I know that Obama doesn’t have the undivided loyalty of Americans, but over here in the “rest of the world” we love him.  And once again he pleased me with his State of the Union address.  For those of you that didn’t hear it, he said we should stop bashing teachers and give them the resources to do their jobs properly and the freedom to teach creatively and not teach to test. HOORAY!!

At last, a politician talking sense. I am sick to death of politicians trying to equate schools with business and allocate resources on that sort of equation – X in = Y out , and we will keep checking you and whipping you until we get the Y we want out.  When will they learn that it doesn't work like that?  What our schools contain is the future of our planet.  The future scientists, doctors, entrepreneurs, teachers, explorers, hairdressers, mothers, fathers and yes, heaven help us, politicians.  What price can you put on our future?

I can tell you one thing – those that don’t invest in their education never move.  Several of our international dealers have been negotiating with a range of different Governments of developing nations.  They invariably have a sub-standard education system and recognise that they need to invest in it if they hope to move their nation forward in terms of mortality rate, GDP, literacy etc etc. However as each deadline for signing the contract passes you realise that unless someone in power is prepared to act authoritatively their country will forever wallow in the third world.

So yes, we must invest in our education system.  And if politicians really want to see it in business terms then they should consider schools as the R&D Department of UK plc.  Successful companies recognise that they have to allocate money to their research and development in order to stay ahead of their competitors, produce the next innovative product and assure their continued growth.  But I would like to rename the department for UK plc to N&D – Nurture and Develop.

Now, as we say over here President Obama, “fine words don’t butter no parsnips”.  So yes we loved the words, now let’s see the action, because as we know where America leads, the rest of the world follows.  So let’s give those N&D Departments the resources they need and the freedom to use them.

So we are about to enter the Year of the Dragon. This is meant to be a very lucky year. But I have to say it hasn't done us any favours as yet. China has closed down. We failed to persuade the Chinese Government to delay Chinese New Year until Roamer-Too had been completed. So PJ our Production Manager has returned empty handed; all very frustrating. But just the latest of frustrating things that have dominated the gestation of this little creature.

On the positive side, Roamer-Toos will be zipping out to see you all next month. And not a moment too soon. It became very clear talking to you all at Bett last week that you cannot wait to get them into your classrooms.

What I did find rather disturbing last week though, was the number of old friends who came to see us , who are now grey and wrinkled. In fact one Adviser was telling me about her new grandchild and I had first known her as her maiden name!

It made me think that maybe I had been around too long, but then I thought about the prospect of our little Roamer-Toos going out and helping educate the next generation of children and I got all excited again and thought that maybe I'll stick around a while longer.

I have just bought Dave a book for his birthday, "The invisible gorilla" exploring ways our intuition fools us. It is written by the guys who created the famous Gorilla in their midst experiment which showed how people watching basketball players can completely miss a gorilla coming and standing in the middle of them. I have sneakily started to read it and it is full of anecdotes (which always makes it more readable for me) giving examples of how we have not seen what we thought we saw.

It's fascinating stuff and I know it's true. E was a dancer at the Wimbledon Theatre pantomime - Cinderella; as the curtain came down at the end of the first half I suddenly noticed a crystal coach pulled by two beautiful ponies in the centre of the stage. "How the hell did they get there?" I asked Dave. I had been so intent on watching E dance that I had completely missed it, even though it must have passed across my centre of vision several times.

Once I have given Dave the book I will be able to read it a bit more openly. I do find this pschyschology of perception absolutely fascinating. I'm not sure what relevance it has to teaching but it certainly makes you less sure that you are definite about something!

I'll let you know if I come to any conclusions once I've finished reading it. In the meantime enjoy your holiday reading and I hope the weather stays gorgeous for you.

I hear that the new man in charge of the DFS (Goodbye Department for cushions and soft furnishings) is something of a "traditionalist". This has been explained to me as someone who expects children to wear ties and stand up when a member of staff enters the room. This will apparently improve standards.

I scoff but actually I am all for politeness (how can anyone be against politeness?) and yes it doesn't do anyone any harm to automatically open the door for someone else - not in a male opening for a female sort of way but as one human for another. In fact the first school I taught at was a tough school in the North West and our Head expected the students to stand when a teacher entered the room. I won't go into the fun I had one afternoon finding excuses to keep popping in to a friend's classroom when they had a new group of Year 7s! But the politeness ethos really did mitigate the general harshness of the atmosphere. Particularly on school trips - I remember one trip to the ice rink where one member of staff was dealing with the police over various thefts committed by school students whilst another was in the cafeteria being told what polite students they were by the lady behind the counter.

