Rant / Cranial Compost

Archive for the ‘Rant’ Category

You want to ban THIS?

Posted 26 May 2010 — by cheersphilip
Category Rant

You want to teach Design & Technology in your schools, but you don’t want your students to use these:

Do you have any idea what these things can DO?

This is not an advert for mobile phone companies – it is a call to arms against the anti-tech tyranny!

Do you, school leader or administrator, have any idea of the capability of these devices? Can you not see that all students, from all backgrounds, already have and regularly use one of these devices? Most of them have better ones than i do!! They can do more things, faster and easier, than most of the programmes supplied with my free teacher laptop! And the students ALREADY OWN THEM!!

Yet you want me to teach Design & Technology like it mattered, whilst pretending that nobody has one of these, that we’re all in some era where D&T is softwood mortice & tenon joints and ‘chalk and talk’ lessons. Ridiculous.

Rise up, D&T teachers of the world, (well, the UK then), and unite against evil tyranny of technology oppression!

Petition your headteacher and Local Authority to allow the use of mobile phones, in order to raise student engagement and cut unnecessary spending on duplicate resources. Throw off the yoke of alleged cyber-bullying and educate your students on the use of digital technology – send them the message (via text? <ouch>) that their culture is not subversive, but that it is the future!

You can do it if we all do it.

Cheers,

Philip

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Tags: 21st century, education, fun, future, good intentions, manifesto, petition, question, school, technology, thought, world gone mad

Crikey, it’s interview fever!

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Posted 26 May 2010 — by cheersphilip
Category Rant, diary

Okay, so I went to an interview on Monday – and I got the job!

Sweet – a part time design & technology teacher in a nice school in Norwich – exactly what i was looking for.

But then…

Then I heard back from the SSAT. They were looking for a National Network Coordinator on secondment, which on paper pretty much looked like my dream job – travel around the country talking to specialist D&T departments. Lovely.

Except now I already have a 0.5 appointment. I wouldn’t want to change that; they are extremely nice and I’m really looking forward to starting in September, it’s just that the SSAT job was the one that i originally wanted…

However, the SSAT have kept me waiting OVER TWO MONTHS after the application date to inform me of the shortlist. Okay, they were waiting for the election and some certainty about their funding. (goodbye BectaX – the right idea, just a little too late!).

So, what I am going to do is go to the interview (tomorrow – short notice!?) and see what happens. I think some negotiating is going to be called for.

But… if i get the secondment as well, what am I going to do about my RDTHSC training? I won’t have any time left to go and train teachers how to use their workshop machinery. Crikey.

Onwards and upwards. In other news, I’m still making oak boxes, fully mitred, for my wife’s degree show, selling our campervan, renovating my Vespa, moving house and progressing with the DVDs. Will this ever calm down? A part of me hopes not!

Cheers,

Philip

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Tags: 21st century, bectax, best laid plans, busy, crikey, diary, education, future, hypocrisy, interview, lifestyle

Time for a TeachMeet?

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Posted 19 Apr 2010 — by cheersphilip
Category Ideas, Rant, diary, thought

Okay, I want to meet teachers and students and anyone who can help me understand why education isn;t working (IMHO) and what we can do about it!

So I went to Becta-X and that was fun and techy and information overload but I didn;t feel that it really hit the mark for, just identified that there was a mark that was being missed.

It may have been there that I picked up the habit of writing really long sentences with no punctuation but I guess hey thats just speculation.

So anyway, there seem to be these things called Teachmeets, they are a type of ‘unconference‘ that you organise yourself and then people come along and you all talk and there’s no agenda and thats it.

This sounds perfect I just want to meet other people who think differently to everyone else and can kind of see there’s a problem and want to DO something and not just wait around for someone esle to do it and then complain that that wasnt what should have been done.

Fast Tube by Casper

Does anyone out there want to join me? I have no idea what I’m doing, othere than the speaking to other people thing which i believe i already mentioned – i’m going to need a date a venue and a sponsor to start and somewhere along the way there’ l be people invited nad then it’ll happen and who knows what.

We also need a title – i was thinking of something like ‘SATs: Secret Agent Teachers’ as one that would bring together people who see that there is a deficiency in our current system but who also see that change will not come from that top, we have to be agents of change ourselves – hence secret ‘agents’.

