Guest Lecturer - Dr Russell Grigg

16/1/2012. Head of the South Wales centre of teaching Education.
Estyn - An overview. What does Estyn do?

Today we had a guest lecturer of the name Dr Russell Grigg who was the head of the South Wales centre of teaching education. The lecture was very interesting as Dr Grigg explained in great detail the role and expectations of Estyn.
What does Estyn do? Estyn inspects quality and standards in education and training providers in Wales including Nursery, Primary, Secondary, independent and special schools. As a whole they inspect a wide variety of educational settings, those being: pupil referral units, further education, adult community learning, local authority education services for children and young people, teacher education and training, work based learning, career companies and offender learning. Estyn also provides advice to the Welsh Government on quality and standards in education and training in Wales and promotes the spread of good practice in education and training.
  There are two types of reports. The first being thermatic reports for the whole of Wales which covers all kinds of learning and the second reports different institutes - schools, prisons etc.
Dr Grigg informed us that the three fold purposes of Estyn are accountability, improvement and development. These purposes can guide and help the inspectors judge the different areas more effectively. As Dr Grigg had inspected schools himself he could give us an honest insight into what happens in the inspections and what the inspector has to comment upon. The inspector must decide for example whether or not certain areas of the school are excellent, good, adequate or unsatisfactory.
  The lecture was very informative and Dr. Grigg referred back to the Estyn website which we could all see for ourselves and we saw past reports that had been written in the past. He also portrayed to us that the relationship between the teachers, pupils, parents and governors are highly important when inspecting a school. We were told that Estyn also concentrates on achievement and attainment. Achievement being that of individuals and attainment is the standards against others.
Overall today's lecture has given me a great insight into the Estyn reports and how the inspectors go about inspecting schools today. An Estyn report is very important for a school and can make a difference to us as learners. It enables the school to make improvements and better themselves therefore improving the education of many which enables children to continue learning to their full potential with the positive encouragement of those within the education setting.

References :
http://www.estyn.gov.uk/english/   Retrieved on 23rd of January 2012.

Work placement week :)

This week we were all at our work placements in our chosen schools. I was with year 1 & 2's. Within the classroom I was in there was not a lot of technology used. As it was nearing Christmas the teachers and pupils were preparing for their Christmas play.
On a couple of the mornings I did help the children on the computer draw pictures of their families and print them out for a calender. The Children also made Christmas cards on the computer for their parents using paint on the PC's that were in their classroom. There was a white board in the classroom although it had broken. The teacher used a paper easel and a chalk board. Although I do believe that children should be taught how to use today's technology and become familiar with how it works. For the children that I was with I didn't feel that it was highly important for them to be using technology within their classroom as they were learning to read and write and play with the things they choose to. I assume that the further they continue through school the more technology they will come to use.
I did thoroughly enjoy the week I spend on placement even though I did not come across much technology I found the techniques the teacher used to teach the pupils very helpful and rewarding both for the pupils and the teacher. I am looking forward to next years placement already.

The scream

Today was our first session of visual communication with Suzie. As a group we looked as a variety of images and talked about what we thought about them and what we thought the artist was trying to portray. We firstly looked at the picture named The Scream.


This painting was painted by Edvard Munch in 1893. We discussed the colours in the painting and the reason behind the man screaming. This session was fun and was a great start to our visual communication lessons.

Visual Communication - collages

Today in class we worked in groups and made a collage with the thought in mind 'sense of place'. We looked through magazines and newspapers and cut out the things we individually liked or gave us a 'sense of place'.
We started the lesson by writing down what we personally felt like our sense of place was. The main similarities between everybody was that we wrote down places where we felt safe, cosy, being with family and friends, holidays and happy family memories. After discussing our sense of place with the whole class we worked in our groups on our collages. From doing this exercise I decided that my sense of place was based around family holidays as we always took family holidays to different places and I always felt safe and happy being away with my family. As a whole the classes collages were very similar with pictures of homes, beds and food.

