Terry Loane
I have a particular interest in the impact that digital technology is having on our assumptions about educational institutions. For more on this see my blog at https://terryloane.typepad.com/beyondrh/
Location Ruislip, Middlesex (Greater London)
Activity
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Terry Loane replied to Terry Loane
Yes, Ross, I think you and I do have similar views on learning. Let me pick up on your point that "the professor and the student create the "curriculum" together". Actually I think this is how most education over the age of 12 should work, with much greater flexibility than at present and with students being given increasing autonomy and choice in what and how...
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Terry Loane replied to Terry Loane
I have found this course valuable, Ross. I am always interested to share views on what people call 'assessment' (but that's a word I never use myself:-) And I have particularly enjoyed sharing ideas through the comments with other participants, including yourself, Ross.
Best wishes for your future learning and teaching!
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The answer. Ross, is to move to a system of defined competence levels. There is nothing new about this, as the following three tried and tested examples show:
# The Common European Framework for Languages, which defines language competence at six levels (A1, A2, B1, B2, C1, C2) You can find the level definitions at https://tinyurl.com/yn5p7cw6
# the old...
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An afterthought... I wrote in my previous message that the informal 'off-piste' aspects of a programme of education "are largely outside the control of management". But the way an institution is managed - both at the local level and by government requirements/diktat - can have a huge impact on whether such valuable informal activities actually happen. If you...
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@RossAlonzo Thanks for your response, Ross. I wonder if the key issue relates to the reference in your final sentence to "formal education". I think that all institutions and programmes of learning have both formal components and informal components. The informal components are largely outside the control of management, but these are often the things that have...
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Terry Loane replied to Terry Loane
Just to let everyone know that the moderators have now done what they needed to do - they have removed all the comments from Sarjhon Arguelles and Eliezer Vigonte that simply consisted of sentences copied and pasted, without attribution, from comments made by myself and others.
I still struggle to understand why anyone would waste their time copying,...
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Terry Loane replied to Terry Loane
@AnnieBryan Thank you for your support, Annie, but the moderators have not removed any of the inappropriate time-wasting comments from Sarjhon Arguelles and Eliezer Vigonte. Clearly I can't be expected to flag each of the 130 comments from these two that are cluttering participants' notification inboxes with junk/spam/plagiarism. I will report one comment from...
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We may have to agree to disagree, Ross:-) I see no reason why education should necessarily require "learning outcomes... that have to be achieved by the end of the term." That is a very mechanistic, managerialist and narrow approach, I would suggest. In fact nobody thought like this at all until very recently in human history. The vast majority of real human...
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Terry Loane replied to Terry Loane
Maybe the issue here, Ross, relates to the distinction between 'education' and 'training'. I accept that, as you say, there are certain specific competencies that are non-negotiable in particular professions. This is especially true in the case of safety-critical issues, as I said in my previous message, but I concede that such competencies are wider than just...
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@JacquelineMarielaPintoMota You are absolutely right, Jacqueline to point out that the process of assessing for learning and providing feedback is quite different from the process of certification, and you have, in my view, explained the difference clearly. It really is unfortunate that people use the same word, 'assessment', to refer to these two very different...
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Terry Loane replied to Terry Loane
BLATANT AND REPEATED PLAGIARISM – part 2 of 2
… I realise that FutureLearn course are open to all, but I do not understand how anyone following a course about teaching in higher education can think it appropriate to behave in such a bizarre way, to copy sentences from others without attribution and to pass them off as their own thoughts. I trust that the...
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Terry Loane made a comment
BLATANT AND REPEATED PLAGIARISM – part 1 of 2
Yet again I have had my time wasted and patience tested by course participants submitting replies to posts that consist merely of a single sentence that they have copied and pasted from another comment. I will not at this stage name and shame these participants so I will identify them by their initials.
RS...
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Terry Loane made a comment
Thank you very much for the course, which has offered me the opportunity to reflect on how we can improve teaching, learning, assessing and providing feedback. It has been most useful to read about the experience of others and to share ideas in the comments.
Thank you in particular, Annie and Brinder, for taking such an active part yourselves in the...
