Brilliant

Roundsquare

A lady in Toronto called Linda Rosier that helped with some if the Ireland Fund program last year at Muskoka Woods was telling me about Roundsquare and what the school network stands for. Have a read at the website and let me know what you think. She is friends with these folks and mentioned connecting me for a conversation.

The other group she mentioned was free the children
This organization was started by a canadian guy and is growing substantially

Let me know what you think after you have a good read

Mark

FEAR IN THE CLASSROOM

Being a parent of a child who has just started school, I am surprised at the feeling of fear that I have regarding his pathway through the educational system. Will he fit in, what if he doesn’t keep up with the rest of the class, how will he cope with the workload. All reasonable and healthy fears for a first time parent, I thought.

Then I reflected on my years as a school-teacher and talking with the new intakes about their fears with moving into high school. Again similar issues coming up centering around belonging and behaving. Lots of questions about the ‘what if’s’ dominating their thoughts, taking away from the joy of moving through into a new phase in their life.

Recently I have been thinking about the climate of fear that pervades our education system of parents, pupils and teachers. A recent piece of research commented that over 51% of teachers provide their students in the UK with detailed essay plans for major state exams at the age of 16. Over 90% of surveyed teachers admitted that they would return coursework to students for a redraft in an attempt to improve grades. The era of league tables, age-group testing and a drive for some form of universal indicators have ensured that our teachers now operate in an atmosphere of fear. The class with the lowest grades is going to have the teacher called into question. The narrow critieria that is assessed through coursework and timed exams provides little room for innovation and creativity within the classroom.

Teachers who live under the cloud of exam results operate out of a fear for their professional reputation which breeds mistrust in a system, de-motivates the teaching profession and creates a must do better ethos. Society today is moving at such extreme paces today that to allow students to draft and re-draft work places them at a disadvantage in the workplace. Fear needs to be faced and teachers need the courage and skills to stand resolute at a time when the system wishes to force them to ‘play the game’.

Education and the longtail

I thouth that this one on Rob Paterson's blog was interesting enough to log for us

Learning and Social Networking

I think one of the key changes we need to consider over the next season as we develop new ways of enhancing learning is to recognize how learning happens naturally outside of the classroom. Bob Carlton fired me over a link which is a discussion with Danah Boyd. Here is the blurb about her:

boyd, a Ph.D. candidate at the University of California, Berkeley's School of Information, explores how young people negotiate the presentation of self in online mediated contexts. Her research focuses on how this young audience engages with "digital publics" - connected social spaces such as MySpace, LiveJournal, Xanga and YouTube.

Global Change

This is a video Adrian shared with the group about education. There is a lot more to watch so I thought I would log it for further reference

Course Design

I have justed added another category into the blog under eLearning. I think that we need to consider some more of the options and learn the trends with this as it is being reformed via some of the influence of social networks. There is a very interesting article on Tong Karrer's blog about course design that highlights the common mistakes of what is happening at the moment within many of the eLearning solutions.