One of my favorite apps to use for online learning isNearpod. It’s fun to use, it’s free (but there is a very cool premiumversion ifyou want to really up your game) and it’s very effective.
If you’ve never made a Nearpod lesson before, then this video I made today talks you through the different steps (and shows you the amazing end-result!):
Nearpod overview
Where you can get it and use it: App Store, Google Play Store, Microsoft Store, Chrome Web store and on the web atNearpod.com
Cool Feature #1:You create a slideshow on Nearpod. Your kids login with a code that Nearpod generates (they don’t need to sign up, which saves tons of time) and, boom!: the slideshow will play on every student’s device. When the teacher changes a slide, then the slide will change on the kids’ screens.
You can choose to show the slideshow on a front projector screen/smartboard, or simply walk around the class with your iPad or laptop as you’re instructing the kids.
Cool feature #2:Put polls, questions, quizzes, drawing tasks, videos, 3D objects, web links and audio segments into Nearpod presentations to make the experience fully ‘interactive’.
When I tested Nearpod at Harrow I thought it was super-cool because I could write an answer (as a student) and it would show on the front-screen as a sticky-note with everyone else’s. Chelsea Donaldson shows this excellent image of what I experienced over at herblog:
As you can see, other kids can click ‘like’ and can comment on the responses, making this an ultra-modern, ‘social-media’ style education tool.
Another feature I loved was ‘Draw it’. It’s similar to ‘collaborate’ (the feature above with the sticky-note answers), but this time the students either draw a picture or annotate a drawing you have shared.
I can see this being great for scientific diagrams and mathematical operations.
Students can use a stylus/Apple Pencil, their finger (if it’s a non-stylus tablet or phone they are using) or even a mouse to draw the picture. Once drawn, the pictures will show up on the teacher’s screen together, and this can be projected if the teacher wishes.
Cool feature 3:Virtual reality is embedded into Nearpod (and I need to learn a lot more about it!).
I don’t understand it fully yet, but Nearpod themselves say that over450 ready-to-runVR lessons are ready on their platform, including college tours, mindfulness and meditation lessons and even tours of ancient China!
Now that sounds cool!
My thoughts about Nearpod
I like apps that are quick, useful and free/cheap to use.
Nearpod ticks all of those boxes.
The features that I tested which were super, super cool include:
Kids log in with a code and your presentation appears on their screens. When you change a slide, the slide changes on their devices!
You can put polls, drawing tasks and questions into your slides and it’s all fully interactive. Kids’ answers will appear on the projector screen for all to see (if you wish), or simply on the teacher’s screen (for private viewing).
I love this app and so do my students.
We welcome you to join the Richard James Rogers online community! Join us on Facebook and Twitter for regular updates, giveaways of Richard’s books, special offers, upcoming events and news.
Group work and independent study can now be greatly enhanced by technology. Google Suite has really opened up this space by pioneering the development of real-time collaboration via ICT. This week I’d like to share some tips on how to use Google’s super-cool tools in the classroom.
The Google Suite of services involves a number of apps that students can use for group work, online learning and data processing. The most useful apps that I use in my daily teaching are:
Google Classroom: This is a place where the teacher can post assignments, upload resources (including links to websites, YouTube videos, PowerPoint presentations, Word documents, etc.) and post questions that the students can comment on. It has a very nice, user-friendly interface and is an absolute blessing when a teacher is absent from school – cover work can be uploaded with ease, and all students will have quick access to that work (and will even receive an e-mail notification every time something new is added to their Google Classroom by the teacher!). It’s a form of Virtual Learning Environment/VLE.
“An AMAZING book!”
Google Meets:This is a truly amazing video conferencing platform that’s so easy to use. Basically, you go to https://meet.google.com/_meet and type in a nickname for your meeting. Click ‘join meeting’ and you’ll get a link. Share the link with your students (e.g. through Google Classroom) and, hey presto, you’ll hear some ‘ping’ sounds and students will join your meeting. Cool features include captions (as you and your students talk, you’ll see auto-generated subtitles on-screen) and screen-share (allowing you to share a window with your students – great for explanations). I’ve also beta-tested Google Meets with my iPad Pro and this is where it gets really exciting – you can share your sketch pad and draw things for for every student to see, in real-time! Just brilliant! Check it out!
