Comments on: TESS Article 12: Giving Up Control

By: Linda Stormonth

Linda Stormonth — Mon, 25 Aug 2008 10:28:41 +0000

Congratulations on such an interesting website. (Where do you find the time?!?)
As part of Curriculum for Excellence, and as one of my own personal crusades, I am interested in Independent Learning. Whya wait till senior years? So, I have just started introducing Collaborative Learning where pupils work in groups to teach each other and/or to practise work. I am only feeling my way and have had mixed results in the little I have done so far BUT the pupils LIKE this style of learning (at least for the moment). Interestingly, some colleagues remarked to me that they were uncomfortable with the style of it since it would mean “giving up control”.
Example of CL in French is writing a paragraph on a different aspect of The Simpsons family as a prelude to writing about their own.
My S1 class today did various activities by themselves in their groups on numbers 1-20. Would they have learned more if I had stood in front of the class and run things? Probably, yes. But did they enjoy the experience, definitely. Part of the success of this approach lies in planning, clear instructions and Learning Intentions so that they can be independent in the way they complete a task.
Concerning your point on LIs and context: Shirley CLarke makes some of this clear when she talks about, for example, the LI is to write an argumentative essay but the context could be many different topics or curriculum subjects.

By: Jim McDougall

Jim McDougall — Sun, 10 Aug 2008 00:34:39 +0000

Lots to think about here! Re Jaye’s post I wondered if you had any empirical evidence of countries who had followed this model you are proposing. How successful was the school in Finland? How many chose not to attend school? Are we moving towards home-schooling, and a consequent loss of the social aspects of learning? (by which I mean debate, discussion, question and answer, group work, peer marking, etc). I know GLOW is new, but an existing online community of resources, such as BBC Bitesize, school and authority wide blogs, wikis has grown up in the last 5-10 years; do we know how effectively teachers and pupils use what is already out there? I suspect many pupils don’t yet make effective use of existing online support materials.
Are we putting too much faith in GLOW and online learning as a substitute for the expertise and enthusiasm of teachers?

By: Jaye Richards

Jaye Richards — Thu, 07 Aug 2008 12:14:46 +0000

I’ve done this for the courses I teach as well. And on a recent study visit to Finland, one of the schools I visited had also done this using Moodle. The students could choose to attend school, or just to access the course on-line. Now there’s a thought !!

By: dave t

dave t — Tue, 05 Aug 2008 18:53:11 +0000

“Over the course of the last year I’ve spoken to senior students from many schools and without exception they all said they would have welcomed the chance to access their entire course on-line. That’s not to say that they didn’t want a teacher but that they wanted their teacher to work in a different way.”

Which is how I’ve been changing my style and use of resources including IT, paper and blogs etc as well for my senior pupils. Indeed I also use tutorials for some of my S3. It works and also encourages them to do more work to ensure they get the grades they deserve in return for their efforts not what they have been spoonfed.

The way ahead once we get GLOW sorted out up here!