Great Lessons (TOM SHERRINGTON)

This series of posts is about the habits of teaching; the things we do every day; the strategies and attitudes that define our default mode. These are the characteristics of lessons that feel outstanding as soon as you walk in… no tricks, no gizmos, just embedded routine practice.

Please read the full Great Lessons Series:

1. Probing  2. Rigour  3.Challenge  4. Differentiation 5. Journeys 6. Explaining  7. Agility 8. Awe 9.Possibilities 10. Joy

TOM SHERRINGTON

How teachers’ myths about the brain are hampering teaching

How teachers’ myths about the brain are hampering teaching

October 17, 2014

Photographs of the left and right midsagittal sections of Einstein’s brain (credit: the National Museum of Health and Medicine)

Teachers in the UK, Holland, Turkey, Greece and China were presented with seven “neuromyths” and asked whether they believe them to be true.

A quarter or more of teachers in the UK and Turkey believe a student’s brain would shrink if they drank less than six to eight glasses of water a day, while around half or more of those surveyed believe a student’s brain is only 10 per cent active and that children are less attentive after sugary drinks and snacks.

Over 70 per cent of teachers in all countries wrongly believe a student is either left-brained or right-brained, peaking at 91 per cent in the UK.

And almost all teachers (over 90 per cent in each country) feel that teaching to a student’s preferred learning style — auditory, kinaesthetic or visual — is helpful, despite no convincing evidence to support this approach.

The new research from the University of Bristol, published in Nature Reviews Neuroscience, calls for better communication between neuroscientists and educators.

“These ideas are often sold to teachers as based on neuroscience, but modern neuroscience cannot be used support them,” said Paul Howard-Jones, author of the article, from Bristol University’s Graduate School of Education. “These ideas have no educational value and are often associated with poor practice in the classroom.”

The report blames wishfulness, anxiety, and a bias towards simple explanations as typical factors that distort neuroscientific fact into neuromyth.

“Sometimes, transmitting ‘boiled-down’ messages about the brain to educators can just lead to misunderstanding, and confusions about concepts such as brain plasticity are common in discussions about education policy.”

The report highlights several areas where new findings from neuroscience are becoming misinterpreted by education, including brain-related ideas regarding early educational investment, brain plasticity, adolescent brain development, and learning disorders such as dyslexia and ADHD.

Hopes that education will draw genuine benefit from neuroscience may rest on a new but rapidly growing field of “neuroeducational” research that combines both fields, he said.

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Abstract of Neuroscience and education: myths and messages

For several decades, myths about the brain — neuromyths — have persisted in schools and colleges, often being used to justify ineffective approaches to teaching. Many of these myths are biased distortions of scientific fact. Cultural conditions, such as differences in terminology and language, have contributed to a ‘gap’ between neuroscience and education that has shielded these distortions from scrutiny. In recent years, scientific communications across this gap have increased, although the messages are often distorted by the same conditions and biases as those responsible for neuromyths. In the future, the establishment of a new field of inquiry that is dedicated to bridging neuroscience and education may help to inform and to improve these communications.

references:

• Paul A. Howard-Jones. Neuroscience and education: myths and messages. Nature Reviews Neuroscience, 2014; DOI:10.1038/nrn3817

Authentic Assessment and Progress. Keeping it Real. | headguruteacher

Authentic Assessment and Progress. Keeping it Real.

POSTED BY TOM SHERRINGTON ⋅ OCTOBER 19, 2014 ⋅ 13 COMMENTS

FILED UNDER  ASSESSMENT

There are many progress paths. The bell curve helps to define standards at any given point but does not fix the path that follows.

This post is based on the ideas that I outlined during my workshop at #TLT14 in Southampton.  It forms part of the process of rethinking assessment at KS3 now that levels have gone.  This is a live discussion at my school and is very much a work in progress.

A good starting point is to revisit the many very good reasons for moving away from levels.  A recent TES post by Tim Oates explains this very well:

I’ve explored a lot of these ideas in previous posts:

• The Assessment Uncertainty Principle
• Great Lessons 5: Journeys
• Assessment, Standards and The Bell-Curve.

