Ideas, Practices & Personal Insights

Finding the right resource to support flipped classrooms in the UK

What if traditional methods of classroom teaching and ‘homework’ were switched? Teaching professionals have constantly looked at improving ways of raising learner engagement and attainment. While some have fared better than others, it is technology that has offered the greatest scope for innovation, helping the teacher to spend more time supporting students directly rather than instructing them from the front of the class. Flipped or reversed teaching is not a ...

What’s so great about having a visualiser in the classroom?

If you’re considering buying a visualiser, you’ve no doubt heard good things about how they enhance teaching. You may be aware of some of the things visualisers can do but would like to grow your knowledge. Visualisers do what they say. They let you and your class visualise anything and everything. Anything that needs demonstrating; anything that needs showing; anything that needs sharing. In a nutshell, they convert ...

If it bugs you, it is probably worth innovating

As educators, every so often we get stuck. It is easy to lose perspective when we meet an obstacle. The daily grind can put limitations on our ability to make the connections necessary to make a leap forward towards success. Instead of getting frustrated, bored or irritated, you can use the skills you already obtain to develop, with a little confidence, brilliant and practical innovations for everyday living. Ideas can ...

Going SOLO: An introduction to the taxonomy everyone’s talking about

This article originally appeared in Innovate My School's September 2012 digital magazine. The Structure of Observed Learning Outcome (SOLO) taxonomy aims to show pupils how to develop sophisticated responses to questions by getting them to examine their thought-process as their understanding of a topic improves. I began using SOLO in 2011, and it is now integral to my teaching. SOLO defines five stages of understanding for any topic: prestructural, unistructural, multistructural, relational ...

What is the key to a successful education system?

Education Secretary Michael Gove wants to change the primary and secondary school curriculums in England. He has said he wants pupils to be taught a "core knowledge" of facts and figures. He wants them to be able to recite their times tables, punctuate a sentence correctly and list capitals of the world. The education systems in Hong Kong, Finland, and South Korea are often lauded as among the best in ...

How to help students harness their hunger to achieve

The ability to set goals and understand the steps necessary to achieve them is a key skill for secondary school students looking to succeed in life and work. Whether it’s encouraging pupils to discover the desire to improve, to follow their dreams or to learn from their mistakes, having dreams and ambitions can turn young people’s lives around. It was a skill I learned from a young age ...

How 3D printing will revolutionise the classroom [Infographic]

As 3D printing becomes more accessible to the public, educators are learning how this technology can revolutionise the classroom. Image courtesy of OnlineDegrees.org.

Using Facebook to create a positive learning community

The whole reason for educators to fear Facebook was because "it's unsafe and can't be monitored." Which is partially true, but wasn't convincing enough for me. Now with 1:1 programs popping up all over, companies like Edmodo, Moodle, and Schoology are developing safe ways for teachers and students to communicate outside of class time. These free online tools are great, but they operate on a more closed basis than Facebook. However, ...

Transforming a school ICT suite to a future proof Discovery Centre

Here’s a picture of the original ICT suite, complete with rows of desktop computers and an obligatory interactive whiteboard at the front. The senior management team felt that the suite didn’t properly represent the school’s creative ethos, didn’t reflect our vision of learning, and wasn’t capable of delivering the future curriculum needs of our pupils. So we started gathering ideas from pupils about what ‘future ...

Closing the gap with peer marking

Came across a great example of how peer marking can be effortlessly, but effectively used to close the learning gap today – courtesy of our Head of Geography, David Brading (@davidbrading). It went like this: Step 1 – Peer marking based on clear success criteria Students were set a writing task – ‘Describe in detail how humans use fold mountains’. They were then given clear instructions on how to peer mark the work: Circle ...

To tech or not to tech: Is our education fit for purpose?

What are we educating our children for? "Just in the past couple years, we've seen digital tools display skills and abilities that … eat deeply into what we human beings do for a living.” (Andrew McAfee) "Are droids taking our jobs?" is a very powerful presentation by Andrew McAfee which looks at the great changes in civilisation. One change trumps them all: the technological advances that led to the industrial revolution. ...

Creating RSA-style videos for teaching Geography

This is a ‘how to’ post that was inspired by this post over at Noel Jenkins’ excellent Digital Geography. This in turn led me to another useful and creative blog by Paul Bogush and this post on creating RSA Style animation videos with the class. If you want to know how to do it properly, I recommend that you head over to Noel and Paul’s posts first. This post ...