Exploring Learning

… what we have loved, Others will love, and we will teach them how (Wordsworth, 1888). This quote embodies my belief about reading and is at the top of my Books 2014 page, which charts my attempts to read 100 books this year. It also heads my latest essay documenting my research into the impact daily reading can have on overall achievement in middle-school learners. ***** I have always believed that reading has a significant impact on our understanding and appreciation of the world. As both a life-long passionate reader and an experienced English Language Arts teacher, I have witnessed first-hand the impact that reading has on the ability of learners in terms of comprehension, grammar, empathy, confidence, vocabulary and expression. This has however , only ever been phenomenological through informal observations in the classroom, and in an effort to incorporate sustained silent reading (SSR) as a regular, valid and essential practice, I have embarked upon this resea...

Marshall McLuhan (1969) claims that, as humans, we are only aware of changes to our environment when the new “supersedes” the old and that we are actually “always one step behind”. If our survival is “predicated on the understanding of new media” (McLuhan, 1969), we have a responsibility to consider the future of educational learning within a digital realm and make learners aware as much of the medium as we do of the message. Often, we are presented with a dichotomy of Utopian and Dystopian representations of technological advancement, and McLuhan’s assumption suggests we may be doomed unless we adapt to new media. If we can do what all good pedagogy does and bring what we know to the table as a starting block, we can draw comparisons between the unfamiliar and the familiar, and the abstract and the concrete, as a way to try and understand the assumptions made about new media and ways of delivering learning. A Utopian perspective presents technology as our salvation - transformative a...

I recently became certified as a digital citizenship educator. I wrote an article for The Guardian , which was published yesterday. The Guardian, Wednesday 15 January 2014:  http://gu.com/p/3ypzy

Split Screen Extension, Chrome Store I am fairly comfortable with technology and have been using it for as long as I have been working, though it did not pay a big role in my education. My father did recommend my taking a GCSE in Information Technology, one of the first ones that came out, as he said that computers were the future. I wanted to do art, but I did as my pops suggested. During the time I was studying for my degree, the Internet made its debut appearance. I do remember a boyfriend at the time excitedly showing me a page on an American punk band we were into , but it took about ten minutes for the page to load and I just didn't see the appeal. My degree essays were researched from actual physical books and journals and my essays, in the main, were handwritten, though I did invest in a word processor in my final years. Being able to see four faint lines of my 4000 word essays was progress... I think. My first job out of University was as ...