Definitely need to see a rocket launch in real life. Anyone up for a school trip?

Hi everyone,

Last week was so incredibly rewarding. I had the opportunity to continue to share the work of my students via the Classroom 21 FB page. This week it was the wonderful work of four students from 7E. They were kind enough to write a ‘thank you’ to a fellow teacher who had re-tweeted a tweet. Twitter is proving a difficult tool to master. All the teachers I have seen with a large number of followers are basically tweeting constantly. I’m not sure how they are able to do it to be honest. With the amount of planning, marking and general work I have to do, it’s difficult to find the time to think about tweets, let alone type and tweet them. They are also tweeting/blogging about general teaching practice that could help assist peers/colleagues and not what they themselves are doing in their schools and classrooms.

Will have to see how this goes, as I had always planned to tweet about what my students and I have been up to in our classroom. Two of my students were kind enough to offer help to ‘make my feed more interesting’, which made me laugh (as it’s true!) and is very much appreciated. I was hoping I would receive such help, as I am positive they are far more knowledgeable than I am on all things social media related. To be honest I am far more interested spending my time creating new learning experiences for my students as well as evidencing the outstanding work that my students are doing on a daily basis. Thanks to the digital learning platform my students and I have developed I can do that until my hearts content.

In the last 30 minutes I have sent out a personalised link to all of my students so they are able to navigate to the NASA website and watch the live rocket launch this evening. I am of the opinion that education never stops and if there is the opportunity for my students to learn then I am going to do all that I can to help and assist them to do that. As I am always attempting to learn something new every day myself, it seems obvious to me to send any new, interesting information that I learn, in a more simplified way, to my students at the same point. This is one of the reasons I designed The Learning Portfolio. Due to my interest in science and my role as a teacher of science, 90% of the information I send to my students is of a science nature. The other 10% usually inspirational, creative, imaginative information to attempt to inspire them to learn in general. I am always aware that a single piece of information, delivered at the right time could ignite a spark that could lead them on to study science themselves in the future. I have found learning about science such a rewarding experience in my life. I have no doubt that it would be the same for anyone who studied it to degree level and beyond, therefore I am always attempting to ignite that interest so they do just that. 

Next week I will be able to talk more about The Learning Portfolio, as Sean and Jaida have been kind enough to introduce it to everyone for us. Thank you so much to both of you for your kind words, we will have to see what happens with it. I am excited by the possibilities it could have to help our vision become a reality but always know there is a huge amount of work to be done as yet. As the saying goes, nothing worth having comes easy. 

D.