Archive for February 2011
The insidious culture of meetings
Posted by: mimanifesto on: February 25, 2011
Everybody complains about meetings don’t they? A culture of meetings has overtaken possibly every industry, business organization and public sector operation, creeping in slowly over the last fifty years or so, gradually cementing itself into organizational culture the world over. I suppose you have to ask, how has this happened, and why? After all, most [...]
Reports of the death of blogging have been greatly exagerated !
Posted by: mimanifesto on: February 24, 2011
- In: Literacy | networking | PLN | sustainability
- 1 Comment
So teens are going off blogging and turning increasingly to social networking sites such as Twitter instead. So says a recent article in the New York Times I came across, courtesy of the Smart Brief on EdTech. Some interesting comment, particularly about the reasons for this apparent switch. One of these was the time taken [...]
Islay first, and the Cedars follows…
Posted by: mimanifesto on: February 21, 2011
- In: change | future of education | ICT
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Well done to the Cedars School of Excellence, a private school in Greenock for equipping all pupils with iPads and having most lessons taught using them. The school’s website proudly boasts that it is the first school in the world to have a 1:1 pupil/iPad ratio. At a cost of £45K, no small change here [...]
Native linguists removed from schools..
Posted by: mimanifesto on: February 19, 2011
- In: Inclusion | Literacy | Leadership | Equality | change | capacity-building | future of education
- 4 Comments
An excellent piece from Tom Shields in today’s Herald newspaper. He takes a rather witty and beautifully written series of pot-shots at Glasgow City Council Education dept for removing all foreign language assistants from their schools by remembering, somewhat fondly, his own experiences of the benefits of language assistants. The enormous benefits of having native [...]
What’s the problem with faith ?
Posted by: mimanifesto on: February 15, 2011
- In: change | Equality | homophobia | LGBT | Same sex marriage
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Just what is it with religion and homosexuality at the moment ? Ever since Peter and Hazel-Mary Bull lost their discrimination court case and rolled out their religion as a justification for their bigotry, the television and radio waves have been hot with news reports and discussion shows trying to analyse the wrongs and rights [...]
Inter professional dialogue as CPD
Posted by: mimanifesto on: February 14, 2011
It sometimes strikes me, as I speak and network with other education professionals that we are rather insular in our approaches. Of course, many folk I’ve worked with went from school, to university, and straight into teaching as their chosen career, and have been teachers and educationalists ever since. However, certainly over the past few [...]
The big society….
Posted by: mimanifesto on: February 9, 2011
So nice to see Renfrewshire council education department enthusiastically jumping on the bandwagon of David Cameron’s ‘Big Society’. They have recently unveiled plans to bring in non GTCS registered folk to teach their primary school kids for two and a half hours a week. I’m sure these will be perfectly nice people who mean well, [...]
You’ve got the looks, we’ve got(or are supposed to have) the brains….lets save lots of money, or the wider purpose of education…
Posted by: mimanifesto on: February 7, 2011
Councils all over Scotland are rushing headlong into the newspaper headlines with their ever more outrageous and outlandish schemes to save money in education. And they are getting wilder and more extreme every day. Hot on the heels of South Lanarkshire threatening successful nursery establishments with closure, axing services to children with special needs, and [...]
Calm before the storm perhaps ?
Posted by: mimanifesto on: February 4, 2011
For the second day running, nothing about education on the ‘letters’ page of The Herald newspaper. Indeed, a quick perusal of the rest of the paper reaveals nothing at all written about education. With the spectre of savage cuts nationwide, teacher redundancies, reductions in IT and computers, increased pension contributions, and other changes to working [...]
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