In replacing levels, we should be seeking to implement a system that tackles some of the problems levels created.  Here is a re-cap of some of the problems that I see:

• Levels create the impression that learning follows a linear progress path in equal-sized steps.  This an illusion – though widely held as true and enshrined in the levels-of-progress concept.
• Levels suggest precise parallel standards between subject areas within a school  – 5a in History is as good as a 5a in Science – even though almost no work is done in schools to measure this, beyond checking distributions on a bell-curve model.
• In reality, levels and sub-levels have become general bell-curve indicators for a cohort not statements of absolute attainment – so the detail of what has been learned and understood is largely absent from the discourse between teachers and with parents.
• The moderation needed to ensure that a 5a in English in School X in Birmingham means the same as a 5a in School Y in Exeter doesn’t happen.  Again, it is largely an illusion that this level of national standardisation is meaningful.
• It requires precious time and effort to explain how a piece of work can be assessed on a level scale; meaning and detail are lost in the process.  Similarly, it takes precious time and effort to explain how the next level might manifest itself in a real piece of work; more detail and meaning are lost.  Using levels does not help to explain the next steps in a child’s learning in most situations; it’s far more effective to explain the steps in the context of the work itself.
• Very often, the demand to show progress through incremental steps through the levels forces teachers to make arbitrary decisions and to concoct perverse attainment statements that do not fit the organic nature of their discipline.

A possible solution:   Authentic assessment and progress reporting

What is authentic assessment?

In practice, there are just a few different ways to measure performance from which teachers can make deductions about learning:

• Tests. Right and wrong answers or extended answers evaluated for quality. This generates an aggregated score.
• Qualitative evaluation of a product against some criteria – a piece of writing, a painting, a piece of design, a performance. These can generate a wide range of outcomes: marks, scores, broad overall grades or levels. Teachers’ professional judgement is critical.
• Absolute benchmarks: A straight-forward assessment that a student can do something – or can’t do it yet. I’d suggest that there is a very limited set of learning goals that are simple enough to be reduced to can do/can’t do assessment; in most cases there is a proficiency scale of some kind.

Across the range of disciplines at KS3, different situations in different subjects lend themselves to being assessed using a particular combination of these measures. There is usually an authentic, natural, common-sense mode of assessment that teachers choose with an outcome that fits the intrinsic characteristics of the discipline. My suggestion is that we simply report how students have performed in these assessments, with data in the rawest possible state, without trying to morph the outcomes into a code where the meaning is lost.

Let’s explore an example:

In science, students learn about balancing chemical equations in Year 9. They take a test with several questions of increasing difficulty.  Each question is assigned marks based on the number of elements that can be right or wrong. Some or all could be multiple choice questions.  The marking generates a score which indicates the level of a student’s performance.  It could be expressed in raw terms – say a mark out of 30, but a percentage would also to help make comparisons with other tests.

If consistent tests are used over time, the range of marks for any cohort will tell teachers about the performance of each student in the context of that specific topic.  Over time, a series of tests allows teachers to build up a profile of a student’s learning and progress.  Some tests might be harder than others but teachers can see this from the pattern of performance of the whole cohort.   The more tightly focused each test is on a specific set of concepts, the more precise the information will be about any student’s learning.

Teachers would know that a score of, say 70%, is an exceptional score for student with a low starting point, representing excellent progress.  For a High Starter ( to borrow from John Tomsett), 70% might represent progress below the expected level.  For both students, the feedback can focus on the details of balancing equations and the wrong answers. This is miles away from the nebulousness of a 6c.   At the end of each term or year, the cumulative data from tests would represent a strong basis for a discussion with students and parents and for making an overall statement about attainment and progress in a report.

This will work if the tests are well designed to sample the curriculum and to span the range of likely performance levels.  It’s no good if lots of students gain full marks in every test because that would suggest that their is a ceiling on their potential attainment in that area of the curriculum.  The details of all the tests could be shared with parents and students (perhaps online) so that it is clear and transparent. Eg High Starters should be aiming to achieve at least 80% on the unit tests and in the practical assessment. The tests cover the topic with questions like these…..

There is a case for exemplifying standards more explicitly with samples of writing. Not all of science is made up of right and wrong answers; there is always the question of depth:

A:   When someone is running they need to pump more oxygen to their muscles and take the carbon dioxide to the lungs so their heart has to beat faster.

B:  During exercise, energy is released from respiration in muscle cells as they contract repeatedly.  The heart rate increases in order to regulate the supply of oxygen to the cells and the rate at which the waste product carbon dioxide can be expelled via diffusion from the blood into the air via alveoli in the lungs… Etc.

Without the obfuscation of a level ladder, it is possible to illustrate different levels of depth in an extended answer.  This may link to the number of marks given in an assessment and could be used as an exemplar for parents and students.  It is expected that Middle Starters making excellent progress will be writing answers like Example B by the end of Year 9. 

