TESconnect

Today the TES's revamped website went live and I must say that it certainly looks good. All of the things you would expect are there upfront and quick to access. Jobs, Communities and Resources feature on the clear, white front page ... a no-nonsense design style that does them credit.

Well worth making the first of many visits I think ...

Here's what they say about themselves in their press release:

Launch of TESconnect highlights how the Internet will give back
14.3 million hidden hours to UK teachers by 2012
5,000 teachers say social networking will revolutionise the teaching profession

New research, released today, proves that social networking, resource sharing and collaboration has the potential to transform the productivity and working lives of the UK teaching community and fundamentally raise the quality of lessons taught in UK classrooms. The research is released by TSL Education, publishers of the TES to launch TESconnect at www.tes.co.uk, the essential new website for teachers, by teachers, a social network that allows teachers to network and share teaching and lesson planning resources. At launch, TESconnect will be the world’s largest social network for a single profession

Results from the study entitled 'The Digital Staffroom: How social networking and resource sharing are transforming teaching’, involving 5,000 teachers across all aspects of the teaching profession, illustrate a picture of a profession committed to delivering the best quality teaching experience possible for their pupils and spending hidden time to do so. 73% of teachers use their evenings and weekends to plan for their lessons with many classroom teachers working a 50-hour week, 30% or more of that time is spent working out of school hours. However, the study reveals that teachers who currently use online resources as a starting point for their lesson planning are saving on average 31 minutes per unique lesson using shared resources. Based on this information, online collaboration is expected to save 14.3 million teaching hours per year by 2012, the equivalent of employing around 23,000 new teachers a year.

The survey of 5000 teachers finds that they are constantly seeking to raise educational standards and are on a permanent quest for new ideas, but they are often isolated by the solitary, classroom-centric nature of teaching itself. Internet technology has the power to fundamentally change this. In particular, it provides the first real opportunity for teachers to communicate with each other across geographic or disciplinary boundaries. TESconnect, www.tes.co.uk, a social network and resource sharing platform just for teachers has been created so the professional community can come together online and share their best lesson plans. The new site unlocks a vast potential for them to collaborate and distribute the highly creative classroom materials that exist within schools throughout the country..
Key takings from the study reveal that:
• 90% say that quality and creativity of lesson planning is compromised due to time pressures
• 42% of teachers are too busy to go and meet colleagues during the school day; and 27% say that they are never in the same place at the same time
• 95% of teachers are aware of the value of collaboration to the quality of their lessons, but 27% say that they are never in the same place at the same time as colleagues
• 73% of teachers use their evenings and weekends to plan for their lessons
• Nearly 50% of teachers spending an extra day a week (8 hours or more) preparing for lessons
• Sharing resources saves teachers time. Existing TES resource bank users say that they save on average 31 minutes preparation time per lesson by downloading shared resources, with significant numbers of teachers saving up to an hour
• 84% of teachers say that an online professional network would help them share their ideas, regardless of time and place
• In 2007, teachers downloaded 2.9 million resources from the TES resource bank
• Teachers saved 400,000 hours in planning and preparation time as a result - the equivalent of hiring 600 full-time teachers
• At current growth rates, teachers will be downloading over 80 million resources every year by 2012, saving 14.3 million 'hidden' teaching hours - the equivalent of hiring 21,400 fulltime teachers
• Resource sharing is already growing at 180% per annum on www.tes.co.uk and growth is expected to increase with the launch of the new website TESconnect.

Where will those hidden hours go?

The study indicates that online resource sharing is set to have a positive impact on not only the lives of teachers but also those of the pupils they teach. Using a social network will mean that teachers will be spending less time alone to plan and create resources, and instead will be online connecting with, and being inspired by, the ideas and resources of other teachers. Teachers using existing online resources such as the TES Resource Bank, part of www.tes.co.uk, felt their lessons were more creative and fun as a result of this inspiration. Asked as part of the report 'what would you use the extra time saved for?' 744 teachers said a priority would be to spend more time tracking pupil progress, 853 said they would be able to mark books more effectively and 774 said they would spend more one-to-one time with pupils. All time ultimately invested in the quality and teaching experience within the classroom.

Johanna Radcliffe, NQT maths teacher from Blackpool uses TESconnect to share resources and ideas: “My biggest challenge is inspiring a class of children that are easily distracted and lack the enthusiasm to learn. Using social networks I don’t feel that I am the only teacher in this situation and I have access to a wealth of ideas that help make my classroom a fun and vibrant place to learn. It frees up my time, so I am able give more individual attention to the children that need it.”

