News for psychology teachers
The 28th annual ATP conference 2010 will be be held at Keele University – Friday 2nd July to Sunday 4th July. The theme is Teaching Psychology: changing lives, changing minds.
The conference is for teachers of psychology and will offer updating sessions on psychology, presentations and workshops on teaching and learning, and opportunities to share good practice.
See you there.
SouthWestConferences are offering an interesting INSET opportunity for teachers.
More details are here.
The ATP is running a CPD event for NQTs and those new to teaching Psychology. The aim of the day is to provide high quality, low cost CPD for Psychology teachers.
The day will consist of interactive workshops given by experienced teachers and examiners on a variety of topics relevant to NQTs. There will be plenty of opportunity to network with like minded professionals. The exact programme is still to be finalised, but will contain workshops on issues such as effective lesson planning, using interactive resources, questioning, Assessment for Learning, teaching research methods etc. A website forum has been set up for suggestions.
The event will be held at: -
The Polesworth School
Dordon Road
Dordon
Tamworth
Staffs
B78 1QT
The nearest train station is Tamworth and the school is 5 minutes away from junction 10 of the M42.
The very reasonable cost of £30 will include refreshments and a light lunch. The day will begin with registration and coffee at 9.30am and finish at 3pm. Please book your place early to avoid disappointment.
Please pay £30 delegate fee via PayPal. In order to qualify for this bargain price you must be a member of the ATP. Please join here if not already a member, before registering for NQT/New to teaching Psychology CPD Event. Any queries please contact d.gajic@sky.com
To gain an A* grade for psychology, students will have to firstly obtain a grade A overall at A level, and secondly obtain 180 out of 200 on the uniform mark scale (UMS) for the combined scores of the two A2 units.
The A* grade will not be awarded at AS level because, it is argued by OFQAUL, the more challenging material is introduced at A2 only.
OCR has announced that it is to run two ‘Lead the Way’ events which will focus on the two new A2 units G543 and G544.
There will be sessions with the Principal Examiners focusing on aspects of the new A2 specification but the theme for the afternoon is “Psychology in Action”. Experts from the fields of forensic, clinical, sport and educational psychology have been invited to speak with the aim that it will broaden teachers’ understanding of the applied section of the course.
There are two dates
London (22nd May)
Leeds (5th June).
The early booking rate is £205 and more details and booking forms can be found here.
This autumn Insight Conferences will be running their Exploring Crime Conference in the following Venues
Manchester Town Hall 5th November
Salford University 13th November
London Westminster Hall 24th November
Birmingham University 26th November
The cost is £20 per delegate
Teachers accompanying a school/college party attend free of charge.
Check out Insight Conferences for more details.
If you are going to the ATP conference at the University of Lincoln next month, you will probably want to check out the recently updated list of workshops. The keynote speakers have also been finalised and there is further information about timings, accommodation and travel available on the web site www.atpconference.org.uk
If you have not booked yet I have been told that there are still a few places available.
I am looking forward to it.
The OCR web site is running a psychology free prize draw.
The prize is a Bozo doll, similar to the original Bobo doll used in the Bandura, Ross and Ross (1961) core study.
All you have to do to win one of the 25 inflatable dolls is to fill in a form by clicking on Bozo the clown below.
Good luck.
AQA is having to re-set Psychology exam papers due to be sat on the 16th May.
Following a theft of a Parcel Force van containing exam papers AQA has re-set a number of its GCE and GCSE exam papers. The Parcel Force van was stolen in Bushey Heath, Hertfordshire, on 15 April.
The van was later found with some parcels still inside and some nearby. Some of the exam papers were recovered, but a number were missing.
AQA said that the loss of just one exam paper from a set could mean the exam was compromised so it took the decision to replace the papers nationally.
Among the exam papers were the AS psychology papers PYA1, PYA2 and PYA3.
Stolen AQA exam papers included GCE Business Studies, Biology Specification A, Computing, French, Modern Hebrew, History of Art, ICT, Law, Media Studies, Psychology Specification A, Sociology and Spanish.
Furthermore GCSE English Specification A and English Literature Specification A were stolen.
Here is the letter sent out to all centres from AQA
In their statement AQA noted that “incidents like this are extremely rare” although they fail to mention that a similar incident did occur fairly recently in April 2004 (see BBC 2004). Perhaps the days of sending exam papers via Parcel Force vans are numbered.
PsychClips is a great new web site for psychology teachers to share video and audio clips that are hosted on youtube-type sites.
There are already almost 100 video clips on PsychClips and with other psychology teachers help this should grow considerably. Some of the videos are the better-known ones such as the Milgram and Zimbardo clips but there are already some lesser-known ones that psychology teachers may not have seen before embedded on the site.
The site is free although you do have to register. Teachers who have already registered for PsychExchange can use their existing user name and password to access PsychClips.
Possibly the best feature of PsychClips is the book-marking facility. Teachers can add clips to their own profile so that they have instant access to these psychology clips when they log on. This is so useful for teachers who have access to networked interactive white-boards in their classroom – like me.
For a list of youtube-type video sharing sites check out yube.co.uk