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Terry Loane made a comment
I have found it really useful this week both to reflect on how teachers should best give feedback to their students and to read the views of other course participants about this – we can all learn from the experiences of others working in very different teaching/learning situations.
But I think there is an 'elephant in the room' here; in other words a...
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Terry Loane replied to Martin Nelson
@MartinNelson Well, Martin, Sugata Mitra is a scientist, so he does tend to support what he says with evidence. But at the same time he is a visionary, who has thought a lot about what education should look like in a digital age. A few years ago I helped to organise a talk he gave in the Houses of Parliament here in London. At one point he asked the audience...
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Terry Loane replied to Clare Tyrer
What's interesting and very encouraging, Martin, is that a consensus now seems to be emerging, at least here in the UK, that we need to move away from big exams. Even Conservative politicians (not known for favouring radical educational change:-) seem to agree:
Kenneth Baker in the Independent newspaper "I introduced GCSEs in the 1980s – but now it’s time...
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Terry Loane replied to Clare Tyrer
I think you are probably right, Clive. But perhaps part of our education of undergraduates, and indeed younger teenagers, should involve giving them the confidence to clarify and, if necessary, challenge the feedback they are given.
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Terry Loane replied to Martin Nelson
Regarding what you wrote about a system designed for the 1800s, Martin, do you know this TED talk by the great Sugata Mitra? (https://www.ted.com/talks/sugata_mitra_build_a_school_in_the_cloud?language=en) I think you might like it. He starts the talk by saying that we have a wonderful education system - if what you are trying to do is to run a worldwide...
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Terry Loane replied to Myra Bilal
@MyraBilal I agree completely with what you say, Myra, about education needing to be centred on the student rather than on the perceived (and inevitably short-term and short-sighted) interests of industrialists.
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Terry Loane replied to Enock Mbenza
@AnnieBryan Yes, Enock does have a really challenging task with 200 students. I think group feedback could be helpful here, as you suggest Annie. Perhaps it could be useful to say something along the lines of "Quite a few of you seem to be having a problem with ... Here are two suggestions to help with this..." Or maybe "some of you found X easy and others...
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Terry Loane replied to Clare Tyrer
@ClareTyrer You made a good point, Clare, about the issue of the authority of the teacher. The power imbalance between student and teacher makes it difficult for the student to challenge what the teacher has done, and this in turn makes it easier for the teacher to work in a sloppy way. On the other hand, the introduction of student fees in higher education in...
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Terry Loane made a comment
I agree with the earlier comments. I only have one thing to add, which I don't think anyone else has mentioned so far in the comments. I note - with alarm - how the attention of the reader is immediately drawn to the mark awarded (74/100). The mark is highlighted by the use of a different colour from the rest of the text and the fact that it is HUGE, with a...
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… I remember once that, by coincidence, I happened to visit our local rubbish dump (known rather pretentiously as the "Civic Amenity Site") the day after the A-level* results were published. I saw a boy who looked as if he were about 18 and a woman who looked as if she were his mother. They were both throwing a large quantity of papers, files and books on to...
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Terry Loane made a comment
I certainly like the idea of dialogic feedback and of students becoming "autonomous, self-regulating learners". The ultimate in autonomy and self-regulation is for the student to be so intrinsically motivated that they take responsibility for their own goals and for the direction of their learning journey, rather than just seeking to reach institutionally set...
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I think you have made a very important point here, Sheena. Back in 1988 Ruth Butler did some interesting research on the effects of different types of feedback on the performance of learners (https://bpspsychub.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/j.2044-8279.1988.tb00874.x). She found that performance improved if she gave learners comments that described what...
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@ClareTyrer An excellent comment, Clare. I agree with everything you wrote. I particularly like your point about the importance of helping to make the student a more autonomous learner. We must develop more autonomy, more engagement, less jumping through institutionally determined hoops.
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Terry Loane made a comment
The video tells a clear story of how assessing has developed. Or rather it tells a story of how assessing SHOULD HAVE developed. The section from 1:18 to the end is, unfortunately, simply not a true description of what has actually been happening in UK schools. Teachers are NOT able to " give students more control over their own learning". Teachers are NOT...