Google Slides: Imagine you’re in a group of 5 people, each working on the same slide presentation simultaneously on 5 different computers. You’re all editing the presentation in real time – that’s what Google Slides is, basically. It’s really powerful, and I’ve found that students never grow tired of working in groups to create beautiful presentations. Get your students to present the slides to the class when the project is done and you’ve ticked so many boxes – collaboration, using ICT to enhance learning, leadership skills, courage, and on and on we could go. Just make sure you’re walking around the classroom to check on the students as they are doing the work, and ask the group leader to ‘share’ the work with you (this involves clicking a button, and selecting the teacher’s school Gmail address to share it to).
Google Docs: This is similar to Google Slides, albeit with a slight difference: the students collaborate on a word-processed document in real time, rather than a slides presentation. It’s great for producing leaflets, infographics, reports, booklets, summaries and traditional ‘assignments’.
Google Sheets: As the name suggests, this is a spreadsheet application that the students can collaborate on in real-time, in groups. As a science teacher I find that this is perfect for data collection and processing as it can be used to generate graphs and charts. It’s also good for keeping lists (e.g. lists of revision websites).
Google Forms: Great for surveys and peer-assessment tasks. Students can create forms for other students to fill in, share these forms with their peers, receive responses and the software will even generate pie charts of the responses for quick analysis. It’s a fun way to use ICT to enhance learning, and a quick way to gather interesting data.
New Google Sites: This is Google’s amazing website creation software. In a matter of a few clicks, students can create their own websites that are securely linked to the school’s G Suite server. I’ve just recently used Google Sites with my Year 7 students to create ePortfolios. These ePortfolios act as online records/journals where the students can record their reflections on their work, school achievements, extra-curricular activities and photographs of schoolwork they are really proud of. At my school, we plan to use these ePortfolios as an ‘entire’ record, with students adding work to them throughout their time at school. It’s something meaningful that the students can take pride in, and spend significant time developing.
Things to be aware of
It’s not all sunshine and rainbows with Google Suite, however, and there a few things to watch out for:
When used extensively in a school, the whole suite involves frequent electronic communication between the teachers and students. This can be a little time-consuming, and one has to be careful that students (and you) are using the school’s official e-mail addresses (and, of course, Gmail works best). It’s very easy to inadvertently log in to your personal Gmail, and comment on a student’s Google Slides with it. You also must ensure that students have not created any Google Suite projects using their personal Gmail addresses, otherwise you could inadvertently send an e-mail or message from your school e-mail address to a student’s personal e-mail address.
When everyone in the school (students, teachers and admin) are using Gmail, it can be easy to e-mail the wrong person by mistake, especially when you’re in a rush. If you a have a student named Peter, and a colleague named Peter, for example, then if you’re not careful you could end up e-mailing a ‘teacher to teacher’ e-mail to a student. This requires vigilance and although educational technology seems to be gaining pace and speeding up, teachers really do need to slow down when using it to avoid making some silly mistakes.
Google Suite is easy to use, but it can be a bit daunting at first. Google does offer online training for teachers at a really low price, and if you pass the course you become a ‘Google Certified Educator’ (now that sounds cool!). Check outteachercenter.withgoogle.com for more information.
Accompanying videos (Highly recommended if you want to improve your online teaching skills):
We welcome you to join the Richard James Rogers online community! Join us on Facebook and Twitter for regular updates, giveaways of Richard’s books, special offers, upcoming events and news.
In today’s video I list and describe my top 5 apps for remote learning (all beta tested with my students for efficiency, engagement and user interface). In the video, I describe:
Tip:Jump to the end of this article for questions I’ve received (plus answers) on these apps.
In addition to the above video, I highly recommend that you watch my ‘sequel’ to this, which goes through welfare, safeguarding and practical issues you’ll need to deal with when doing online learning (includes some not-so-obvious things to consider):
Your questions answered
Question about Nearpod from Mirian (via Facebook):
Sorry to ask but Nearpod seems to be really useful. Is it an app I have to download or a webpage? Because I logged in but then I couldn’t create my lessons or it didn’t generate a code for my students. Probably I didn’t do things properly 😕
Answer:
It’s a website. You’ll need to create an account, upload a slide presentation (as a pdf – just click ‘save as’ on your ppt and convert to a pdf.). Once your slide show is uploaded and saved (Nearpod will ask you to choose the subject and age level), you then need to click on ‘Live Lesson’. This will generate a code. Share the code with your students and you are good to go.
