Diigo In Education

"In a world where political divisions seem more entrenched than ever, and a school system which has yet to crack the problem of bullying, an opportunity to engage young people with different voices, narratives and ideas seems urgently necessary. I would suggest that the strategy of "writing in-role" holds the potential to do just this. "

"The education twitter-sphere has been all a-buzz today with stuff about helping (or failing) bright pupils. I am not at all qualified to contribute directly to the debate; I can only recount my own experiences, and anecdotal evidence is not very valuable in such a case. Because of my work as an examiner, I meet history teachers from scores of other schools every summer, and I do not think my approaches were in any way unusual. Yes, I taught at an independent school, so it was selective in terms of ability to pay fees. It was not very selective in terms of ability; plenty of our pupils did well to get C passes at GCSE with a couple of Bs thrown in."

We rely on an assessment measure without taking a close look at what it is measuring and we obfuscate the information we need to evaluate the utility of these measures by reducing the results to numerical values.

"Many students require years of experience to discover their preferred (and most efficient) style of revision. For me, I found that dictating my notes to myself and playing them through my earphones when I lay in bed at night was effective, but this might not work for everyone."

"There's something about origami that really seems to capture children's imagination. In most of the classes that I have taught over the years, there has been at least one child with a real passion for origami. Many a show-and-tell has been dominated by incredible paper-folding creations, from water bombs to paper dragons. Think back to your own school days; which of these origami classics do you remember creating?"

"In education we are very comfortable using the term "middle leaders", rather than "middle managers", to talk about heads of department and heads of faculty. But are they really leaders? What distinguishes middle leaders from middle managers?  Middle managers - and senior managers for that matter - work to the specification of their leaders. Managers only become leaders when they inject something of themselves into their work. Managers sing the hymn sheets of others. Leaders do much more, they add verses, create harmonies and the best compose new scores. "

"Imagine being a child who's given a school note to take home and realising all your friends can read it, but you can't. Or being asked to complete an assignment in class that has been written on the whiteboard but having no idea what it says. Or opening up a book and seeing all the letters jump around. For the one in 10 children in the UK who are dyslexic, this may well simply be part of their everyday life."

"Usually, being able to visualise mathematical concepts to students is an important step in helping them understand techniques to illustrate connections with previous learning, helping them master maths notions to progress their skills. The importance of visualising concepts is clearly integral for Peter Mattock who has collected together a valued resource of mathematical activities that can be used with manipulative across the age and ability range."

"Many people know the benefits of reading, as whole new worlds, opportunities and adventures can open up to help enhance knowledge of the world around us, but getting some young people to read quality can be like extracting teeth!"

Identifying what our children need to learn is one of the most important processes within education. For the teacher this is the question they engage with as they design their teaching and learning units. By no means is this an easy task and the teacher must balance multiple factors to ensure that the programmes they design provide their students with the learning they require. Even the most effective sequence of lessons is of little value if what it sets out to teach has little importance in the lives our learners are likely to lead. 

We ask lots of questions as we plan for our student's learning. Some of the questions we ask are about where they are with their learning. But perhaps we miss one important question along the way. Maybe we should be asking questions about how our students will apply what they learn? 

In a crunch, this site is great for finding translations of popular vocal repertoire.

Sheet music domain. Most music is free to print and easily accessible. Scores range from printed to handwritten and for several different instruments.

Great resource for furthering music theory knowledge. It covers various topics from basic theory to advanced.