This is a list of 30 recommended education-oriented Twitter feeds. Note: this is by no means a ‘best-of’, and is in no particular order. The list is comprised of suggestions from the public and our own choices.
I really enjoy election season - the excitement, the stories, the debates and the whole theatre of politics. Then there are the election specials and the blow-by-blow analysis of which seats are going to which parties as the votes come in. The discussions with friends and colleagues as we dissect the results and speculate the impact it will have on us. Then the quality of comedy increases as we have ...
The pressure is on: official figures suggest 880,000 extra places could be needed in schools by 2023, placing a huge strain on classrooms and resources when budgets are tight and there’s simply no space to expand. While birth rates have soared (rising by 23 percent between 2001 and 2012), the number of schools has actually fallen, from 25,500 in 2003 to just over 24,000 in 2014.
With the weather growing warmer and summer most definitely imminent, students everywhere are starting to gaze out of windows and wish they were somewhere other than a hot, stuffy classroom. And when you think about it, they might have a good point. Taking learning outside the classroom can carry some very significant benefits...
There is a lot of media attention on the mental health of young people. Barely a week goes past without a new article about the mental health crisis. The issue of child and adolescent mental health is of major concern for three reasons. Firstly, although we know that about 10% of young people have a mental health disorder, it is by no means obvious which young people are in that 10%, much ...
“If at first you don’t succeed, try, try, try again.” Schoolchildren’s successes can be brought about with informative, systematic values education that progressively develops and nurtures the whole person. Key to achievement is a mindset intent on mastery through proactively capitalising on learning opportunities that crop up in all contexts.
What separates the successful mobile learning projects from the unsuccessful? This is a ‘million dollar’ question, and I’ve thought long and hard about it. From the 17 large 1:1 projects I’ve worked on, only three have been truly successful in producing transformational learning. In your own experience, how many schools do you know who have transformed learning vs how many you know rely on iPads as ...
What is excellence and how do we achieve it? How can we take the secretarial out of excellence? You may have heard of Ron Berger and Austin’s Butterflies, showing the stages a boy goes through to create an excellent drawing of a butterfly. It’s an uplifting clip, reminding us how we need to teach our students the drafting process in the pursuit of excellence.
Whether or not you subscribe to the digital native ideology or believe it’s a fallacy, on the whole our students today are more au fait with social media than ever before. Schools have become adept at limiting student access to social media and at managing their own accounts, but it’s often seen as an additional PR tool rather than a legitimate learning activity. Whilst I don&...
There are many different ways for schools to get involved with fundraising, whether it be for charity or to raise money for a school requirement, such as a new classroom or equipment. In order to promote positive behaviour, primary schools can encourage pupils to fundraise as a worthwhile group activity that can help others or benefit their own learning.
I often remind people that recovery from loss can be compared to recovery from say a stroke - where it really is a case of one step at a time. Schools can play a vital role in helping a student’s recovery and bereavement journey in encouraging them to take those first difficult steps.
Whenever I am with my girlfriend and we are both hungry there is always a discussion as to what to eat. She will say she does not know what she wants to eat. I will say “whatever you want is fine”, as a generically good boyfriend should. Then we each throw out suggestions with one person having reasons to not go to the other person’s suggested restaurant. “This place ...
