Innovate My School - Ideas, Practices & Personal Insights

Detention without notice - a good idea?

I was watching David Cameron doing a public Q+A session on TV a week or so ago. In response to a question from a teacher he began to explain where the Conservatives stand on education and, in particular, how they will ‘Restore Order and Discipline in the Classroom’.

Death of the School Text Book?

Tom Stoppard has recently spoken of his fear for the future of the printed page. In this age of digital media, does the old fashioned medium of dead trees have a future?

Project: Global Inform – Peace Education & Technology

Currently there is a gap between what students at the secondary and post-secondary levels are learning about human rights violations, and what is being done to stop them. Many humanities’ classes and curricula have genocide and human rights as a unit, but assess their students using traditional assessments.

The history of school technology: Part 2

The overhead projector revolutionised the teaching world. It could turn the most mind-numbing lesson into an even more mind-numbing lesson through the power of electricity. Teachers could swap acetates and stories of bulbs fusing at the most inappropriate times, with students stunned into silence by the power of technology. One hour lessons were turned into 20 minutes of learning because the teacher couldn’t get the projector to work or put ...

The history of school technology: Part 1

As I sit here in my office, the head of a large all boys comprehensive, it’s easy to look back at the days free from National Curriculum, massive testing, APP’s, league tables and Ofsted and think how stress free those days were and how free I was to prepare my lessons in any way I saw fit. Oh yes, walking into school knowing that my imaginative English lessons ...

Waving goodbye to email?

The content of the first email may have been forgettable, but when Ray Tomlinson first fizzed that message over the ARPANET between two side-by-side computers in a Cambridge laboratory, communication changed forever. That was in 1971. Since then email has remained, despite decades of technological innovations, the staple tool for communication between computers. By rights it should be a redundant relic, rusting beneath the surging tides of technological evolution. Instead, email ...