Jackie Gates Learning Journal

2004-04-15T19:19:00.000+01:00

Well this learning journal is sadly neglected as time is so short at the moment. However I have finished the assignment as have uploaded it sucessfully so I can now forget about it. I must say that I found the action enquiry tool difficult to work with from the view of the headings didn't really fit my research. I think that Ultralab should look into the fact that not everyone is working directly with children even though we work in schools.
The marks for the last assignment are now available and much to my surprise I achieved 68% so am pleased with that.
It will be on with the next assignment come Monday so will be looking into the study skills tass before then.

2004-02-29T12:07:00.000Z

The assignment is now uploaded . I couldn't believe how difficult LA4 was for me. I think I got the idea in the end but its the first time I have had writers block and it took a lot of help from others on the course before everything was clearer in my mind. I feel a lot happier now that its all out of the way. Identifying the links between the artifacts was the most difficult thing and did reveal a common factor that surprised me. It dawned on me that I wasn't really confident to stand up and say what I thought, that I was happier to go along with what others said as I believed that they knew better than me. Hopefully now that I have identified this I can work through it and develop strategies that might help. It could be that the action research will help as this is something that is mine to work on and if its a success then I will gain confidence from it. Time will tell but I will also have to prepare myself for disappointments and not take them too personally.

2004-02-22T21:08:00.000Z

One artefact to go and then I will feel as if i'm finally on my way to completing this assignment. Its been hard work getting motivated for this one not because I've found it difficult or uninteresting but because I just haven't had the time to spend on it. I have had to work in short spaces of time and just keep losing the thread of what i'm doing. This has meant going over what I've read to refresh my memory on the theory. So much time wasted repeating things. I really must allocate time for this degree and stick to it as much as possible.
Well back to school tomorrow , I'm not really looking forward to it as I have a meeting concerning an incident with a member of the teaching staff. Somehow things have got a little unpleasant so I hope this will sort them out but I doubt it. The member of staff concerned is renowned for being extremely difficult and victimising people, it just seems as if its my turn to be the victim.

2004-02-21T15:27:00.000Z

Well the half term holiday is nearly over and I was supposed to finish the assignment on reflection. Like most best laid plans things haven't really gone as I thought they would have due to family committments which have to come first. However I have completed the reflectons on three artefacts, a process I am finding increasingly difficult as I feel I am repeating myself. The portfolio tool is down as well so I can't upload them in order to get feedback. I will instead just have to cary on with the next one. One thing I did try was to use PowerPoint to record my reflections, however this has taken so much more time than using Word that I do wonder if it will be worth the effort. Will I gain extra marks for using the technology ? I'll have to wait and see. I think I have learnt that I need more experience in geting the messge across using just bullet points though, I think some of what I have done isn't explicit enough. Anyway I have worked enough on it and am running out of time so will submit it and hope for the best.

2004-02-03T22:43:00.000Z

Got the results of Report 2, i'm pleased that i got 65%, much better than I thought as I didn't always think that I had grasped what I was supposed to do for the report. The feedback I got was helpful, I should try to read and compare literature to gain more marks.
I feel that now I am getting somewhere albeit slowly with report 3, I have done most of the research and written it up and begun the reflect on the artifacts. Three more of these to go and then the reflection of them as a whole. So feeling happier than last week. First class still seems to take up a lot of time , i have to be selective in which messages i read now .

2004-01-28T12:39:00.000Z

School closed due to the snow

2004-01-19T22:12:00.000Z

January 19th 2004
Visit to another school with the snakes.
I was asked to take the school snakes that belong to the science department to another school, so that the pupils in Year 7 could experience snakes for real. The pupils apparently had many preconceptions about snakes, most thought they were cold and slimey, and the idea behind the visit was to correct these thoughts. The visit was part of an English lesson carried out by one of the Graduate Teachers in the English delatment, who was nearing the completion of her training.
The visit was scheduled to last one hour. This was broken down into sectionsas follows
1) Introduction to the snakes, general facts about snakes
2)Viewing the snakes, a corn snake and a rat snake
3) Question and answer session
4) Pupil participation in the handling of the snakes
5) Further questions

The pupils were very interested in the snakes, asking many relevant questions. Some pupils thought they would make good pets and asked about the cost of a vivarium and the snakes themselves. They were fascinated by the feeding habits, a mouse every two weeks, and kept coming back to the point.
When it came to viewing the snakes, my colleague carried each one to the pupils to allow allow anyone who wished to touch them. Most pupils hadn't touched a snake before and said they were surprised that they weren't cold and slimey as they had thought. A surprising number of pupils wanted to hold the snakes, even to have them draped over their shoulders.
The final question and answer session was very interesting, with pupils remembering facts mentioned in the Introduction and wanting more detail.
Overall the visit went well. As this was the first time I had taken part in this type of activity, I wasn't sure what to expect. Personally I learnt a lot about the snakes and feel that next time I'm involved I can participate more.
The feedback from the teacher was very positive. The pupils had managed to remember facts about the snakes which they then used to write poems about them. They even created a mural for the classroom wall and wrote poems in the shape of snakes. One pupils commented that 'we should do more of this in school'.

2004-01-12T20:45:00.000Z

January 12th
What was it I said about everything running smoothly in ICT? Well just forget that comment. The Year 11 GCSE ICT exam took place today, or at least was supposed to but the gremlins had been in at the weekend and over half the computers decided not to ork properly. Added to this was the fact that the network slowed down completely, it took 20mins to print one document. In the end we had to abandon the whole thing and re-schedule for Thursday.

What upset me most was how useless we all were. Nothing we tried could get the system working as it should. There are grave issues about the age of some of the computers and their lack of memory. The students themselves were getting very frustrated by everything and in the end it was the fairest thing to stop the exam. Some of the lucky students, whose computers were ok then expressed their dismay at having to repeat the work they had done. All in all it was a bad experience for all concerned , lets just hope that tomorrows exm fairs better.

2004-01-09T20:20:00.000Z

9th January
The first week of the new term has finished and I don't quite know what I have actually achieved. Most of the science lessons were non practical ones so there was little to set up and everything was running smoothly in ICT. I decided to have a chat with my line maager concerning my role in the school as for a while I have felt that I haven't been fulfilling my potential. After explaining how i felt he came up with the idea that I should use my skills to bring more ICT into Science. It was decided to concentrate on providing some ICT training for the science staff and to lok at the Year 7 schemes of work to see where ICT could be incorporated more. This has certainly given me something to think about and I fel boosted by the fact that I was taken seriously.

2003-12-07T13:16:00.000Z

OK just changed the time zone so I think I am all set to publish.

2003-12-07T12:08:00.000Z

Setting this up was so easy, why haven't I done this before. Mostly through lack of time but now the reports are written and uploaded and suddenly I feel free again. I will write my learning journal here and then it will be easier to access, I have been jotting things down on paper but then its a chore to type them into Word.