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Sep 17, 2015
2 min

Are You Sitting Uncomfortably?

This week, I experienced a familiar feeling. Awkward, a little sweaty, over-exposed and defensive. This wasn’t a first date, or a public presentation, but a lesson on the novel Noughts and Crosses. In the incredibly diverse secondary schools I’ve worked in all over London, it always feels a little disappointing to answer, ‘here,’ to the inevitable question; “Miss, where are you from?” While I’ve been told I sound Australian and look French (?!) there is nothing particularly

Feb 27, 2012
2 min

New Technologies – teaching the new generation

Don’t they know it all already? In a word, no. Just because our pupils are exposed to a massive amount of ‘tech’ it doesn’t necessarily mean they will be adept at using for a variety of outcomes or be able to critically evaluate the impact that it has on them or on society. Most people tend to use this stuff on a ‘need to know’ basis. No-one knew how to tweet or IM before the technology became available, and so young people will tend to use whatever is most popular or most us

Nov 13, 2011
2 min

Teaching Beyond the Test!

I found myself in the unusual situation of defending my position on educating 11-16-year-olds about the world around them and was told that this was ‘A-level.’ Unfortunately this person held a senior position with an examining body. The topic in question was bringing current developments in the media into the classroom. Clearly not relevant. In a similar vein, a rather astute Year 9 pupil quipped just this week; “Miss, we aren’t really given an education, are we? We’re just t

Oct 21, 2011
2 min

Media Literacy Part 2

Limiting the field? While I am incredibly pleased to see something so vital and fundamental to modern education being approved by the powers that be, unfortunately the main focus of this seems to be the ‘big bad media’ approach, through which we are all mindless, passive vehicles blindly accepting what the media tells us and that children should be protected from its evil intentions. This is, of course, only part of the story. On the one hand, I am reluctant to follow the lin

Oct 17, 2011
2 min

Media Literacy Part 1

Qualifying The term ‘media literacy’ (often also termed ‘digital literacy’) has been bandied around in educational circles for a while now, and has been the subject of several documents (http://bit.ly/gKEWmz) and case studies (http://bit.ly/qUdCz0), of which this is clearly only a sample that I have come across. It is a hugely broad and encompassing term which is possibly one of the most problematic issues, as it takes just as long to define exactly what it is we’re talking a

Oct 10, 2011
3 min

‘Embedding’ across the curriculum – real possibility or box-checking exercise?

Cross-curricular concepts As a teacher in a secondary school, we are constantly bombarded with new initiatives, ideas and concepts that are to be ’embedded’ into the school as a whole. These can vary from government-led legislation (cynically often a knee-jerk reaction to whatever the popular press happens to be shouting about or the exact opposite of whatever the last government did, despite how effective it may or may not have been) to governor/headteacher priorities. Ideal