Can we do better? November 29, 2009
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According to research carried out by BECTA ..
‘Invisible’ parents: Of the parents who admitted they rarely made contact with their child’s teacher, nearly a quarter (22%) said they did not see the benefit for their child. The majority (67%) of school staff said that these parents simply do not realise how important their support is in their child’s development. And 60% said that these parents often feel their job stops at the school gates.
Confidence issues:42% of teachers said the reason so-called ‘invisible’ parents have so little contact with the school is that they lack the confidence to discuss their child with teachers – 43% of school staff admit parents might find them ’difficult to approach sometimes.’ One in five (19%) parents are worried about bothering teachers and more than a fifth (22%) say they don’t want to add to the teacher’s workload, resulting in many taking a back seat in their child’s education.
Lack of information: More than one in ten (11%) of the parents who do initiate communication said they felt dismissed by teachers as an ‘overly demanding’ parent and a further 11% commented they often feel they are imposing on the teacher’s time. More than a third (36%) of school staff encounter parents who want ‘constant reassurance’ and others (19%) who try to ‘influence everything that goes on in the classroom.’
So in the red corner we have some parents who can’t get enough information and conversation about their children’s learning, with teachers who resent having parents crossing some imaginary line of learning and teaching competence. In the blue corner we have other parents who the schools want to see more of and teachers who think that, actually, coming in to see a teacher must be too threatening for at least a quarter of parents.
The cuts are coming November 28, 2009
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Children’s Secretary Ed Balls today called for a new drive in schools and local authorities about investing public money effectively, while securing frontline services post-2011.
First steps will be Smart Meters for cutting back on electricity. There will also be a focus on making sure that underspend will be clawed back – I can’t imagine that this will be a huge problem next year though …
Searching safely November 14, 2009
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Pass this link on to your parents via a newsletter.
Internet Facts October 18, 2009
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Want some posters for the ICT rooms?
This website has some images that contain internet factoids that are interesting and would create nice posters.
eg. If you printed the internet …. it would take 57,000 years to read at 24 hours per day
You might want to checkout other links like “13 useful things to print out” – I liked it anyway
How to design e-Learning October 13, 2009
Posted by bobharding in Teaching.Tags: e-learning, Merlin, moodle, vle
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A really interesting interview with Cathy Moore. A few extracts to sum it up ….
- We’re not designing content , we’re designing activities then getting the content to support this.
- Think about the behaviour and not the knowledge otherwise e-learning can become an information dump.
- Put students in a compelling situation then provide information as needed.
- Often e-learning is like traditional presentation but even more painful
- Exposing pupils to information does not change their understanding or behaviour.
- Pupils go through the course and we’re done – it doesn’t work like that in the real world.
- It’s hard to measure and control.
Overall 6 minutes long and well worth a listen.
(oh and I like the application as well – anyone know what it is?)
Comment July 11, 2009
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“I’m getting tired of hearing people continue to ask for the evidence that technology helps students learn. It doesn’t matter. We know — that good teachers help students learn. We need technology in every classroom and in every student and teacher’s hand, because it is the pen and paper of our time, and it is the lens through which we experience much of our world.”
David has an excellent way of summing things up. Here is another where he refers to ‘techies’:
“they are excited by the “light”. I, on the other hand, am excited by what we can shine that “light” on…”
Tough GCSE Exams? May 21, 2009
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This comment on a recent forum had me wondering if any readers felt that this year the exams were either particularly tough or hard:
re OCR Short course GCSE
In the nine years that I have been teaching I have never seen a paper (foundation and higher) as hard. Some of the questions were ambiguous and there was definitely a cross over between short and full course (e.g. system life cycle and validation checks etc). Just hoping that the rest of the country found it difficult, that way the grade thresholds may be lower.
Graphs that show nothing April 14, 2009
Posted by bobharding in General Info, Teaching.add a comment
Have you ever come across pupils who use excel to draw graphs that show nothing – like a scattergraph to show ‘age’ against ‘tutor group’.
Well here is a lovely picture that you could use when to come to discuss the issue.
New criteria for GCSE in ICT April 3, 2009
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OfQual have released the new criteria for GCSE for first teaching from 2010.
This is the document that exam boards will use to design the revised qualifications.
From my quick read I see a much tighter focus on the national curriculum and explicit references to problem solving, groupwork and new technologies.
It’ll be interesting to see the response to this.
http://www.ofqual.org.uk/files/2009-03-gcse-ict-subject-criteria.pdf
