PECOS

Today I made a huge breakthrough in on-line ordering and I feel confident this time that my PECOS order will be successful! After months of not being able to log on, slow network speed, computers crashing and orders disappearing. Today I put in an order for about half of the equipment in the Lyrco catalogue. I must thank Angela Hepburn who helped me conquer the system! Soon the department will be awash with new stationary including pens, pencils and next years jotters. I ordered the equivalent of the Amazon Rainforest in paper (recycled of course) to make sure that I do not run out again.

After my initial excitement of getting this order through I spent most of my free time marking. There are lots of extra questions being done by Higher and S4 students at the moment in the build up to the examinations after Easter. Its great to see that some students have become really focused – hopefully it will catch on?

In the afternoon I borrowed Ed Offers OHP. Although I use my Interactive whiteboard for 90% of the work that I do in class an OHP is still a valuable resource. I particularly like it for teaching weather as it allows you to build up layers on a synoptic chart and then add warm and cold fronts using a series of overlays. I resurrected an old lesson using ‘Geography Man’ who flies’s through a frontal system and experiences different types of weather.

We don’t have an OHP in the department and I think an OHP or a visualiser still has a place in the Geography classroom. Perhaps it’s time to see how much money I still have in my budget following my mammoth-spending spree this morning?

Exc-el board meeting after school. We discussed the accessibility of the exc-el web site and devised a new set of short cuts to access key parts of the site. We also talked about the site layout, in particular the home page. Finally we talked about the exc-el conference. It looks like we will try and do this in September with the emphasis on ‘inspiration’ rather than ‘hands-on’. The ‘hands on’ practical sessions can then be delivered on an individual needs / cluster basis through the Councils CPD programme. Although September is a busy month with SETT in Glasgow and Celebrating Success I think we could capitalise on these two events to deliver a really good conference.