Emerging ideas about education for discussion and debate
By Dennis Sherwood
We all know that old cliché 'Necessity is the mother of invention', and events over the past nine months have validated its truth: that wretched virus has caused many new things to happen, from enhanced remote teaching at all educational levels to the ever-closer development of a vaccine.
Why has there been such an outburst of the discovery of new ideas, of creativity? ...continue reading "Thinking differently about creativity"
Effective professional development (PD) - professional learning if you prefer - is critical to maintaining and enhancing practice (and thus learning) in schools. However, the most common forms of PD for teachers tend not to be effective - in the sense of leading to positive changes in practice which lead to improvements in young people's learning. This begs the question - what does effective PD look like? ...continue reading "Characteristics of effective CPD"
This post attempts to summarise a Twitter thread about how to encourage student questions which went viral in August 2018. @MrsSasser ’s initial post explained how apparently small changes in the way she asked students if they had any questions had a massive impact on the number of questions that they asked. ...continue reading "Helping students to ask questions"
A version of this article was originally published on the OU News Website on the 25th July 2018
In my previous piece (5 reasons why mobile phones should not be banned in schools) I argued that teachers should actively encourage the use of mobile phones in schools. This is not a trivial task. ...continue reading "6 tips for teachers on using mobile phones in classrooms"
A version of this article was originally published on the Open University News website on the 25th July 2018.
There is a lot of hype around the problems caused by mobile phones in schools. ...continue reading "5 reasons why mobile phones should not be banned in schools"
This article was originally published in The Conversation on the 21st Feb 2014
As schools struggle with shortfalls in their digital technology budgets and as teachers see how much parents spend on laptops and tablets at home, many teachers are considering ...continue reading "Bring or buy: would you let your child take their tablet to school?"
Some call this vertical learning (not to be confused with virtual grouping/mixed age teaching)
Stand up learning has 6 key elements: ...continue reading "Stand up learning"
Mastery Transcript Consortium - a US organisation that is working to bring about pedagogical change (moving to mastery learning) by changing ...continue reading "Mastery Transcript Consortium"
[This is a second draft following thought provoking feedback from Will Richardson on the original version (thanks Will) - key changes include a revised version of the 'key relationships' diagram and subsequent explanatory text]
We know that having a shared educational vision is important because it enables us all to travel in the same direction. “Vision is a key part of ending up someplace on purpose” (Hill 2010 p.28). However, ...continue reading "Educational vision is not enough (D2)"
This is a critical question (both in the sense of being important and in the sense of implying criticism of our current school system).
Prince Ea asks this question in a YouTube video ...continue reading "What is school for?"
