In the mid 1980's I was teaching English and Communication and using a lot of video and other technologies - remember hypercard anyone ?. In the nineties the web arrived and I tried to get anyone who would listen to get their course on line and get their students to start helping making it better. Some folks thought this was a good idea and I got to evangelise across the sector for a few years.
By now I thought every teacher in the globe would have their stuff up on line and would be working in some collaborative way with their learners and their peers and the learning paradigm would have changed. The power in the system would have moved to the learners and those who guide them. Instead we still have quite a few closed communities and lots of pupils and teachers who are not engaging with this revolution as much as they could be. Burger King can Simpsonise Me but we haven't found the magic formula to engage teachers and learners with this stuff yet.
At least it is great to see that it has started in East Lothian This should be compulsory reading for anyone working in education public policy and our public bodies. If you get the chance , catch Ewan's session at the Scottish Learning Festival.
4 comments:
Maybe GLOW will be a start, though I still think it needs a serious interface/portal overhaul if we are to be completely successful in bringing in the technophobes.
We finally got to see and have a hands on session with GLOW last week.
We are going to do all we can in getting things on to this platform to make it - glow - is probably best word.
SQA are now signing up to the user agreement.
Main thing that concerned me was speed of roll out. I , probably naively thought that 32 local authorities would be ready to roll this out from the switch on in September. This is not the case - and one of the reasons I am going to get as much stuff into Glow as I can to persuade them to quickly adopt this platform.
I really cannot wait for the day when instead of relying on centre SQA coordinators to distribute important information or other way we need to consult subject specialists - we can just do it directly through a GLOW group. I think it is things like this that will make technophobes engage and give them no excuse for not engaging. We will also hopefully be able to give more information direct to learners.
Once we are all on board - sure - I agree, there is more to be done around interface and perhaps some of the tools - hopefully all the users will drive this - especially the pupils.
I'm glad to hear the SQA are going to be an important part of the Glow experience, and I agree that, if we get it right, it will be the pupils that will drive a lot of the future appearance and functionality of the portal.
it easier when you are writing in the language that you grew up speaking. While many of us who may read this post grew up speaking English, that does not mean that we may not need to improve in one aspect or another of English grammar. Websites that cater to this aspect of writing are always useful.
Good IELTS Band
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