Teaching, Learning
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Don’t Bore Us. Get to the Chorus.
Written as part of the purpos/ed take 2 campaign of 2012. Much of what goes on in classrooms is unbelievably dull. Which is strange, because no one ever really planned it that way. And it’s also strange in the sense that it doesn’t work. I mean, there’s no point in being boring – because pretty…
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Why Schools don’t need ICT
I have written an article in this month’s ATL magazine that seems to be causing something of a stir. You can read the full article here. The closing paragraphs read as follows: Our schools are now a desert swept with the winds of yesterday’s technology; meanwhile our students can be found drinking from an oasis…
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Teams, Technocrats and Technophobes
We all want to use technology to its best advantage. We live in the 21st Century. We’re technocrats. We practically invented the modern world. But there are people out there who are slowing us down. They’re called technophobes. We need to do something. 1. Make them Care Most technophobes have trouble relating to the inflated…
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Thoughts on Exam Questions
I was on the team that analysed UK GCSE Science questions from Summer 2008. It was a depressing experience – and our findings made for sorry stories in the media. In practice, the outcome should have surprised no-one; the Royal Society of Chemistry have been making warning noises for some time. One of my colleagues…
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Ouch: Virtual Learning Environments are Expensive and Ineffective
Wow. According to the BBC, Ofsted have produced a hard-hitting assessment on the costs (high) and benefits (err, very few apparently) of the VLEs that we are all supposed to be purchasing. Some of the quotes: The use of online materials to help students with their lessons has been “slow to take off”. In many…
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You get an ology, you’re a scientist
Lots of students are doing public exams at the moment. One of them (thanks James) sent me this: From Randall Munroe’s hugely entertaining xkcd – a site which not only offers “romance, sarcasm, maths and language”, but also makes very clever use of img tags if you mouseover his cartoons. All of which led me…
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Independent Schools Conference
I’m chairing a session tomorrow at the Independent Schools Annual Conference. We’re looking at the threats and opportunities presented by Social Networks within a schools’ context – so primarily YouTube, MySpace, Bebo and Facebook. It should be a good session: we have Dr Zoe Hilton and Emily Knee, both from the NSPCC – who are…
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Learn Mandarin
Historically the British have always mastered communication with johnny foreigner by simply using English – but speaking a little slower and a little louder. I’m not sure that will work with the new Chinese who now outnumber us by approximately 25 to one. In just five years, the number of non-Chinese people learning Mandarin Chinese…
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Sentient Developments: Must know terms for today’s intelligentsia
I fell upon this quote from Carl Sagan whilst browsing Sentient Developments: “The visions we offer our children shape the future. It matters what those visions are. Often they become self-fulfilling prophecies. Dreams are maps.” Which particularly struck me as I had only just finished listening to the latest podcast from the UK thinktank Demos.…