I have made a video describing how to create an awesome, free Nearpod lesson here:
It’s the story that everyone is talking about, and that also has many school leaders concerned: COVID-19.
The recent outbreak of this novel strain of coronavirus has caused a domino effect resulting in school closures, travel restrictions and a general, heightened sense of anxiety for many people. For schools, three major priorities now exist:
Protecting the student and staff body from infection
Having effective, simple plans in place to support students with their learning in the event of a sudden school closure
Educating the community about good hygiene practice and dispelling any myths about the virus that may surface, and which may add to anxiety
In this week’s blog post I aim to tackle all three of these priorities in a non-biased, objective way. Original sources will be hyperlinked and a full list of citations can be found at the end of this article.
Priority 1: Protecting the student and staff body from infection
This has to be a school’s first priority right now, as not only do the symptoms of COVID-19 infection vary slightly from person-to-person, but the resulting disease caused by the virus can progress to a serious stage in some people. A community in which high numbers of people work in close proximity to one another (such as a school) is also an ideal place for human-to-human transmission to occur, should an infected person be on-campus.
The latest official information about COVID-19 allows us to evaluate risk to some extent:
Transmission can occur from person to person, usually after close contact with an infected patient through droplet transmission. This is why it is important to stay more than 1 meter (3 feet) away from a person who is sick. (World Health Organisation)
Current estimates of the incubation period range from 1-14 days with a median estimate of 5 days (World Health Organisation)
At the time of writing (March 17th), official confirmed cases globally stand at 185,067 infected with 7330 total deaths and 80,236 official recoveries (Johns Hopkins)
Thisinteractive mapfrom John Hopkins University is a clear a quick way to track the official numbers.
Develop, or review, the school’s emergency operations plan. Review strategies for reducing the spread of disease and establish mechanisms for ongoing communication with staff, students, volunteers, families, and the community. Collaborate with local health departments and other relevant partners.
It is advised that students, staff, parents and guardians, are excluded from sites if they are showing symptoms of COVID-19 or have been in contact with someone with COVID-19 in the last 14 days.
When possible, regular health checks (e.g., temperature and respiratory symptom screening on arrival at school) of students, staff, and visitors. Those who are symptomatic should be excluded. For students experiencing homelessness, use your current procedures to ensure their safety.
Older adults and individuals with underlying medical conditions that are at increased risk of serious COVID-19 are encouraged not to come to the child care and food service setting (including employees).
Practice social distancing (i.e., limit contact of people within 6 feet from each other).
Provide adequate supplies for good hygiene, including clean and functional handwashing stations, soap, paper towels, and alcohol‐based hand sanitizer.
Follow environmental cleaning guidelines from the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) are followed (e.g., clean and disinfect high touch surfaces daily or more frequently).
Plan ways to care for students and staff who become sick and separate them from students and staff who are well. Use face masks as needed should this occur. Staff should go home immediately if they become sick. Contact the student’s parent or guardian immediately if they show symptoms of COVID-19.
Priority 2: Having effective, simple plans in place to support students with their learning in the event of a sudden school closure
I’ve come up with what I believe to be a simple method to facilitate learning in the event of a school closure:
The Online Learning Journal [A suggestion for schools]
Step 1: Every student in the school creates a website that will act as an ‘ePortfolio’ or learning journal. Each website should contain a separate page for each subject the student learns. Google Sites is amazing for this (it’s very user friendly), but Wix, WordPress and Blogger are also good (and free) alternatives. Just make sure the students are using their school e-mail addresses to sign-up to these platforms.
Step 2: The URL for every ePortfolio for every kid in the school is kept on a centralized spreadsheet (e.g. a Google Sheet or an MS Excel sheet) that every teacher has access to.