I could make up a similar  example for maths.  There is likely to be a series of topic-specific  tests and, in conjunction with some exemplars of the increasing level of challenge of content areas through the curriculum, this would give all the information needed.  In History and Geography, each unit could have specific outcomes described with success criteria for a synoptic assessment allowing progress to be measured relative to a starting point. Exemplars for written work could be produced and the students’ books would serve as an organic record of progress for all to see.  In Art or DT, success criteria could be used referenced to some exemplar work for students to benchmark their work against.  Grading or levelling might work here at the impressionistic level that NC Levels were originally designed – not the basket-case of sub-levelling that we ended up with.

It might be too confusing for parents to engage with 10 very different modes of assessment across the curriculum.  (One reason levels are held onto by some is because of the illusion of simplicity – an opiate for the masses that masks the underlying house of cards). At KEGS, we devised a generic *, 1,2,3 system that was explained in detail for each subject with specific attainment criteria defined and shared with students and parents.  At Highbury Grove I think a similar system could work but we’d need to add in another dimension to account for the broader range of starting points.  The principle would  be the same: students with starting point X, should  be aiming to reach standard Y by the end of the year, with the standards defined and exemplified by subject.  We haven’t started work on this yet but it is the direction of travel.

Progress will be relatively easy to report, focusing on attainment relative to the starting point and the progress of the cohort.   We’re going to use the simple four-stage code: Excelling, Good Progress, Some Concerns, Poor Progress.

A parent at KS3 could be told that, in Science, a Middle Starter child’s progress level is S (Some Concerns) because the assessments (eg a test average of 48%) indicate that progress isn’t yet in line with that expected for a student starting at that point.  A similar assessment for a Low Starter might warrant a progress level G (Good Progress) and for a High Starter in would be P (Poor).  The combination of progress and attainment is critical to understanding the full picture but the progress measure is the most important.

If I was told my son was Excelling – I wouldn’t necessarily need to know precisely how – I’d trust the teachers to know what they are doing.  However, if I needed more information, I’d expect the teacher to say “your son is Excelling, because for his age and starting point, his score of  82% in the science assessment represents excellent progress”.  In History, it might be a question of showing me my son’s books or an essay at parent’s evening so I could see the progress (or lack of it) with my own eyes. During lessons I’d expect my son to be informed of his areas for development in some depth; he should know which 18% he got wrong and why.   Similarly, he should know where his writing in English needs improvement based on an authentic assessment that suits the process of assessing English.  Levels? Marks out of 20? Approximate GCSE Grade? Whatever is the most natural and retains the most detail.

(See: Formative use of summative tests.)

Standards and Moderation

An important reinforcement to this approach will be the routine moderation of work between teachers within departments and between schools.  If there was a national database of tests and samples of work that exemplified standards for children of different ages then schools could  cross-reference their own standards easily.  In the short term this needs to happen though school-to-school collaboration.  Teachers in next-door classrooms ought to have a shared understanding of what ‘exceptional work’ might look like for their parallel Year 8 classes.  Moderation should create upward pressure; if one school is getting much better work out of the Year 8s who came in with Level 6 in English, then it would lead to a review of standards.  Currently, because everyone’s version of a level varies, that discussion is often reduced to an exchange of mutual suspicion about the validity other people’s assessments.  If we ‘keep it real’, that won’t happen.  It will just fuel an upward spiral of challenge.  That’s the theory in any case.  Let’s see!

As I said, this is a work in progress… and, as ever, I’m more or less thinking aloud.

Standardised testing suppresses intellectual leadership and lets some students coast (Guardian)

Carl Rosin teaches philosophy, English and interdisciplinary studies atRadnor high school near Philadelphia, USA.

When I left university I didn’t consider teaching. I got a job as a technical writer and worked for an organisation that made software for large manufacturing companies. It was a wonderful job for a young person, but after several years I realised that I wanted to be stretched more intellectually and to do something that had an impact on individual people, not a profit margin.

I think philosophy should be a core part of the curriculum. I’m not talking about kids knowing the ideas of 10 philosophers, but about exploring philosophical thinking and understanding critical issues. I teach philosophy as an elective at the high school I’m at. In my course we talk about the philosophy of education, ethics, truth and logic, and how to form an argument. I tell my students that everybody has an opinion and I love that, but I don’t want to ever hear your opinion. When you can take the “I think” and turn it into a convincing argument, that’s when you have real power.