2simple2animate

Today we were asked to create a simple animation using a programme called 2simple2animate. I thouroughly enjoyed this task and found it really fun. We were asked to try and create an animation similar to the ones seen on the TV programme catchphrase. The software had a simple version and an advanced version. It was very easy to navigate and not over complicated to use. I started off doing a simple animation and then tried a more advanced one once I got the hang of it. This is a great programme for children to use in schools and can develop their ICT skills greatly.
I have posted my animation on a seperate blog below.

Animation

Evaluation of Website.

Our site we used : http://www.loch-ness.org/

My group and I decided to research information on the Loch-Ness Monster and to find a genuine site that told us information on our chosen subject. The site on initial appearance was jam packed full of information, had 'real/fake' arguments throughout, was easy to use and navigate, had a chat room (forum), contact information and link pages to tourist attractions and hotels. Negatives we thought on the site were that the writing was too small, that the layout was not very eyecatching, there was alot of advertisements and no search box.
 The website was devoted to nessie information and to the understanding of the loch ness mystery full of facts gathered from past and present and many pictures also.
 From using the http://www.easywhois.com/ website we discoved that the site was created on 4th Jan 1999,

Reflective learning articles

Reflective journals and logs can be very useful for communication. It is a very useful tool for expressing feelings and thoughts. By blogging on a regular basis, you can reflect upon activities and challeges. It is an effective way of communication as communication is used in every day life. Gibbs(1996) came up with six steps to help people recognise and help reflective practice, them being :
Descrption- what happened?

Feelings- What were you thinking?

Evaluation- What was good and bad about the experience?

analysis- what sence can you make out of the situation?

Conclusion- what else could you have done?

Action plan- what will you do next time?

If after a task we followed these 6 simple steps we can learn how to improve ourselves and learn certain things about ourselves also. By reflecting we enable ourselves to gain better knowledge and understanding on subjects and can only improve ourselves.

Nick Bennett- Further education

6/3/2012 – Guest lecturer – Policy and practice- An overview of further education in Wales – Nick Bennett: Principle at Gower College Swansea.

Todays lecture was taken by Nick Bennett, the principal at Gower College Swansea. The British council (2006) 'understand further education as the most commonly used term in the UK to describe education after the age of 16, which is not part of higher education, them being University honours degrees and above' (page 1).

In 1988 the Education Reform Act established the National Curriculum and gave us a better understanding of what further education was. Before 1993, colleges were funded by local authorities. Nowadays further education is run independantly which is seen as a positive change as colleges and other further educational institutes can make their own decisions. Further education is very useful and valiable to many different people from all walks of life and enables them to learn new skills and gain qualifications. It can also be seen to be widening access, community regeneration, fulfilment of potential, cultural awareness, civic duty and a second chance for many. Main aims for further education in Wales are to underpin social justice and supports the economy. It supports the economy by training or enabling people to re-train which supports our economy and benefits employers by providing people with the skills needed for pacific jobs.

The Welsh Government in 2011 took the decision to merge many further education colleges in order to make improvements. Nick Bennett is now the the principal of two colleges that have merged, those being Swansea and Gowerton College. This can enable the colleges to have more money as the individual budgets do not have to be spread as much as Nick Bennett informed us that his college budget had already been cut this year. The Minister for Education in Wales, Leighton Andrews has said, this regarding further education- 'performance will be our driver, with a continued focus on improving performance and quality across the board and at every level' (Welsh Assembly Government 2011). The Welsh Government have also stated that they aim to maintain financial support for those from low income households which enables all to have the same educational opportunities and to better themselves to succeed in life.

Nick Bennett informed us of there being over 5000 different qualifications available for those living in Wales for higher education. By offering this many courses it is enabling many people's needs to be met and providing courses that many people would not necessarily have the opportunity to train to do otherwise. It can can be said that a lot of money is wasted on running these courses where as the money could be used more wisely in funding courses that do enable people to leave further education fully trained and able to find paid work easily. Nick Bennett informed us that there is a reveiew of qualifications due in the near future to identify the qualifications that have the more meaningful value to people and that some low key, minor courses will be cut.

