Mr P's ICT blog - Tech to raise standards!

Over the past half term, I have been working in Year 2 and supporting both classes with their Geography topic. I have blogged what we have done previously and you can read what we have covered so far: Enhancing Learning in Geography Through Technology Lesson 1 Enhancing Learning in Geography Through Technology Lesson  2 The next step was to focus in on our local area of Manchester and Urmston where our school is. We listed some of the famous landmarks and interesting places to visit. We also discussed other reasons why people should visit or even live here. The children were then challenged to create their own eBooks about why people should live in Urmston, Manchester. The students worked in pairs using the app Book Creator  to create their eBooks. Book Creator has always been one of my favourite apps to use in class. As a creative tool, it is up there as one of the best apps/tools for the classroom and is a must for any primary and secondary school. The app al...

This week, we were very lucky to have the team from Teach Rex  visit our school. The brought their good friend Jam to see our pupils and led workshops to help us learn about the Tyrannosaurus Rex. Needless to say, our pupils were captivated! To have an actual dinosaur roam our school was amazing! See the moment Jam appeared to our KS1 pupils here: To say the pupils enjoyed the experience was an understatement! They didn't stop talking about it all day. For me, Primary School should be about creating incredible experiences that ignite a love for learning and provide memories that last a lifetime.  We had such a good day when @teach_rex came to visit this week! This short video gives you a glimpse of what we were doing and the excitement and wonder on our pupil’s faces! If you head over to Facebook, you could win a FREE visit from the team! A post shared by Lee Parkinson (@ict_mrp) on Feb 25, 2018 at 2:41am PST What I liked most about the...

With the recent tragedy in Florida, where so many young innocent lives were taken in another school shooting, Trump has sparked controversy by suggesting that teachers should be armed with guns . Here are my thoughts on this idea and what I feel would be the universal response to this suggestion: The response to this video has been incredible and it seems that most teachers are certainly on the same page. 

It is awards season! We've had the BAFTAs and BRITS and will soon have the Oscars. But what about teachers and other school staff? What about celebrating them? Well, I've decided to do something about that! This video, which I posted on Facebook, has all of Mr P's nominations for this year's School Staff Oscars. The winners? That's up to you! You can tag your winners in the comments!

The next in the series takes a step back in time and uses some of the best hits from the 90s for those popular teacher catchphrases: Watch every volume of Now That's What I Call Being A Teacher Vol 1-14 here. Please subscribe on YouTube.

Last week, I blogged about the work I had started in Year 2 linked to their Geography topic: Enhancing Learning in Geography through Technology Lesson 1 After the students had labelled the continents on a world map: The next step was to focus in on the UK. The first step was to create a similar labelled map through Seesaw. However, this time we discussed improving the formatting and style: The next step was to look at finding out about each country in the UK. First, we generated a series of questions to help us with our research, some of the suggested questions: Where is it? How many people live there? (Population) What is the Capital City? What does the flag look like? What is the national anthem? What famous landmarks are there to visit? Who is the patron saint? The pupils were then given some time to research online and try and find the answers to these questions. After writing a script using their facts, they created a short video about their country usin...

The response to the first Taking Teaching Back Episode has been amazing! Thank you so much to everyone who took the time to watch it. The comments have been great and it has been so encouraging to hear of teachers who have taken the discussion into school and are actively looking at ways to change what they were doing in a way to help reduce workload. This is EXACTLY what I wanted from these videos. So here is Episode 2 and this one looks at one of the biggest reasons for the workload crisis in schools which is... FEAR. As always, please let me know what you think. In case you missed Episode 1, here it is:

For the past few weeks, I have been working with Year 2 in my school. I have been team teaching with the staff to help build their confidence in using technology more in class. Along with English and Maths, we have been looking at ways in which technology can enhance learning in Geography. The topic is all about learning about their local area, but to start with, we look at the world and gradually work in. Around 4/5 years ago now, we did the same topic in Year 2 and I blogged about the tools we used then. You can read that blog post here - Using iPad to give children a better understanding of the World.  This time, we have used some different creative apps. As I discuss a lot on my training, this is how we should be focusing our use of technology in schools: allowing students to use tools to creatively demonstrate their knowledge and understanding about the chosen topic. I understand the pressures teachers are under, especially in Year 2 when SATs are looming. English and Ma...

I am in an incredible position where I am able to visit schools all over the UK. On that journey, I try to inspire teachers with ideas for how best to utilise technology in their school. One part of this is looking at ways in which technology can be used to help teachers work smarter, not harder. There are still so many schools who are struggling to effectively manage workload for a number of reasons. This is something I am passionate about changing. Being able to address some of these issues when visiting schools is great however it is only a small amount of schools compared to amount throughout the UK and beyond. Thanks to the unbelievable support I have through this blog and social media channels, I am able to reach thousands of teachers, which is why I have started this new series of videos. Taking Teaching Back will be a series of videos that look at addressing a number of issues within education that I feel contribute to workload. I cannot guarantee that I'll be able to ...

In my sessions each week at Davyhulme, I have been working on a project with my Digital Leaders. As a school with a motto 'Reaching for the Stars,' I wanted the pupils to create a display that would inspire children to persevere and not let failure stop them achieving their goals. The idea was inspired by something I saw at Candleby Lane School in Nottingham. They had a display featuring stories from teachers talking about how they have failed and how they overcame that failure. So we did the same, we asked teachers to share stories of times when they felt they had failed and how they worked through it and didn't let it stop them from achieving their goals. I feel this is a really powerful thing to share with our students to make them understand that everyone will have ups and downs including their teachers. Here is my example: The Digital Leaders also researched famous people who had also struggled in their journey to reach their goal. To share what they ha...