WARNING! This website is no longer actively maintained. It is an archive of 2 years work by Doug Belshaw who now blogs at dougbelshaw.com...
As you read this I’ll be in the north of Scotland (about here actually) for a week of walking, exploring ancient monuments and general spending-time-with-the-inlaws malarky. I need some time away from this Macbook. Much as I love it, what with blogging and my Ed.D. assignments, it’s beginning to feel like a part of me! On with this week’s roundup… 
A fairly short roundup this week - here’s what I’ll be looking at:
- TEDTalks
- TeachersTV - Inspirations - Blogosphere
- Dave Warlick - Joining the Blog-versation
- Christopher D. Sessums - Fire on the mountain: Envisioning the future of school
- Learning Blog - What is a 21st Century Teacher?
Although TEDTalks conjures up images of pipes, slippers and stories by the fire the reality couldn’t be more different. These are a series of talks, lectures, call them what you will, by leading authorities in their fields about various things, all loosely related to the concept of ‘creativity’ and ‘ideas’. As such, many of them - if not all of them - are of interest to educators. Being a Christian, the first one I watched was by Rick Warren, author of The Purpose-Driven Life. Although this has been the biggest-selling book in the world for the last few years, it’s probable that a great many of you haven’t heard of it. Basically, it’s a wake-up call to churches to start actually practising what their preaching. Our church back when we lived in Newcastle did it and it was excellent. Anyway, Rick Warren - along with the rest of the speakers - gives ideas of general relevance and applicability. The best thing is you can watch them as well as listen to them! 
Something else you can watch is the Blogosphere video in the Inspirations section of TeachersTV. This shows how blogging has been integrated - with great success - in a school in Hove (south coast of England). Given the painful slowness of the TeachersTV site when it comes to watching videos at present, I’ve downloaded it and re-uploaded it (using the CcPublisher program) to the Internet Archive (under the terms of the Creative Archive license). You should be able to view it by clicking on the link at the end of this post!
Moving on, 3 posts to do with the future of education have struck me this week. The first is by the bearded Christopher D. Sessums:
I only point this out because I was struck by the sheer quality of Daniel Dennett’s beard on the TEDTalks website:
My proto-beard’s getting there - meeting with more and more disapproval from my wife the longer it gets. It’s all part of my theory that respect is proportional to depth of voice and length of facial hair, you see. 
Ahem. So, back to the post Chris made on Fire on the mountain: Envisioning the future of school. He starts his post with a great quotation from E.M. Forster which I’m sure will have many reading this nodding their heads in agreement:
As long as learning is connected with earning, as long as certain jobs can only be reached through exams, so long must we take this examination system seriously. If another ladder to employment was contrived, much so-called education would disappear, and no one would be a penny the stupider.
How sad it is that we’ve built this great big monolithic lumbering beast that no-one’s prepared to shoot down. A lot of what we do as educators has actually very little to do with education and everything to do with social control. There’s nothing wrong with schools in terms of gathering people together to learn things - it’s just the way in which we do it and the results we expect at the end which cause the problems. If, as Forster dreams, ‘earning wasn’t linked to learning’ the system would change overnight, I’m sure of it.
That schools need substantial reform for the 21st century is so obvious it hardly needs stating. But how is this to be done? Chris suggests the following:
When I think of school reform, the image of a forest fire sticks out in my mind. Forest fires, while destructive, and dangerous, also bring about change and renewed growth. A disruptive metaphor, to say the least. Controlled fires are used here in Florida forests to clear away elements that make wildfires less destructive. Perhaps controlled burning is an apt way to think of school reform. Yet who decides what is to be burned and what is to be left alone? (You didn’t think such a complex notion such as school reform had a simple and clever solution, did you?)
One things for sure, the powers that be won’t allow it to be the teachers. 
But then that’s partly our fault. Teaching only becomes a ‘deprofessionalized profession’ if we let it be. No individual or institution, no matter how powerful they are can resist a groundswell of opinion (at least without resorting to violent and repressive methods, anyway…) This leads me nicely to Alex Ragone’s post on his Learning Blog website entitled What is a 21st Century Teacher?. It’s a response to Jo McLeay’s post What does it mean to be a teacher in the 21st century?:
So what is a 21st Century Teacher? One that is flexible, collaborative, research based, knows the learning styles of their students, teaches to different learning styles and ability levels…
I guess the more I think of it, the more being a great teacher, administrator, or student are very similar. Know what your goals are, create a road map to those goals, practice the skills needed to get there, assess where you are along the way, and finally create a final product. That works for lesson planning, designing schools, or completing a science project, no?
Exactly. To be a great teacher you need to be a great learner. At the Ed.D. summer school I went to last month a guy from the U.S. but who is now teaching in the Netherlands was asking me a few questions about teaching in England. He was asking about whether the Ed.D. was recognised and desired by teachers, as apparently over the pond it is. I responded that no, in fact it’s not. Go up to your average teacher and ask ‘Hello my good man (or woman), could you kindly tell me what an Ed.D. is?’ and they’d have no idea, I’d wager. Which just goes to show that real, self-propelled professional development isn’t really on the radar of English teachers. So I’ll say it again just in case anyone’s still reading this, the best teachers are the best learners. What are you doing to become a better teacher? Apart from reading this blog, obviously…
Finally, the irrepressible Dave Warlick chimes in with his post Joining the Blog-versation. One thing you can do to become a better teacher, at least in my opinion, is to blog. The amount of self-reflection that’s required means real learning, and therefore teaching, gains. But no-one wants to blog and for no-one to read it. I started blogging when I was off with stress at my previous school. It focused my mind and gave me something education-related to do with my time. I’m glad to say that people started reading it, and now’s there’s quite a few. This tends to spur me on to post more often, which in turn has greater learning and teaching benefits for me. A kind of virtuous circle, if you will. Dave has some tips about how to ‘join the blog-versation’ and get your blog up and noticed. Here’s some of them:
- Write and write and write. This was the advice that I received, and it worked. Even though people aren’t reading initially, just keep writing � and they will come.
- Read and comment. Find bloggers who are talking about the same issues you are, and comment on their ideas. In most blogs, you are asked to type your URL when you post a comment, and that URL is linked to your name. Use your blog address for the URL, and it provides a link to your blog.
- Read and blog. If what you have to say about another blogger’s ideas is more involved or dramatic, then write it in your blog. Be sure to link to the entry you are commenting on. Then post a comment on the entry you read with an introduction, and point (link) readers back to your blog for the complete story.
Remember, spamming is not good, but putting as many valid and relevant links out there is. So go and get a blog and start reading, writing and commenting. Go and learn more and go and become a better teacher! 
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