The way I hope that taking the subject pays off the most is through less quantifiable things, such as happiness, self-actualisation and being able to cope with uncertainty. If you give a kid a question and there is an answer, it gives them the false impression that this is the way the world works. We need to encourage young people to be confident enough to challenge their own ideas. If students are self-reflective, they’re better able to assess what their values are.

In the US conformity is a serious issue. As much as we might value individualism, we’re very influenced by peer pressure. This is natural stuff, but if kids can understand why they like or don’t like something and articulate it to their friends, they’ll be happier. Studying philosophy doesn’t necessarily lead to happiness, but it does facilitate the attainment of happiness.

If you give someone a novel to read, and they’re reading it for a test, that’s an insult to the idea of literature and art. When I give a student a book to read, I’m hoping someday that kid will want to have that book on their shelf and talk to people about it. But the craziness we have for measuring things is leading us away from that.

I hate it when a kid says, “Oh, I don’t want to do that, it’s boring.” No, you’re bored. It’s not the same thing. I’m not often bored; I look around and see people I want to talk to, kids I want to challenge, literature I want to read and things I want to think, and there’s not enough time in the day. If I can pass on some of that energy, enthusiasm and respect to my students then I will have been successful.

Something I’m very uncomfortable with is the standardised tests that are used in the US. They’re hugely reductionist. As teachers we should be respecting the things that interest kids. If we constantly teach to a set of requirements, then students won’t have time to explore other things. Something I hear teachers complain about is pupils asking, “Will this be on the test?”

For me, the assessment is the rest of your life. Will you be successful, dynamic and able to give your opinion in a group discussion? The call and response stuff of standardised testing is not creating intellectual leadership, it’s suppressing it. It also lets kids who are doing OK coast. An A grade paper deserves the same amount of constructive feedback as one that receives a C – they are both a work in progress. No student should be in high school thinking that they’re done.

I would like to see the current exam system replaced with a portfolio assessment model. It’s not cost effective, but I think teachers should design how pupils are assessed and a group of unbiased professionals should then vet the quality of these assessments. You wouldn’t necessarily be able to compare results apple to apple with other schools, but you would be creating a dynamic way of examining young people’s knowledge, competencies and skills. As a teacher, I want to be incentivised not to have my students score well, but to develop the most challenging and rigorous curriculum possible.

My school is number one in Pennsylvania’s state rankings, but I wish that hadn’t happened. I like it because I think we’re a very good school, but I hate the fact that schools try to climb that list instead of properly focusing on the quality of their teaching. I want people to see if my students are succeeding or not, but as soon as you put data out there people use it to create rankings – I’d ban them if I could.

Near the end of the philosophy course I teach, I ask pupils to give one of their pieces of work a grade. It’s one of the assignments that I’m most fond of. I get them to do this, and accept their grade without criticism because I want them to feel that ethical transparency that they don’t often feel. If they cheat on a test there are consequences for that, but this is about a duty to tell the truth and reflect on how hard they’ve worked and why. I want to show that I respect them, not by simply saying it, but by handing some power over to them.

Later school start time 'may boost GCSE results' (BBC news)

Delaying school start times could help teenagers concentrate better in class and boost GCSE results, scientists say.

University of Oxford researchers say teenagers tend to start functioning properly two hours later than older adults.

A trial tracking nearly 32,000 GCSE pupils in more than 100 schools to assess whether a later school start leads to higher grades is to be run.

Improved mental health and wellbeing could also result, the scientists say.

Continue reading the main story

“Start Quote

If we adapt our system to the biological status of the young person, we might have more success”

Prof Colin EspieOxford University

Professor of sleep medicine Colin Espie said: "Our grandparents always told us our sleep is incredibly important.

"We have always known that, but it's only recently that we've become engaged in the importance of sleep and circadian rhythm.

"We know that something funny happens when new teenagers start to be slightly out of sync with the rest of the world.

"Of course, your parents think that's probably because you're a little bit lazy and opinionated, if only you got to bed early at night, then you would be able to get up early in the morning.

"But science is telling us, in fact there are developmental changes during the teenage years, which lead to them actually not being as tired as we think they ought to be at normal bedtime and still sleepy in the morning.

"What we're doing in the study is exploring the possibility that if we actually delay the school start time until 10am, instead of 9am or earlier, that additional hour taken on a daily dose over the course of a year will actually improve learning, performance, attainment and in the end school leaving qualifications."

He added: "If we adapt our system to the biological status of the young person, we might have more success than trying to fit them into our schedules."

Prof Russell Foster, director of seep and circadian neuroscience at Oxford University, said that getting a teenager to start their day at 07:00 is like an adult starting theirs at 05:00.