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Terry Loane made a comment
I must say that I am slightly concerned, even perhaps sceptical, about what the concept of "assessment literacy" means in practice. It is important, of course, that students know what is expected of them. But it is surely the job of institutions to devise systems for reporting the achievement and capabilities of students and for certifying, where appropriate,...
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Terry Loane replied to Martin Nelson
Here is another example of an informal network that plays a key role in achieving and maintaining high professional competence. A good friend of mine was responsible for the professional development of musical instrument teachers in a local authority schools music service in the UK. He found that the guitar teachers were better at peer support and at...
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Terry Loane replied to Martin Nelson
Yes, Martin, the type of multimedia portfolio of audio, video, photo and written evidence is suitable for creative and practical activities. But such activities are not limited to the arts. Many activities in e.g.engineering, design and construction trades also lend themselves to this approach.
To prove that a student has reached a defined level in...
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Terry Loane replied to Clare Tyrer
@MartinNelson I agree with what you say, Martin, about there being better ways to record, report and certify students' capabilities and achievements than "that one big exam". A few years ago I did an MA with the Open University. There were no exams at all, but it was nevertheless a rigorous and demanding programme of learning. It was also a wonderful learning...
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Terry Loane replied to Susana M
@VictorManatadAurino I agree, Victor, about the importance of developing critical thinking in higher education. (Actually, I feel we should start this process earlier, at the latest by the age of 13.)
But I think the importance given to high-stakes pen-and-paper exams neither encourages nor rewards critical thinking. And the artificial environment of such...
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Terry Loane replied to Terry Loane
… But who defines the difference between, say, " BROAD knowledge" and " VERY GOOD knowledge"? Who gives an operational definition of each adjective? Nobody.
One must conclude therefore that these so-called assessment criteria are simply a smokescreen for a system that is subjective, unscientific and utterly lacking in genuine rigour.
What we need, as I...
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Terry Loane made a comment
As teachers we have a duty to prepare our students to 'perform' as well as possible in the tasks upon which they will be judged. But as professional educators we surely also have a duty to reflect critically on the process of categorisation and judgement that many refer to as 'assessment'. I believe that honest reflection will lead us to the conclusion that...
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@KEAGILEBATI Well said Keagile! It is an essential part of effective teaching to be able to give feedback that motivates students to address any problems they may encounter and to move to the next step for that particular student. The psychologist Lev Vygotsky, regarded the role of the teacher as being is to help move the student into the 'zone of proximal...
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Terry Loane made a comment
The word 'assessment' is problematic because it can be used to refer to two quite different processes.
1. It can refer to the process of a teacher (and a student) reviewing what a student can and cannot do in order to decide on the next stage of the teaching and learning programme. Is there a need to revisit certain material because the student has failed...
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Terry Loane replied to Martin Nelson
@MartinNelson I think you are right, Martin, that assessing work done in groups can be problematic. It can be difficult to know what precise contribution an individual has made to the group. But we know that the ability to work collaboratively with others is really important so we have to encourage this and to have some methods of recording how well each...
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Terry Loane replied to Camilla Eyley
That's interesting Camilla. This is exactly how the old NVQ qualifications worked in the UK. There was a comprehensive (arguably too detailed:-) list of defined competencies, assessors could use a variety of different methods to assess and record these competencies, and there was a system of verification (as you suggest) to monitor and ensure that candidates...
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Terry Loane replied to Clare Tyrer
@AnnieBryan I am afraid I do not agree, Annie, that "it's not always easy to devise new ways of assessing". Alternatives to traditional exams already exist, are being used successfully and are often more rigorous in the true sense of the word. But we mostly have to look outside mainstream education to find these better systems of recording, reporting and...
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I was delighted to see that the very first example in the Teaching Excellence case studies collection focused on "legitimate peripheral participation" and involved "enabling students to become active participants in their own learning, rather than assessment and grading being their sole motivation." I have long observed that a great deal of 'real' learning in...
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Terry Loane replied to Martin Nelson
@MartinNelson I agree, Martin, that it is very easy to overlook and undervalue social and observational aspects of classroom learning that we have just taken for granted in the past. Perhaps one of the good things about the (partial) move to online is that it makes us focus on and analyse the importance of the social component of learning.
I really like...
