Teachers for Supply

Students at the University of Leicester’s new distance learning MSc in security, conflict and international development face more challenges than the typical distance learner. To illustrate, some students might spend weeks without access to an online connection, working in a refugee camp in post-conflict countries. How does the university make certain these remote students have everything they had to perform their studies

“When you are doing that kind of thing, you cannot be carrying huge folders of printed material,” says Prof Adrian Beck, head of the university’s department of criminology. “It struck us that we would have liked to seek out a technique for them to move our materials that may be highly flexible but low-weight, and offers them access to all of the material they are going to need while at the go.”

The solution was to provide every student at the course a free iPad, directly to which they may download a bespoke app and all of the course materials. Despite concerns from the university about security and technical support, the plan has gone smoothly. a couple of months into the MSc, no iPads were lost or stolen and scholars have responded with enthusiasm.

Distance-learning providers already use virtual learning environments (VLEs) to enable students to read documents online, contact tutors, submit coursework, or engage in discussions with other students. However the increasing approval for smartphones, iPads and Kindles implies that universities at the moment are responding to student demand to access those resources from their mobile devices.

The Open University (OU), for instance, is developing a brand new generation of interactive course materials for tablet computers and has just launched OU Anywhere, a tablet and smartphone app that allows students to download the entire course materials they wish directly to their mobile devices. The app also allows users to access the university’s VLE to have interaction with fellow students and tutors. For distance learners, who often struggle to mix studying with full-time work, this gives a brand new flexibility. Prof Mike Sharples, chair in educational technology on the OU, says mobile devices are perfect for students who wish to study during lunchbreaks or quiet moments at work, or at the train home.

As the price of technology falls, mobile devices become more powerful and cross-platform development becomes simpler, it kind of feels inevitable that universities will begin to take mobile devices under consideration after they design learning resources.

Stuart Sutherland, senior development and delivery manager on the University of Derby Online, which has recently introduced an app to permit mobile access to its VLE, thinks that the arrival of free Massive Online Open Courses (MOOCs) is forcing traditional universities to elevate their game, and to design content specifically for a mobile environment, akin to short videos or podcasts. “The small video explaining a troublesome mathematic or scientific phenomenon is often a greater way of explaining that than text,” says Sutherland. Terese Bird, a learning technologist on the University of Leicester who’s evaluating the impact of tablets in distance learning, argues that mobiles could be ideal for bite-sized learning: “One benefit identified by scholars is if you learn something briefly frequent bursts, you may actually have the ability to learn better than doing a five-hour study spree on the weekend.”

Opportunities for social learning open up when students use mobile devices: the OU, as an example, plans to permit students to share their e-reader annotations online, and to determine which other students are reading an identical text and chat online to them about it. The Leicester MSc students have an app that permits them to determine where other students on their course can be found and contact them. They are able to also make video calls to their tutors in given time slots or they could ask written questions, with the answers then made available to other students. Twitter functionality may be built into the following iteration of the app. As one student, RAF squadron leader Julian Turner, says: “i can often be using a note-taking app, ebook reader app and mind mapping app concurrently when studying.”

Mobile devices offer not only convenience and adaptability, but potentially a brand new way of studying. Equipped with cameras, video and sound recorders, and GPS, they allow students to become creators in addition users of info – by recording a brief video for a course assessment, as an example. John Traxler, professor of mobile learning on the University of Wolverhampton, says mobile technologies can be utilized to assist undergraduates “think like scientists, to have hypotheses and test them by gathering data within the wild as opposed to re-enacting what Michael Faraday did 200 years ago”.

It could be early days, however the potential for using mobile technologies to remodel the experience of distance learning is big. As Beck says: “Distance learning has gone from being something pretty static and lonely to something it’s a lot more dynamic and interactive, and you’ll find the right way to engage students in a community of learners that was quite difficult to do prior to now.”

Thank you, Seumas Milne, for placing into words exactly what i’ve been thinking these long dark months of Michael Gove’s stint as secretary of state for education (Gove is not only a bungler, he’s a destructive ideologue, 13 February). Further, though, has anyone else thought throughout the long-term implications of his wrecking-ball policies

Imagine a future where state-funded education has ceased to be a countrywide, integrated endeavour, where the commercial and other vital needs of our country as an entire can now not be met through an informed and enterprising general population, for the reason that majority of colleges are run to make profits for globally distant corporations instead of the purposes of individual children.

