Given how often most students access social media sites, it’s now becoming more common for schools to utilise them for education purposes. The Lady Eleanor Holles’ director of ICT Matt Britland waxes lyrical on how social media can help innovate your school.

The summer is not too far away, and many school will be thinking about next year. Perhaps 2014-15 is the time for your school to begin to use social media, if you’re not using it already. Maybe you're already using social media but would like to experiment with different services? Using social media in education can show young people how it can be used responsibly and productively. I have compiled a list of social networks to try and how they can be used.

Given how fast the UK’s teaching communities are growing in multiple directions, different ideals of education are constantly emerging. Are the lesson plans of old being pushed out for a new, more entertaining way of teaching? The Perfect Ofsted English lesson author David Didau discusses this.

First of all I need to come clean. Up until pretty recently I was a fully paid up member of the Cult of Outstanding™. Last January I considered myself to be a teacher at the height of my powers. In the spirit of self-congratulation I posted a blog entitled Anatomy of an Outstanding Lesson in which I detailed a lesson which I confidently supposed was the apotheosis of great teaching, and stood back to receive plaudits. And indeed they were forthcoming. I was roundly congratulated and felt myself extraordinarily clever.

And then Cristina Milos got in touch to tell me that there was no such thing as an outstanding lesson. I was, she patiently pointed out, deluding myself. When I sputtered my objections she directed me to a video of Robert Bjork explaining the need to dissociate learning from performance. Now no one enjoys being told they’re a fool, but I have to say that I’m profoundly grateful to Cristina for not pulling her punches; nothing else has had anywhere near the impact on my thinking about teaching and learning. When you start thinking in this way, it becomes increasingly obvious just how little we know and understand about what we do.

Photo credit: Louis Shackleton

Kaizen: The business philosophy implemented by the Japanese in order to improve productivity. They worked on the idea that, if everybody did their job properly, there was no need to stockpile anything. This meant they could lower overheads, reduce backlog and speed up efficiency and productivity.