Step 3: Work is set by the teacher through the school’s online Virtual Learning Environment or MOOC (such as Google Classroom, Firefly or Moodle) or even via e-mail. Students are required to complete their work on their website (e.g. by writing notes on each page, uploading photos of work that’s handwritten, embedding Google Slides, etc.)
Step 4: Teachers simply need to click on the URL for each website of the kids they teach and check their work. Feedback can be written on the website itself (Google Sites makes this very easy, but the student needs to click ‘share’ and share it with the class teacher), or feedback can be directly e-mailed to each student.
You can read more about this method at my blog posthere. I also made an accompanying video:
I’ve done some recent research with my own students about which online learning platforms work and my findings are given below (please share this image far and wide):
Priority 3: Educating the community about good hygiene practice and dispelling any myths about the virus that may surface, and may add to anxiety
Keeping good communication lines open and providing regular updates is always a good idea at times like this. Consider the following ideas:
Send out a weekly newsletter to parents that goes through the steps the school is taking to protect the community from infection and general advice about good hygiene and best practice.
Encourage parents to e-mail any questions or queries they have to a designated person, or to their child’s homeroom teacher.
Assemblies and meetings with students and staff to go through good hygiene measures and offer advice and reassurance.
Find out where everyone in the community is travelling to during school vacations (Google Forms is great for this – send it out and collect responses). Analyse the data received and plan accordingly.
I’ve been an advocate for the use of praise as a student empowerment tool for a very long time. After drafting theThe Four Rules of Praiseback in 2018, I wrote my second book,The Power of Praise: Empowering Students Through Positive Feedback,with the aim being to provide the teaching profession with a concise, practical manual on how to create long-lasting student-drive and motivation through meaningful praise.
As a reminder, and for those who are new to my work, The Four Rules of Praise are as follows:
Praise must be sincere.
Praise must be specific.
Praise must be recorded and remembered by the teacher.
Praise must be reinforced at significant points in the future.
…….and, as an optional (but powerful) extra:
Praise must be collective in order to be effective(ask colleagues and parents to reinforce the praise you’ve given to a student).
The Four Rules can be remembered using the acronym S.S.R.R. – Sincere, Specific, Remembered and Reinforced.
To conclude today’s blog post, I’ve made a YouTube video that summarizes my thoughts on what meaningful praise means. In essence, I make the point that all of our praise must connect with our students on a deep, emotional level.
You can watch today’s video here:
We welcome you to join the Richard Rogers online community. Like ourFacebook page and follow us on Twitter for daily updates.
I like it when colleagues share golden nuggets of hard-earned information: things that took a long time to figure out. Things that really work and are easy to implement.
If you could list only three things that would maximize a teacher’s impact in the classroom, then what would those three things be?
The aim of today’s blog post is for me to share my three top tips with the whole world – in the hope that those reading this will implement my suggestions.
“Simply Brilliant!” – Readers’ Favorite
So, without further-a-do and without a lengthy CPD lesson plan that would be impossible to implement in real-life, let’s take a deep-dive into some easy-to-implement strategies that offer maximum return-on-investment.
Top Tip Number 1: Get up early!
Getting up and out of bed well-before school starts is a habit that has paid me massive dividends in my career as a high-school teacher. Getting up early allows me to:
Read over my lesson plans for the day ahead.
Take my time in the morning and not rush, which puts me in a good mood.
Have breakfast and some coffee – helping me to be biochemically and physiologically ready for the day ahead (a subject matter which is not discussed enough in the teaching profession, in my personal opinion).
Get clear about any meetings or events I have to attend.
Do a little bit of exercise – giving me a good energy boost and a feeling of accomplishment before my day even starts!
Read over any topics I am unfamiliar with – giving me the confidence I need to deliver all of the content I need to.
Leave home on-time, and get to school on time.
Getting up early is a really basic skill but few adults ever really master it. I must admit that for me personally it took years to get into a good ‘waking-up routine’. Once I had built-up momentum, however (through tremendous and painful self-discipline), the benefits came quickly. I was in a better mood at the start of each day and my lesson delivery improved dramatically.
Top Tip Number 2: Plan lessons well in-advance
Time invested in lesson-planning always pays dividends. By waking up early on a Sunday morning to plan my week-ahead, I find that I can get really clear about:
The topics I’ll be covering.
