Posts Tagged ‘good intentions’

Addicted to Trash

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Posted 29 Aug 2010 — by cheersphilip
Category diary, thought

I have a confession to make – I am addicted to free online Flash games.

I can’t stop playing them, every moment I get. I love playing them, but when I finish playing them I feel somehow lessened and unfulfilled, as if I’d just been stuck in traffic for hours.

This has not gone unnoticed by my ever-loving wife, who has pointed out that this may be some sort of diversion strategy. In fact, she has wisely pointed out that I may find myself being more fulfilled by, perhaps, cleaning the house or, just maybe, cooking us our dinner, or even – who knows? – doing some shopping.

Now, a couple of days ago my wife and I were musing over the possibility that we don’t have anything that stimulates us mentally. Having just completed her degree, and not considering herself an intellectual, she was surprised to find herself enjoying her dissertation. We decided to do a little essay each over the next fortnight. We will choose a topic, research it and write up our findings. The results will be presented to each other one evening over a bottle of wine.

So, having found this quirk in my character that enables me to eschew my responsibilities and focus only a 17″ screen for hours on end, I’ve chosen to investigate the psycho-physiological effects of video gaming.

Results will be, undoubtedly be posted here in a fortnight.

Game on!

PS: God only knows what my life would be like if I’d ever ventured into serious MMRPG games such as Halo, World of Warcraft and others… you would literally never hear from me again!

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You want to ban THIS?

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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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Today’s Lesson

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Posted 13 May 2010 — by cheersphilip
Category diary

Well, this is a first.

Can you see what I'm doing wrong?

Looks like I’m using my blog to help me deliver a lesson in a ‘foreign’ school! This lesson will take place in Norwich, which I’ll have to get to by starting out at seven in the morning and travelling until eleven.

After that, I’ll be in interview mode. For a teacher this means doing a sample lesson, sort of like try before you buy. Its a funny old situation, as you have no idea about who the students are, where they’ve come from, what their day might have been like, or anything.

For the lesson I’ll be using eggtimer (thanks to @chrisleach78 for finding it).

The school gives you a topic in advance, and some basic information about the students i.e. how many there might be, and you have to come up with a lesson to fit the slot you’ve been given. In this case twenty minutes.

My worst fear is that another teacher, given the same broad topic (exam preparation), has chosen the exact same detail to focus on. Of course you don’t find out until afterwards, so i guess you can’t worry about it too much.

The reason I’m typing this up in the blog is simple. Going to a new school, with various different IT solutions is a tricky business. Will your powerpoint work? Will their computers recognise the file type? Its all a bit of a nightmare, so I thought ‘why not put it all on the internet?’ I know they have this, and have asked the head of department if they can see my blog, which they can, so all good.

The lesson is simple – the topic is exam preparation and the learning objective is to gain an understanding of what makes for an effective study environment.

  • Show the first picture (me in my untidy spare room) and ask for comments about what I’m doing wrong vis-a-vis study
  • then get students to write or draw in detail what their own study areas are like (with the timer),
  • share with a partner (timer again)
  • note down some comments for improvement that their partner suggests
  • round it up with some examples fromt he various people
  • finish off with the second picture, showing me putting into practise what it is that I’m preaching.

What have I changed?

Lovely.

Hope you enjoyed the lesson. Wish me luck!

Cheers,

Philip

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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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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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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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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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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

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I’m looking at Education

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Posted 19 Mar 2010 — by cheersphilip
Category Ideas, diary, thought

Good news, people:

I’ve decided I’m going to concentrate on one thing – education!

More specifically I’ll start with design & technology education reform, then move swiftly on to changing perceptions about what education for young people can be.

This is going to be a lot of fun, but first I’m to meet someone for coffee ;)

Actually, you might like them - studiomold is a UK designer couple who have some really intelligent use of form, coupled with a fresh take on materials use.

Damn, now I’m running late!

Cheers,

Philip

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Country Lane Defence!

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Posted 19 Feb 2010 — by cheersphilip
Category Ideas, Uncategorized

Don’t know why, but yesterday I couldn’t help coming up with a solution to the common problem of defending a country lane from potential attackers, including tanks.

Rather cunning, i thought. And economical, too.

Let’s just hope that society doesn’t crumble and that we’ll never have to use these booby traps. Hmm, might just make sure that crow scarer is handy, though.

Cheers,

Philip

Click on the image to see it bigger

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