This is for people who are in the system and want to change it from within.

So, are you with me? It would be really cool if you could join in, like I said, so just let me know or stay keen and then maybe I can eventually get to the end of this incredibly poorly-structured blog post.

You will hear more about this!!

Cheers,

Philip

PS: I’m looking at Friday 11th June as the date. We’ll do it in the evening, its after school, its the week after half term so teachers may have a chance of still being fairly fresh and we’ll keep it small and tidy and fun. Normal syntax will resume in the next post

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Tags: bad spelling, Becta-X, best laid plans, creative, cynicism, doing something, education, fun, future, good intentions, manifesto, play, question, teachmeet, unconference, video

Education: What do we DO?

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Posted 13 Apr 2010 — by cheersphilip
Category Ideas, Rant, thought

Reading this book at the moment “What’s the Point of Schools?” by Guy Claxton.

Very interesting, so much so that I want to spend the whole day reading it, neglecting the renovation of my campervan that i was going to do.

My wife tells me that I always do this, it’s like OCD or something, but then I lose steam after exhausting my interest and go on to something else.

Something tells me I should listen to her. I think this is important enough for me to take it slowly and let the interest build, so I’ll just post my impressions so far.

What I’m feeling at the moment is that it is extremely annoying that education in this country is not better. There are so many quotes, anecdotes and solid statistics over the last century, that for us to be in basically the same position is a joke.

It is a joke that makes me very angry, to be honest.

What i want to know is, what are we actually going to DO?

The whole system feels like its in gridlock – schools, students, parents, governments – no one can do anything because they are all tied up together in a vicious-circle, self-fulfilling prophecy state of affairs.

So this is what I’m thinking of doing.

At Becta-x the other week, I was talking to Kate who basically challenged me to run an unconference about education.

Damn it, it looks like that’s what we’re going to have to do, because I just don’t see any action out there at the moment to suggest otherwise.

I have no idea how to do this, so if anyone feels like coming on board, please give me a shout. We’re going to need people to turn up, too, so get prepared to spread the word.

We’ll start off small in a central London location, of an evening, so that teachers can attend. This will happen by the end of the school year.

I want to know what other people, face to face, have to say about education – any part of education – and what we can actually do to improve it.

That is all for now. I’m off to read my book – no, work on my campervan!

Cheers,

Philip

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Tags: audience participation, best laid plans, change the world, creative, cynicism, education, fun, future, good intentions, manifesto, question, self-doubt, thought, unconference, wisdom

BectaX: What Happened?

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Posted 01 Apr 2010 — by cheersphilip
Category Rant, diary

Photo0321

Originally uploaded by Cheersphilip

So there we have it – an amazing event with some truly inspiring speakers.

But what actually happened?

I had no preconceptions about what was going to happen, and having talked to many people yesterday, many of them were in the same position.

We talked, discussed and tweeted about many different aspects of technology in education, but there was one thing that was noticeable by its absence.

There was a missed opportunity to talk ABOUT education, its purpose and current heading. The talk centred, in the main, around how to use technology.

As a teacher, I was so chuffed when the group I was with asked me what it is actually like to be a teacher. I was totally dumbfounded – no-one has ever seriously asked this question before.

The answer was, I am sure, as convoluted and contradictory as someone who enjoys what they do but doesn’t like the way it is done could possibly give.

There was no way I could give the technology and media people an accurate picture of how teachers think and feel, but hopefully I could get them thinking about it in a different way. Who knows. it was an amazing discussion.

Technology has its place in education, but its clear that technology cannot drive education – only people can do that.

As I heard so many times yesterday ‘the teachers just don’t use it’. There is little take-up of these new and startling technologies, because thats just not what most teachers are into.

No doubt I’ll come back to this time and again, but for now I just wanted to get my initial thoughts down.

Big cheer for the school kids who participated yesterday – can’;t have been easy hanging on to a webcam all day while Sony did their sales pitch!

Cheers,

Philip

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Tags: 21st century, becta, bectax, creative, diary, education, future, good intentions, question

Malaise

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Posted 29 Mar 2010 — by cheersphilip
Category Rant

Its true. There is something wrong with our education system.

