even a decision that anyone, in this era of transparency, can challenge or track. Where are the lists of sites published that are banned so that they can become an agenda item on the school council or at a staff meeting? Evaluating real websites for their...

I was browsing Alison Mitchell’s Mulhall’s British School of Amsterdam Senior School ICT blog and came across Pivot, a simple but very effective stick animation software. Sometimes the most simple software is the most fun. Loads of creative fun to be had with this. I think I am going to organise a Pivot Animation Competition. It would be cool to see what everyone else created. Click on the thumbnail to see my efforts.

Taylor Mali is one of my creative heroes and his poem ‘What teachers make‘ has served me well at speaking engagements over the last few years. However, it was time to move on and perform some other stuff. What better way to bow out than with a performance (if you can call it that) at the top of the Valluga, at 2,809 m the highest point in the Arlberg mountains in Austria. It was so quiet up there that I felt I just couldn’t rant loudly so just let the performance slip away peacefully. I always enjoyed a love-hate relationship with the performance of that poem. I love the poem...