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Terry Loane replied to Martin Nelson
@BrinderRajpal Thank you, Brinder, for the reference to the research. Are you referring to: Mayer, R. E. (2008). Applying the science of learning: Evidence-based principles for the design of multimedia instruction. American Psychologist, 63(8), 760–769. https://doi.org/10.1037/0003-066X.63.8.760
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Terry Loane made a comment
I think the seven bullet points listed in this step should be a checklist for anyone designing a programme of learning, regardless of whether it is to take place online, face-to-face or blended: 1. Choice; 2. Collaborative tasks/activities; 3. Friendly welcome; 4. Multimedia learning; 5. Opportunities to participate; 6. Photographs/biographies; 7. Social...
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Terry Loane replied to Martin Nelson
I agree with you, Martin, that a video of a conversation is far more engaging than just watching a 'talking head'. My hunch is that a student will engage more and retain more of what they hear when it is presented in this more informal video genre. It would be interesting to know if there is any research evidence to support my hunch.
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... The only exception to the negotiation and re-negotiation approach I suggested in my previous post is, of course, safety-critical training. We do need some specific outcomes and rigorous assessing of the achievement of these outcomes in the case of the skills/knowledge needed by, for example, plumbers, motor mechanics, aeroplane pilots, surgeons.
But...
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I hope nobody will mind me being blunt. I believe that it is a dangerous and simplistic myth to suggest that a programme of learning should have "Learning Outcomes"/"clear goals for our learners" that are specified before a course starts. Clear goals and outcomes are appropriate, and indeed necessary, for civil engineering projects, but not for the process of...
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Terry Loane replied to Susana M
Ken Robinson was an inspiring educational figure and his death last year at the age of (just) 70 was a sad loss. I thought it might be useful to explain something about the context of the animated video used in this step of the course.
1. What we hear in the video is a short extract from a talk lasting nearly an hour that Ken gave at the RSA (The Royal...
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Terry Loane replied to Joe Bennett
@JoeBennett I am really interested in your point of view, Joe, as you teach plumbing. Humanist and social-constructivist approaches are very appealing, but when it comes to safety-critical professional training we have to ensure that students are 100% competent in what they do. A pipe joint that is 90% leak-proof is no good! Likewise we would not want to fly...
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Terry Loane replied to Terry Loane
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My third suggestion for developing a sense of community is, I am afraid, a direct criticism of the direction in which FutureLearn has moved. It may sound wonderfully open and flexible to suggest that as a FutureLearn student you "can complete them [i.e. each course] as quickly or slowly as you like". But it's virtually impossible, I suggest, to develop...
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Terry Loane made a comment
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Terry Loane made a comment
I would say that in the majority of face-to-face learning environments a sense of community among learners will develop naturally. There is often little need for intervention by the teacher, but including collaborative projects in the programme will surely help.
It's different when the course is online. In this situation both the course designer and the...
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Terry Loane made a comment
My answer to the question "who are your students?" is that I no longer have any:-) I retired from paid work as an educator a few years ago. My reason for doing this course is that I continue to be interested in how people learn, and in particular I research and write about the education of teenagers. So that includes what is in the UK known as secondary,...
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Terry Loane replied to Myra Bilal
Oh dear! I have just re-read my previous post. It seems rather pedagogically dogmatic to me - even though that is what I was warning against in my final sentence:-)
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Terry Loane replied to Myra Bilal
I think you make important points, Myra and Aparício, about the teacher not being the centre of attention, but being more of a facilitator. Actually teachers have no choice about this these days, because handheld technology means that it is simply no longer possible for teachers and educational institutions to control students' attention like they did in the...
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Terry Loane made a comment
What a nice idea to have the Padlet map! It's a really engaging way to make connections with other students (and it's not something I have come across on any other Futurelearn course I have done).
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Thank you, Mrs Chips, for your kind feedback. I came to the conclusion several years ago that the really significant impact of digital/Internet technology on education will not turn out to be anything to do with new educational tools and resources (virtual learning environments, videos of lectures, MOOCs etc.) No, the real impact will be that new technology...
