Just a quick one. Managed to update Year 7 tornadoes work, IB Global Interactions - Outsourcing and IB Hazards - Introduction. Using this site in partnership with Rich Allaway's GATW site to teach my IB Higher Level students.  Also managed to produce some resources for GCSE Population & Settlement unit. Updating this as I go along so it should take until May 2012. Again, using GATW for certain tasks - no point reinventing the wheel and the stuff on there is great and perfect for the OCR B Geog course. More soon although a busy week coming up with IB commission as well as Y11 then Y13 parents evening.

Accidentally set up the wrong sort of Facebook accounts for the IB and GCSE students. I have now ammended that after advice from my Y13 students and now have loads of different Facebook groups for the Y10, 11, 12 and 13 classes associated with my work and gmail accounts. Seems to work well and feedback and discussion has already taken place.

Just finished adding information to unit 2 of Sport, Leisure and Tourism for IB - using up to date figures from World Tourism Organization.

Loads of new ideas from @TomBarrett on the #intinset day yesterday. Lots of great information about Twitter and ICT within the classroom. Like the QR codes and also the new Google Apps on the school Moodle page. I have inserted one or two QR codes on the website and a couple on the classroom door as a bit of a test to see how much the students pay attention (if you are a student reading this ..... have you worked out what it means yet) and recognise these codes. Still trying to fathom how I can effectively use these in the classroom in a meaningful way. I think that they will be more for amusement sake to begin with but some nice ideas have been shared on Twitter and I may have a look at instigating something soon.

Other than that, today has been spent showing new parents around the school and catching up with students and parents. Pleasing to hear that the old Y13's have already left for shores afar ... even Florida, USA. Good luck to all of those students in the coming months.

In terms of website, I have been updating the start to the Leisure, Tourism and Sport module for the IB Geography course and managed to get hold of an excellent IB Geography guide for students from the Chinese
International School in Hong Kong. I have edited this to suit our situation but a great resource nonetheless and it has saved me a good few hours work. It can be found on the front page on the IB Geography menu.

First day with the students back tomorrow so lots of admin to do, folders to give out, Twitter to be signed up to & Diigo for Y12 students. I have decided to give the Y12 students 15 minutes focussed Twitter time for their Geography centred accounts and will point them in the right direction of good feeds that will be useful for their Geography Diploma. I will give all Y7-9 students their level recording sheets and explain the internal and external rewards system. Externall, we use www.mystickers.co.uk and the students will be creating their accounts with them tomorrow. I just hope we don't have as many faulty codes as last year!

It has been above 30°C all day here and the classroom now resembles a sauna. Going home to jump in the paddling pool to cool down.

Ciao

OK, I should really be documenting my progress here with the website to act as a bit of a diary. Late session last night completing work on Year 7 - What is Geography and the start of the France, Europe and Le Monde Site.

Next up will be getting the Year 9 pages of Blue Gold up to speed, adding learning objectives and instructions throughout the Y9 unit of work. If I have time this evening, I would also like to get the first module of IB Sports, Leisure and Tourism online.

First however is a key note speech today by @TomBarrett as part of the IST training day. Should be great. You can follow the progress at #istinset.