Brian's Blog

  Exploring the world of education has shown me how important working together is for success. It's like the heartbeat that keeps everything going. Imagine a story where different people with different ideas come together, making our education more interesting. Collaboration, like the blood that keeps us healthy, not only lets ideas flow but also helps us overcome challenges together. It's like building a strong and helpful group. In this blog post, I will delve into the multifaceted dimensions of collaboration in education, exploring its transformative power, benefits, strategies, and the collective responsibility it gives educators. The Transformative Power of Collaboration Working together with others is like creating a beautiful painting where everyone shares their ideas. This shared knowledge inspires new and creative ways of teaching, helping educators become better at meeting students' needs ( Wenger, 2004) . Collaboration makes educators stronger, more adaptable, an...

The following has been borrowed from my end of year post last year as it still remains appropriate. "The one guaranteed constant in educational technology is change, and the pace of that change is definitely accelerating. So as we approach the New Year I thought it a virtuous time to reflect on this year's development in the use of technology at my school." The biggest shift I have seen with the use of technology had been a pedagogical one. I have begun to find teachers have moved away from asking about how to use specific programs, apps and hardware to focusing on this is what I want to teach what tools are out there to enhance the learning desired. This has included coding , makerspaces , video conferences and mystery locations . I have found a major shift towards teaching genres of programs eg word processing and presentation rather than 'word' and 'powerpoint'. I believe that this has been driven by a greater reliance on cloud based computing. ...

Just over 18 months ago I was exposed the programming process of "Design Thinking" and "Problem Based Learning". Design Thinking The term was originally coined by Peter Rowe in his 1997 "Design Thinking" book. In this he described the methods and approaches used by urban planners and architects. This concept has been more recently been adapted for education by the REDLab Group from Stamford Universities Graduate School of Education . It is a method of planning, goal setting and creating creative solutions for problems to improve future results. Design thinking is regarded as solution focused thinking where the starting point is the goal and then uses backward mapping to fill in the details. "A key component of the process is fostering the ability not only to solve a problem, but to define the problem. This seemingly subtle shift can energize one towards empathetic action and innovation." (REDLab, 2009) Design thinking encourages divergent thin...