How would we even start to compete with countries in Europe, nearly all of which still hold to a “national” educational project, with the fractured strategy to local education Gove has installed place on our behalf: free schools with very little checks and balances from local, democratically elected bodies; academies with unsustainable funding i locate it baffling to look our hitherto hugely successful system being systematically dismantled with huge implications for the industrial way forward for our country. What’s in it for the coalition, i ponder
Joyce Massé
Hemel Hempstead, Hertfordshire

• While we believe Margaret Pelling (Letters, 15 February) that the coalition has lead the way for the privatisation of the NHS, she shouldn’t be reassured that education is safe, and there are “no commercial interests waiting greedily in the wings” to take it over. Seumas Milne two days earlier reported a leaked document that prepares for the “reclassification of academies to the private sector”; he cites one such commercial company already involved in academy schools, the American K-12.

Our research found that private sponsorship has been integral to academy schools since their inception. Cambridge Education Associates (owned by the Mott MacDonald management consultancy) was handed control of a school in 2003. The Reed Employment agency, Amey, WS Atkins, Capita, Nord Anglia, Group 4 (with the Tribal Group), Jarvis, Serco and Ensign are just some of the for-profit companies involved as “partners” in academies and “free” schools. The Swedish commercial companies Kunskapsskolan and IES are planning to take over chains of UK schools. The “commercial interests” in education aren’t anyt just waiting inside the wings, they are already there.
Professor Deborah Philips
University of Brighton
Professor Garry Whannel
University of Bedfordshire

• One of Michael Gove’s main aims have been to make the English education system “world class”, but my colleagues abroad tell me he has turned it into a global joke, with the debacle over the Ebacc. We want a democratic approach to developing policy where teachers, employers, students and fogeys are consulted before public pronouncements are made. The time, money and resources which have been spent responding to Ebacc must have gone towards coping with students’ learning needs.

The conclusion to be drawn from Gove’s bungling is that government policy has become the largest obstacle to improving standards in education.
Professor Frank Coffield
Institute of Education

I suppose Niall Ferguson’s highly personal attack on me (On history, Gove is ideal, 15 February) as regards to deserves a response. Intellectual consistency hasn’t ever been his specialty, so I wasn’t surprised when he backed Michael Gove’s narrowly Anglocentric proposals for a brand new school history curriculum, despite the fact that Gove rejected the worldwide sweep of Ferguson’s own proposals. Ferguson doesn’t object to the curriculum’s obsession with teaching “facts” in preference to analytical skills, even though his own books are stuffed with arguments that schoolchildren surely find it stimulating, though not really too hard, to analyse and disprove.

Ferguson portrays me as an ivory-tower academic with out a knowledge of college education but, as he knows perfectly well, i’ve two school-age children, both studying history. I even have talked to many teachers and pupils. I’m well briefed at the current history curriculum and the government’s plans to scrap it by the numerous supportive messages I’ve had from history teachers.

Ferguson boasts that he is “written and presented popular history”, but being a telly don doesn’t equip you for the realities of the school room, as David Starkey found to his cost in Jamie’s Dream School. i’ve got, as Ferguson says, written works on Nazi Germany but, “dry” or not, they’ve sold greater than 1 / 4 of one million copies in English and been published in lots of other languages. After all, I’d rather have a “dry” style than follow Ferguson in writing articles that ape the sneering populism of a regular Mail leader.
Richard Evans
Regius professor of history, University of Cambridge

• Professor Ferguson’s application of the term “partisan prejudice” to Richard Evans and David Priestland is ironic. His cliched jibes about “dreaming Oxonian spires” to melt public opinion for the replacement of a rigorous academic discipline with a lifeless, hackneyed, unimaginative and triumphalist national narrative are inexcusable.

My own 14-18 students are virtually unanimous of their horror on the considered an all-British history curriculum, and passionate of their defence of the present objective, balanced and evidence-based approach as an encouragement to free thought. Should the proposals go ahead, secondary school pupils will see through this thinly veiled try and indoctrinate them and abandon history on the earliest possible opportunity. It’s Professor Ferguson who must “set foot inside a college classroom” or have “a talk with a history teacher or a pupil”. He can be welcome to come back to my school.
Katherine Edwards
History teacher, City of London Freemen’s School, Ashtead, Surrey

• My experience of nineteen years teaching in secondary state schools and now as a teacher educator at Oxford University has given me a variety of access to teachers, parents and pupils. Lots of my pupils, taught under the present curriculum, would recognise that says should be supported by evidence.

My pupils would tell me to not base my arguments on anecdotal subjective selections. Ofsted’s History for All (2011) relies on visits to 166 state schools. It concludes that “the national curriculum orders and programmes of research in key stage 3 have ended in much high-quality teaching and learning in history”.

My pupils would advise that having checked out the problem extensive I should talk about an summary. David Cannadine’s The proper of History reviews 100 years of educating history, and means that no golden age existed when all children left school knowing key events and individuals.

