A teacher is one who makes himself progressively unnecessary
After becoming increasingly frustrated with the British Council’s E-Languages site for our UKIERI link, I’ve decided to set up a blog, which can be used by all partners in Delhi and London to document outcomes. It will also allow students to have discussions without the need for a password, making it easy to hold forums. The site can be viewed at:
I find it odd how so many students are reluctant to integrate their hobbies and interests into their studies – particularly the arts. One of my AS Photography students recently showed me this show reel he edited of himself free style running (aka Parkour):
Perhaps it is the fact that so many of our students view school as a training ground for exams and such out-of-school activities, which they consider to be “fun” should not become confused with school work which is an “obligation”. However, there must be a better way that schools can draw on these non-academic skills and interests, providing a platform for sharing.
Our school currently has links with six schools in Delhi through the British Council’s UKIERI programme. Today, I am running a workshop/conference with a delegation of senior staff from our cluster schools in India and using this sideshow to evaluate our progress so far:
As part of this project, we asked students to create Q&A podcasts. Initially, we asked students from all schools in India and London to exchange questions as audio files and then edit them in audacity or GarageBand to create a podcast. Here is an example of five Q&As:
The film was made by Callum Robertson, a Year 13 student studying A2 Photography, for his exam title ‘Transition’ and captures a mundane journey through a number of fixed perspectives. It was made with the new iMovie, however, there were a number of frustrations as he was unable to slow down footage and limited sound editing, which seems pretty basic for an AV editing application. It is a shame since many schools like use iMovie since it is simple to operate, whereas Final Cut Pro, Avid, etc.. are too complicated to teach in such a short, crowded curriculum. Anyone know of any good alternatives?
This is a very entertaining video of Ken Robinson’s presentation at a TED talk.
Robinson advocates that creativity should be given the same status as literacy and that we don’t “grow into creativity, but grow out of it”. He also discusses how there is a hierarchy of subjects in schools that is mirrored around the world with mathematics and languages at the top, followed by the humanities and finally the arts.
He cites the main reason for this is that the education system is relatively young, having been borne out of a need to educate people for an industrialized society. Students were steered away from doing subjects that was not relevant to their future employment. This has changed as creativity in employment has become a valued workforce skill, allowing companies to innovate and be creative in an increasingly crowded marketplace.
Robinson also goes on to explain how “academic inflation”, whereby students continue to accumulate qualifications and degrees become worthless, is a signal of the need to change and reassess our concept of ‘intelligence’, which must be diverse, dynamic and distinct. Essentially, we need to move away from departmentalized thinking, to valuing all styles of learning.
In practice, I see this as indicating a move away from a fixed timetable and examination focused system to giving students more time to make mistakes without the fear of assessment. Yesterday, I had a chat with some sixth form students about the value of extra-curricular activities and one of the overwhelming points that came across was how the pressure of evidencing all aspects of their learning took the enjoyment out of many activities.
Strobe 4, originally uploaded by Fortismere Art & Photography Department.
This project worked really well – one of our Year 13 students, Patrick Raimondi-Taylor, recently brought in a strobe and took photos for his photography exam project ‘transition’ using a long exposure and low ISO. He’s got some great results – visit his Flickr site and leave a comment.
Next year, I hope to make creating a digital portfolio a prerequisite of the A-Level course so that students are use to sharing and managing assets online.
Drawing Animation, originally uploaded by Fortismere Art & Photography Department.
Animations provide an excellent way of bringing drawings alive. This animation was done by a Year 13 student studying Applied Art & Design.
In order to get more children enjoying drawing, it might be best to move away from the 19th Century concept of Still Life drawing and painting and towards more applied method of drawing such as using drawing instead of images to make an animation.
I used to work with the Campaign for Drawing, which champions the uses and relevance of drawing. They set up the Big Draw events, which have now been adopted across the UK and Eileen Adams, who runs the Education programme, has produced some interesting literature.
Every year, I get a few sixth form students to help photograph the year 11 students during their National Record of Achievement (NRA) evening. We set up a white backdrop with studio lighting and take portraits. In our school, the students don’t have a uniform so they tend to go a bit overboard when dressing up for such events… Here is an animoto video including some of the images:
One of the most stressful parts to organising such an event is giving students access to photographs and then being asked to print them out. So, this year we decided to use Photo Box as a platform for sharing images. In Photo Box, you can specify a password code so that it is not public, but still easily accessed as you don’t need an account to view images. Anyone can then order prints, which are printed and dispatched by Photo Box.
There are other services where you can specify a fee on top of the printing costs so it is possible to make a profit. As a department, this might be an extra way of raising funds to buy capital items or even allow students to profit from their work.
