Items to Share: 6 October

Education Focus

• New Academic Year. New Inspection Handbook. Same Old OFSTED (Scenes from the Battleground). I've long suspected that Ofsted inspectors assemble their reports from boilerplate text banks, which may have its uses. But perhaps they may be interested in the next item... 

• Educational Jargon Generator 'Amaze your colleagues with finely crafted phrases of educational nonsense! 

• Top 100 tools for learning announced Twitter is #1...

• Three terrible academic habits | Neurobonkers | Big Think Basically a plug for a MOOC on academic writing—which may actually be worth taking.

• Do you remember that advert about the trousers? | Webs of Substance It is perfectly possible to be amused, interesting or even amazed by something, retain it for the long term but remember nothing about the point that was being made. [...] I think that this happens a lot in teaching. 

• A summary of ideas on this blog | Pragmatic Education Always useful to know where bloggers are coming from.

• Journal series on progressive education | Chip's journey 'Progressive education is a pedagogical movement that emphasizes aspects such as learning by doing, student-centered learning, valuing diversity, integrated curriculum, problem solving, critical thinking, collaborative learning, education for social responsibility, and lifelong learning. It situates learning within social, community, and political contexts. [It is] reflected in the educational philosophy of John Dewey.'

• No need to explain | Webs of Substance Critical discussion of Dan Meyer's approach to teaching maths 

• McDonaldising the student soul | Dennis Hayes | spiked 'Many critics have written on the factory-like changes that occurred as the university became ‘McUniversity’. The changes are now familiar: the removal of formal examinations so that grades and pass rates improve; the obsession with league tables; the modularisation process that chopped academic programmes into easily digestible, bite-sized nuggets; [...] Any academic or student can recognise and amplify this picture of how efficiency, calculability, predictability and control are the basis on which McUniversities are now managed. 

• A Machiavellian Guide to Destroying Public Universities in 12 Easy Steps In the US, that is, but in some respects we appear to be ahead of them.

• Feedback (and Forth) | Sam Shepherd '[Their reaction to feedback] also says a lot about the learners, and reflects something of the calculated, point scoring mentality they bring to the classroom. For them, at the moment, receiving and responding to feedback is not a constructive and developmental process, but a series of marks against which they are being punitively measured. In a sense, they are suffering from the worst elements of performance management. What is the goal? Have you achieved that goal? Why haven’t you achieved that goal? You are not a success, and need to work harder. And so on.

Other Business

• 94-Year-Old Pete Seeger Sings “This Land is Your Land” at Farm Aid

• Are emotions 2D? | Evolving Thoughts 'We are at the point in our researches where the neurological aspects of psychology and the behavioural and socially functional aspects are joining up, slowly. The ethical implications, however, seem not to be considered as much as I expected they would be. 

• 3quarksdaily: How to Write a Crap Philosophy Essay