Finally, they might tell me to observe other interpretations. Ferguson chooses to not consider the Royal Historical Society’s conclusion that the draft is just too narrowly concentrated on British and political history, and its regret about its “strictly chronological sequence”.

The draft takes little account of the contingent nature of history and of the complex ways that learners progress in history. The evidence of teachers and their experience of learners should be central to any reforms.
Jason Todd
History curriculum tutor, department of education, Oxford University

• As a first-rate teacher, I question if it is possible to do justice to a few of the subjects we’re being asked to hide inside the hour per week we will be able to realistically expect to allocate to history. Equally, key elements in history should study by a non-specialist in limited time just so that the stern chronology could be preserved.

Also, with school budgets being squeezed increasingly more, some primary schools might want to form mixed-year classes. This works because we will be able to differentiate work by the talents each child has and people they should acquire next. However, to fulfil this programme, with its emphasis on knowledge other than skills, different years might want to study different periods in history.

We ought to consider if it is possible to deliver this content effectively inside the time available. Without this, its merits or otherwise are irrelevant.
Sue Parkes
Buxton, Derbyshire

• Rebecca Grant (Letters, 16 February) is ideal – history teaching should point to the uncomfortable legacy of slavery and colonialism on current events, but not only on Britain’s horrific treatment of asylum seekers but on foreign policy too – as Iraq and Afghanistan demonstrates. The racist rationalisation that conquering other people’s countries is somehow for his or her good is an identical one utilized by the British after they claimed to be “civilising the savage” in India and Africa.
Dr Gavin Lewis
Manchester

• Niall Ferguson says that every one his children left school knowing “nothing whatever” in regards to the Norman conquest, the English civil war and the wonderful Revolution, and “a section” in regards to the Third Reich, the hot Deal and the civil rights movement. I blame the parent.
Aiden Lambert
Dublin

Since becoming a teacher i’ve been a passionate supporter of inclusive education. An education system where every child’s needs are thought of in order that each can feel equally welcome and feature their highest expectations met. Contrary to government propaganda, there hasn’t ever been a time when inclusive education was the predominant ethos. There were, and stay, pockets of wonderful practice however the system as an entire hasn’t ever really got its head around puzzling over each child as a valued member of the faculty community.

So, i used to be not surprised to work out the Education Guardian story on Tuesday a few new report that shows 22% of kids with disabilities are being illegally excluded from school once per week. These worrying statistics match my very own experience, and the experience of many fogeys who’ve children with disabilities and special needs. The tale proves this can be a critical and national issue that needs addressing.

Government obsession with SATs as a measure of a school’s success would not help the location in any respect. It’s easier to dissuade parents with children who’re unlikely to present you national expectations in SATs than welcome all children into your school community. The Children’s Commissioner asked me recently what i’d say to the secretary of state to enhance education. My reply was to reward schools who successfully include high levels of pupils with statements of special needs; for Ofsted to have a look at the full area when judging a university and penalise the colleges who don’t take proportionately as many children with special educational needs and disabilities (SEND) as their neighbours and agreeing along with her report – to guage schools as ‘inadequate’ in the event that they are excluding disproportionate numbers of youngsters. The evidence (see the Children’s Commissioner’s exclusions inquiry from last year) seems to signify that many new academies, on that criteria, will be put into special measures.

I don’t need people to be fooled into thinking that special schools are the reply. My view is that each one children ought to be included of their local inclusive school making the desire for special schools redundant. Plus, the DfE’s own statistics show that during 2009/2010 there have been 14,910 fixed period exclusions from special schools that are also becoming increasingly selective of their admissions criteria.

The advert for the job I applied for asked for an ‘inclusive headteacher’. The governors, staff, parents and pupils have inclusion flowing through their veins. Our five children with hearing impairments have their very own BSL interpreter who’s teaching all the children inside the school sign language (sign language and never sign supported English). Our youngsters with severe autism and Down’s Syndrome generally is a handful and require significant adult support. We have got a nurture group where they spend a few of their time in a smaller, quiet atmosphere with a high level of adult intervention. All my staff are having in-depth training in safety first so that it will safely hold the kids if the placement requires it.

But the secret thing is an inclusive ethos from the head of the college. Teachers may be pro-inclusion, but they wish support from school leaders and governors.