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I agree completely that the disruption caused by the rapid rate of development of technology means it is most importnat to seek to create "critical thinking students". Unfortunately we have a situation, at least here in the UK, where this is not happening. The reason is that there is an almost exclusive focus on maximising performance in exams that require...
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Terry Loane replied to Daniel Young
@DanielYoung I think you are absolutely right to point out the connectedness of the various sustainable development goals. I don't wish to sound unkind to whoever wrote this step of the course, but focusing on the linkages and dependencies between the different goals is surely far, far more useful than trying to "rank the 17 goals in general order of importance".
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@AnthonySHIELDS I completely agree with your statement "what better place to learn about nature than outdoors". To see an example of just how dreadful it can be to attempt to teach about nature in a classroom watch the video from step 2.6 of the course (https://tinyurl.com/y49c6bbj) from 46:04 to 47:35. It is is so horrific that it can't be real. Surely an...
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What you say about education in Venezuela is interesting, Erica. Thanks for sharing.
Surely the development of the Internet and of smart mobile devices is the biggest expansion in the availability of knowledge since movable type was invented in the 15th century and books became much, much cheaper. Here is an extract from a recent article about the spread...
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I agree that a mobile device can be a really useful and relatively cheap learning tool. (I have used my phone for part of the time doing this course.) So why are mobile phones banned in so many British schools?
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Here are some more important systemic barriers in the education system, Anthony (largely a repeat of a comment I made at step 1.16):
TIME BARRIERS; why not open educational institutions for seven days a week, including evenings, for most weeks of the year, instead of schools being locked shut for nearly half the days each year?
AGE BARRIERS; could we not...
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You say, Anthony, that education needs to be shaped by the people it is to educate. I absolutely agree. I think that young people, certainly from the age of about 13 onwards should have a much bigger say in shaping their own education.
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You are right, Philippe, to say that "private corporations are private, they need profit." So we should perhaps ask how Samsung imagines that its provision of this free-of-charge Futurelearn course will increase its profits.
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Picking up on your last sentence, Karinne, should the purpose of education be to enable people to thrive in "the world as it is", or should the purpose of educatoin be to enable people to transfrom the world to be "as one want it to be"?
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Yes, indeed, Anthony, it's truly shocking and you have summed it up well. As Ivan Illich wrote in "Deschooling Society" (back in 1971!) schools are "the reproductive organ of a consumer society" .
I was particularly struck by this, from 45:27 on the video:
"One of the great tragedies of schooling is how it has ripped people out from nature and locked...
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Terry Loane replied to Terry Loane
You make an important point here, Anne. Before I retired from paid work I spent 12 years promoting/developing the use of technology in education. It struck me at the time that no institution had thought through how to quantify the amount of time staff spent supporting students online. To some extent teachers' time has never been quantifiable because of the...
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Terry Loane replied to Terry Loane
It would be a mistake, Anne, to think that opening educational institutions for more days and hours in the year would mean that teachers had to work "24/7". Other public services (libraries, hospitals etc.) have far longer opening hours than schools yet those who work in them can still take time off! To quote from a Daily Telegraph article about rethinking the...
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I have just read all the comments so far in this step of the course, Hamish, and I believe yours is the most perceptive and important. As you suggest, there is no way we can claim to be solving the problem of inequality while "those that can't succeed are branded as failures" and "the gap between those deemed to be successful... and the rest is growing rapidly"
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Terry Loane replied to T. M.
I agree, Patricia, about the value of the comments from so many different people throughout the world. With most of the futureLearn courses I have followed, the interaction through the comments has been, at least for me, as educational as the course content. That is not a criticism of the courses, just an acknoweldgement of the importance of peer-to-peer...
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Terry Loane made a comment
Many of the comments have referred to the lack of equality caused by poor or non-existent access to the Internet for many people in poorer communities. This is certainly true, but we should not lose sight of the fact that the Internet represents an enormous step-change in increased availability and decreased cost of learning resources. We are certainly not...
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Terry Loane replied to William Winward
I believe in the importance of precision, William, both in language and in our thinking more generally. But I have no idea why anyone should object to a split infinitive, because I can think of no example in which placing an adverb between 'to' and the infinitive leads to any ambiguity of meaning. Can you?
Examples of split infinitives can, I am told, be...