'Results boost'

He also highlighted the results of a small trial at a school in north-east England, where school start times were shifted from 08:50 to 10:00. This led to an increase in the percentage of pupils getting five good GCSEs from about 34% to about 50%.

Among disadvantaged pupils, the increase had been from about 19% to about 43%, he said.

Now in the wider, year-long study, Year 10 and 11 pupils at more than 100 schools will be divided into two groups, with one starting school at 10:00, and the other following the usual school timetable.

Both sets of pupils will also be given education on the importance of getting enough sleep.

Pupils' results will be assessed before the trial and at the end, and comparisons drawn between the late start and normal start time groups.

Some pupils will be fitted with non-invasive bio-telemetric monitoring devices recording their sleep-wake patterns. Analysis of these results will be fed into the study as well.

The study is one of six projects funded by £4m from the Education Endowment Foundation and science charity the Wellcome Trust, looking at how the application of neuroscience can improve teaching and learning in schools.

Education Endowment Foundation chief executive Kevan Collins said: "We're delighted to be researching these cutting-edge strategies based on the latest knowledge in neuroscience."

Eat, Sleep, Research, Repeat

Published by Rachel Jones on May 18, 2014 | 4 Responses

If you exist within the microcosm that is twitter, you cannot fail to have to have noted the flavour of the (academic) year is research. My timeline is full of tweets about research – how to do it – when is it rigorous – how can we learn from it as practitioners.

No bad thing. I can’t escape the feeling that just like other fads before it, research is a bandwagon, a flavour of the month, that is order for us to feel validated by the external educational community, our ideas or experiences must be some how validated by research. No easy thing when critics shoot down much as ‘anecdotal’, and data appears to have to be quantifiable when operationalizing learning is near on impossible.  I see lots of research being held up for the sole reason it is easy to shoot down. Real research is longitudinal, and the outcomes of projects starting now will not be known for many years. Can we wait that long? Can we trust the future governments or even future teaching communities will treasure the results of long laboured research? As a time investment, I seriously wonder if teacher have the job security or the motivation to work beyond the next round of curriculum change.

‘Research’ and I have been friends, or at least acquaintances for a long time. During my PhD the research phase was the fun part, at least compared to the writing up. I then spent ten year or more teaching ‘research methods’ to A-level students so I am interested to see an essentially a non-academic community flocking to research as the provider of answers, when many academics would argue the more you research, the less you find you actually know.

Of course there are now conferences dedicated to ‘research,’ I have attended and enjoyed them a lot, but not as much as the ones involved sharing of classroom practice. I have seen presented top down research dictated from SMT, as well as a more teacher led research movement, and a growing assumption that unless you are involved in action research you are somehow lacking as a teaching practitioner. Part of me, the bit trained for years to research and critique agrees with that, the other part of me, up to my eyeballs in UCAS, reports, and normal teaching, screams that this is madness. That this is in many ways an extra self-inflicted pressure that exists alongside all the existing joys of targets, OFTSED, league tables…. Really? Do you really think teachers can’t be brilliant without research to quantity their ideas? I don’t think many classrooms teachers have the time, or schools money for research to be the only way forward for teachers as a profession.

Here is the problem. The tendency has been to dismiss qualitative ideas in favour of quantitative data. To dismiss the case study in favour of more reliable data, but as any good sociologist would tell you this doesn’t make the data valid.

As a teaching profession are we working towards treasuring one type of data-  I can certainly see the advantages in reliable data, however for my money the real impact and inspiration comes from valid data, which gives not only insight but also empathy with those studied. I see no reason why research should indicate a clinical and cold approach to those studies and some pale grasp of objectivity, which can only be a fallacy as we are all subjects of our own view point.

So yes, teaching community, by all means go and research and use this as a yard stick – but please beware there is more than one way to research, and of course the really important issue is about impact. Research can only be of use if we can adapt it to have impact in the classroom, and for me, this is the real key.

Should learning be fun? Or do we mean enjoyable?

Much has been said about the links between enjoyment and learning, but is enjoyment the same as fun? Gerald Haighconsiders how we should approach learning.

My granddaughter started year 11 in September. When I saw her before the end of the holiday she was apprehensive about what was clearly going to be a challenging time. So, after a couple of weeks I sent her a text: “How’s it going?”

Straight back came: “It’s hard work but I’m loving it so far.”

I smiled to myself. Most teachers, surely, would give a lot to have that reaction from their students. After all, in many walks of life “hard work” and “loving it” do not belong together. 