The activities I need to do.
Any resources that I need to upload to my school’s virtual learning environment (Google Classroom, in my case).
The logistics of each lesson (where students will sit, where they will move during activities, etc.).
Any homework I need to set and collect in.
When I’m going to mark work.
Any meetings or events I need to attend in the coming week.
Any reading-ahead that I need to do.
Any printing that I need to do.
I don’t believe in planning lesson-by-lesson too far into the future: plans may change as time goes by (e.g. I may get through more material than planned on any particular lesson). However, I believe that a week’s worth of planning, in advance, is highly appropriate and beneficial.
Top Tip Number 3: Use ‘Live-Marking’
‘Live-Marking’ is basically a way of providing feedback to students in real-time (saving you a ton of after-school and weekend marking). There are two main live-marking strategies:
Strategy 1: Diffusive Live-Marking
This is really simple:
Set a task for your students to complete (it could be a Google Slides presentation, a worksheet to complete, some questions from their textbook to do, etc.)
When a few minutes have passed, ‘diffuse’ through the classroom by walking around with a marking pen in hand (I use a red pen).
Mark student work in real-time, as they are doing it. Of course – reinforce your written comments with verbal feedback (and you can even write ‘verbal feedback given’ or ‘VF’ on the work).
Hey presto – you just saved yourself an hour or so of after-school marking time!
Strategy 2: Absorptive Live-Marking
In this scenario, one can imagine the teacher being like a ‘sponge’ that ‘absorbs’ the students: instead of walking around the classroom to mark work in ‘real-time’, you sit at your desk (or at a designated ‘consultation point’ in the room) and call the students to your desk one-at-a-time.
Same result – you just saved yourself a ton of after-school marking time.
Which is better – absorptive or diffusive live-marking?
In my personal opinion, both forms of marking have their place.
Diffusive live-marking can actually double-up as an excellent behavior management technique – when you walk around the classroom and check work in real-time, pockets of low-level disruption tend to fade away because of the teacher’s proximity. The disadvantage of diffusive live-marking is that it can be difficult to stand behind, or to the side, of a student and mark work on a crowded desk.
I tend to use absorptive live-marking more than diffusive as I am lucky enough to work in a school where the overwhelming majority of the students are very well-behaved. This means that I can call them to my desk one-at-a-time and the class will still stay on-task. A big advantage of the absorptive method is that I can give more detailed and personal feedback to each student and I have my whole desk-space to neatly mark the work on.
Here’s a video I made about live-marking (very highly recommended):
We welcome you to join the Richard Rogers online community. Like ourFacebook page and follow us on Twitter for daily updates.
It was a typical morning tea break in the school staff room. Typical morning grumbles. Typical morning camaraderie.
“It’s like talking to a brick wall with John”, piped in one colleague.
“Yeah he’s pretty distant isn’t he?”, said another.
“He just doesn’t try. I doubt he’ll even get a grade D in GCSE Maths”, says the colleague who started this conversation.
Then I make the biggest cardinal sin a teacher can make in such moaning contests. It was the ultimate point of flippancy for a 23-year-old like me: “He’s great in my lessons”, I arrogantly say.
“An AMAZING book!”
The conversation went quiet.
Back then I wasn’t as polished in my speech as I am now. For some reason my colleagues still put-up with me, and I think they liked me. Perhaps I was given the benefit of the doubt because I was, essentially, a kid myself.
The truth, however, is that John was, actually, great in my lessons. The question is this: Why?
Coursework Conundrum
Then there was that time when something I said went down like a lead balloon at a departmental meeting.
A challenging Year 10 class, who were completing Science coursework, were given to me to cover for a lesson. Their teacher was absent that day.
I write about this story in my first book as a classic example of how teacher organisation and rapport-building can generate dramatically different results to the status quo when applied consistently. Basically, I booked the ICT lab and simply walked around the class and helped the students with their work. I also took all of the loose bits of paper that were loosely organised in a blue tray (their ‘coursework’ tray), and put them in plastic wallets with each students’ name on.
A simple tactic, but it worked really well. It meant that the students didn’t have to fish through papers at the start of each lesson and complain that bits were missing – adding to disruption.
