Author Archive
Zoom School
As overheard in school:
Basic Bread Tutorial
Sometimes I like to take a break from teaching and digital technology. Using 4-5 simple ingredients (flour, water, yeast, salt and (optionally) oil), and this tutorial, you can bake a simple, but very satisfying, loaf:
Can We Stop Software From Eating School?
In 2011, Marc Andreessen, venture capitalist and co-founder of the venerable Netscape, noted that “software is eating the world”. His observation was intended to reflect the way that computers, and the software they run, were flipping the business world on its head. Nine years on, and Andreessen’s words ring truer than ever. If anything, it seems that he understated the shifts we were seeing and feeling. In 2020, you could reasonably look at the changes of the past decade and say that “software has eaten our culture”.
Bread & Beer
As part of ICHK’s Deep Learning program, I’ve been working with a group of 10 students over the past weeks, studying the wonder that is yeast. In this hands-on unit, which covers a total of 4 school days, students bake bread and brew beer …
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The Art of Growing Up
This post was originally published as an ICHK Teacher Insight.
The process of becoming an adult is one of life’s main preoccupations: it takes a long time, and requires the investment of a considerable amount of personal, familial, societal energy. As a secondary school …
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Anxiety
Are my anxieties a deliberate result of the capitalist systems within which I have grown up?Simple Scratch Game
In this post you'll learn how to build a simple game using Scratch, the block-based programming language designed for learning to code. The instructions are not 100% complete, so you'll need to solve problems yourself, as they arise.Traditional Schooling
Although not quite as vociferous as Ivan Illich (Deschooling Society, 1971), I am nonetheless a constant critic of what might be termed "traditional schooling". Discipline, rigor, neat rows of desks, exams. You know the drill.
Over a number of years I've criticised my own traditional teaching practices in my talks on Free Learning. To illustrate my point, I've used a three-leaved Venn diagram outlining the interplay between grade worship, conformity and dependence. Expanding on this line of thinking I've recently added a fourth leaf, delusion, which I've previously written about on this site. The result:
Is it any wonder that our school systems produce so many humans (and I include myself in this bracket) who struggle to live within the societies we are building?
Over a number of years I've criticised my own traditional teaching practices in my talks on Free Learning. To illustrate my point, I've used a three-leaved Venn diagram outlining the interplay between grade worship, conformity and dependence. Expanding on this line of thinking I've recently added a fourth leaf, delusion, which I've previously written about on this site. The result:
Is it any wonder that our school systems produce so many humans (and I include myself in this bracket) who struggle to live within the societies we are building?Baking Bread
In last year’s End of Year Assessment (which I did not write about, but you can get a sense of it from the prior year’s) students asked for more curriculum surprises. One them related with obvious relish the tale of the (very random) occasion …
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