Not all youngsters are bored in their ICT lessons, of course, but it’s a sufficiently common complaint to have made me do a mental double-take when Maddi, an Australian teenager, happened to mention that she actually enjoyed her ICT lessons.
Read More10 ideas for Computing or ICT lesson routines
Things may be going great, so why change them? You know the old saying: if it ain't broke, don't fix it.
But there's another point of view too: who wants to become ossified? Read on for a few simple ideas to try now.
Read MoreL is for lesson observation
I watched an episode of that seminal contribution to English culture, Waterloo Road last week, for the first time in ages. I wrote about Waterloo Road in What makes a good ICT role model? if you’re interested, but basically it’s a soap set in a school which has to be the most dysfunctional school anyone has ever come across. The kids are alright (as some pop song said once), on the whole – but the adults…..
Read MoreICT and computing lessons should be organic
Stephen King, in his book ‘On Writing’, makes a very interesting point. Going against just about all the advice proffered in books and magazine articles, he says:
Plot is, I think, the good writer’s last resort and the dullard’s first choice.
You might be inclined to dismiss that as hogwash, but given King’s phenomenal success as a writer I’d suggest that would be unwise.
Ed Tech Innovation–#1: Introduce a new routine
With the new school year about to start or, in some parts of the world, already underway, I thought a new mini-series containing some ideas to play with might not come amiss. Here’s the first one, about classroom routines.
How do you start your lessons? Do they always start in the same way? There’s certainly a lot to be said for having a well-established routine, but it’s not a bad idea to shake things up a bit now and again.
8 Observations on flipping the classroom
One of the more unfortunate buzzwords to appear in online education circles and the press is “flipping the classroom”. This means that instead of lecturing students in lessons in school, the teacher records the lecture as a video and uploads it to YouTube – or recommends other people’s videos to the students. The students watch the videos for homework, freeing up the lesson for interactivity, project work and so on.
I not impressed with this brilliant “new” idea. Why not?
Why Is ICT Boring? (Updated)
Not all youngsters are bored in their ICT lessons, of course, but it’s a sufficiently common complaint to have made me do a mental double-take when Maddi, an Australian teenager, happened to mention that she actually enjoyed her ICT lessons.
Read More