My school is a microcosm of society. We’re soon to become a co-operative academy signing as much as the values of the co-operative movement worldwide. Central to this philosophy is that each someone is effective and deserves a spot in our society. My future goal is for each school to incorporate every child from it’s area people. i need teachers and headteachers to incorporate every child who comes throughout the door adapting the building, curriculum and ethos to be large enough to deal with regardless of the child needs. In 2010 I gave a conversation on the NUT conference. I asked the audience to place up their hands in the event that they had successfully included a baby with a listing of each impairment that i may consider – most people post their hands every time. The expertise is offered we only need to hunt down the pockets of fine practice and adapt our faculties in order that all of us become experts in inclusion – and create a greater world for us all.

Nigel Utton is headteacher of Bromstone Primary School and chair of Heading for Inclusion. School leaders can access Heading for Inclusion as a bunch at the National College of college Leadership portal.

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Some youngsters do the grand tour between finishing compulsory education and the beginning of adult responsibility. a little bit backpacking round Europe. Getting off your tits on a south-east Asian beach. Sinking a couple of wells for the good thing about a Chilean village. All fine and mind-expanding experiences, none of which I did.

My personal grand tour plumbed the depths of the united kingdom economy.

Between 16 and 21, I stacked shelves, tended bars, packed boxes, waited tables, washed floors – did anything that might make me the minimum wage (or, since this started before i used to be eligible for the minimum wage, at the least the cost of a pint per hour) and will be done in shifts around my education.

At the weekend, Iain Duncan Smith claimed that some people “think they’re too good for one of these stuff” – by “this sort of stuff” he meant experience in unskilled labour, and by “some people” he specifically meant Cait Reilly, a graduate who successfully took the dep. for Work and Pensions to court after she was told that she needed to surrender volunteering in a museum and work unpaid in Poundland, or lose her jobseeker’s allowance.

IDS was incredulous at claims that working without recompense from the employer was reminiscent of slave labour: “She was paid jobseeker’s allowance by the taxpayer to try this.” Actually, a good way to get all technical about it, and rather unhiply insist on words being taken to intend what they really mean, jobseeker’s allowance is an allowance paid to people within the strategy of seeking a task (as Reilly was).

The appropriate remuneration for those who are working in Poundland is a wage paid not by the taxpayer but by Poundland. Poundland gets the advantage of Reilly’s labour, in any case. The taxpayer gets … nothing.

But IDS said much more than this. He said that “most adolescents love this programme [of unpaid labour in unskilled jobs]”. Presumably IDS believes that these teens – we could call them workers State employees within the service of personal enterprise Serfs – have become some advantage from this arrangement. i will not deny that I learned lots from my five years within the hinterland of earning power.

For example: at 16, I learned your entire velocity code system for the Co-op’s produce section by heart, excluding probably the most lesser-purchased exotics. (A velocity code is a 3-digit number utilized by the till system in lieu of a barcode. Carrots were 123. Bananas, 950. i’ll go on. There’s a complete numerical dictionary of fruit and veg lodged in my brain where my irregular French verbs must have gone.)

But a Rain Man recall of velocity codes is not one for the CV. The identical could be said of alternative things I learn: that a Dairylea Dunker won’t take an excessive amount of from your hourly wage, but it surely definitely doesn’t qualify as a lunch; and that there are people on earth (presumably people who’ve never needed to work within the service industry) whose eyes flame with hatred if you ask in the event that they have a Dividend card.

Working at the packing line of a mail order company, I learned that standing in a cubicle while classic cotton apparel flows directly to your workbench – an unstaunchable deluge calibrated to be slightly faster than the employee can manage – appears like the worst anxiety dream you have ever had. Working as a waitress, I learned that i used to be unlikely to work as a waitress for terribly long. i attempted, alright I just will not have the balance or the spatial awareness.

I worked in a genuine ale pub after that. That was worthwhile ones: I learned the finer points of cask bitter, and in addition that if a leery man orders orange juice thrice in a row, it isn’t because he’s seeking to up his vit C intake, but as a result view he gets when his unsuspecting server bends all the way down to get the carton from the underside of the fridge. All of those are great things to understand, but none so good that I’d was happy to receive this treasure of wisdom because the sole reward for my labour.

There’s one lesson that I’ve taken from these jobs into my post-university career: the lower you might be, the harder you figure, and the more thanklessly. i would feel moderately fatigued from a heavy day of journalism, but not the aching tiredness of scampering about in heels for eight hours, unsteadily delivering meals that cost greater than I’ll make in my shift. I’ll have minor clashes within the office, but i haven’t got to suck down the total contempt of a customer who considers me the personification in a polyester tabard of everything he despises (especially loyalty card schemes).

I’ll do anyone of those jobs again any time i would like the cash, but what I learned from my grand tour of the minimum wage – what Reilly knows too, and what Duncan Smith pretends to not understand – is that none of those jobs are worth doing in case you do not get paid.