Edward Griffith, Head of TESconnect comments: “Our research clearly demonstrates that resource sharing can revolutionise lesson planning and the quality of lessons taught. All teachers have a passion for sharing knowledge, not just with their pupils but increasingly amongst themselves too. We are on the verge of a revolution in education; by giving teachers the tools to do this I genuinely believe teachers will achieve even more remarkable results. We now have the technology to help teachers teach not only better individual lessons but to become better, happier teachers, which ultimately has an important impact on the quality of our children’s education.”

TESconnect , for teachers, by teachers

Used by thousands of schools and colleges, with over 500,000 registered users, TESconnect, is the central focus for the UK teaching community at every level to share their ideas, thoughts and views outside the staffroom. TESconnect is a social network that allows teachers to network, share resources and search for jobs. It is the world’s largest social network for a single profession and allows teachers to connect with other professionals to find and share their best classroom resources and advice. Split into four user-friendly sections including jobs, community, resources and My TES, the site gives teachers access to tools that have the potential to transform lesson planning and the quality of lessons taught. Further details on the site:

1 Community: The world’s largest online social network for teachers where they can share their professional profile with peers, discuss a range of issues on the forums, and see what their professional colleagues have been making good use of in the classroom
2 Resources: The TESconnect Resources section is home to a vast library of teaching resources, all created and uploaded by other teachers in the TES community for everyone to share. With separate channels for every type of teacher from a nursery to a primary or secondary school, there are all kinds of classroom materials from lesson plans, videos, powerpoints and assessments; games, puzzles and quizzes to worksheets and tutorials. With over 20,000 resources already in the site, hundreds are uploaded by the community every week.
3 Jobs: www.tes.co.uk is the number one site for the best teaching jobs from all across the country, with over 500,000 registered users, it is the UK’s leading online recruitment resource for schools and colleagues looking to find new quality teaching and support staff. Now a key part of TESconnect, visitors to the jobs section can browse by position, subject, workplace and by location and build customised job alerts so when that perfect new job vacancy appears it is sent to them
4 My TES: A personalised page where teachers can save the content that is relevant to them. Users also receive updates from the local community as well as bookmarks and links to top content on the site


About TESconnect

TESconnect builds on the success of www.tes.co.uk which is already the UK's most popular site for the teaching community with over 500,000 registered users. A prototype resource sharing tool TSL’s Resource Bank was launched in 2006 as part of www.tes.co.uk. TESconnect is a professional network for teachers to search for jobs, discuss ideas and share resources from lesson plans to poster and worksheets. TESconnect can be accessed at www.tes.co.uk

About TSL Education

TSL Education Ltd is the UK’s leading educational publisher and recruitment service. Its portfolio of titles includes education websites www.tes.co.uk and www.thetimeshighereducation.co.uk, print publications The Times Educational Supplement, FE Focus and Times Higher Education, and education exhibitions and events. TSL’s recruitment service, TES Prime, is a dedicated leadership service for the education sector, working with primary, secondary and independent school governors seeking a new leader for their school.

www.tes.co.uk is the home TESconnect, the UK’s leading educational website. The number one site for education jobs, TESconnect is now also the world’s largest professional network for teachers to share ideas and the best classroom resources.

Notes of the research:

The research was commissioned by TES and conducted by L.E.K Consulting in August 2008. More than 5,000 teachers who had previously registered with TES took part in an online survey designed to gather information about a wide range of teaching issues. In addition, L.E.K. conducted two focus groups, involving 21 teachers from around the country. The participants in the study covered a range of teacher and school types, levels of experience, subject specialisation, and geographies. To request a copy of the report titled ‘The Digital Staffroom: How social networking and resource sharing are transforming teaching’ please refer to press contacts below.

About L.E.K. Consulting

L.E.K. Consulting is an international firm that specialises in strategy, transaction services and performance improvement consulting. It advises the largest private and public sector organisations, private equity companies and smaller, more entrepreneurial businesses.
With a reputation for resolving the most complex commercial issues, L.E.K. helps business leaders consistently make better decisions, deliver improved business performance and create greater shareholder returns.
The firm was founded in 1983 and employs over 850 staff in 20 offices across Europe, North America and Asia Pacific. In 2007, L.E.K Consulting was awarded the Queen’s Award for Enterprise for its achievements in international trade. Find out more at www.lek.com

-ends-
Press contacts:
For more information, please call Annie Woodhead or Jessica Helyer on tes@hotwirepr.com or on 020 7608 2500 or Ginni Arnold on 07968 730247.

Using Comic Strips to give a sense of narrative

For the TES magazine of 29.02.08 I wrote an article on using Comic strips to give pupils a sense of power over narrative writing. Many kind people have mentioned the article and have taken up some of the ideas. As is the nature of writing in this way the original text was cut down to fit the magazine's format. Below I have included the whole thing for those who wish to read more (with my thanks to Simon Mills for his original idea):

Bring it to life!