The world is full of people who, sadly, actively dislike, even hate, their work. Perhaps that’s why something of the same attitude occasionally creeps into education – a sense that lessons aren’t meant to be enjoyed.

Part of the problem, I guess, lies in overuse of the word “fun”. Over the years, we have had so many schemes and books along the lines of Maths is Fun or Fun with the Treaty of Utrecht (okay, I made that one up) that we began to make jokes about them – like that one I suppose.

The problem with that “fun” approach, I’d say, is that it starts from the assumption that learning is inherently disagreeable, and requires the addition of a layer of happy-flavoured jam. 

As a child I was given “Fenning’s Fever Cure”, medicine so dreadful – made, I now find, from creosote – that it had to be immediately followed by a spoonful of golden syrup. That “spoonful of sugar” philosophy, surely lies behind much of the “learning is fun” approach.

But “enjoyment”, surely, is different from “fun”. Often – and I know I am not alone in this – I test such ideas by reflecting on studying a musical instrument, which for many people is the most difficult learning experience they have as adults. If I work on a new piece, one on the far margin of my competence, taking it one or two bars at a time, over many months, then there is no doubt that I am working hard. I am also, however, enjoying the experience. But is it fun? I’d say not. Were I to say to my teacher, “I’m having fun with this new piece”, she would instantly recognise the irony. 

No, the enjoyment comes, not from the instant gratification of a poke from Ken Dodd’s tickling stick, but from the much deeper sense that’s best expressed simply as: “This is bloody hard, but you know what? I can do it.”

As I prepared this article, I became aware just how much has been written about the relationship between enjoyment and learning. I fought shy of actual research papers, because unless you’re prepared to explore the provenance of a piece of research you’d best be cautious about it.

I did, though, find a thoughtful blog post by Chris Hildrew, deputy head at Chew Valley School, called The Importance of Enjoyment.

In it, while making the usual disclaimers – he’s not against teaching knowledge, and accepts that some topics just have be slogged through – he says: “My point is this – children should enjoy learning. Instinctively, they do; everybody does. But this enjoyment needs to be nurtured or it will flicker and fail. Not at the expense of high expectations, but in conjunction with them.”

Mr Hildrew’s belief that all children instinctively enjoy learning is surely true. From the dawn of time, learning has been necessary for survival, with evolution settling on enjoyment as the obvious motivator. A good early years class is a good place to see the principle in action. Ten years ago I sat beside a five-year-old as he set out to write a simple sentence, intent on acquiring the necessary life-skill of literacy. He set about the task with a will, confident in the knowledge that he could succeed.

“I went to the park with my dad, and I went on the swing and the slide,” he wrote – carefully, carrying out all the checks and routines he’d been taught – then sat back with a sigh and smile, awaiting his teacher’s approval.

Is he still as keen on his writing now, at 15, I wonder? Or has enthusiasm been dampened by testing, fear of failure, and a series of classroom regimes that consecutively failed to build on that early excitement? Sadly, as we know, there’s no certainty. It could have gone either way.

At a glance, the teacher’s task appears straightforward. It is to present the child with the next step on their learning journey, saying something like: “This is what you have to do. Let’s not pretend it’s easy, because it isn’t. You’re not here to do easy stuff. But I have confidence that you can succeed. And my job is to help you through every step. Only you have to believe.”

In a fictional world of film or theatre, a visionary teacher might actually make that speech, with appropriate background music. Actually doing it, though, daily, with lots and lots of children, all ridiculously different from each other, is something else. 

The good news, though, is that there are teachers who can and do pull off what is actually a daily miracle, and my granddaughter, thankfully, seems to have encountered some of them.

• Gerald Haigh was a teacher in primary, secondary and special schools for 30 years, 11 of them in headship. You can find him on Twitter @geraldhaigh1

Reference

The Importance of Enjoyment:http://chrishildrew.wordpress.com/2013/08/20/the-importance-of-enjoyment/

Ideas for 3D printing across the curriculum

With 3D printing taking off in the school environment, Peter Jones offers some ideas for its use across a range of subjects. 

Printing in 3D is steadily transforming the world through innovation, speed, localised manufacturing and empowering the creativity of the individual. 

Where computers and mobile technology changed the world and the landscape within education, 3D printing will add another dimension to learning and give rise to the next generation of engineers, designers, entrepreneurs, artists, and industry innovators.

