I love Ken Robinson, and think he makes a lot of really good points in the talk above. I think he’s right that the systems of education that I have encountered (English National Curriculum & International Baccalaureate) can squeeze out individualism, talent and passion in exchange for all students meeting mandatory minimums in the areas of knowledge & skill that policymakers believe...
It has been over a month since it was announced that the ICT curriculum faced review, and I still don’t feel like it is being done well. The overwhelming majority of press coverage, including articles where industry experts are being questioned, seems to offer only two options: keep the current curriculum, or replace it with computer science. Surely those aren't the only two choices...
There has been an understandably frenzied response to the initial findings of the National Curriculum Review expert panel report that was released earlier this month, particularly from ICT teachers who are facing the prospect of their subject being marginalised, or others who think it will be removed altogether. But are the report findings all bad news for ICT teachers?
Critical thinking was once the purview of classicists & philosophers, but with those subjects still being squeezed out of schools that view them as elitist or irrelevant in the modern world, where does critical thinking fit?
In September I moved to the beautiful island of St Helena in the South Atlantic. I recently started work on revamping the ICT curriculum, and am currently looking at a blank piece of paper surrounded by piles of reading material. What would you do?
As part of a presentation at an SSAT seminar entitled 'How to make ICT the most popular subject in your school', here is my presentation - pushing ICT lessons beyond their original definition as we look at the history of war, from an ICT perspective.
In the 4th century BC the Ptolemies of Alexandria began throwing money at the arts. They did not make the same distinctions between fields of study as we do today, and housed scholars from all disciplines together in the "Muses' birdcage," blurring the lines between otherwise disparate disciplines. I think this should be the role of ICT in the modern curriculum.
Aside from pontificating at the front of a classroom, hands down my favourite thing about teaching is developing schemes of work. I find there’s something extremely satisfying in developing a project that forms part of a larger whole, knowing its place within that whole, and knowing what else is needed in order to guarantee a good coverage of skills.