#Niedchat, Wednesday 20th November 2013.

‘How do we enable students to take control of their learning? How do we monitor progress in this scenario?’

Lots of ideas were shared in what was a very high quality discussion. Some old favourites like "SNOT" (Self, Neighbour, Other, Teacher) were mentioned as well as some novel ideas such as allowing pupils to choose their homework task from a menu or a list of options.

What is clear is that many of you see promoting independent learning to be much easier achieved in Key Stages 1-3 but much more difficult when GCSEs and A Levels come in to play. 

I've added a few of the links tweeted during the chat. If you'd like to add to the conversation feel free to use the comments section below.

You can see an archive of the chat here.

LINKS:

Homework Options (shared by @lcgeography)

http://t.co/k0t4yB5c2I

Solo Taxonomy to encourage deep learning and improve written and verbal responses (shared by @dmchugh675)
http://www.learningspy.co.uk/solo-taxonomy/

The Teaching and Learning Cycle (shared by @lcgeography)
http://whatslanguagedoinghere.wordpress.com/2013/03/23/blog-3-the-teaching-and-learning-cycle/

The amazing power of critiques and feedback (shared by @evlury)

Advice for a trainee teacher

We recently received this request via one of our online forms:

"I am a PGCE science student and I start my first secondary school placement 11th November. I was wondering what advice other members could give for the teaching novice?! Much appreciated!"

 So I thought it would be a good idea if the teachers who follow and contribute to #Niedchat could share some thoughts and ideas via the Padlet below. This will take the place of our Wednesday night chat this week. Many have been finding it difficult to take part recently due to school commitments so hopefully this will give more of you the opportunity to share your thoughts.

Get sharing everyone!

Created with Padlet

Topics for Wednesday 29th May

Are VLEs a waste of time?

Post-chat it seems the answer is a resounding  'No!'...but with a caveat. Many of our contributors are keen to utilise the power of VLEs to enable learning outside of the classroom but they are not content to limit themselves to the tools within any particular VLE preferring instead to use their VLE alongside other services such as blogs and wikis.

You can view the tweet archive from the chat here

You can view the VLE survey carried out during the chat here

112 Simple Ideas for your Classroom

Below are 112 ideas (at the time of publishing) crowdsourced in one hour on #niedchat. 

Simple ideas for the classroom

On Wednesday 27th March we will be engaging in a crowdsourcing exercise using a collaborative Google document edited by multiple users in real-time (see YouTube video below).

The aim is to gather as many ideas for the classroom as we can in one hour from as many teachers as we can.

In particular we are looking for SIMPLE ideas; things that teachers can try without having to invest too much in the way of time or resources.

So far I have come up with a few sub-sections;

• Snappy Starters
• Delicious Discussions
• Lovely Literacy
• Working Smarter...not harder
• Perfect Plenaries

If you think of more subsections then please contact us via the @niedchat Twitter account.

The link to the shared Google document will be shared on #NIedchat at 8.30. Please retweet it far and wide!

Technology and the changing nature of the classroom.

Posted at 3pm Wednesday 13th February 2013 

Tonight's #NIedchat is entitled "The impact of technology on the concept of 'the classroom'."

Technology has made information on any topic availabile to our students when and where they need it. They can make connections with people from across the globe and have conversations in real time. So tonight we're asking if the whole concept of a classroom - as a place where children go to learn - has changed. Is the classroom still relevant? What impact has the availability of technology had on your classroom? How do you see things changing in the next 5 years?

 We hope you can join us at 8.30 and share your thoughts.