The concept of industrial 3D printing has been around for many decades, used within industries such as aerospace, automotive, product development and engineering. However, since the rise of the RepRap project in 2009, desktop 3D printing has taken leaps and bounds resulting in a technologynow suitable for offices, classrooms and households.

The importance of 3D printing is not just focused on the desktop version, which traditionally uses materials such as plastic, but also focuses on medical and bio 3D printing. The Geno Project has played a significant role in creating 3D printed organs, cell tissue and blood vessels through to innovating cosmetic and reconstructive surgery, for example.

If we take a moment to consider learning – innovating and exciting the classroom, transforming learning processes, and introducing the ability to simplify complex design processes can all be achieved quite simply with a 3D printer.

Design and technology

Complex designs and products can be printed and manufactured quickly and efficiently. Printing in 3D enables a more seamless process, allowing the user to modify the design, tailor sizing, add additional features and use a variety of materials ranging from traditional plastics in solid or transparent colours to wood, chalk and rubber. The entirety of this process creates a great foundation for higher education.

3D printing robots

Robotics and 3D printing are closely becoming aligned, with leading robotic androids now featuring 3D printable parts. 

The importance of robotics within education remains in its infancy although sectors such as warehousing, manufacturing, engineering, finance andtechnology have been transformed. It seems fair to say that the next generation shall use robotics in a variety of forms and situations within the home and work. 

3D printable robots can educate students in a variety of key skills, such as engineering, mechanics, electronics and programming. For example, BQ has introduced PrintBots, a simple 3D Printable Robot kit aimed at all ages with 10 easy steps.

The exciting aspects of kits of this nature ensures the process does not stop once the robot has been built. Instead, the process can develop further to programming, additional printable parts can be downloaded for print, and those students who want to push the boundaries and challenge their computer-aided design (CAD) skills can create their own unique parts for their robots.

Art

3D printing art has challenged the traditional concepts and processes in art and we now have a new generation of 3D printing artists and enthusiasts. It has helped empower the creativity of students to create complex and unique pieces, from jewellery, abstract shapes and concepts to replicating traditional art formats such as statutes, vases and interior design pieces. 3D printingcan also be used to simplify complex designs and introduce 3D CAD into art lessons.

Science

The ability to innovate in science can be seen with the rise of industry bio and medical 3D printers and the introduction of 3D printers into science at an early stage will give the first foundation of how this technology is changing the landscape of medicine, healthcare and science. 3D printing can be used in a variety of formats, such as printable dissection kits – the dissection of a frog printed in plastic to illustrate key organs and discuss how they work and fit together. Moveable joints, working mechanical hands and a pivoting solar system can also illustrate the subject area, creating and necessitating group projects and activities.

History, geography, maths

3D printing can have a place in all subject areas. Learning can come to life by turning back time and creating dinosaurs, fossils and historical features such as pyramids, Roman helmets and castles. Designs can be versatile and be printed as a whole or in stages to demonstrate key syllabus objectives and to further educate the student of the workings of 3D printing, thus allowing a multitude of skills to be learnt and developed simultaneously.

In maths, questions such as how parts interact with each other and the regularities and symmetries of various parts may come to mind. The boundaries can now be explored further by printing tangible parts, such as moveable cogs, a working abacus and mathematical shapes.

Geography lessons can also benefit significantly, recreating complex structures such as volcanoes and sediments in parts or stages to illustrate the inner workings or create 3D terrains of various world locations.

Even drama

From Games of Thrones to Hollywood sci-fi blockbusters, 3D printing has transformed film sets with leading prop-makers using the technology. Drama students can use this outlet to be creative and work with various 3D printingmaterials to create a range of props and allow productions to become one step closer to realism.

Conclusion

With all new technologies, the concept can seem at times confusing and complicated. However, we are now entering the third generation of desktop 3D printing and the process is as simple as plug and print. The design process, which comes in tandem, could also be considered daunting – however, with software such as Google Sketchup and TinkerCad, 3D CAD has also become a simpler process.

The cost of 3D printing and printers has also decreased significantly with a variety of education-friendly 3D printers now available from around £550. This downward cost trend will continue, making it an accessible tool within schools.

• Peter Jones is an expert in 3D printing who works for PrintME 3D. The company provides 3D printing education packs and training days. Visit www.printme3d.com/solutionsme/education

Does a five-year-old need to learn how to code? (BBC NEWS)

Here's a scary thought for any parent whose child has just started primary school.

The new national curriculum for Key Stage 1 - ages five to seven (Years 1-2) - requires pupils in all local authority schools in England to "understand what algorithms are; how they are implemented on digital devices, that programs execute by following precise and unambiguous instructions; create and debug simple programme".