Back-reading through my Internet ‘feeds’ I came across some literacy work by Simon Mills that really attracted my attention. Amongst many other things there he was talking about multi-modality and punctuation and there was this bit about:

‘…pondering on how the use of comic strips might help with this, and how in the process I might also encourage colleagues to see this undervalued literary form as a potential tool in supporting engagement with texts and literacy development.’

This got me thinking about narrative and the way that comic strips could be used to engage different people in different ways. In other words, how a single story line might be accessed from different directions. This especially worked for me as I was thinking that comic strips were great multi-modal representations and the whole thing fitted into a ‘design and build’ context. The images chosen and the captions created carry both the narrative and the story and different people focus on different parts to begin with and then ‘blend’ or ‘mash-up’ to imbibe the whole context. I feel that writing narrative succinctly could be really well facilitated by using comic strip format. Really I was getting to grips with ‘storyboarding’!

So I began to look for an electronic format which would help me to do just that.

During October I spent some time in an Online Conference called ‘K12’ and there I came across a presentation by Wendy Wolfe from Saint Paul, Minnesota, USA, where she detailed the use of some free Web 2.0 tools. Her presentation, ‘If All My Class Did This’ was both entertaining and engaging. It introduced me a number of potentially useful Web 2.0 tools that I had not come across before. It was the easy way that she adopted and then adapted the tools that were available to fit in with her curriculum that impressed me and determined me to look at ToonDoo, a cartoon creator.

This free Web 2.0 software enables users to create simple one, two or three panel cartoons quickly and simply with supplied character sets (there is a really large fantasy range) and supplied backgrounds etc but it is also possible to upload photos from your own computer for use in your cartoons. There is also a function which allows you to build your own characters. To get to use it you have to fill in a simple form and register online (as with most of these applications).

The implications of using this technology are exciting for children as they begin to take control of their writing and also how they develop their sense of audience. Web 2.0 technology opens up a developing idea of communicating and review that has not really yet been explored in a school setting. The usual audience for children’s work is restricted to the class or occasionally home and the close community. Using tools, such as ToonDoo, opens up the possibilities of collaborations around the world in formats that are engaging and creative. There is no need within this environment to be tethered by geography, it is as open as users are prepared to allow. And it is this allowing that we all need to come to terms with within our various institutions.

Once your film strip has been created it can be saved, kept private, shared with friends or even published to the world. This opens up enormously the concept of ‘sense of audience’ for published creations and all of the exciting things that come with giving children the power to go outside the school environment with their work.

When you view the finished work it looks like this ...


(and there is a comments box at the bottom for people to give you feedback on your work - provided that you shared it with them!)

It is also possible to combine ToonDoons to form ToonBooks which work terrifically electronically with virtual page turning. This function means that groups can combine strips to make a series. After a few exploratory goes, the whole thing is very intuitive and simple to use allowing the users to concentrate on the quality of the literacy involved rather than getting bogged down with the operation of the software.

Contextually you can use the visualisation through the different formats of the speech bubbles to easily differentiate between speech and thought … as Simon notes: ‘With thought bubbles we can think, reflect, look back, imagine or visualise... with speech bubbles we can shout, cry, whisper, whimper query, say and exclaim’ . The shape and size of the bubbles and their position on the pager can also play a part in the inference of the ideas. If you have ever ( and who hasn’t) read any of the ‘Tin Tin’ books you can see how this works with the first part of the dialogue/idea always on the left of the picture and any action moving with the eye line from left to right . Even in some cases, going out of the frame.

Using these ideas young writers can explore the difference between thoughts and speech and can develop ideas of how to track the narrative of a story in a variety of ways – comic strips being one of these. The Express Newspaper’s Rupert Annuals of the past are excellent examples of this whereby the narrative is carried by the title of the page, the four images and the rhyming couplets and the narrative text (which also involves speech). At this point it is about experimentation and almost the ‘breaking’ of conventions to see the effect that they have on writers and readers.

Simon notes:
‘The narratives presented within comic strips are layered or textured and in constructing meaning as intended by the author must be accessed on multiple levels. When I read a comic strip I often begin with the visual elements, and then use the captions to set context before following the speech, linking the pieces together to construct my own version of events, in using the text in this way I am take personal control of the meaning I am making, designing my own story from what is being presented as I go.’
It is this sort of experimentation with writing that we should be encouraging so that it allows the audience of the writing to construct their own version of the author’s narrative.

Point to Ponder

There are numerous ‘comic strip’ generators sitting on the Web that can easily be found by any quick search. Before you consider using such an application in a classroom context or as a home/school idea check carefully. Really work through the options. Remember, these sites were not, on the whole, designed for education purposes and there may be things lurking you would prefer not to be associated with.

Other software to explore.

Plasq (works with Mac or Windows) – is a download rather than a Web 2.0 application
Comic Creator - from readwritethink