I mentioned this story at that meeting, and whilst my Head of Deportment was impressed with me (he was, secretly, the person I was trying to impress anyway), the teachers of that class were not so happy with my ruthless expose’.
“If I was kid in that class and I had to root through a pile of mixed-up papers to find my coursework, then I’d be disruptive too” I said with a judgmental, 23-year-old voice.
I probably would use more tact and subtlety were I to raise the same issue today. Our colleagues are our allies, not our enemies.
So, what’s the point you’re trying to make?
Simply this:
A teacher’s behavior can have a profound, long-lasting effect on student behavior.
Robert Greene, in his bestselling bookThe 48 Laws of Powerdescribes something called the ‘Mirror Effect’. Basically, it’s a way of showing someone their faults and failures by mirroring their actions.
For teachers, the Mirror Effect works best by modelling the passion and determination we want to see in our students:
When we are passionate, our students become passionate
When we are relaxed, our students are relaxed [be careful how far you take relaxation, however. Relaxed demeanor: yes. Relaxed attitude to your professional role: no.]
When we strive for excellence ourselves, our students also strive for excellence
When we praise and encourage, with passion and real emotion, we inspire our students to work harder, and perform better
One of my proudest moments as a teacher was when I was given a very shy young girl from Iceland to teach. Starting in Year 11 and studying IGCSE Chemistry with me, she had two main challenges to overcome:
She had never learnt any chemistry before, and was due to take an IGCSE exam in Chemistry in 6 months time (that’s hard, by the way)
English was not her first language, and I was teaching her through the medium of English
After my first lesson with her had finished she told me straight: “Mr Rogers, I didn’t understand anything you taught me this lesson.”
That’s when I knew that this was serious, because I’d taught a lesson covering the basic fundamentals.
Her first test came back in two weeks – she got a grade U. She was devastated.
“I’m just going to fail Chemistry, aren’t I?” – she said
“No way. We won’t let that happen. Your target for your next test is an E, and come and see me on Monday lunchtimes so I can teach you the fundamentals. I believe in you.”
It saddens me to say this, but I received a massive public backlash about a year and a half ago when I suggested that one way that we can help exam-level classes is by giving up a few minutes at lunchtimes to tutor weak students on the run-up to the finals. One person went so far as to write damning review of my book (which, I assume, he hadn’t even read):
Another happy customer!
I’m not suggesting for one minute that top-up sessions are the only way to help students who are falling behind, but in the case of this student (who had zero prior knowledge of chemistry) it was an essential intervention move.
That student, incidentally, went on to achieve a grade A* in IGCSE Chemistry six months later – beating almost everyone else in Year 11.
This happened because:
The student worked really hard (this is the main reason)
The student wanted to work hard because I kept on pushing her, telling her that I believed in her (and I meant it), and because I gave believable and achievabletargets for each test (she scored a U, E, E, D, B, A and then an A* in the final).
This is a living testament of the efficacy of my core philosophy, which is this:
I believe that ANY student’s success can be engineered by a great teacher
You’ll find that statement in my bio onTwitter– it’s the personal philosophy that has guided me for more than 15 years. It works, because I’ve seen it work.
But how do we implement this philosophy?
Use the four-step T.I.P.S. method:
Step 1: Track progress. Look for patterns in grades. Keep a spreadsheet of scores.
Step 2: Intervene when grades slip. Have a short conversation with the student in which you use……..
Step 3: Professional Intelligence: Gather and use knowledge about the students’ past achievements, achievements in other subject areas and skills used outside of school to praise the student and remind him/her of the ability that he/she naturally possesses. Talk with other teachers to gather this intelligence if needs be. Couple this with…..
Step 4: Subtle Reinforcement: Be on-the-ball and remind your student regularly what his/her target is. Introduce new resources and offer your time to help. Remind him/her about a test that’s coming up and how you believe in their ability to get a good score. Praise small steps of progress along the way, or any positive work in your subject area.
We welcome you to join the Richard James Rogers online community! Join us on Facebook and Twitter for regular updates, giveaways of Richard’s books, special offers, upcoming events and news.
