Wiki to Discuss Classroom Change

Clarence Fisher – Remote Access – has now set up a wiki to facilitate the discussion of classroom change.

You can join the discussion at http://classroomchange.pbwiki.com/ with the password "network".

Visual Links???

This site purports to produce a visual image of the links to a website. I am not technical enough to verify it.

Class Room Practice

Clarence Fisher blogging at Remote Access is thinking about the changes we need to make in the way we run our classrooms and what we do there to take full advantage of the new tools at our disposal. My comment to him was:-

I too am thinking about the changes which need to take place in the classroom. Here in Scotland, there is a lot of forward thinking about the new technologies and tools, but often it's using them to do the same old thing. For example, podcasting is thought of as a new way of teaching literacy. This is true and it does get results but it is so much more!

This was something of a cop out. What do I mean when I say more? If enough young people write enough heartfelt blogs and record enough heartfelt podcasts will they change the world? Maybe….. I am not certain. However, if we prescribe what should be written in school blogs, I know nothing will change.

Will Richardson in his keynote at the eLive in Edinburgh talked about imagination and making connections. Teachers perhaps need to fire up imaginations and then provide connections to knowledge, to experts, to other young people, to whatever takes your fancy. So how do we do we stimulate imagination? Can we or should we even try to focus it? And to do this, how do teachers behave and what do they actually do when facing a class?

At the moment, I find myself very short of answers…..

A Curriculum for Excellence

The Scottish initiative, A Curriculum for Excellence, is a pious set of documents which one could hardly argue with, so far at least. But does it really answer the shortcomings of our traditional methods of education? I hope somebody can point me to the evidence which I have missed and which says it does. There is talk of cross-curricular projects but no examples or guidance. Should it explicitly mention the use of ICT?

Ewan McIntosh and John Johnston to name but two are pushing ahead with innovations in learning and teaching which do fit the C for E, but will the managers of education follow or have they even heard about it. It would be nice to see some Directors of Education and representatives from SEED at events like the recent eLive. One would have more faith that, unlike the Home Office, they were fit for purpose.

The Nation State

I feel that there are now a number of changes happening globally which have not been seen on such a scale in previous centuries. There seems to be a bigger flow of people from country to country; there is greater conflict between belief systems and there is the globalisation in commerce and industry encouraged by the Internet. The nation state is under attack from these forces as well as, in Europe, from the political drive to a European Federation.

If a nation state is to withstand these pressures, it must promote its culture and identity very fiercely. However there is an argument for thinking not of nations but of territories which anybody can move to and make use of. You take your cultural identity with you, but then you must accept that neighbours may have very different attitudes and patterns of behaviour and that you should make no attempt to alter them. If you do not, then there will be conflict and social tension. For example many UK citizens are taking their culture with them to a permanent home in France or Spain. Asians and Africans are moving to Europe and establishing their own ways of life with little regard to local sensitivities.

There are indications that this is happening whether we like it or not. The Home Office has lost control of UK immigration, but so have other countries such as Italy and Spain. The UK has tacitly agreed to a big influx of people from the new EU countries. We no longer insist that the UK is a Christian country, but have accepted a multi-faith, multi-cultural society. This does not show any real determination to maintain this nation state.

elive 2006

It's been a long but very exciting and worthwhile day starting with Will Richardson's keynote on Web 2.0 and Imagination and ending in a blog session in the Jolly Judge in Edinburgh's Royal Mile.

Ewan McIntosh has more about Will's address on edublogs so i won't attempt a rewrite, but I must emphasis Will's use of the words connection and connector in talking about the role of teachers. I see the idea of making connections as a very powerful notion.

More about this tomorrow…..zzzzzzz

Cultural Education cont.

Following the earlier thread, education is very much a matter of the culture of the country. However, we can say that a German or a Spaniard or a Brit is educated and yet have substantially different sets of knowledge. The knowledge needed to be judged educated is not an absolute. I ask if the skills they have acquired through their education are not perhaps more important, long-lasting and useful in life than the facts that they learn and retain?

I feel that our present assessment systems tend to test the knowledge rather than the skills, particularly the skills need in the future. So another question arises. How do we alter the assessment regime to reduce the knowledge element and test the sort of skills we need.

The Scottish "A Curriculum for Excellence" does acknowledge perhaps a little vaguely the skills, but will the implementation deliver the required assessment procedures?

The vigorous ongoing debate and discussion about ICT in the curriculum has thrown up some fantastic ideas and technologies, but I still do not detect a real shift in teaching methods. Too often the new technology is just a modern replica of a previous delivery. Perhaps somebody will show me I wrong.

Cultural Education

Most of what we teach is related to our culture. English is an explicit cultural subject. History takes a cultural bias as does Geography (maps show the UK in the centre of the page), perhaps the sciences (the traditions of Newton etc.), Modern Languages (more often French or German than Chinese), Art and so on. Perhaps Numeracy is the only subject without cultural bias. Does Tony Blair really need to add another subject to the curriculum?

Masterclass Facilitator

i have just got back from a holiday in Northern Spain to find my tender to renew my job as a masterclass facilitator was not successful. I have been told that i did not score enough points on the tender marking system. I have only done the job for 3/4 years already.

Anyway, I will have to move on. Edublogs seems to be as lively a forum as masterclass so I will pay more attention to that.

Training

Why should Ministers of the Crown get jobs with absolutely no requirement for training, when even headteachers must now qualify before they are appointed?

Anyway I am off on holiday for a week or so.