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?
Ever felt like teaching was an uphill struggle? So does everyone else, but impossible it's not - we just need to consider carefully our definitions of the word success. People who say it's impossible to be an extraordinary teacher are part of that uphill struggle, making goals seem more difficult to achieve, but it is possible.
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.
A recent US Department of Education report concluded that “on average, students in online learning conditions performed better than those receiving face-to-face instruction”. With the way current e-learning environments are set up, I don't see how... with usability barely registering in the mind of most course creators, students are left searching the labyrinthine maze of hyperlinks to find...
September's top links for ICT teachers.
When I was training to teach, one of my tutors had a section on his lesson plan proforma entitled "vocab". At the time, I wondered what possible reason there would be to have a vocab section for an ICT lesson plan - the kids know the vocab, right?
I was interviewed by a freelance journalist for a TES article recently, and was told that our LA ICT advisor was unhappy with the comment I gave on the Rose reforms. “Good ICT is very difficult to teach, and rarely gets beyond skills building, or ‘trivial pursuits’ in primary schools,” I said, annoying primary ICT coordinators everywhere with my sweeping generalisation. “Teaching students to...
Two A1 posters designed to help students meet levels 4 & 5 at Key Stage 3.