I’ve been given three Year 7 Computer Studies classes to teach this academic year. It’s been really exciting, and really interesting to discover what 11-year-olds are learning about in this important subject these days. When I was in Year 7, for instance, I learnt how to create folders, spreadsheets, word-processed documents and databases on an even-then outdated Acorn desktop computer:
Today, however, students are using tablets, notebooks and smartphones to learn about:
E-safety
Digital footprints
Cybersecurity
Online docs, sheets, slides and forms using Google Suite
Gaming addiction
That last bullet point: gaming addiction, has been really interesting to teach as a significant minority of my students are regular gamers on Fortnite and other platforms. As part of their course, I was required to show them this video which tells the story of a young boy whose life was almost destroyed by gaming addiction (very highly recommended):
In the story, the boy is given a gaming console by his dad, and his life basically spirals downwards until he is left homeless. It highlights the fact that online gaming can be really expensive, really addictive and very time-consuming. The effects on the character’s body, his hobbies and his schoolwork are all very cleverly portrayed.
Is he working, or gaming?
Gaming addiction is only a small part of a much larger and more pervasive problem in society, however. That problem is smartphone addiction, which has really gripped younger generations quickly, and was certainly not a problem 10 years ago.
The report summarizes a large study conducted by researchers at King’s College London. The research analysed 41 studies involving a whopping 42,000 young people, and was published in the journal BMC Psychiatry. It arrived at a surprising and worrying conclusion:
23% of participants exhibited behaviors consistent with addiction, such as feeling anxiety when the phone was taken away, not being able to control the time they spent on smartphones and spending so much time on mobiles it encroached on other activities.
So smartphone addiction is officially ‘real’, and that should act as an immediate call-to-action for school leaders.
As a teacher who has embraced technology for learning purposes for quite some time, I was quite the advocate for the use of smartphones in teaching. They can be used as clickers for online games likeKahoot!, and can be good alternatives when kids don’t have access to tablets or laptop computers. This research however, along with the World Health Organisation’s recentclassificationof gaming addiction as a mental health disorder has led me to reevaluate my stance.
Perhaps it’s now time for schools to ban smartphones and online gaming completely?
Here is a snippet of what theWorld Health Organisationhas to say about this new condition, Gaming Disorder:
Gaming disorder is defined in the 11th Revision of the International Classification of Diseases (ICD-11) as a pattern of gaming behavior (“digital-gaming” or “video-gaming”) characterized by impaired control over gaming, increasing priority given to gaming over other activities to the extent that gaming takes precedence overother interests and daily activities, and continuation or escalation of gaming despite the occurrence of negative consequences.
This, I believe, should lead all teachers to a logical question to ask: What can we do about it?
Here are my suggestions:
Ban smartphones in schools completely, unless written permission is given from a parent. In the case where written permission has been given, the smartphones must be locked away in a centrallocation during the day and only returned to thestudent at the end of the school day (e.g. for the purposes of phoning home).
Invest in ICT systemsthat are non-intrusive and non-addictive (e.g. ICT labs). Classrooms could be fitted with notebooks/laptops integrated into classroom desks, or students could be asked to bring their own laptop/tablet to school each day.
Schools should have bookable sets of laptops or tablets for students to use, and school libraries should have suitable numbers of laptop and desktop computers for students to use.
The clear advantage of centralized ICT systems over student–owneddevices in schools is control: school-owned devices can be set-up with gaming blockers, chat blockers and website filters.
I would suggest that the challenge of solving smartphone and gaming addiction (two separate, but related problems) is an urgent one, and will require:
Schools to work even more closely with parents, health professionals, ICT service providers and local governments.
Careful allocation of school budgets, with more money being funneledtowards ICT systems that are usable, but safe.
We welcome you to join the Richard James Rogers online community! Join us on Facebook and Twitter for regular updates, giveaways of Richard’s books, special offers, upcoming events and news.
