Progress Report, anyone?

This pic shows the end of a fascinating exchange on Twitter last night, one which sums up much of what I love about social media - but which in a way saddens me, in that the very praise that gave me genuine pleasure showed how slowly things move in educational circles.

The work that @digitalmaverick is referring to and commending to @janeyk419 is a blog, Progress Report", maintained through 2006 and 2007 by first a couple of S4 students and then by one of them. It began when the two girls came to me for private tuition; following an excellent Standard Grade result one of them returned to the blog for further mentoring as she worked for her Higher English. It became more widely known when I spoke about it at an early TeachMeet at the invitation of Ewan, aka no. 2 son.

So far, so satisfying. But note how long ago that was: four years have elapsed since that blog was being used to improve the writing skills of the students involved, four years since I realised my ambition to use technology to disseminate advice which in the normal classroom I might have had to repeat over and over again to different individuals and groups. The blog itself is as old-fashioned in blogging terms as the one I'm writing now, and the formative assessment given in the comments is what I've built up over a career in the classroom - no change there. After my talk at the TeachMeet, I expected a huge growth in the use of such basic technology to further all kinds of learning - including the fairly traditional model practised by me.

And that's why I was so surprised last night, to find that someone actually recalled this event vivdly enough to consider it outstanding, and that it was not in fact so old hat now as to be past mention. I suppose I thought there would be examples of outstanding practice all over the social networks, an explosion of exemplars that would render this now inactive blog redundant, a curiosity at best.

I left the classroom just as the possibilities of this medium were opening up. There was at the time one classroom's worth of laptops on two trolleys, and you booked them weeks in advance. Any one class was lucky to get them for a period a week, and the labour of tracking them down and finding that someone hadn't plugged them in to recharge put you off the notion as often as not. I don't know how much better provision is now, but I do know that more and more pupils have their own technology. I gather from some former colleagues that they find it a drag to use computers more than is absolutely necessary, but it's been 6 years since I was in school and I'm limited in my local contact now.

I do, however, have one question: how much detailed formative assessment takes place online these days? (unless it's one of these things that are not done any more) It seems to me an obvious area for widespread sharing, for teachers to be of use way beyond the walls of their classroom. Maybe there's loads, and I'm just showing my lack of current experience; in which case, dear readers, I wait for your correction - and your links!

Not blogging but ...

I read recently that someone had said that we ought not to describe ourselves as bloggers, and find myself agreeing with this. I'm not a blogger: I'm a communicator who will use whatever means seem appropriate to the task. That said, I'm delighted to welcome two new blogs to my Bloglines.

The first belongs to my latest private student, who is getting to grips with Shakespeare for the first time and has just begun to write about it here. He would welcome comment from any of my regular readers as we embark on an old-fashioned education in English.

The second blog is that of one of my oldest friends, who has been writing all the time I have known her and would probably have had a blog in the 60s, just as I would. Have a look at wordswordswords - and if you have any advice on laying out verse in WordPress this would be a good time to visit.

And you will note we are not averse to the odd quotation...

Teaching...still.

I was once again thinking of retiring properly - of not teaching anyone for a bit, now that Higher English is almost upon us - when out of the blue came the kind of proposition I just couldn't ignore. A luminously bright student to "educate" in the old-fashioned business of Eng. Lit. - Shakespeare and that kind of thing. My choice. As a by-product, we achieve a Credit 1 next year and a Higher A the year after. A challenge, but goodness does it sound like fun.

So I'm doing it, and we start in a couple of weeks. At the moment I'm thinking about the best online methods of keeping the impetus going between lessons. Ewan has already suggested using Skype and Google Docs plus a blog of best work. I've not used Google Docs before, so want to see how it compares with Quick Topic for ease of use (if anyone already has a take on this I'd like to hear from them). I realise that doing this sort of thing only intermittently means I get left behind a bit, but at the same time I relish the prospect of some real hard work on exciting texts.

Today I suggested to my current student that she might like to sit in the garden for her lesson. I don't know whether it was the proximity of the exam or the sunshine and cool breeze that gave her an edge, but she's doing much better at the old Interpretation. (I'm sure I shouldn't be calling it that.) Exam weather always has a bittersweet edge to it. Let's hear it for all the kids facing exams right now!

Words fail me .....

Having just sat for 15 minutes trying to load beta blogger to publish an entry, I find myself so startled by the sudden appearance of the page that I've almost forgotten what I was going to post about. I had, in fact, begun to mail a reply to BT that the problem is theirs - but I'll do this first now that I'm here.

After teaching two hours intensively today on Higher Engish, and then spent 30 minutes on QuickTopic Document Review doing formative assessment on a Higher essay, I feel suddenly very ... teacherly again. I am exercised by the problems pupils carry into the Higher English course - in particular, today, the problem of a limited vocabulary. It is, I imagine, unthinkable that someone would sit Higher French without making an effort to learn new words, and words of a certain degree of sophistication so that they could get past the "je m'appelle.." mode, and yet they expect to cope with the subtleties of English literature without knowing, say, what "dreary" means. That example comes from today, but I could come up with many others - and that's before I move on to the technical language required to discuss literary technique with any degree of clarity.

Ah well. There is much to be done. I've suggested the daily read of Guardian Unlimited as a start to acquiring the necessary vocabulary - as well as the skills of the essayist. In the meantime, I find Quick Topic Document Review an excellent tool for online tuition at the moment, and am grateful to Dave Weinberger for pointing me towards it.

And now to see if I can establish sufficient connection to publish this ......