I'm a Lifelong Learner!!

What? I realised today that a primary school teacher will spend about 1000 hours a year with a student, this is without any absences from either the teacher or the student. A high school teacher spends only 120 hours a year with a student, without any absence from either side. A parent, at best, will have the opportunity to spend 2860 waking hours with their child. This does not include the time they could have during the holidays. With all that in mind, the teacher is the person who is asked to ready a child for the future. To prepare them for the world out there and create a lifelong learner. The OECD (2016) report entitled “Trends Shaping Education” states that we must re-think our teaching profession as well as spend time looking at assessment and the achievement outcomes of our students to create a breed of lifelong learners. Should this really be our responsibility? So much of raising the lifelong learner is farmed out to coaches, club leaders, medical advisers and techn...

Using Social media in school can be such a wonderful and powerful way of allowing the students work to be viewed by a truly authentic audience. When I was a primary school teacher this would have been the most exciting new way to give my students a digital learning portfolio of their life at school. Now that I have finished my first year as a high school teacher, with only year 9 learning support (often behavioural support) students, I am constantly seeing these ideas through very different coloured glasses. I total agree with Magette 2014, “Embedding social media in the classroom helps equip students, beginning even before middle school, with the skills and judgment to help them become effective communicators in the spaces where it can count most.” I just get this knot in my stomach when I try and imagine how this could be managed well with my students. Would they take this seriously? Which ones would misuse it? I know the ones that would just love it and see it as a fantastic way ...

Introducing BYOD (Bring Your Own Device) into a school of 1700 students and 105 staff is not a small task. The number of hours which go into the planning and implementing of such a task! Well, our high school did it. At the beginning of 2018 we introduced the recommended option of bringing your own device. The students were sent purchase options, best fit type devices and all the requirements needed for their device to be compatible with our school system. I think it was fully expected that around 80% of students would turn up on day one with their new device. Not quite so. There were not many students at all who came with a brand new device. The inequality gap was clearly apparent. The cost of outfitting your child with a new uniform as well as a device was just too much for many families, including my own. Those who had more than one child at the school were certainly not able to provide them all with a device. Ehrich et al (2011) Model for Ethical decision making has been use...