One of the Heads particular foibles was that she insisted that all female members of staff were addressed as "Madam". This did confuse new members of staff who wondered exactly what sort of institution they had arrived at. But actually over time it became second nature to the students. So even as they were telling you to F Off they always added Madam, so it ended up sounding more like a polite request!

First of all let me assure you that this is no April Fools joke, but yesterday E became a guinea pig. As I may have mentioned before we are developing storytelling with robots as an educational activity, and our professional storyteller has designed a workshop for the Constructionist Conference in Paris this summer. (As a world renowned robotics expert Dave had been asked to organise the robotics part of the program.)

Anyway, our storyteller wanted to test out her activity on someone first, before then trialling it with a class in the school prior to the big event when it will be all the world's leading educationalists who will be doing it. And of course E was the obvious choice. She really enjoyed the workshop and wrote a couple of imaginative stories. In fact proud Mum that I am you will find them reproduced below.

"Legend says that each human had a robot buddy, with special powers! These powers connected the human to the robot. This ability could be invisibility to shape-shifting. The robots name was Roamer! A story of Roamer helping his human friend was when an evil man called Dr.Squidworth kidnapped a poor child, but fortunately Roamer was not afraid of evil and went on a mission to save his beloved human twin. ROAMER TO THE RESCUE! Roamer busted brick walls, flew on vines, swam a crocodile infested lake, clambered up to the top of Mount Everest and back down again in no time until finally he saw his friend pressed up against the window of a broken down shack. Oh what a sight it was, it brought a tear to Roamers eye, since he realised the shack was on the other side of a hot lava river. Luckily this was no match for Roamer who just wiped his tear away and jumped, JERONEMOOOOOOOO! He made it (only by a few centimetres though, but still he made it) now all he had to do was silently pass the guards, crack the code for the lock, fight the kidnapper, untie the double mega knot around his human and then get out and back to safety with his best friend on his back. He did all that with ease and just in time for tea! Guess what Roamer's special power was, bravery.

 Now it's time for the most well-known legend, it is called Brian and the Fish! A generation ago there was a young boy named Brian who had a robot friend, also called Roamer. When Brian first discovered Roamer he played with him every day, but as time went on he began to ignore roamer and started to hang out with his friend Eddie instead. Although every so often Brian would buy Roamer a gift to make up for ignoring him for a while, but as more and more things started to happen around Brian (to do with his environment) he slowly forgot about Roamer. Roamer felt lonely which meant he started to lose his powers of happiness and invisibility, and sadly Roamer could only use his special powers when he was happy! Brian had so many other priorities from his mother being pregnant to Eddie being off school for at least 3 weeks. It turned out that the factory that Brian's father worked had dumped mercury into the bay and that is why Eddie was sick, because of food poisoning (since the fish which they ate was contaminated from the mercury). Since Brian had so many problems to sort out he completely forgot about Roamer, so that is why their connection has become weaker and weaker as the years passed them by.

 THE END! "

Have a great Easter.

As I have noted here before, we are working with storytellers to look at the sort of role Roamer-Too could play in telling stories. So we have gone to storytelling workshops to see the sort of strategies and activities that professional storytellers use. And I discovered that I have a very visual memory. My storyteller was describing a little girl to us. She then asked what shoes she was wearing. I answered straight away and the guy next to me asked how I could know such a thing. Without thinking I responded, "I looked". And it was true - I had such a strong image in my mind that I just glanced down to the little girl's feet to see what she was wearing.

I also have a very good memory. This is not just idle boastfulness. I knew that I had an OK memory but didn't suppose that it was anything out of the ordinary, but then a friend was doing a psychology masters and had to develop her own research on memory. She devised a test and used me as a guinea pig. Once completed she admitted to me that she almost gave up after my test because I had scored 100%. It was only by using another couple of test cases that she realised that it was me that was abnormal and not her test that was wrong.

Putting these two facts together I have realised that I have always used visualisation and connections when remembering. Things that are now known to be great memory strategies. Having recognised this I think that Roamer-Too could be used to help children remember as well as understand. It's a rather exciting realisation.