The Fundamentals of Classroom Management: An online course designed by Richard James Rogers in Partnership with UKEd Academy
I’m very excited to announce that I’ve been busy building an online course that covers all of the fundamental concepts in my widely acclaimed debut book: The Quick Guide to Classroom Management, in partnership with my good friends at UKEd Academy. Details are given below:
Price:£30.00(which includes a copy of my book) or£20.00if you’ve already got a copy of my book (you’ll have to enter a discount code found within the book)
Launch date:October 21st 2019(but you can start the course at anytime)
End of course certificate? – Yes, endorsed by UKEd Academy and Richard James Rogers
Course structure:Videos, quizzes, study notes, reflections and activities
Course schedule:Flexible(work at your own pace)
After successful completion of this course you’ll earn a certificate that will look very impressive on your C.V. and you will gain lots of knowledge, new techniques, tools and skills.
I look forward to mentoring and guiding you through the key concepts that make an excellent teacher, well, excellent!
If you have any questions at all about this exciting course, then please e-mail me atinfo@richardjamesrogers.com
We welcome you to join the Richard Rogers online community. Like ourFacebook page and follow us on Twitter for daily updates.
A dangerous culture has quietly found its way into a large number of American and British schools in the past decade. Like a wolf in sheep’s clothing that seems pretty on the surface but harbors malice within; over-rewarding continues to take hold like a malignancy to this day.
Betty Berdan was an American high-school junior at the time of writing thisexcellent opinion piecein the New York Times. She eloquently summarizes her thoughts on over-rewarding as follows:
Like many other kids my age, I grew up receiving trophy after trophy, medal after medal, ribbon after ribbon for every sports season, science fair and spelling bee I participated in. Today the dozens of trophies, ribbons and medals sit in a corner of my room, collecting dust. They do not mean much to me because I know that identical awards sit in other children’s rooms all over town and probably in millions of other homes across the country.
Rewarding kids with trophies, medals and certificates for absolutely everything they do, including participation in a sports event, seems harmless at first glance: what’s wrong with encouraging kids to take part, right?
My thoughts on this are simple:the real-world doesn’t reward mediocrity, and if school’s are designed to prepare kids for the real world, then they shouldn’t be rewarding mediocrity either.
Your boss doesn’t give you a pay-raise or certificate for turning up to a meeting: it’s a basic expectation. You don’t get instant recognition and brand awareness for starting an online business: you have to slog your guts out and make it happen.
The world is cruel, but it’s especially cruel to high-school graduates who’ve been babied right the way through their schooling and come out the other side believing that they’re entitled to everything: that they’ll receive recognition for doing the bare-minimum.
Some teachers may feel that rewarding everyone, but keeping ‘special rewards for winners’ is a good way to go. But what benefits can be extrapolated from removing first, second and third place prizes at a sporting event, or even removing winner’s trophies completely?
According toAlfie Kohn,author of Punished by Rewards:
A key takeaway here is that awards aren’t bad just because the losers are disappointed; everyone (including the winners) ultimately lose when schooling is turned into a scramble to defeat one’s peers
Really, Alfie? So awards are bad because losers and winners feel bitter? I think school culture has got a lot do with that. In school’s where students are encouraged to celebrate each other’s achievements, and aspire to do their best, overall achievement and attainment increases. A massive study by the University of East Tennessee, for example, found that classroom celebrations of achievement enhanced:
Group solidarity
Sense of belonging
Teacher’s ability to find joy and meaning in teaching
I don’t see much about bitterness there, Alfie.
Here’s another one I pulled-up: Ameta-analysis of 96 different studiesconducted by researchers at the University of Alberta found that (look at the last sentence especially):
…….reward does not decrease intrinsic motivation. When interaction effects are examined, findings show that verbal praise produces an increase in intrinsic motivation. The only negative effect appears when expected tangible rewards are given to individuals simply for doing a task.
This confirms what teachers have known for years (at least those with brains in their heads): that awards have no value when they are given to everyone, but have lots of value when they have to be earned. This coincides with the Four Rules of Praise that I wrote about in 2018 (supporting video below).
Conclusion
Teaching profession, some words of wisdom: Awards and rewards only work to improve motivation, attainment and achievement when the students have had to earn them. Foster a school culture of collective celebration when students achieve success (such as using awards assemblies), and articulate the skills and qualities needed to achieve success to those students who sit and watch the winners, hopefully with smiles on their face and pride in knowing that one of their own made it happen, and they can too.
We welcome you to join the Richard Rogers online community. Like ourFacebook page and follow us on Twitter for daily updates.
