A day with Tim Rylands

Today our whole school had a professional development day, tagged onto the end of the TET break. The day was facilitated by an English chap, Tim Rylands, and his colleague Sarah. Tim is known for his work getting reluctant students, and students who have been excluded from one school and also their current school, to write. He uses online games as his stimuli for language, for talking, for words, for similes and eventually for speaking, writing and reading Yeah yeah I know its all language, however it was interesting to see the starting point, and eventually the children independently moving to writing. He began today using Myst III, in an interesting way. (My sons played Myst 1 way back about 15 years ago. Wow a blast from the past)
He partially showed the front picture which looked to me like the rock formations around Alice Springs. There was a bird circling in the air, so he asked lots of questions about why, and what do you think, and funnily enough what can you smell. People seemed to engage over the smell question. We never actually got into playing Myst as a problem solving, thinking strategically online game, although he does ease the students in gradually Questioning is always an interesting issue because teachers ask a zillion questions and never give students time to think. Research I have showed teachers asked questions at the rate of one every 3 seconds. Tim had an interesting strategy He always had a cup of water in his hand. He’d told us he was thirsty because of the heat. However I noticed he asked a question and then took a drink, or pretended to drink. This gave creditability to the waiting time, also made that time non threatening and in a way signalled a relaxed, lets talk over s cup of coffee atmosphere.
The second half of the day was focused on tools online or otherwise Tim uses with students. Some I have used eg Wordle, Twitter, Comic life etc but his arsenal was huge.
For me this was the PD I have hung out for, over a along time. I too, want some new tools, and watching him use even the old ones I had creative ideas. Tim’s website is ICT to Inspire, and today I was inspired. When I worked for UC Ed Plus I started a blog about the ICT tools I used for good teaching and learning. Today I am Inspired enough to want to continue adding more tools and writing more about the strategies Tim used to inspire children to speak, write and read. Professionally I feel I’m moving forward again.