I see a lot of papers and blog entries on the changing role of education from being a teacher-led learning activity to a student-led teaching activity.
While I see, and agree with, may of the benefits of students directing their own learning activities what I think many of these studies ignore is the fact that a large proportion of young learners do not know what they want or need to learn. They turn up at school and need the guidance of the teacher and the education system to provide them with a broad education to prepare them for later life.
Most students, as they enter their teenage years, challenge why they have to learn what is being delivered in the classroom. What to a sensible, mature adult seems appropriate and important is dismissed in an instant. Given the ‘choice’ of what to learn many students during this period would choose to learn nothing.
Rather than provide the choice and freedom during this period of what to learn, perhaps we should be providing the freedom of how to learn. We should be encouraging our students to develop their own strategies for making sense and meaning of their studies.
Ideally, I would like to see more papers address this issue when discussing the transition from teacher-led to student-led learning.
Incidentally, I am a strong believer in student-led learning and an advocate of the transition of the teacher from “the sage on the stage to a guide on the side”. What I need to see for this to work are educational strategies for ensuring a student-led learner covers an appropriate curriculum for their future needs.

Assistant Professor of Cultural Anthropology Michael Wesch has created an interesting video exploring the changes the internet is making on society.

Both interesting and thought provoking.

Ever wondered why social networking is so popular and what all the fuss is about?

Take a look the following tutorial from the great guys at CommonCraft.

I love the straight talking plain English style of tutorial that the CommonCraft team present.

For anyone wondering what a Wiki actually is take a look at their short video.

Prepare to be blown away by this 20 minute talk by Hans Rosling.
Hans Rosling shows us how, using technology, we can see patterns in the way the world population is changing. If only all learning was as clear, and interesting, as what Hans presents us with here.

It is amazing that plain old data can be taken and turned in to something as clear and visual as what is seen. We are only scraping the surface of what analysis technology is helping us to perform on our data.Truly inspirational!

One day I would love to be invited to TED - and have something equally as inspiring to show people.

I have recently subscribed to GeekBrief.tv. I think that this is a great video podcast with good production values. Each episode is just long enough to watch any time and they are crammed with lots of small bits of info. Cali Lewis is a great host and is fun to watch.

I am thinking of making my own educational video podcasts and we can learn a lot from studying this one.

Watch this space…

It is the time of year when there is a lot of course work to assess.

I have always been a strong believer in providing the marking criteria for students to follow. After all, I have to mark to the criteria so the students should be allowed to know what I will be looking for.

All year long I have been providing my GCSE and GCE groups with the marking criteria I will be using. I have given them frequent and regular reminders that they need to look at the criteria and ensure that their work fits what I will be looking for. I create presentations, provide handouts of ‘tips’ and give print outs of the marking criteria for the students to keep.

Even with constant reminders I am amazed how few students pay attention to those guidlines. Their work often resembles anything but what the marking criteria is asking for. Often the criteria is quite clear in that you have to include a certain section, part or comment to get above minimum marks and still many students fail to include that section.

Even worse, I am still seeing coursework copied from other students within the same class. One daft fool even handed in a piece of coursework which was a direct copy and paste from the examination board exemplar coursework.

It is easy to get good marks and as adults we can see that. However, many of our young adults have yet to discover the benefit of using assessment criteria to get good marks.

Proportions? About 15% follow the assessment criteria, 70% fail to meet the critera and 15% don’t seem to have even taken the effort to look at it.

Assessment for learning - good in theory but not the silver bullet that us adults see it as!

I have seen some events unfold in the school that I currently teach.

The ethos of the headteacher’s leadership is one of student empowerment. On the whole this is a very positive approach and the students are able to take responsibility for their learning. This doesn’t always make things easy for the teacher but is much better for the students and at the end of the day we are all there to help the students to learn.

One thing that has struck me has been that of the students ability (or inability) to learn the responsibility to go with their ‘empowered’ rights.

Children are children. They are constantly learning. They need to learn their social behaviours as well as their academic knowledge.

With rights come responsibilities. The two go hand in hand.

Which led me to think about how students learn responsibility. Observing students it could be said that many of them are irresponsible. They make poor decisions when it comes to:

• behaving in enclosed spaces - running around putting other children’s safety at risk
• looking after their belongings - dumping their bags and coats in the corridors
• dealing with adults - sometimes being cheeky and arguing when it is unnecessary
• behaving in a group situation - behaving inappropriately in a classroom when a teacher is trying to help a class learn, in turn spoiling the learning of others

The question is how to help students to learn to become responsible. While we have been giving students more and more ‘rights’ I feel that we have done little to balance that by teaching the responsibilities to go with the rights.

For example, historically students had to clear the building at breaks and had plenty of open space to run around and burn off any excess energy. Now, we have given the students the right to stay indoors at break and most of them choose to do so. For most of the students this works very well, they act in a responsible manner and there are no problems. However, there are a few students that abuse the right to be inside and run around putting the safety of other students at risk.

How should we deal with this situation?

• Should we have outlined that the ability to stay inside is a right and explicitly explained what the responsibility that goes with this right it is?
• Do we take away the right of the students that behave irresponsibly?

Whenever students have rights do we need to explicitly outline what the responsibilities are that go with those rights?

Can we help students to learn responsibility by removing their rights? I believe that rights and responsibilities go hand in hand. It seems logical that the reward for responsibility is the right to continue to do something.

Reward and punishment is the traditional mainstay of behaviour management in schools. If we are to continue to empower our students then perhaps reward and punishment is not directly applicable to the area of student empowerment. Perhaps it should be the the pairing of rights and responsibilities with removal of the rights of those that don’t accept the responsibility.

I for one think that the rights and responsibilities model may prevent the popular student cry of “it’s not fair!”. As long as we are clear and explicit the right to do something is earned by exhibiting the responsibility to go with it then the students will get to practice responsibility if they want all the things in life that are good.

Every single time I have travelled transatlantic to the United States there has always been one person in the long queue in front of me that hasn’t completed their visa waiver form (VWF) prior to attending the immigration desk.

This not only frustrates the immigration staff but holds up the queue slowing down the whole process and frustrating the many tired travellers waiting to clear immigration.

What I don’t understand is how these people got to be in this situation. They have:

• Just travelled for 9 hours where they have had plenty of free time to complete their VWF
• Had cabin staff parading the aisles with forms offering help and advice
• Watched an in-flight video explaining what the form is, why it is necessary and how to complete it
• Had access to the in-flight magazine that has several pages dedicated to helping complete the VWF

I have a theory as to why this is and how the problem can be addressed. There is a general problem in trying to help the general public to learn how to perform a necessary task and to then actually do it.

The next 6 months will be spent addressing such a problem and how organisations can produce resources that are effective at achieving high levels of learning and compliance.

I am part-way through writing my mini-course on learning and study techniques.

There is some really exciting content and is guaranteed to improve learning skills, retention and problem solving.

Details of the enrolment website will be posted here shortly. The course is FREE of charge and will help anyone from age 14 to 140.