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Terry Loane replied to Saw Leir Larr
You are right, Saw Leir Larr, to say both that "there always seems to be inequality in this planet" and that "this does not mean one should stop trying to address inequality".
Surely it's just the same as with disease and violence. Inequality, disease and violence will always be with us. We will never eliminate them but we must do our very best to minimise...
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Terry Loane made a comment
Many of the comments below tell of how education systems oppress individuals in particular minorities and social identity categories. Such oppression is undoubtedly widespread, but we should not forget that certain educational institutions and cultures oppress not just minorities but every single student who has the misfortune to be caught up with them. For...
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Terry Loane made a comment
What if we got rid of TIME BARRIERS; why not open educational institutions for seven days a week, including evenings, for most weeks of the year, instead of schools being locked shut for nearly half the days each year?
What if we got rid of AGE BARRIERS; could we not be more flexible in allowing young people to learn with others of different ages, rather...
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Terry Loane replied to Samiul Islam
I particularly liked these two of your 'what ifs', Samiul:
"What if we had different types of educational systems and we could all individually choose which ones we wanted to go into so we could learn in our own personalised way?"
"What if we didn't consider age within education, allowing people to learn from any age they want to?"
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Terry Loane made a comment
Doing this exercise took me back to 1995: In that year I heard a radio programme about a recently published book: "In Search of the Virtual Class: Education in an Information Society" by Lalita Rajasingham and John Tiffin. I bought the book and read it during my summer holiday, sitting outside a cottage in rural France. After reading the book, I said to myself...
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Terry Loane replied to Nilusha Perera
I really like these sentences from your first paragraph, Nilusha:
"Education right now feels very rigid in structure and limits imagination and creativity in favour of memorisation of key topics that they want you to know. I don't want to learn to just memorise some content, I want to learn to be able to research things."
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Terry Loane made a comment
My four sentences:
1. School was, for me, both boring and stressful; boring because I felt held back by the slow pace at which we were being taught, but stressful because I nevertheless felt that nothing less than perfection was acceptable.
2. Education right now feels (in the words of Sugata Mitra) like "a system [engineered by the Victorians] that was...
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I agree with your analysis, Mia. Except that I would slightly disagree with your last sentence. I don't think that it is necessarily the 'smartest' people who succeed. Our system promotes conformity. So it is the conformists who tend to succeed in the education system - the people who will accept being taught one side of history and are happy to regurgitate...
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Your comment, Beckie, is a brilliantly concise and clear description of what is wrong with our current education system, certainly here in the UK. You have summed up all the key shortcomings of the present system in six sentences.
And I read your comment just after watching the video, in which Jess told us that "83% of young people believe that the...
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Terry Loane replied to Veena Singh
@KarinneTeránKorowajczenko It is interesting, Karinne, that your comment emphasises behavioural rewards, what I call extrinsic motivators, while Veena talks of "the joy of pure learning lies in the satisfaction of one's curiosity or interests or in gaining knowledge and new ideas for problem solving or being equipped to pursue one's inner passions" - in other...
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Terry Loane replied to William Winward
I think 'skinning a cat' is rather a good metaphor for current educational practice, William:-) There may be many ways to do it, but none is pleasant either for the cat or for the person removing its skin. Likewise much current educational practice is unpleasant both for those on the receiving end and for those required to subject them to such dehumanising...
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Terry Loane replied to John Daniel
@JohnDaniel I agree, John, that quite a lot of education requjires a mix of interactive/social and independent/solitary activities. Music making is a good example. For most musicians the great joy comes from performing with and for others, but musicians also have to do a lot of individual practice (jazz musicians call this practice 'woodshedding' - locking...
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Terry Loane replied to Cora Teske
I think that in practice, Cora, each of us can be a member of several learning networks, particularly as the Internet enables online networks. And I guess we may need to seek out and join networks if we find we don't have any. Some of these networks may be relatively permanent, but some may be quite short-lived (e.g. just two weeks in the case of this...
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Terry Loane replied to Daniele Monorchio
@DanieleMonorchio @SamiulIslam
I agree, Daniele, about the key importance of the four things you mentioned:
1. task-based approaches
2. cooperative learning
3. skill-based activities
4. engaging in real-life activities.It is a tragedy that none of these four approaches to education is encouraged or assessed in pen-and-paper age-specific standardised...