And there were you thinking they were just going to be doing a bit of colouring.

The rather daunting-sounding plan is part of a push to get computer coding taught in school from an early age as a way of helping to find programmers for a jobs market that is increasingly reliant on such skills.

Putting aside the obvious parental worries that our five-year-olds are not yet able to read properly let alone code, the other question is whether the education system, which struggles to keep pace with technology, is coming to coding rather late?

We are entering an era when computers are actually beginning to teach themselves. Known as cognitive computing, the new branch of computer science revolves around the idea of training a computer to think like a human brain.

It could mean that we no longer need a bunch of programmers sitting in a room writing lines of code which, in turn, could mean that the skills which schools are just coming round to teaching are already outdated.

That's the view of technology journalist Kevin Maney who, writing in Newsweek, describes coding skills "as about as valuable as cursive handwriting".

He points to Muse, a program being devised by the US military's science laboratory Darpa (Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency).

The program aims to give a computer all of the world's open-source software and organise it in a giant database. It means that someone with no computing knowledge can simply ask the computer what he or she wants it to do and it will find the necessary code to carry out the task.

Dead language?

Is Java going the same way as Latin?

IBM is leading the cognitive computing field with its supercomputer Watson, which has already proven its human language skills by competing and winning US quiz show Jeopardy.

On its website explaining the concepts behind Watson, it gives the example of an executive of a large store who, in the near future, rather than employing someone to write an algorithm to work out the most profitable place to build their next shop, could simply ask the computer.

So, in an era when we can chat with our computers, will Java, C, Javascript and other computer languages be about as relevant in the average workplace as Latin?

"Code is definitely evolving and the specific languages we use today may not be used in five to 10 years," admits IBM programmer Dale Lane. "In fact I hope that coding language in 10 years' time will be closer to the language we use to talk to each other."

But for him that doesn't mean that coding is dead.

"Coding isn't going to become outdated, but it is going to evolve," he said. "It is not just about writing lines of code it is about starting to teach logical thinking, breaking things down step by step," he said.

He has seen the benefits for his own young children.

"My youngest is six and what she is doing is more about finding ways to solve a problem which to me is the same as writing an algorithm," he said.

"And funnily enough my 9-year-old has just started to learn Latin."

Digital natives

Kids love technology but do they need to know how it works?

These was once a time in the dim and distant past - well, the 1980s - when coding wasn't just a good skill to have it was pretty damn essential if you wanted to penetrate the confusing world of computers.

But these days a two-year old can operate a tablet computer and a child given a new phone can personalise it with apps, games and home-made video content faster than a parent can say, 'I want to know your password.'

So with computers now officially user-friendly why would the generation of digital natives need to understand what is going on beneath the bonnet of their shiny devices?

"It is about teaching kids that it is not just a black box that they are consumers of but it is something that they can change and modify too," said Mr Dale.

"The tools we have to create content today are amazing but we want people who will create the tools of tomorrow and they are going to be the ones that open up the box and tweak it," he said.

Algorithmic future

How will teachers cope with the new coding-heavy curriculum?

The new focus on coding has meant boom times for organisations such as Codecademy.

Since it was founded three years ago, 25 million people have taken its courses.

This summer one of the biggest groups of applicants was teachers, desperate to polish their digital skills before the new term and new curriculum kicked in.

Codecademy has partnered with more than 1,000 schools in the UK and has had 4,000 teachers taking its courses.

So does it think that it will be able to equip teachers with the skills they need?

"There is apprehension about whether we can train enough teachers in time and as with any big changes there is always going to be hiccups and it will be a while before it is completely embedded," said Rachel Swidenbank, head of UK operations at Codecademy.

Techno-manipulation

There is little doubt that in today's job market coding can come in pretty handy in a range of industries that previously had little or no need for technological skills.

Algorithms are increasingly driving everything - from medicine, to the legal profession and even journalism, everyone wants a piece of code that will help them do their job better.

But as our society becomes more and more governed by technology so people will need to know exactly what the machines are up to, argues Evgeny Morozov, contributing editor at the New Republic and a keen watcher of the social implications of technology.

"Learning to code will make us question all the techno-manipulation around us. Just like learning to read made us question all the propaganda," he tweeted recently.

So parents, like it or not, the era of colouring-in may be over. Now your little ones are more likely to come home with a computer game they made than with a badly-drawn picture.

Prepare yourself for a household of logical thinkers.