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Dear Santa

Alan Coady

Tuesday 27 June 2006

My wish for Exc-el is a page combining the following features:

101 handy hints for the new teacher
things I wish I’d learned earlier
thought for the day

I gather that there are 1000 teachers in East Lothian. If every third person were to contribute just one offering, this would amount to a year’s worth of daily postings.

I have learned a great deal while sitting at a computer in the classrooms of seasoned teachers – Salt Paterson & Pepper Cruickshank (MGS) and (primary sector’s gain/secondary sector’s loss) Paprika Holden (formerly NBHS). Much of this concerns the way things are expressed. These were lessons in tone, volume, tempo and phrasing as much as in content and conduct. That it is possible to learn so much through simple eavesdropping, suggests that much more could be learned by reading the considered, distilled thoughts of our experienced teachers?

Possible topics might include:

time-saving admin tips
time-saving IT tips/shortcuts etc
classroom organization tips
ideas/similes/analogies which seem/seem not to work
things which have proved popular/unpopular
ambiguities to be avoided
phraseology which is rarely misunderstood
recommended reading, websites etc.

How exactly this would be organized is anyone’s guess but, in theory, is anybody up for it?

Comments

Exc-el revamp

Ewan McIntosh

Tuesday 22 August 2006

Hi Alan et al,

I've just started a new post within LTS and East Lothian. First task to be done is a revamp of Exc-el to make information flow better, to make all the RSS feeds work and to include ideas such as yours. They've been noted. Thanks for suggesting them.

There will be more consultation when we all meet again soon.

Maybe Del.icio.us could help?

David

Thursday 29 June 2006

Alan,
Do you know about http://del.icio.us? It's a social bookmarking web site which might help make this work. Register, and you can tag web pages you like with any tag(s) you think appropriate. It's an informal "folksonomy", not a formal taxonomy - but it works well. The tag info is shared, so you can easily find pages other people have tagged with terms that mean something to you. There's no reason it couldn't be used within Exc-el to tag useful pages within the site, on blogs or elsewhere.

Here's some examples of how you can use it to find useful pages that others have tagged; see what you think.

* time-saving admin tips e.g. http://del.icio.us/tag/timesaving
* time-saving IT tips/shortcuts etc e.g. http://del.icio.us/tag/tips+PC
* classroom organization tips e.g. http://del.icio.us/tag/classroom+tips
* ideas/similes/analogies which seem/seem not to work http://del.icio.us/tag/metaphor+learning
* things which have proved popular/unpopular
* ambiguities to be avoided http://del.icio.us/tag/ambiguity+learning
* phraseology which is rarely misunderstood
* recommended reading, websites etc.

Of course - as ever - I'm only scratching the surface with this description. You can also see notes others have made, such as these for timesaving, by clicking on the "Saved by 1546 other people" for the page titled "how to get more time out of a day" http://del.icio.us/url/cf3bf4e34019ed83cb772ae81b1ee888 ....enough!!!

Wish list

Brian

Wednesday 28 June 2006

Its a great idea Alan. There could be seperate discussion groups for each of the points that you raised. As for the daily thought etc then that could be conveyed via the RSS feeds. Or you could start a wiki with a theme on each of the points and have people add and amend them as they came up with new and improved ideas. I would be willing to put in the time to help you administer wiki's etc

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