References:

British Council(2006) Further Education, Vocational Training and Access to University in the UK England: British Council.

Welsh Assembly Government (2011), Priorities for the further education sector Cardiff: WAG.

Guest Lecturer - Education for sustainable development. Graham Allen

February 21st 2012.
Education for sustainable development : Graham Allen.

Today our guest lecturer was Graham Allen. He talked to us about education for sustainable development. We started the lecture by looking at a quote in order to explain what we would be learning about, 'our biggest challenge in this new century is to take an idea that seems abstract- sustainable development- and turn it into a reality for all the world's people' Kofi Annan, March 2001. This quote came from the head of the UN, which is where a lot o education for sustainable development comes from. There are three hundred definitions of sustainable development commonly quoted from Gro Harlem Bruntland who was the former Prime Minister of Norway who is now the Director General of the World Health Organisation. One of his commonly seen quote is 'sustainable development is development that meets the needs of the present without compromising the ability of future generations to meet their own needs' Brundtland, 1987.
  Graham Allen told us that action is another key feature of Education for Sustainable Development to help young people understand the importance and the responsibility which lies with us all. Overall Education for Sustainable Development encourages young people to take action and lead on from what they learn. Points that should be considered when teaching young people are firstly to clarify and extend the ability of students to think for themselves. Secondly, encourage students to reflect and debate issues to enable them to form their own opinions and thirdly foster learning that emerges from discovery and is relevant to the learners life experience.
Corporate Responsibility- what is it? The definition that Graham Allen gave us for corporate responsibility was that it is an organisations positive impact on society and the environment through its operations, products or services and through its interaction with key stakeholders- such as employees, investors, customers, communities and suppliers. The main elements of this were corporate strategy, this being the values, leadership, advocacy, risk management and policies. Integration which he explained as being integration of principles, business conduct, performance management, strategic decision making, training and development, senior training, stakeholder engagement and reporting. Management were that of key issues, objectives and targets, allocation of responsibilities, training/support, internal monitoring and reporting and finally- performance and impact which consists of measuring and reporting, scope of data, quality of data, target setting and performance improvement.
  We then listened to important examples of 'what makes a University or School that counts?' Graham Allen explained that leadership and commitment of the highest level contributes a great deal. Also policies, to ensure responsible behaviors across the business. He then lead us onto explaining Digression and that the benefits of growth are that it creates employment, higher incomes, decreases poverty, improves standards of living, leads to economic stability and also means creativity and innovation. The alternative of this could lead to stagnation, decline or even a Great Depression. On the other hand if we have a steady state economy we have prosperity without growth. A quote Graham Allen mentioned to us was 'growth is more of the same stuff. Development is the same amount of better stuff'.
  This then followed onto political strategy. It is explained by claiming that if the public are given the information and the tools to achieve it- they can be part of a transition to a sustainable society. A failed high growth economy is much more politically damaging than a successful lower growth economy. The public are looking for leadership to work towards sustainability. We were told that the National Assembly for Wales has a duty under section 121 of the Government of Wales Act 1988 to promote sustainable development in the exercise of its function, that is, in everything it does. In all sectors of education, this including higher education, the Welsh Government recommends that Education for Sustainable Development and Global Citizenship (ESDGC) does continue to be delivered through- leadership, learning and teaching, practise within an Higher Education Institute (HEI), partnership and community work and also research.
  Finally today's lecture finished off by concluding upon Education for Sustainability. According to Koichiro Matsuura, UNESCO Director General- 'the principles of sustainable development must find themselves in children's schooling. This means that education will have to change so that it addresses the social, economic, cultural and environmental problems that we face in the 21st Century.
  Overall today's lecture was very interesting. As a whole I learnt a great deal and thoroughly enjoyed Graham Allen's points of important information. Previously I had never given much thought to Education for Sustainable development. I am glad that we had today's lecture as I have now have a great insight and understanding of Education for sustainable development and can therefore put what I have learnt in today's lecture into practice and develop ideas from these.

References : Lecture notes and Graham Allen's power point.