Education innovators – among them many teachers – have the ability to reinvent the art of teaching in the classroom.
Yishay Mor in his new book talks about teaching as a design practice that can change the world. The French daily ‘Le Monde’ just published an inspiring portrait of a young teacher who wanted to change his class… and the world. This story makes you believe in the inspirational dimension of teaching. (more…)
For those who travel in Europe on a weekly basis, the publication of the OECD PISA results just confirmed the heterogeneity of European education systems. This is what you could have read in the press while crossing Member States borders: that Swiss students are the best in Europe at maths; German students have improved their maths scores once again; Italian students have improved in maths; and that Spanish students keep falling short in maths. A more in-depth reading would also have told us that Finland has fallen from the podium, Sweden had entered a period of turmoil… The only certainty we can take from last week is that Singaporean students again emerge world beaters in international assessment.
What is the relationship between a marathon mountain bike ride and a classroom experience?
Last weekend, I spent the whole day mountain biking in the country side near Barcelona. For 120 km, our group of 14 bikers rode through small trails, many of them hard to find, and we came back at night using headlamps to find our way through the woods. Another rider and I had brought a GPS. We started following our tracks, sharing indications that appeared on our screens, looking for consensus each time we had doubts or different interpretations. Following GPS indications is not as simple as it may seem, especially in a group. It requires technology understanding, interpretation skills and consensus. Working with technology in the classroom requires the same ingredients, and consensus is hard to reach. Students using tablets in the classroom may be tempted to “follow their own track”, i.e. make individual use of technology. The teacher in the classroom is, like any GPS holder, challenged by another GPS holder to find the right trail.
Vittra school Stockholm
I rediscovered a very interesting study commissioned in the UK by the DfES – Classroom of the Future. It argues that a pleasant and comfortable environment for learning will stimulate children’s imaginations. Everyone will share this view even if most of our schools are very far from offering such architectural and design features. Very interestingly, the report linked the delivery of an effective education, which makes use of all the possibilities of the Information Age, to the way the school buildings reflect advances in technology (1).