Walking round Bett last week I was reminded of an occasion many years ago that I had found particularly frustrating.  Nikki and I were making finger puppets with our same age classes.  I was so proud of mine.  The boys had produced dinosaurs, pirates, lots of Liverpool footballers and a couple of traitorous Everton ones.  There was even a Man U finger puppet produced by a boy who had recently arrived from London and didn’t know better yet.  The girls had produced all manner of characters and creatures.  Every child had worked really hard on their creation

We had an open evening and each class had to produce a display and I proudly displayed my children’s finger puppets and their design portfolios (unheard of then!).  Unfortunately Nikki also decided to display her finger puppets – they were beautiful.  I asked her how her children had produced such fantastic work and she showed me the commercial pattern she had used and explained how she had made card templates for them to draw round and had glued the felt edges together for them to sew over.  My kids on the other hand had drawn their own designs, traced round their fingers and made measurements to create their own paper patterns and used a variety of materials to produce their very individual and distinctive finger puppets.  It had been a learning experience of greater depth and more skills and far more satisfaction.  But try explaining that to the parents who looked witheringly at my children’s’ puppets next to Nikki’s.  I either had to go into the educational why’s and wherefores which they weren’t interested in or sound whiney and pathetic “but mine was a much more educational learning experience!”

Why was I reminded of this last week?  Because for the first time, since we weren’t actually exhibiting, I had the time to really look at what was on offer.  And yes, there was much that was innovative, exciting  and educational.  But there was also the glossy and beautiful or funky and fun that promised much but was actually incredibly shallow. Once you got over the production quality you realised that whatever the activity was it promoted very little learning.  It provided a short route to an end result that didn’t engage the children’s brains but allowed them to seem like they were learning. Aaaaaaaah! Here were Nikki’s finger puppets all over again.

Happy New Year. I’m feeling rather smug.  We decided not to go to Bett this year. So no spoiling Christmas with Bett preparations or frantic rushing around at the beginning of the year.  I’m sitting here feeling quite relaxed – for the first time in 20 years.  And to top it all the weather forecast is dire.  Another six days of snow and then continuing freezing temperatures.  So only the most dedicated (or foolhardy) will actually go to Bett this year

So, yes I am feeling smug.  If only I was also feeling snug!

.

Swine flu. Been there seen it done it bought the T shirt. What a nasty little critter it is.  So hot your eyeballs burn, so achy that even your teeth ache, then there’s the congested chest, the sore throat and the throbbing head.  And just as you start to think that maybe making it to the sofa in the living room is not an unattainable goal, the next wave of lousiness hits.  On the other hand you really appreciate fresh pyjamas, the ingenuity of the straw (mind you one feverish 4am as I was trying to get the last half inch of juice I tipped instead of sipped,) and you find the real meaning of marriage.  Forget the hearts and flowers twaddle.  When you are at your unloveliest, communicating with a grunt, and your partner is still caring for your every need then you know you’ve got a good ‘un.  Thanks Dave

So now I’m back, fighting fit, and tomorrow is my birthday.  Life is good.

Two of E’s Year 12s took an assembly on Internet Safety.  They had created a fictitious facebook profile and linked her to the school network.  She then made friends with lots of others on the network.  The sixth-formers then showed everyone who had become her friend even though they didn’t know her.  E was on the list

Now I have drummed into E the possible dangers.  Every time someone runs off with a person they met on the internet I highlight it with E.  We talk about how you can pretend to be anything you want to be on the internet.  And I regularly check her facebook.  Even so she was caught out.  It was a salutary lesson and a brilliant one.  Wish I’d thought of it.

I have taught in many schools and visited many many more.  But yesterday was a first.  I was visiting St Augustine’s in Trowbridge to show Roamer-Too to a cluster of teachers. And we had a great time playing for the afternoon, chatting, developing ideas etc.  And then I went to the loo.  And here was the first.  There was a small lined basket with a selection of toiletries – deodorant sprays and lotions and potions.  I was mesmerised. And apparently the Gents loo had similar

I thought about it later and realised that they were probably not used very often.  They would be a thrill to start with but then just “there”.  So they wouldn’t need replacing very often.  So for a really limited amount of money (probably less than £20 a year), you get an enormous effect.  You are saying – this is a really civilised place to work and we care about you.  Remember it next time you are recruiting.  Oh, and if you want me to come and check out your loo I’ll be more than happy to come and do a Roamer-Too workshop for your cluster.