Category: #edchat

Digital Skills Sandwich

Sandwich anyone? I do love a good sandwich. If potatoes are the king of carbs, then surely bread is its queen? As an Irishman, I am of course very biased. Anyway, I digress… The Digital Skills Sandwich is an idea that’s been rumbling around in my head for a while now. It’s seed germinates from the fact…
Swiss Cheese Knowledge Gaps

This nugget of cheesy thinkery came from hearing Sal Khan speak at the BETT show. He talked about kids having “Swiss Cheese gaps” in their knowledge, and needing a growth mindset to close them. To understand education culture, talk to the kids who are subject to it and see what they see. My experience of…
Creativity in Schools

I watched this video clip of Dylan Wiliam talking about how important creativity in schools is. I worry – and I know a lot of others do to – about the lack of importance placed on this in schools, and in particular, secondary schools. In the UK, we’re going backwards. A lot of the responsibility…
The Four Elements of Studentship

I met John Webber from Sussex Downs College recently, and discovered a number of common interests, including Open Badges. He sent through this thinking on his understanding of studentship, which I’ve taken the liberty of attempting to bring life a little….
River of Education

I was reading this bit of fluid thinking by Aaron Davis and this thought popped in to my head, so I had to draw it. The idea of different tributaries combining to form a wide river at the source, and the wide displacement of the river’s delta as it meets the sea surely fits the education system metaphor.…
Digital DNA – women in tech

The recent Digital Leaders conference was entitled “Building Digital DNA”. Jacqueline de Rojas (VP at Citrix) spoke about women in tech (or the lack thereof). I was thoroughly impressed with some female students I met a few weeks ago whilst doing some visual thinkery for UCL Academy. They had no problem seeing themselves as future engineers. Sure enough, looking…
Higher Education

Ok. If you’re an academic, and Higher Education and formal learning is the pinnacle of all knowledge and wonderment, then this may be mildly insulting (er… apologies for that…). However, the thing I’m most grateful to my University for is that it allowed me to reinvent myself (in a few different ways). Growing up in a small town…
PLNs

I came across this thought by @tomwhitby thanks to an Aaron Davis blogpost. I found something comforting it that, possibly due to not really having a title these days…
An Organic Teaching Routine

I met @urban_teacher recently and he asked me to apply a visual metaphor to his teaching routine. I’m not sure if the metaphor of growing stuff is the most appropriate, but it captures the essence behind the various stages of the process. Here’s a sketch of where I started: And here is the result…
Confidence and Perspective

When we took on our first young people at wapisasa last year, I really didn’t appreciate how important self-confidence in the Rookie’s outlook and enjoyment of their job. On reflection, I see that I’m no different. A lack of confidence makes you blind to the options and opportunity that surrounds you.
Invest in Teachers

I really enjoyed listening to Andreas Schleicher, Director of Education at the OECD. I worry about how the stats that OECD produce can become canon fodder for politicians – but Andreas speaks very well on the conclusions that can be drawn from the data, and those that can’t. He spoke about how different countries choose…
TechBac

I really enjoy trying to find visual metaphors for abstract concepts. Is it a bird? Is it a plane? No, its a bridge of course – to a profession. TechBac…