But if course, anyone who has gone through that system recently knows this. Those who went through it longer ago may have just hazy memories of how something wasn’t quite right.

There are two types of student; those who get school and those who don’t. Both types recognise that school is not for everyone, that there are people being left behind and treated badly. Its really not fun when those people are you.

If you say ’school’ to most adults, it conjures up a negative image: the institution, the boredom. Positives too, if you probe: friends, inspiring teachers. Maybe even the odd person who found their passion at school.

Clearly this has to change. There are too many opportunities missed here, too many talents going undiscovered, un-nurtured. To many it seems that the resources for this are all there – the websites, the programmes, the courses, all in place. Yet not too many people, students and teachers, seem to be taking advantage of them. Why?

There is a malaise int he school system. Beaten too hard, pushed too far, are most teachers, students and parents (call them stakeholders, why not) just a bit strung out, not knowing what they should be doing?

Here is a list of ‘initiatives’ or programmes in education in the UK today. See if you can work out what they mean, and which are more important than the others.

14-19 Specialised Diplomas
14-19 Collaborative provision
Academies
Accreditation & Assessment
Adult & Community Learning
Apprenticeships
Behaviour Management
Budget Management
Building Schools for the Future (BSF)
Information, Advice & Guidance
Collaborative Learning
Community Leadership
Continuing Professional Development
Creativity across the curriculum
Developing school community programmes
Education/Business Links
e-Learning
Effective Use of Time & Resources
English as an Additional Language
Enhanced Learning
Enhanced Teaching
Every Child Matters (ECM)
Examination Skills
Extended Schools
Further Education Links
Future Schools
Gender Equality
Headteacher mentoring & coaching
Higher Education Links
ICT across the curriculum
Improving Attendance
Inclusion
Independent Learning
Initial Teacher Training
Innovation
International Dimension
Key Stage 1/Primary
Key Stage 2/Primary
Key Stage 3 Strategy
Kolb’s theory of effective knowledge transfer
Leadership Strategy
Lesson Planning
Lifelong Learning
Managing Change
Middle Manager training
Parents/Family Learning
Pastoral Care
Personalising Learning
Post-16 Education/Participation
Primary/Secondary Transition
Pupil Mobility
Pupil Tracking/Assessment
Recruitment
Residential Trips
Rural Dimension
School Design
Self-evaluation and school performance data analysis
Self-Review and Quality Assurance
Special Schools
Special Educational Needs
Student Voice/Leadership
Training & working with Adults other than Teachers (AOTTs)
Vocational Education
Interactive Whiteboards
Wireless Networks
Work-based training & vocational providers
Working with Advanced Skills Teachers (ASTs)
Workforce Remodelling
Work-related learning

Please bear in mind that this is not a complete list of things going on, yet teachers are expected to have at least nodding acquaintance with all of these terms. Why?

What is the difference, for instance, between work-based training and wok-related learning? Significant, for those involved in these two distinct areas, no doubt.

But can you see where this is going? Where is the bullet point that says have fun, enjoy your life, explore your potential – live the dream! Well, its there. Its in the Every Child Matters agenda. Fantastic. Now we have a bullet point to remind us to make sure kids have good lives.

What kind of crazy system do you need to be running when you need a bullet point to remind you to encourage children to live their lives?

Of course, you might argue that this is the whole point of education – that it is implicit. Very well, I counter, but how can you be sure that this is not getting lost in the mire of initiatives that bombard the practitioner? How can you know wether the teacher is more interested in their pupil tracking, than in preparing them for an unknown future? Which one will come up in their next performance review?

Education is stuck in a malaise. Maybe not all of it, and certainly not everyone in it, but its there. Things need to change.

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Tags: 21st century, cynicism, education, future, good intentions, manifesto, world gone mad

The world of education

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Posted 22 Mar 2010 — by cheersphilip
Category Rant

Loved this amazing video by Ken Robinson – almost brought a tear to my cynical eye!

Fast Tube by Casper

It really is time for a systemic change in the education system. I’m going to work out how to do it. Maybe not today, maybe not tomorrow, but soon, and for the rest of their lives.

Cheers,

Philip