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This activity could really cut across the curriculum and provide a focus and content to base work around in a number of subject areas.

The most difficult thing here is getting started and deciding who you may need, there are two main approaches here:

1. There may be someone who is the news that may be has connections or is from the local area who you simply feel could be an inspiration to the students and allow them to ask lots of questions. This may be a local politician, a sports person or celebrity.
2. The second approach is to look through your schemes of work and then figure out where an external person could add value to a particular topic and then do a bit of research and then draw up a short list. Again this could be a local business man, a charity, a soldier etc.

Now this is the interesting part where effectively an interview could fuel so many outcomes. Here are just a few that could be the end product from the interview:

1. A presentation is produced summarizing the interview (all subjects depending on topic and interviewee).
2. The interview could have been recorded and the edited to then be broadcast via the school website (all subjects potentially but a really useful quick task for ICT and Media Studies students).
3. The interview could act as an introduction to topic or project (all subjects)
4. The interview along with further information could be used to produce a life story, poem or news paper article based around the life and experiences of the interviewee (all subjects but possibly particularly useful for English for creative writing, History for describing modern history may be World War 2 or Religious Education and Citizenship for describing an event).
5. The interview could form the basis of a critical thinking task especially if the interviewee is very passionate and opinionated for one particular perspective.
6. The interview could simply form part of the students research for a project or some coursework (all subjects but especially Business, Travel and Tourism and Sociology).

In my last post I talked about the latest in using Music for learning.

However, I felt it also important to highlight the usefulness of music in creating a safe and calm environment for learners to learn. It is vital that students are emotionally ready for them to start learning and if they are not then there is actually no point in attempting to get started as they will not be receptive to learning. We can get into why another time…..

…But for now it is important to understand that rituals can play an important role to prepare learners to learn and one thing that can get the brain into learning mode as one of these rituals is music.

It does not necessarily need to be any particular type of music although some genres may be inappropriate but will leave that for you to decide. I would stick to a handful of tracks throughout so a half term so the music starts to form part of a ritual.

To finish on I’d like to leave with you a website where you can select the music you want to listen to depending on your mood or that mood you may want to provoke in your students. Anyway dead easy to use take a look the site is Musicovery.com

I saw this video yesterday and thought I would share it with you it really made me think about how technology should be used more creatively within the curriculum and how schools really need to be focusing on how to develop a clear strategy for eLearning.

This video is a must-see for every parent and teacher. Education guru Sir Ken Robinson makes an entertaining (and profoundly moving) case for creating an education system that nurtures creativity which is so often being pushed out of the exam led approach to the curriculum in the UK. It certainly made me think about how I could encourage creativity within my classroom.

I found this video sometime ago.  It goes through lots of snippits where ICT has been used in the classroom.  I have used it during whole school and deaprtment insets to get the ball rolling.