second draft (final - hopefully)

myself and Billy gave up another lunch time to try and sort the video out, although we where more interested with the new apple range.

Here's the link

Hope you enjoy!

Billy and Tom

PS: The video may not beable to be viewed till 1500

Twitter

Just received a positive tweet about our new website from the Ideas Foundation. Thought I'd share it with you. Plus, our presence on Twitter has raised at least one pair of eyebrows.



-- Post From My iPhone

Raihan' recruiting film

Raihan has made this film to encourage interest and participation in the upcoming Tangled Feet residency. I like his use of Live Type to animate the text and create interest in the project. It's another really effective element in the publicity campaign that you are putting together. I think you are doing a such a creative and effective job on this (which is no surprise given all your talents).

You can see his promo film playing on the screen by reception - I'm looking forward to peering over the balcony to see how people respond.

Soren

Sharing The Creative Manifesto

Mr Thomas came to speak to me yesterday with a really exciting opportunity for the group. He was clearly very impressed with the group when they presented The Creative Manifesto, and has given us the opportunity to share our ideas with all staff at a whole school meeting on Tuesday 16th June. Schools always have packed agendas, so it is really good news for us, and the school, that they have given us an opportunity to share our thoughts on, and plans for, the development of creativity at Tallis.

Mr Nicholls and I thought we could ask staff to consider the manifesto and complete the three year planning task, much in the way that the Leadership Team did a few weeks ago. We thought that we might ask staff to work in Year Team groups to make sure that there was a good spread of subjects in each group. Would the ARG members be willing to work with a group each, just like we did last time?

One thought that occurred to me was that last time it was easy to feedback because there were only twenty or so people in the room, so how could we allow for some feedback either at the meeting, or on the day? Could we set up a Tallis Talk topic and provide groups with a laptop to leave a comment and try and share some of the feedback on a screen at the end. I thought I could collate the three year plans and put it on the Blog or Creative Tallis site.

Mr Nicholls has The Creative Manifesto and the Three Year Plan ready to go. I was wondering whether Tom might be willing to introduce the manifesto again? I will look into ways of managing and sharing the feedback effectively. I don't know the precise timings yet, but I will try and get us on near the start to save you having to hang around, could people get back to me to say if you are available? It will be a great opportunity to demonstrate how a group of students and staff can collaborate to develop the learning experience of the whole school community.

Hope you can all make it,

Soren

Musician’s Dice Are d12 Kinds of Awesome!

Musician’s Dice Are d12 Kinds of Awesome!

Posted using ShareThis

Internet Mapping Project

The internet is now so vast that it's often difficult to see your place in the great scheme of things. Check out this site which encourages everyone to draw a folk map of the internet, indicating where they perceive their home to be. Some amazing drawings!

P.S. We now have a brand new Share This button at the bottom of each post so that you can share content with your own social network.

The Video!

Here is a draft of the video me and Billy have been making today... what do you think? Are we hedding in the right direction? Is the sound ok? Anything that we should change? I had a but of trouble thinking what to put at the end at the moment it seems to just finish... any ideas? (did that make sence?)

The video might not be avalible straight away (it was still processing at 1423)

Thanks

Tom

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sIQFnxzP2Qw

Online magazine maker

http://en.calameo.com/

This website it really cool, quick and easy to use. Don't kow if it will come in handy for any of you but look at it anyway it may be useful someday! You can browse hundreds of other peoples work, create a free account and it will even let u upload your videos for flickr and youtube.

Huge Apologies!!

Hi guys,

I apologize, as i have not been able to complete the task of creating the video for the television downstairs.. This is mainly due to it being in need of improvements to make the Ad more appealing towards the audience. I probably feel i need to be more professional with not only the video but with the team...

I'll try to improve it on Friday which will hopefully be ready the week beginning, if anyone has any great ideas feel free to give me your advice!

Sorry again,
Raihan

New look for our mobile blog

It's taken me a while to work out that there are quite a few new looks available for our Tumblr mobile blog. In the end I went for this fetching wooden desk and polaroid frames option. If you haven't had a go at Tumbling yet, here's a reminder of the email address:

cikrist290@tumblr.com

Using this address you can post quotes, pictures or regular blog entries direct from your mobile phone. There's even an option to post audio but, unless you have the iPhone app, you may need to go to the website for this.

The Island

When I first joined the school, nearly 20 years ago, and began teaching in the English Faculty, there were a number of resources created by The English Centre which were designed to encourage students to produce a variety of texts for particular purposes and audiences. The trend then was to teach writing in the context of extended projects, often with a multi-disciplinary element thrown in. Then, of course, came the National Curriculum.

One of the resources that proved popular with teachers (and some students) was "The Island". This small booklet (accompanied by another with a similar theme called "School Under Siege") provided a range of writing tasks linked to a dramatic scenario. In the case of "The Island", the class was meant to imagine that they had been marooned on an island, cut off from civilisation and were responsible for their survival. 20 years later and "The Island" is making a strong recovery at Thomas Tallis School as a stimulus for thematic study at KS3. This may have something to do with the disappearance of KS3 tests but it may also be because all good resources are eventually taken up by a new generation of teachers.

However, this being the 21st century, there are things we can attempt today that were impossible back in the early 1990s. One of my colleagues asked me this afternoon if I could help him set up a blog for his English class so that they could use it to post their experiences of being desert islanders. This was really easy to do and here is the link. Whilst I was at it, it seemed like a good idea to create a website where more resources could be located. We are hoping that this site will become a resource that other teachers may want to refer to when they get stuck into "The Island".


We are also hoping that students will blog in and outside school and get their parents involved. The opportunities for peer and teacher assessment online are really exciting and it will be cool to see thye story of their island adventure taking shape online and shared instantly. I think we should keep a close eye on this experiment and lend it our support by getting involved in commenting on the posts.

Yesterday's meeting

So an update of what we said:

• The interviews will be on the 16th of June - the drama studio is already booked from pd.6 onwards
• We are definitely doing the maze idea starting from the dhi room to the drama studio
• Tom and Billy are making a video about Tangled Feet to go in the drama studio (and they are meeting Thursday to do this with each other)
• Raihan is making the video to be played on the screen outside the office by the end of this week
• Matthew and Seb have made some posters and will start putting them up this week (and in tutor bags)
• If assemblies are still running then a quick mention in those too)

I think that's all.

So a week and a half until the interview to get word spread.