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Just give me one good reason to use a tablet in the classroom

2016-02-19T14:12:30+00:00February 18th, 2016|Featured|

I'll start with a confession: I don't really get iPads. This came as something as a surprise to me as, by and large, I'm pathetically geeky about Apple products. I use my iPhone 6plus all the time and have just bought one of the new ultra-slim Macbooks. I fully expected to dig iPads, but my problem is that I just can't really a see a use for them that can't be handled more efficiently or effectively by either my phone or my laptop. Anyway, that's just me; I'm happy to live and let live and if you're an iPad aficionado then more power to you. [...]

January on The Learning Spy

2016-02-03T08:36:34+00:00February 2nd, 2016|Featured|

Here, for your delight and edification, are the blogs I wrote during January: 1st January - New Year’s resolutions for teachers and school leaders  Make this year better than last! 2nd January - Varieties of boredom  How and why some varieties of boredom might not be a bad thing but others are dreadful. 5th January - Can anyone teach? Well, that depends on what you think education is for An exploration of the idea that anyone can teach. 9th January - What every teacher needs to know about… Edtech In which I conclude that technology is great but 'edtech' is a bit crap. 11th January [...]

Some assumptions about scripted lessons

2016-01-31T22:24:10+00:00January 31st, 2016|Featured|

"So long as we use a certain language, all questions that we can ask will have to be formulated in it and will thereby confirm the theory of the universe which is implied in the vocabulary and structure of the language." Michael Polanyi In this post I wrote about the fact that one of the tenets of Direct Instruction (note the capitals!) is scripted lessons which aim for 'flawless communication'. Let me be clear at the outset: I am not advocating the use of scripted lessons, nor am I claiming DI is the best way to teach. What I am suggesting is that [...]

Ouroboros: a review

2016-01-29T09:40:28+00:00January 29th, 2016|Featured|

I've been following Greg Ashman's writing for some years and have always been struck by his clarity, precision, humour and single-minded sense of purpose. I haven't always agreed with everything he's written but I've been persuaded by an awful lot. Naturally, when I discovered he was writing a book I was keen to read it. The concept or conceit of Ouroboros is that education is constantly eating its own tail. New ideas are old ideas repackaged for a new market; lessons are not learned; the past is forgotten and the future is always new and exciting. As Greg says in his introduction, this [...]

What's the difference between character and personality?

2016-01-25T11:24:32+00:00January 25th, 2016|Featured|

The recent Sutton Trust report on character education, A Winning Personality, concludes that extroversion correlates strongly with career success. It recommends that schools focus their efforts on improving "less advantaged students" knowledge and awareness of professional careers, using "good feedback to improve pupils’ social skills," providing "suitable training in employability skills and interview techniques" and on ensuring that attempts to improve outcomes for less advantaged students are "broad-based – focusing on wider skills as well as academic attainment". Like others, I feel appalled at the idea of extroversion being preached as a gospel of success. To the extent that career success might correlate with [...]

What every teacher needs to know about… Edtech

2016-01-10T11:27:33+00:00January 9th, 2016|Featured|

Here's my most recent Teach Secondary column: Technology has been transforming education for as long as either have been in existence. Language, arguably the most crucial technological advancement in human history, moved education from mere mimicry and emulation into the realms of cultural transmission; as we became able to express abstractions so we could teach our offspring about the interior world of thought beyond the concrete reality we experienced directly. This process accelerated and intensified with the invention of writing, which Socrates railed against, believing it would eat away at the marrow of society and kill off young people’s ability to [...]

Reading for pleasure: A reader replies to Michael Rosen Part 1

2015-12-29T09:02:55+00:00December 28th, 2015|Featured, reading|

Back in July I wrote this post on how we might encourage children to read for pleasure to which children's author Michael Rosen left a long & detailed comment critiquing my ideas. The comment included this statement: When children are deemed to be ‘not reading’ i.e. being unable to pass the Phonics Screening Check, some teachers are being asked to do more of the same, rather than do anything different, nor to investigate whether there are multiple reasons for a) not passing the phonics screening check or b) finding out whether some children can read pretty well but fail the PSC anyway. [...]

My five favourite blogs of 2015

2015-12-26T13:43:12+00:00December 26th, 2015|Featured|

It's been some time since I put one of these lists together (The last time I seem to remember getting a fair bit of flak for indulging my gender bias.) and it seems high time to praise some of the best writing and ideas the edublogging community has produced over the past year. There have been plenty of excellent contenders but on balance, these have been my five favourite education blogs of 2015: Filling the pail  Greg Ashman, formerly known as Harry Webb, is an expat science teacher and school leader Down Under. He's produced a remarkable output this year. The combination of [...]

Why I like ‘tick n flick’

2015-12-16T14:40:28+00:00December 16th, 2015|Featured|

It is vain to do with more what can be done with less. William of Ockham Tick n flick - the practice of flicking through students' exercise books and ticking to indicate that they have been read (or at least seen) is widely used as a pejorative term for the laziest type of marking undertaken only by the most feckless, morally bankrupt of teachers - generally gets a bad press. Perhaps this is unsurprising; in the worst cases it suggests a hurried post-hoc skim through pages of work in order to give the unconvincing appearance that books are being marked. No one [...]

Outstanding is the enemy of good

2015-12-14T16:14:13+00:00December 13th, 2015|Featured|

Were it not sinful then, striving to mend, To mar the subject that before was well? Shakespeare In our efforts to be the best, are we eroding our ability to be good? Everyone tends to agree that high expectations are best and, of course, no one rises to a low expectation, but sometimes our expectations are unrealistically high. Sometimes we take the self-flagellating view that only the best is good enough. There are some who might argue that 'good enough' eliminates better and best and others still who counter that our understanding of 'good enough' is always subject to a raising of our collective [...]

When is it worth arguing about bad ideas?

2015-12-08T19:09:09+00:00December 7th, 2015|Featured|

Argue with idiots, and you become an idiot. Paul Graham Trying to identify and inoculate yourself against bad ideas is always worthwhile, but trying to set others strait is a thankless, task. And maybe a pointless one too. A good deal of what we believe to be right is based on emotional feedback. We are predisposed to fall for a comforting lie rather than wrestle with an inconvenient truth. And we tend to be comforted by what’s familiar rather than what makes logical sense. We go with what ‘feels right’ and allow our preferences to inform our beliefs. If we’re asked [...]

Is school a straightjacket? A response to David Aaronovitch

2015-10-23T11:59:05+01:00October 23rd, 2015|Featured|

The more constraints one imposes, the more one frees one's self. And the arbitrariness of the constraint serves only to obtain precision of execution.  Igor Stravinsky In yesterday's Times, David Aaronovitch wrote an opinion piece headlined, Pupils aren't just another brick in the wall. His argument was that schools "force" children into cohorts depending on their age and abilities and that this is a "straightjacket". Many aspects of schooling are, he claims, based on the flawed assumption that children develop at the same time and in the same way. Clearly, they don't. We are, of course, unique, just like snowflakes, but [...]

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