I have been teaching for around 13 years now and this is my first blog post. I have been making great efforts to keep up with technology and all it’s exciting developments but, I must confess, I am finding it harder than I thought I would. Having recently acquired ‘Plickers‘, ‘Socrative‘ and ‘Memrise‘, I am ready to try new things out in the classroom.

Very recently, I used QR codes combined with Vocaroo to get students to hand in ‘speaking’ homework and, apart fom the obvious “my computer crashed” excuses, it worked very well and spurred me on to refine it and improve it in future. This is definitely a positive thing as I feel as though I am not just using technology for the sake of it, I am using it to enhance my practice.

This Monday, I will try using Plickers in the classroom for the first time and I am not hugely confident. The management of the individual cards plus the iPad plus the PC seems like a lot of things to manage but hopefully it will all come good and I will feel invigorated and enthused by this next step in using technology in the classroom. I will let you know how it goes…

Also, I have been very aware of stress levels at work lately and so am trying to focus on making staff feel valued and important. I already send out a positive message every Friday but am trying to develop this further following the example of someone else’s wellbeing bags (which include treats and motivators). Fingers crossed this has a positive impact!

I will let you know how the Plickers experience goes!