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Terry Loane replied to Sayantani Bakshi
Thank you, Sayatani, for your comment, which provides, at least for me, a clear description of the role of the educator as a curator of digital resources.
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Terry Loane replied to William Winward
I was particularly struck by this sentence form the video: "the distinction between student and teacher is kind of now gone, because if you look on the internet, you’ll find a lot of teachers who are actually just students who are sharing what they learn as they learn it." So the Internet is breaking down the traditional hierarchical distinction between...
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Terry Loane replied to Vincent D'A
I am really pleased, Vincent, that you have mentioned Illich. One thing that I find remarkable about "Deschooling Society" is that Illich more or less predicted (way back in 1971!) the development of the Internet and its educational potential, when he wrote in Chapter 6 about what he called "learning webs".
In Chapter 6 he also refers to schools as "the...
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Terry Loane replied to Judith Valdivia
I agree, Judith, that YouTube can be a wonderful educational resource. At the moment my favourite YouTube teacher (if 'teacher' is the right word) is Dr John Campbell. Every day he uploads a new video about COVID to his YouTube channel https://www.youtube.com/c/Campbellteaching/videos
He uses technology in a straightforward yet effective way, and his...
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Terry Loane replied to FEI WANG
You paint a picture, Fei, of students whose only interest in their education is that they will succeed in their exams. It's hardly surprising that they should feel like this because (certainly here in the UK) educational institutions - and our culture more generally - put emphasis almost exclusively on exam results and qualifications rather than on what...
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Terry Loane replied to Sally Redgrave
I share your concern, Sally, about pushy parents. But it isn't just the parents. We have pushy teachers, pushy schools, and a pushy government (at least here in the UK) all putting pressure on young people to work ever harder to over-perform in tests and exams. As you say this "may not be what the child or learner actually wants". No wonder so many young...
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@AnnBM Yes, Ann, there are all sorts of flexible and informal ways of assessing and reporting on what a young person is capable of doing, and technology has made even more methods available. (e.g. e-portfolios). There really is no excuse for continuing with GCSEs and the like.
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Terry Loane replied to Jaspreet chopra
You paint a very clear picture, Jaspreet, of the reality of inequality in your country. Regardless of what technology we manage to make available to poorer young people, there can never be any sort of educational equality while some struggle to get enough food to eat while others (for example the CEO of Samsung) have an income of $23 million a year.
Maybe...
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You have included in your comment several points, Janina, that I think are vital in terms of how we need to move forward with education:
1. The importance of high quality mentoring and facilitation that can provide each learner with an "individually devised long term program"
2. Individuals working "at a pace suited to their abilities"
3. Using... -
@AnnBM Thank you for your reply, Ann. And I would say that the first step in moving forwards with education is to abolish age-specific standardised exams and tests, starting with GCSEs (the set of exams taken by most 16-year olds in England, Northern Ireland and Wales). The whole idea of having to memorise material and then regurgitate it by scratching on...
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A good question, Louise. According to this report (https://tinyurl.com/y45z8zc7) Samsung's CEO was South Korea’s top salary earner In 2017, with a salary of over $23 million, which is about 600 times the average salary in South Korea - not much equality there:-)
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I believe you have raised a really important point here, Angela. Surely a key aim of all educational programmes should be to encourage people "to take the initiative to learn... at a level that be tranformative" and "to take their education into their own hands."
Last week (23 September to be exact) was World Heuagogy Day, designed to celebrate and promote...
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For me there are two important points in your comment, Chew Sze Chong. Firstly you ask if greater use of technological innovation in education might make inequality worse because it could "concentrate the wealth again in the hands of the few who develop those solutions". I think this is a real danger. Global internet-based technology does indeed produce a...
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Terry Loane replied to Jan Deurwaarder
@JanDeurwaarder: I know what you mean, Jan, about the 'cry in the wilderness' aspect of comments in MOOCs. My way of trying to deal with this is that I hardly ever add a comment at the top of the page. Nearly always I find an existing comment that is about something that interests me and I reply to that comment. It is through threads of replies that we can...
