teaching.mrbelshaw.co.uk

I’m growing increasingly frustrated in the teaching profession. I can’t teach the way that I want to, and I find it extraordinarily difficult to teach in the ‘traditional’ manner which is assumed and seemingly expected by all around me. This means I fall between two stools of conceptions of teaching. Allow me to elaborate and explain… :s

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This is one for those wanting to spread the message about RSS feeds or put out a newsletter with good reading material. I’ve discussed xFruits over at EdTechRoundup.com. Go and have a look! :)

The Independent, the Guardian, and the BBC all have articles on the reported rise in the number of school-age children being educated at home. According to the latest figures over 16,000 young people are now homeschooled – a threefold rise in eight years. However, doubt has been cast on the reliability of these claims as the rules and monitoring surrounding home-based education are vague and unclear. I would very much like to educate Benjamin (my son) at home until he’s about 7 – especially as my wife’s a primary school teacher. As far as I understand, in some Scandanavian countries children do not attend school until this age and they still top the world league tables, so there’s no advantage in starting formal education too early as far as I’m concerned. :)

Today – 23 February 2007 – is National Work Your Proper Hours Day in the UK, organized by the TUC. They’re urging everyone to take their proper lunch break and go home on time. The situation is especially acute for those who work in education as according to the Guardian we work on average 11 hours ‘unpaid overtime’ per week which would amount to over £10,000 per year in monetary terms. I chose the teaching profession for interest, not financial reward, but I have to say that my job does dominate my life somewhat… :p

Stewart Mader of the excellent Using Wiki in Education blog/wiki/book has alerted me to his new project – Wikipatterns.com. The idea of the site is to identify constructive and destructive patterns regarding wiki usage. The aim of the site is to get your wiki up-and-running and being successfully used by a lot of people. What follows is my take-away from the site… :D

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It’s a truism that teachers respond differently to the various classes they teach. That’s because teaching and learning is all about relationships. I’m becoming increasingly aware not only of the different way I respond to some classes on a superficial level (e.g. how many times I set homework, etc.) but on a pedagogical level too. That’s something I want to explore in the following, as I think there’s an underlying cause, fashioned by the school system… :o

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There’s a great article in New York magazine entitled Kids, the Internet, and the End of Privacy: The Greatest Generation Gap Since Rock and Roll. If you don’t get why people would want to make their lives as public as teenagers tend to you might want to have a read. The changes mentioned in the article are: 1. They think of themselves as having an audience; 2. They have archived their adolescence; 3. Their skin is thicker than yours. Of course, as usual with these things there’s a fair bit of hyperbole and generalization, but it’s certainly worth a read if you want to understand your students a bit better! ;)

Over at EdTechRoundup.com I’ve posted my thoughts on Steve Jobs’ controversial recent speech at an education reform conference in which he made two important points. Worth a read if you’re interested in educational technology in schools or the status of the K12 teacher… :p

Last month I mentioned (in The Wonder of Google Calendar for Teachers) how I’d started to use Google Calendar for my lesson planning. Well it’s now a bit further down the line and I’ve spent a half term with it in action. Now’s the time to reflect on how I’ve used it now that I’ve refined my practice a little further! :D

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A U.S. senator has called for Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia created by thousands of volunteers worldwide, to be banned in schools and libraries. Ted Stephens, famous for his description of the Internet as a series of ‘tubes’, has introduced a bill which seeks to ban interactive access to websites – i.e. MySpace, Wikipedia… basically anything that involves online collaboration. To say that this ‘Son of DOPA’ legislation is misguided and short-sighted is understating the issue quite a bit. I’d like to say that UK politicians are a bit more sensible, but then I’m not so sure… :o