Category: #learning

Quant + Qual

On creating some Visual Thinkery for Tabetha at Timmus, our conversation touched on the differences between quantitative and qualitative analysis. Here’s a visualisation of that thought. You know, I’m always learning from my clients…
Sparks of Openness

Working in the open – it often feels counter-intuitive. What if someone criticises my half-baked idea? What if they make it stronger? What if someone dislikes the thing I’ve created? What if they really like it? What if they pinch the idea? What if they’re able to use the idea, or add theirs to it? Inspiration comes…
Embed Practice

Whilst prepping for a design-a-thon for a digital literacies MOOC for teachers with my We Are Open colleagues, we talked briefly about the importance of embedding practice…
SATs – they don’t tell you.

Meaningless, meaningless all is meaningless… …and mildly oppressive. Does a filter bubble exist where everyone in it thinks SATs are actually a good idea, and I’m just not part of it?
We make this road by walking

Catherine Cronin put me on to the book “We make the road by walking” by Paulo Freire and Miles Horton. And when Catherine puts you on to a book, you’d better read it…
Open Badges 2.0

I attended the badge summit in London last week. I had the opportunity to visually digest the chatter from different speakers regarding V2 of the Open Badges spec. If you have a look at how the standard is described, you hopefully agree that abstract things need all the visualisation help they can get…
The Principles of Makery

As I thought about the making process behind my Raspberry Pi being installed as protector of my shed from overheating, I found myself wondering (as I do) about the principles of Makery. Here are three that came to mind in the building of this project. If you think of others, let me know…
People and Jobs

I attended a Cities of Learning event recently, hosted by the RSA. I’ve long been interested in this project, and how it is interwoven with a local use of micro-credentials. The day was teed up by Kirstie Donnelly, MD at City & Guilds, who framed this problem.
Pathways

Gold, Silver, Bronze, yawn… This (standard) approach prevents the issuing organisation from having to think too deeply about how learners might interact with what they’ve got to offer. There’s more than one way to string together some badges.
The future of testing

I read this guardian article recently where a woman asked Tinder for all her personal information. They sent her 800 pages worth of data. Apply this to the world of testing, which is increasingly data rich, and it doesn’t take much to make a pessimistic prediction. This thought was originally from a town hall discussion at the E-ATP…
Academic failures – got any previous?

We carry around our academic failures like previous convictions. If pressed, we might even blame something: but I’d never even been to France so it just didn’t make sense… Whether or not the excuse is fair, we accept what the piece of paper tells us. I’m not very good at that. Sadly, what we really believe is…
Student Debt

I find this insight from Noam Chomsky about student debt utterly profound – and equally depressing. How can we have let this happen?